Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Walking the walk

About 35- 40 years ago my father- in- law took a job selling cars for a major car dealership.
My father-in-law is a honest a man as you ever want to meet.
He had a young family at the time and he was doing real good in his new job.
People , customers, gravitated to him.

Problem was his new bosses, the owners of the dealership, did not have the same character.

The first month my father-in-law lead the sales team and was winning over his customers. Mostly because he simply cared.

His bosses never allowed the salespeople to follow up with their customers once they sold a car, and this bothered my father-in-law and he thought that it was not right. He wanted to stand behind what he sold and stay involved. He also never strong armed his customers.

One day his bosses and upper management was strong arming one of his customers to the point where the man was beginning to have tears in his eyes.
My father-in-law walked him out of the dealership and went back in himself and said that he quit.
He told them that they were unethical and did not agree with their philosophy and how they treated people.

How hard was must that of been?
Here was a man with a young family to support and he needed a job but he knew that he could not work for people like that.

That is walking the walk.

There are many times that we may find ourselves in a similar situation and to stand up is tough but it is the right thing.

Oh yea my father-in-law went to work for another major car dealership and within one month was promoted to General Manager, the other guys asked him to come back and he never did.
35 years later he retired from as General Manager with a fine dinner honoring him where every person in the room stood up, from the mechanics to the people that wash the cars and every salesperson and they gave testimony to what a good man he was and spoke about how he was a honest and hard working man and how he helped each and every one of them.
 And he left behind a book of hundreds and hundreds loyal customers that went back to him year after year.

That's walking the Walk.


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