Introduction
Have you ever wondered what it's like to work for Puget Systems? As one of their newest Technology Consultants, and with barely five months under my belt, I may not have as nuanced an insight into the company's inner workings than some of my peers. However, I still feel like I can provide some unique insights on this subject, as the differences and similarities between my experiences with my last employer and Puget Systems are still quite fresh in my mind.
Before Puget Systems
For those of you fortunate enough to have never had to experience a big corporation’s culture, and especially the sales side of things, let me tell you that the difference between that experience and working with Puget could not be more stark. With my previous employer, exceeding your sales goals was everything. Meetings of any kind were rarely anything more than poring over different sales metrics, and management angrily demanding promises from each employee as to how they planned to increase their numbers by the next time we met. It’s worth noting that it made little difference whether you’d hit your sales goals at any given time. You should always have done more, worked harder, to increase those numbers.
Worse than the toxic focus on sales above all were the processes put in place to enable (Read: force) a sales conversation with our client base. The measures were manipulative at best, and in some cases customers were told outright lies in order to get them to sit down with me. This often resulted in an incredibly poor sales experience where I had to awkwardly attempt to build rapport with a customer who didn’t want to be in the room with me in the first place, let alone buy what I was selling. I would go home almost daily, sick to my stomach at the horrible, forced interactions I was made to have with people. Coming from this experience, almost any other employment opportunity would have been preferable. What I could never have anticipated was getting lucky enough to find a company whose every decision epitomized the absolute antithesis to that experience.
Enter Puget Systems
Maybe it's partially due to the fact that Puget Systems is – relatively speaking – a small company, but from the first time I visited their website to look at job postings, it was evident that the whole company was built with the customer in mind. I mean how crazy is that? From nothing more than the language used in the job ads I was looking at, I could tell that the people working here just…cared. As I went through the interview process, every conversation I had with the consulting team – or really any employee of the company – reinforced this idea.
It quickly became clear that there was no agenda; no tricks to get sales were being employed…just kindness and a focus on making a quality, positive experience for anyone who interacted with them. It made no difference if you were a customer, an employee, or just someone who was writing in to ask for advice on your first gaming rig. Priority number one here is always that person on the other end of the line, or the other side of that email.
I have since learned that the ideology behind this phenomenon is that if you are creating a product or service that's valuable, and you treat people with respect above all else, the sales will come. It turns out people gain a lot of trust in you when it's clear you have their best interest at heart. What really got me excited, though, was how happy everyone seemed. I actually started to get really jealous the more time I spent interacting with everyone working here. It was clear that a lot of time and energy had been devoted to creating a productive and positive working experience, and it absolutely blew my mind.
Conclusion
I've been working as a Technology Consultant for Puget Systems for five months now, and not once have I had a conversation with anyone here during which I was berated for having low sales, or encouraged to be more aggressive with customers. What's interesting is that quite the opposite has occurred: Every conversation I've had with anyone who manages me has been exceedingly positive, and encouraging of all the other ways that I can and already do contribute to the company's success outside just increasing the number of computers I sell. Do you want to know the ironic part? Never in my life have I been more motivated to do everything in my power to help a company succeed than I am now, including increasing that sales number. My interactions with potential customers is not tainted by the thought of how I'm going to manage to close a sale, which allows me to be genuine and truthful. I devote 100% of my mental energy towards helping to find the best solution for the person I'm speaking with at that moment, and I couldn't be happier.
It's difficult to articulate the feelings I experience when I think about all the good that has been done to make Puget Systems the company that it is today, and how those things are affecting my life now. I almost feel as though I've found this hidden gem that nobody knows about, and I want to share it with the world! I can't wait to see where this company goes from here. The best part is, I'll be coming along for the ride!