August in Northern California

Box Brothers Northern California has been having quite the chaotic August. At the beginning of the month we said goodbye to Aldo, who resigned at the beginning of the month. After a mad scramble to try and find a replacement, we realized it was a blessing in disguise as a decrease in sales in Oakland meant we would have had to cut hours anyway.
At the same time Oakland was having a slow period, business was hopping in SF. Kiyoshi and I teamed up on two separate occasions to more than double our sales quota for the day and also send freight jobs to the warehouse. This was great new for Kiyoshi, because that meant the pressure was relieved for his upcoming absence. Kiyoshi headed out east to Boston to spend the last two weeks of August with his family.
With Aldo now gone, it was up to me to cover the SF store and leave the warehouse in the hands of Roger and Ganzo. With some help from our new office assistant, Sharie, Oakland had a boom in the last couple of weeks, effectively salvaging what was looking to be a dismal month.
I was able to generate quite a few freight jobs from the SF store. While many of these were requests for freight shipping, there were several that came in as a box sale, and ended up turning into a full service palletized household move. Chris Long had been out on a marketing run the week before Kiyoshi left, and it was with his guidance that I was able to make this kind of upsale. The lesson in this? Always ask a customer why they are purchasing moving boxes, and always offer them a card and let them know that we can take care of a long distance move for them at a lower cost than most movers.
So here we are at the end of the month. Sharie is all trained up and ready to work the SF Store when the need arises. Roger is off next week on a long awaited vacation. Sharie and I will be running the office in Oakland next week as Kiyoshi will be back in the SF store.
As a final note, we sure do get some wild requests for shipping. This week we shipped glass cased Japanese dolls, high-end salvaged sinks, an Austrian painting returning to Austria, and a box full of sticks. We also shipped rocks. And paper. No scissors, though.