If you ask my parents what I would be doing for a job as an adult, they might have said working in the library or teaching music.  I have never really had a “normal” job in my career and have always ended up supporting creative people.  The first 15 years of my career was in theater and music.  Now it’s with food.  Who knew?

One of my many tasks here at the bakery is client consultations.  I am pretty comfortable sitting down with a client and designing something with them and doing a tasting.  I have learned how to run a client meeting by listening to Ron conduct meetings.  I am really good with cakes for 50 – 150 guests.  Typically anything over 150 gets a bit more complicated and I will usually bring a designer in from the production room to help me a or I will go in and out of the production room during our meeting, asking designers questions to make sure it’s something we can do or confirmation on a design element.  But what I didn’t realize I would be able to do is sell a cake over the phone without ever meeting the client in person.

I have had one other sales job that I was terrible at.  I barely made my rent.  So the first time I sold a cake over the phone I was very proud of myself.  But then, it kind of just kept happening.  A client would call, we would talk about design and the flavors they liked over the phone, I would run it by Ron, he would give me the OK and then I would send the invoice to the client.  I now have a few regulars that call every couple of months for small celebration cakes.  I have also sold a few large cakes over the phone, one of them being for the jewelry company Chopard.

I have asked myself over and over again how I am able to do this, Ron and my Mom both have said that it’s easy to sell something if you believe in the product.  They both are absolutely correct, but I have never thought of our cakes as being a “product”.  But more like an experience.  Even if our clients can’t come in to sit at the table and design with us, we give them just as much attention via the phone and internet as we would if you were here in the bakery.   Getting one of our cakes should be a fun experience, what we do is truly unique and it’s fun for me to share my enthusiasm for what we do with our clients.