Sort of Like Zorro

Bill Truax's career that began at Heinz, where he supplied grocery stores around Cleveland. When the company launched a hot new product line, Truax was expected to call on every one of his 300 customers in a single five-day workweek. Talk about a blitz call! That's 60 stores each day. "So on Sunday night I started practicing a 30-second sales presentation," he says. "Next day, I'd pull up in a no-parking zone and race into the store, sort of like Zorro." When that week's sales were toted up, he'd moved more Heinz foodstuffs than all the other salespeople put together. People started asking him how he did it, and would he help them, and tah-dah! -- he was on his way to professional independence.