John Cunningham

My first sales job was hauling garbage away from businesses. I opened 14 accounts in a month. No training. I just showed up.

Then Hollingsworth Terminals handed me an audit bag full of samples and told me to work my way home. That was the training.

Then something clicked. They brought in a formal selling program — and I soaked it up like a sponge. I practiced it until it became automatic. I got so good that the International Sales Manager flew up from Pennsylvania and asked, "John, what are you doing?" I told him I was just following the instructions.

They promoted me to Sales Manager. Handed me a book — From Selling to Managing — and sent me out with people twice my age. No coaching. No framework. I fired two of them. Not for performance. Because they didn't follow my path.

I didn't see the person. I didn't collaborate. I thought I was doing the right thing by making critical decisions that affected their lives, their families. Instead of encouraging and supporting them — as I would today — I cut the strings. I regret both decisions.

Eventually I went out on my own. Turned a $250 inventory into a million-dollar operation. Bought a donor recognition business and built that into millions. All of it powered by the sales skills I kept sharpening — Sandler, Challenger, Gap Selling, whatever I could get my hands on.

Fifteen years ago I let go. Then AI arrived, and I saw a problem I'd lived through my entire career: training drift. Companies spend fortunes on methodology, then watch it evaporate because managers were never trained to coach. The reps revert. The pipeline lies. Nobody catches it until the quarter closes.

I built One Click Coaching to solve that problem. Not from theory. From 53 years on the other side of the desk.

— John Cunningham
Hamilton, Ontario