Connor Emmel

Connor Emmel

English 111

Inquiry II

23 October 2014

Capturing a Journey of a Legend in the Making

           “Alright John, in ten seconds or less how would you describe your job to someone if you just met them in an elevator,” I asked 23 three year old, John Hicks, a district manager of Vector Marketing Corporation.  Hicks’s voice inflection sky rockets after I asked this question.  He responded with “This is my favorite question in the entire world; I love it!”  Hicks goes on to say, “I actually work for a knife sales company.  It’s the number one brand of cutlery in the entire world.  It’s been the best experience of my life; I graduated college debt free because of working here.  I get to travel four months out of the year and I work the other eight.  I have a pretty good life.  What do you do?”  I started laughing at the thought of how another person would even begin to follow that up.  That is how Hicks lives.  He started with Vector Marketing Corporation in 2010.  During his first ten days on the job he sold $11,300 as a brand new sales rep.  During his second and third week on the job he sold a total of $14,500.  In a total of two and a half months he sold $52,000 worth of Cutco products!  To put what that means in perspective, he was the number 16th rep in the entire nation after being on the job for such a short period of time.  I got in contact with John to review a talk he gave at a conference to an audience of 2,000 people directly.  The talk he gave was how to become a better sales rep.  Everything that Hicks has been through all led up to this one speech.  By capturing and re-counting Hicks’s journey through the ranks of Vector we learn how he was able to captivate thousands.

           Growing up John knew he wanted to do something that was centered around entrepreneurship and he also had an interest in becoming a financial planner.  He always looked up to his father who ran his own business.  Without being influenced by John’s dad he wouldn’t be the person who he is today.  Hicks stated, “I don’t know how he did it while bringing us to hockey every weekend and three times a week and raising a family while running a business the entire time.”  A large part of Hicks’s mentality with work came from his dad.  John’s customers were blown away by him when he came to their door step.  In John’s speech he had quotes from his customers saying things such as “Most salespeople start right into their sales pitch, but not John. He took the time to comment on aspects of my new home. He then established connections between us as we discussed his recent visit with one of my good friends. All the while, John was building a bridge of trust. After a while he began to share his personal goals with me; I could appreciate a young man of his age having high goals and I hoped I could help him achieve them!”  Another customer said was “Despite the fact that we had never met in person, I immediately felt comfortable with him. The evening he came over he arrived at my doorstep dressed very professionally in a long sleeve shirt with matching tie and dress pants. His friendly eyes, warm smile and firm hand shake alluded confidence and a neighborly mannerism. In an instant, I liked him and invited him into my home.”  From these quotes it is clear that John was on the right track as new sales rep.  That was only in his first summer.  After that he started to move up through the ranks and much bigger things were in store for him

           The following summer John went out to run his own branch office with the company at the age of 20 years old!  Instead of only selling as a sales rep John was now in a position where he was able to teach new reps everything he has learned so far.  Without this experience John would not be seasoned enough to give that talk on stage.  I asked John what his favorite part about his job was and he paused for a moment and didn’t really know what to say.  He went on to say that when he was younger it was all about being the best, being the number one after every contest.  When he was younger all that was driving him was holding that trophy, beating everyone else, and learning as much as he can.  All those thoughts changed as a branch manager.  He states, “Now it’s all about creating a life style for myself and impacting everyone who comes through my office.  If I was number two instead of number one having impacted twice as many people and helped them achieve their goals I would take that any day over winning a silver cup.”  A silver cup is the number one person for the entire year.  For John to say that truly shows how committed he is to transferring all of his knowledge and expertise on to younger reps that are in his position where he was a year ago.  John went on to talk about one of his lowest points in the company and how he came out of it stronger.

          He used to live in New York and when the opportunity presented itself he moved his life to Ohio to chase his dream.  He left his friends, family, and old life behind in pursuit of one with a future.  John wants to be doing 1 million dollars in sales by 2015 as well as having his office be doing over 750k.  He says “I didn’t really prep for it, when I moved I used all old scripts and power points and I had a mental breakdown to the point where I couldn’t even get out of my car to go into the office.  However I knew that I had eleven people in the office to train as well as receptionists all relying on me.  It was at that moment when I chose to be great and said I will never fail in this company.”  John needed this though.  Without it he never would have learned how to deal with adversity and come out of it stronger than ever before.  The week after that break down his office had a thirty thousand dollar week and was the top office in the region.  After that Hicks had a whole new understanding of a different side of the business.  He learned how to get on track and grow his business to be better than ever before.  Hicks has many goals for the future.  He plans to have his assistants be able to run the day to day operations in his office so he can focus on “making people great.”  Hicks plans to work with his top people and help them with their offices and wants his to be able to function without him.  He is all about developing people and without having all the knowledge from his sales rep days and running his own office he would never be able to develop people like he can now.

           I asked John what ran through his head before he goes on and gives a talk and his response did not disappoint.  John said “I think that these people are all hear to hear me speak.  They want to hear what I have to say based on my reputation.  I think to myself that I am the f***ing best and it’s time to kill it and I walk right out on to that stage and deliver the best damn message they have ever heard!”  As talked about in this essay John’s talk on how to be a better sales rep would not mean anything if he hadn’t been through all those different things.  He has such a wide range of knowledge in this business and wouldn’t have any of it if he didn’t work hard to climb the ranks to get on to that stage to impact the lives of thousands of people.