Life as a Sales Director : Jake

My name is Jake Michel, the Sales Director here at Zappshelter. Every day I focus on serving my team to serve our customers better than the day before.

It wasn’t a choice. As a family, Zappshelter was and has always been our life.

At first I joined just to help Zappshelter survive, then slowly it became enjoyable.

As the company gained momentum, we were able to design really cool stuff. We had the honour to work with some great companies. We could bring our friends into the team. We made new friends. We could support the causes that are dear to us… all whilst having fun (and working bloomin’ hard too!)

Overview

What does a normal day as a Sales Director look like?

What does a normal day as a Sales Director look like?

I wish I knew! 😄 I can tell you what yesterday was like :

06 : 30 – Arrived at work with a flask of instant coffee in hand. Unloaded, reloaded and then set the dishwasher.

06 : 45 – Reviewed my task list and inbox, clearing out as much of the quick and easy stuff as possible so I can focus on the meaty tasks during the day.

08 : 00 – ‘Sales Team Huddle’ to review the most important project and actions of the day with my team.

09 : 00 – Phone everyone I needed to.

11 : 00 – A design meeting with a client.

12 : 00 – Warmed up my Chicago Town pizza in the air fryer (worked a treat) and wolfed it down.

12 : 30 – No time for a walk because I had another client meeting.

13 : 00 – Now my tasks were mostly done, I spent time with the team working on their projects.

16 : 30 – I cleared those last remaining emails and planned for the next day before heading home.

What’s something you find challenging about your work?

The most challenging thing has to be turning down a project we aren’t specialists in. I’ve lost count of the number of hours I’ve wasted brainstorming a design that I knew we couldn’t do from the beginning. I get carried away with wanting to help a client and it’s so painful having to turn them away. With that said, we have to know when to say ‘no’ otherwise we’ll only let the client down.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made at Zappshelter and what did you do to fix it?

Generally, I leave the “fixing” to others…joke!

The biggest mistake I made was winging it when pricing up a large project a few years ago. I completely underestimated the time we would need on site to complete the build. With a mistake like that, there’s little I can do other than soak it up. We can’t rush the job or walk off halfway through; neither of those are particularly good strategies for maintaining good customer relationships.

The mental scarring left by the loss we made on that job ensures I don’t cut that corner again.

Anyone in the asphalt industry knows that water is the enemy of efficiency. When raw materials like RAP (Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement), dust and sand get wet, vast amounts of energy are needed to dry them during production.

Between hire terms or before their final sale, each machine is repaired and serviced. It’s then stripped and resprayed ready for resupply or purchase. Initially, the team was having to run this whole process in a single workshop. This lack of capacity wasn’t just inefficient, but also meant the team had to work in a dusty, noisy environment.

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