[Rick Lee]

I'll back up a little.

At my last job 100% of our leads came from going to trade shows and the intense preparation for them weeks beforehand. Weeks before the show I already had a huge Excel sheet of all exhibitors and many attendees I wanted to go meet, often with appointments I had set up.

I met my current employer when they happened to be our booth neighbors. I heard the German and jumped right in. I asked the German boss if so and so was there. He gave me a puzzled look and asked why. I said because that's whom I had emailed and asked for a meeting, but had gotten no response. Turns out he didn't come to the show, but the boss saw I had done my homework. And he saw me running around to every other booth with list in my hand, looking for people. During the downtime I hung with our German neighbors, we talked for hours a day for three days and became friends.

A month later I checked out their website and saw a sales job on their English page. I emailed the boss about it and asked if it was in the US or Germany. He said Germany, but that they'd consider making it US-based for me, asked for a date and time to have a Skype chat with him and his HR lady. That got delayed and delayed. In the meantime, I spent many hours, watching Youtube videos on German job interviews and etiquette. When it finally happened, I had on a suit for my webcam. Boss was in jeans and a hoodie, said they had planned to contact me about that job, but that I got to them first, asked me how much I needed and when I could start. That was it. Didn't even ask for a resume.

During that Skype "interview" he told me that my boss (to be), whom I briefly met at that show, was a great guy, but that he was strictly inbound and would not pick up the phone. My boss has been there five years and is pretty well-entrenched. And he's also very smart, experienced and great on the phone with demos. I truly respect him and envy his abilities. I don't want to even think that I may be better than him or in any way qualified to replace him. I still have a loooonnng way to go to be on top of this product and sales process. But there is no one else I can ask for anything, other than my boss.

The big German boss has twice asked all of us to send him our thoughts on two subjects. Both times I sent long, very well thought-out emails to him only and got no response. So I can't assume I can just call him up or IM him to chat. I'm going to have to be prepared for when we're all together under one roof in a few weeks. I know he had to have talked me up to get the CEO to agree to spend the money and create my position. And he's probably on the hook for some ROI there too. So I know they're going to want to meet the new guy, test my German and ask what's going on.

Oh, and I've never gotten any kind of list of weekly or monthly activity requirements or KPIs. I've simply kept track of everything on an Excel sheet and emailed it to my boss at the end of each Friday. Have-never-received-one-word-of-feedback-on-that. In fact, one week I forgot to send it and still heard nothing. WTF?