 A Day In The Life Of ....... Tracy Follows
"Having spent the last 10 years working as sales & marketing director for a large stationery manufacturer, covering around 800 miles a week & staying away from home on a regular basis, my husband & I decided it was time for me to have a break. We took a year out to travel & saw some wonderful places but as 12 months came around I was itching to get back to work. To be honest I've always enjoyed corporate life & the level I'd achieved in my career also gave me the benefit of organising my own workday. The only downside was the time away from home spent in hotels which might sound great but in reality only leads to longer hours at the office. I was about to take a position very similar to the one I'd left a year before when my husband came across ERA. I liked the concept from the start, no purchasing department can have experts in every field & the size of the organisation told me they'd have suppliers taking them really seriously. I could also see how the concept could have been beneficial to my old company which employed 350 staff turned over £20 million but only had one buyer. In my sales career I always believed it was easier to sell something you'd have bought yourself. When I met the team at head office that pretty much sealed the deal for me. I've always made my career decisions based on logic backed up by strong gut instincts. At my early meetings with ERA I liked the people & found them straight forward, open, & honest. What I really appreciated was that they didn't tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. I was able to question them about the stationery industry ( the area I knew really well ) & their answers proved their supplier base knowledge was second to none. They also gave me the contact details of some existing associates to call, everyone was happy to spend time chatting, giving me an insight into the challenges & the benefits of running an ERA franchise. The training programme was exceptional. Even though I'd paid my franchise fee & obviously believed in the ERA offering I hadn't really appreciated the depth & professionalism of the organisation until the training course. The opportunity to discuss in depth the ERA sales experiences with established associates as well as listen to presentations by category experts was invaluable. All aspects of running your own ERA business were covered thoroughly with lots of time for questions & real hands on experience creating reports & using the ERA back office system. By the end of the course I was confident and raring to go One of the best things though, is that all of the support you get during training doesn't just end there. When you're out in the field working on getting your business off the ground every one is still very much there for you. Mentoring & sales support meetings are in place & the head office team have always got time for you if you need to talk to them. What's really nice is when they call you up occasionally just to make sure everything is going OK. They're genuinely behind you helping you to succeed & are as excited as you are when you pass the major milestones like signing up you're first client. Having worked in larger companies for most of my working life & enjoyed the interaction between colleagues who became friends it's been fun to enter the ERA network. As you'd get in most companies there are a variety of characters & not everyone always agrees on all ERA general issues so regional meetings can produce some healthy debates. It's been really refreshing to find how helpful & supportive the more experiences franchisees are towards the network, prepared to invest time & effort to furthering the organisation as a whole as well as being on hand for a bit of personal advise if needed. Running my own business had always appealed to me but I know from the experiences of friends that it can sometimes be a bit of a lonely isolating experience, this certainly isn't the case in ERA. Since being let loose on unsuspecting prospects only a couple of months ago I've already signed up two clients & have a good number of prospects I've seen who I'm sure will turn into clients in the very near future. These range from a £7 million nursing home to a £200 million retailer & the variety of projects we're discussing range from the relatively straight forward to extremely specialist. So life's not going to be boring & I'm learning something new everyday. It's great being nosy about other peoples businesses & at the end of the day that's the best way to help them too. One of the best things about being my own boss is that I'm only answerable to me, I live or die by my own decisions & the effort I choose to put in (considerable at the moment, but I know the rewards will be worth it). I like working from home, taking a hour or two on a sunny day to walk the dog, then being able to make up for it by working late when it's throwing it down with rain (which is most of the time lately). I like the flexibility of setting my own agenda & formulating my own marketing strategies. I like not having to spend 2 or 3 nights a week away from home.
But best of all I like the fact that all the effort I'm putting in is for me & my business & that really makes a difference. | 
