Schollmeyer explains, \u201cMy primary job is to talk to customers, but I also handle a lot of the back end of the business, the billing, the grunt work, making sure that orders are properly process (the detail stuff in the sales process that a lot of folks find annoying); I kind of watch over the sales department.\u201d He adds, \u201cI know Robert Buchanan because his son and mine are in the Boy Scouts together. In 2010 I had my own company but things went south. Robert needed help because AoA is growing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo pretty quickly, I find myself testing guns, scoping guns, and answering the phone at the same time. I clawed my way through it, but I can tell you that when you are testing guns every day, you learn very<\/span> quickly. The first time you fire a springer followed by shooting a precharged gun, you go \u2018Whoa!\u2019 I did that for three years before moving more into a sales and sales management role here at AoA.\u201d<\/p>\n Schollmeyer says, \u201cI\u2019ve been a salesman my entire life, and I am proud of that, but \u2013 emphatically \u2013 that doesn\u2019t mean selling people stuff they don\u2019t need. If I have one talent, I know that I am good at finding the right product for the right person that is going to make them happy at the end of the day. That means I have to know the products very well, and I have to listen very carefully to the customers to discover what they need and want.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, here\u2019s the weird part: Schollmeyer is not an airgun enthusiast. \u201cOh, I\u2019ll go on pigeon shoots, participate in some airgun benchrest, and sometimes shoot a CO2 lever action with my boys, and I enjoy it, but on weekends, you\u2019ll most likely find me doing something with my three sons or my wife. I\u2019m assistant scout master of a troop with 50 boys, and that generally means camping once a month.\u201d<\/p>\n He says, \u201cAt AoA, we pride ourselves on not being order takers. When you call AoA, everyone you talk to could be considered an airgun expert. We want to make sure that the person who is calling is getting the right product for their need.\u201d<\/p>\n The way Schollmeyer explains it, I think his assessment is wrong — picking up the phone and talking to someone who has in-depth product knowledge is<\/span> pretty sexy.<\/p>\n Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.<\/p>\n — Jock Elliott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I spoke to Darren Schollmeyer on the phone, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t know how you can make this sound sexy.\u201d Perhaps it isn\u2019t sexy, but it certainly is essential: in many ways, Schollmeyer functions as the glue that holds the sales department at Airguns of Arizona together. Schollmeyer explains, \u201cMy primary job is to…»<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3335"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3351,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335\/revisions\/3351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Darren2\"](\"http:\/\/198.154.244.69\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Darren2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cToward that end,\u201d he adds, \u201cthe first Wednesday of every month, we close the shop at noon, have some lunch together and have training and product seminars. Everybody gets to see all the latest stuff, to touch it, and to shoot it, that way, no one in the shop is talking about something they don\u2019t know about. When it comes to airguns, there are dozens of tools in the chest, and they all meet different tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n