Category Archives: PEMBAway

Transitioning from having a job as a sales rep to building a business as a sales agency isn’t easy. We’re often asked how we started to become who we are here at PEMBA. Next in our continuing series in advance of our OIA Webinar on August 18^th, we’re going to share how we got on our way.

The bathroom mirror is a harsh friend. Often, it shows you what you need to see, even when you don’t want to see it. The trick is that you need to open your eyes.

I hadn’t done this in a long time. This particular morning, I didn’t like what I saw.

There were deep bags under my bloodshot eyes. The sheets from my bed were imprinted on my cheeks. Two days prior I had finished another three-week tour on the road, and was so tired that I had spent most of my precious time at home in bed. This day, there might be enough time to do my laundry and maybe polish off some office work before I needed to repack the car again for another three weeks on the road.

At this time, e-mail was not yet ubiquitous. There was a stack of faxes to go through, and piles upon piles of mail that I had abandoned hope of managing effectively and had simply shoved into paper sacks that clustered all around my desk. Buried among junk-mail in these grocery bags were bills, checks, and orders. If I worked really hard and mowing the lawn went smoothly, I might have enough time to sort through it all before I had to leave.

In the mirror, deep beneath the veneer of my own skin, there was a manic energy that told me that something was about to give. Maybe you’ve seen that look in others. Maybe you’ve seen it in yourself. I saw it that morning.

Clearly, I needed to have a talk with my boss.

  Continue reading →

The next installment in our continuing series in advance of our OIA Webinar on August 18th, in which we discuss the idea that – yeah – everybody poops, even us. And, all poop is smelly.

It would be easy to think that because we’re putting some of our methods out there we think that we’re Teflon, stainless, and – que veut dire en francais? – “Parfait.” We know this isn’t true. We get up in the morning, get dressed, have breakfast, and go to work hoping for a good day, just like everybody else.

Most days, we have good days. Some days we have great days, even. And from time to time some days are not so good. This is pretty much like anybody else.

We have different methods because they work for us, but not because we think that they’re better than other methods. There’s a lot of ways to do the job of being a sales rep in the #OIBIZ. As with everybody else, our goal is to provide awesome sales for our vendors and awesome service for our customers. We’ve chosen our ways because they help us to grow our business without – necessarily – driving ourselves (or our families) nuts.

Every model has its strengths and weaknesses, and the PEMBAway is no different. Before we get into the details of the model in subsequent posts, I wanted to be sure we put this out there: EVERYBODY POOPS.

  Continue reading →

Darren Bush of Rutabaga (@canoelover) doing what he does best

In advance of our OIA Outdoor University Webinar on August 18^th, the story of how and why we do things the PEMBAway continues. This time: How to dip into social communications without drowning yourself, or others.

Structure dictates behavior, and the structure of our territory defines who we are. We have 777,044 square miles of terrain to cover for #OIBIZ vendors and dealers here in the Upper Midwest. That’s a lot of ground to cover.

In this territory, there are times when we drive twelve hours in a day, and see two accounts, for an hour each. This sort of travel is difficult to sustain and definitely cannot be scaled. The way we see it, there are two ways we can span this distance frequently:

1. Lots and lots of butt-time
2. Social communications.

So, how does this work? Well, we spend a lot of time on our butts.

(Have you seen my butt lately? It’s HUGE.)

The social communications part? That’s where many are just finding their way. For those who are interested in learning the PEMBAway, here’s our straight-forward plan for swimming – and not drowning – in the social media waters:

  Continue reading →

Pemba Serves has left the building

This one goes out to all the single ladies! Er, sorry: Make that all of the sales reps and other #OIBIZ folk out there who want to know more about the PEMBAway. In advance of our OIA Outdoor University program later this summer, we’ve started this series of posts describing what we do and how we do it, and – well – this is the next one.

We’ve often been accused of having our heads in the clouds, and – turns out – that this couldn’t be more true. Wait, that’s not what I mean. Back-up, rewind: Our heads are in the CLOUD, not CLOUDS.

(Having our heads in the clouds – also prolly true – but that’s a whole ‘nuther thing; we’ll talk about that later…)

For some time now we’ve been actively pushing as many of our systems as we can up into the Interwebz, the sphere, what’s collectively known as “the Cloud.” This is to say that most of the software and systems we run with at Pemba don’t exist on any one computer. In fact, they exist on any and all computers, at least any and all that have internet access.

Why do we do this? What’s the advantage? Continue reading →