It’s 1973 and I’ve been promoted to a field sales position. I was pretty excited and looked forward to the new challenge of covering the whole State of Michigan and part of Ohio. Little did I know that would equate to driving nearly 1,000 miles a week. In those days, most business was conducted on a face-to-face basis; outbound calls were to the answering service, or for appointments.
Part of the job entailed sales call reports. You had a pad of pre-printed sheets with a variety of checkboxes and text fields to make notations, add comments, or check an action that was taken as a result of the call. At the end of the week, you would put all your reports in an envelope, along with your expense account, and mail them to your regional manager.
Filling out the reports every night was the common practice; there were those who probably waited until the end of the week (painful – still exists in CRMs today). When staying overnight, it passed the time in the hotel room. It was not a welcome task when you got home. That’s when I decided that I would be more efficient and do a write-up during the day, after a number of sales calls.
Those days in Michigan often found me in a Dunkin’ Donuts shop filling out my sales call reports. For me, it was the original coworking facility. As a traveling salesman, you couldn’t beat a good cup of coffee, a donut, a clean bathroom, and a wall-mounted pay phone. It was our office away from home, and the chance to share some time with fellow salespeople, or local town leaders and businesspeople.
This week I reflected on this era of selling. I stopped at a local Dunkin’ Donuts to purchased a dozen and a half donuts for a group of folks in an office. After selecting the donuts – hey, don’t rush me, I have to think what kind they’ll like – I looked around and saw how much Dunkin’ Donuts had changed over the years.
The old days at Dunkin’ Donuts were a formula of good coffee (no fancy concoctions whipped into a frenzy), a simple service layout (no drive-through back then), tasty treats, friendly service (they had counters back then, and people served you coffee in a ceramic mug), and no digital interruptions either introduced by you and Wi-Fi, or the result of overhearing an unwanted cell phone conversation by others.
In some of the locations that I frequented back then, you would see the same folks about the same time of day. Since today’s ‘always on’ connectivity was nonexistent, we took time to get to know each other and share a good story, or some other news or topic for discussion. In a similar way, coworking facilities are often described as a “shared professional workspace with a community atmosphere”.
Looking back, after this week’s Dunkin’ Donuts visit, I can’t help but reflect on the idea that yesterday’s Dunkin’ Donuts had the same feel as today’s coworking facility. I also realized how much I miss it.
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