Looking back on my career, I honestly couldn't be more proud of myself at this point. I grew up in a low-income community with a blue-collar family. Most people graduate from my high school and enter the workforce, through college or trade schools. Most of these jobs are manufacturing or labor-intensive positions. However, I was fortunate enough to attend college right after high school on an athletic scholarship. Although I quickly discovered that I wasn't ready to take on the responsibility of a student-athlete. Therefore, after only one year of college, I dropped out. Quickly realizing that I needed to make money and provide for myself, I started working for a lawn care company. Working in lawn care was both physically and mentally taxing. Physical work of 50+ hours a week puts a strain on your body. After work you want to do nothing but rest. You don't have much free time and you find yourself burning out very quickly. Mentally you question yourself every day. Questions like “why am I doing this” or “there must be another way”. Sometimes you feel useless. After about a year of doing lawn care, I chose to go back to school part-time, taking one or two classes at a time. I still had to work in lawn care to pay the bills but I had one goal in mind, one goal: to finish what I started. I always knew I wanted to work in a professional environment. After 4 years of work and courses, I decided that I had to change my environment. I was surrounded by the same people, people who didn't contribute to my goal of being successful. So, with some college education under my belt, I decided to apply for entry-level sales positions in Chicago. After the interviews the presentation began... in the middle of the paper... to find other leads. B.) Implement performance improvement plans for those who don't put in as much effort. Obviously option B was something my boss would have to handle. Therefore, I chose option A. My course of action was to train my team on the processes and resources I use on a daily basis. Implementing the solution included one-on-one training for each rep, job shadowing, and a list of resources to help find new prospects. After implementing this solution, it was determined that every rep, except one, was now filling pipelines accordingly to ensure we were able to hit both monthly and annual quotas. It's too early to tell whether this solution has worked in the long term, but at this point my boss doesn't seem concerned about generating new prospects. I am now responsible for training all new reps on the tips and tricks for finding new prospects.