January in New York can be pretty cold, and 1972 was no exception. On top of that there was a work dispute with the garbage collectors; trash was building up along with the winter snows. New Yorkers, however, seem to take everything in stride. I guess I could now classify myself as a New Yorker. Remembering back to the 1940's when I was in the Canadian Army, and visited New York for a day. I was so impressed when I viewed the city from the top of the Empire State Building, to which I had hoped to return some day. There is a difference between being a one day visitor and a full time resident. As a resident you have to cope with realities of day to day living in a cosmopolitan city of millions of people. Although I had been living in New York for several years, it was on a part time basis and I could escape the city with my business travels and weekends at home. Now New York was to be my full time home. Fortunately, I could still escape on business and I would take full advantage of being able to do so.
It was time to catch up on the District Office visits that I had promised to Kielman, the big boss. Unlike the assistant regional manager's job where I was only involved in the Eastern Regional offices, I now had the additional offices that made up the USA organization. The main stations for charters were New York, Boston, Miami, Detroit, Chicago, and the West Coast. There was no reason why all stations couldn't get charter business, and I wanted to prove that Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte and other smaller districts could sell charters too. My plan was to reach out to our largest producers first and then get to the others, as soon as possible. The main stations only produced two or three charters per year, except for Detroit, that was producing about fifteen per year. So, the potential was great.
In the first few months, I made calls on our main stations and spoke to all their managers and staff. Even though they were producing, their knowledge was still limited. It was very apparent that my idea of writing a sales manual had become even more important. I decided to complete the manual, prior to visiting more cities. I had phone contact with them all, and knew all the managers from meetings and seminars that we had all attended in the past. In the next couple of months, between meetings in Amsterdam every couple of weeks, I was able to complete the manual. Over the next few weeks I invited each manager to assign one of their staff to become the charter expert in their office, and send that person to an indoctrination meeting in the New York office. I set up dates in New York for several meetings and invited Charter Managers from the Netherlands to attend and contribute to the success of the training sessions. Each attendee was given a copy of the manual to take back to their station.( I keep in touch with a number of my old friends in KLM and they tell me that even after all these years that old manual is still in most of the offices.)
I was combining the meetings in New York with field visits to some of our smaller sales offices. I recall our Sales Representative in Charlotte, NC. His nick name was Johnny Mac. He was a good old southern boy. He was a great salesman and everybody loved him. I would accompany him on some of his sales calls; we would drive in his company car in which he had installed a special horn that blasted "Dixie". I didn't know of the horn until one day we were travelling a country road to the next sales call, when I saw a young black boy, walking along the side of the road ahead of us. As we approached the boy, Johnny Mac hit the horn. That young man must have jumped five feet in the air. I must admit that it was pretty funny but I told Johnny Mac that the horn had to go. It was not in keeping with the KLM image. I still remember Johnny Mac, as I'm sure others do, as a great salesman and a fun person to be with. Whenever I got to Charlotte, he would invite me to dinner at his home. He had a very nice wife and a couple of boys. I don't know if he ever took out the horn. I never asked him.
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