Impossible Foods – Apprenticeship Week 6
Every week through (at least) April 2020, I will be outlining my apprenticeship experience as an Inside Sales Rep for Impossible Foods. Each week will recap what I’m learning, what I’ve accomplished, and overall how I am growing and progressing as both a professional, and as an individual. Writing these posts is not only a great way for me to document my experience to look back on in the future, it also allows me to publicly share my successes and failures during my first venture into the professional tech world. Let’s do this.
We’re nearing the halfway point of December, but if I’m honest, it hardly feels like it. This is the first winter of my entire existence where my reality isn’t a freezing, snowy, and often depressing wasteland… did I say wasteland? I meant Winter Wonderland (my absolute sincerest apologies to my Minnesota friends and family). All jocular remarks aside, I’m very excited to spend time at home with said friends and family over the Christmas holiday — that said, I’m very much enjoying the fact that it will only be a temporary foray.
6 weeks at Impossible Foods have flown by in nearly the blink of an eye — didn’t I just get started here? Things are moving fast, but it’s absolutely a good fast; challenging, but not overwhelming. This week provided another healthy workload to get through for us insiders (how I’ll refer to Inside Sales reps in the future for ease), and we made it through without many hiccups. Because we have had so much difficulty with some working relationships, making it a full week seems like a pretty great accomplishment. Go us!
In addition to my normal sales-related tasks, I am finally getting to contribute to other areas of necessity for our team. I offered my time to my supervisor if she had any side projects or tasks that I could work on, and she graciously took me up on it! I use graciously genuinely, too — though I’m offering to help, she took time out of her busy schedule to walk me through the task to a point where I felt comfortable continuing forward, which certainly doesn’t go unappreciated. Although the task is fairly tedious, I’m just happy to be able to help out the team and to begin establishing myself as the person my team can come to when they need something done.
Entering the “second phase” of the end of year holiday season will likely present some unforeseen challenges for us. Nothing incredibly debilitating, but I think it’s healthy to be prepared for obstacles. Knowing that it’s okay if things don’t go perfectly the first time is a really freeing realization to achieve — doing so allows me the freedom to analyze problems as they arise not so much as failures, but just as stepping stones to efficient, quality work.
I’m excited to keep shouldering more responsibility as I gain more and more experience here at Impossible Foods. At the same time, I am eager to keep sharpening my craft as a salesman — I know that it may be easy to get complacent. By taking things one day at a time, I know I can keep myself in the proper headspace to be able to do both of these things and continue becoming a key part of operations here.
Until next week!