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I started with AT&T in 1976. I started out in west Texas, in Lubbock. I started as a executive secretary. It was my first professional job straight out of college, so man, I was really, really excited. They slapped me behind a desk and they gave me all of these personnel files.
So I was ultimately responsible for rating everybody's increases, documenting their salaries, and I tell you what, some of those sales salaries were just overwhelming. I could not believe one particular individual could make that much money. So pretty soon I got a little greedy. I wanted to be on the other side of the fence. I didn't want to be sitting behind a desk answering a telephone all day.
So I went through an assessment process that AT&T has in place to qualify you to tell whether or not you can become a sales person, pretty extensive testing. But since I'd been in the communications industry for a year, I felt like I was ready. Took the tests, successfully passed them, and I was placed in a sales support role.
A sales support role within AT&T means that you are not in the forefront. You do not basically have to go out and talk to the customer first, but you come as a backup person. You're responsible for making sure whatever was sold is technically feasible, that it will work when it's connected, and it will fulfill the commitments that the customer and the sales person have made between the two of them. I liked that role. That was very interesting for me. It was also on the technical side of the house, and I felt like that was the wave of the future. There would always be a need and a call for all technical expertise, no matter what the area was.
I stayed in that job for a year or two, started seeing other people drive new cars that I could not at that point afford. So, I thought, ah-ha, the light came on again. It's time for a career change. Took some additional testing and I was in the right places at the right times, and I moved up the ladder within AT&T rather quickly. But I've always had sales support roles on the technical side of the house, and I've enjoyed them tremendously. So therefore, that has been my focus, my goal, and my ambition is to stay on the technical side of the house.
The natural progression from sales person is to sales manager, again, in the technical role but supervising technical people. I qualified for that job and I've been in this particular job for about five years. I feel like I've been very, very good. I think I've been excellent, by the way. Some of the skills that I've acquired along the way that have helped me tremendously: I feel like I'm a great communicator. I feel like I'm personable. As I said, customers buy from customers. I have a face, I think, that customers trust, and I say things confidently, and I never open my mouth and say something that I cannot support. And I think customers admire and respect that as well.
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