Old School...

I gave several months notice and phased out of a sales position working for a company who specializes in kitchen and bath remodeling. It was a problematic position and the company understaffed. That forced the salesmen to do jobs (like project manage) that cut into time needed to sell. There were other reasons, but I wanted out and agreed to finish the contracts underway and not accept any new work.

Something else (more to my liking) came along and I started working for a high-end custom manufacturer. It was agreed that I would often be called away (from time-to-time) to finish obligations of the other job.

They are using a design program that's considerably more difficult that other industry software but I'm being paid to learn it and make drawings for my boss along with some of the other sales staff. I'm assigned to follow up on sales leads as they come in.

One of the designers (fancy name for a sales person as we all are called designers) has some personal issues and decided to leave the company. I noticed some of her work is/was problematic that requires meetings with the owner and factory manager to resolve manufacturing errors in her designs. She's had issues with clients who also complained about not getting things in her designs. I don't know her track record but after she left they passed 17 leads to me she wasn't following up on. We subscribe to a client monitoring system from Google we use that keeps track of leads, notes and client correspondence. It gives reminders so if you forget for follow up on a lead it will appear on a list and how many days it's been since you contacted the client. It took 3 days to go through the list (while doing other things) and 4 of the leads are still alive.
She didn't answer email to a client who bought a condo in Florida and will visit from their New York residence. I read some email complaints from the customer who didn't get a reply, met with her this week and received a deposit to start shop drawings.

The designer who was leaving had a meeting with the owners to pass her projects to them and they would decide who to divide her projects to. We are a team and often help the other coworkers when something needs to be done. I'm made drawings and gone on field measuring trips to help the other sales staff. It's fine with me as I'm learning their procedure. While I have 30 years experience in this business and handle a wide range of situations, my forte as sales manager was fixing the mistakes from other designers/salemen.

A call came through yesterday from a client who paid a deposit and wasn't getting service to finalize the shop drawings so we could start manufacturing. Some miscommunication happened and he got bounced around. One of the staff who is assigned to write up orders is somewhat familiar the job was too busy to take it and suggested giving it to me. With several people in the room, the senior designer also stated it should have come to me. The designer who was leaving wanted one of the other designers to take it. When my name was mentioned she said "He's too Old School" and that she wanted someone else to take the project.

I laughed and said "I'll take that as a compliment, at least I don't have a history of pissing off clients."
She's gone, it's not her decision who should handle the project. I have the time and experience to deal with it. I went over this event with my boss who admitted he was overloaded (didn't followup) and so was the senior designer (who came in Saturday to take on the project) and agreed they didn't make the correct decision.

Sadly, the senior designer looked at the shop drawings and found some critical design mistakes that have to be resolved with the client because they need to be aware of the necessary changes.

So much for New School designers...