Photo by Jon Anderson.
Leon Williams is a sales manager at Diamond Gold Cars in Inverness Plaza.
Leon Williams is a sales manager for Diamond Golf Cars at Inverness Plaza.
Q: How long have you been in the business?
A: I’ve been here for five years, but I’ve worked sales for business and retail for 23 years.
Q: What other places have you worked in the past?
A: I was a manager for AT&T retail prior to this, and I worked for Hilton several years in Montgomery.
Q: How did you get into this business?
A: I was just looking for a change of pace from technology sales. I actually found this company. They weren’t hiring at the time. We just talked for a few weeks. They were moving into this store at the time, and the time was right for them to expand. I came in as a parts manager role and learned the business from the inside out as opposed to coming in as a salesperson. … I had a very, very technical background because I sold technology for AT&T. I sold business solutions from GPS fleet tracking to 18-wheeler digital log books, business phones, business tablets. It went far beyond a cell phone store. … I had a very technical background. Even though I had never worked on golf carts, I could still pull up a schematic and read it, and then I could learn the parts and figure them out because I was good with product knowledge. … About three years in, the lead salesman here moved out of state, so that gave me the opportunity to move over here.
Q: You do mostly commercial sales?
A: A little bit of both. If someone walks in right now, I can help them. … We’ve always been a commercial dealer. For the majority of our business, we’ve been in the commercial lines with Cushman, and then we moved into Club Car a couple of years ago. There really is a huge need for that in the commercial space. …. I don’t have a set customer that’s a target audience. You could come buy one of these. I could sell one of these to Auburn tomorrow to move people around. I could sell one to a construction yard tomorrow to haul utilities around. I could sell one to a residential company next week that’s building an apartment complex over here on 280. Then this guy down here at the Forestry Service needs a Cushman utility for his maintenance fleet. We cater to everyone. All the major universities, all public municipalities, cities, state departments. I have unlimited customers in every industry, and then you roll back to the consumers. There’s always that guy that pulls up that lives out here in Chelsea that wants a gas Cushman hauler to work on his farm. It’s such a diverse business. You get to meet a lot of different people. You never know who you’re going to see, celebrity wise. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with some really good folks.
Q: Who are some of the celebrities?
A: Basketball coaches, football players, NFL players. We had a player who played for the Jaguars, and he recently traded in a vehicle that was given to him. These football players do crazy stuff. Whoever it was on the team decided he was going to buy 10 golf carts and give them out. Well, he wanted something a little different, so he traded it right back in and got something else. … We work with all the major schools — Alabama basketball, Alabama football. We’ve got some stuff going on right now for the city of Tuscaloosa, the city of Auburn as well.
Q: Outside of work, do you have hobbies?
A: I like to travel, and I love to go to live events, whether it’s hockey, concerts, football. Those are the big three. .. I also collect guitars. I love guitars and musical instruments.
Q: Who are your favorite hockey and football teams?
A: Birmingham Bulls, Philadelphia Flyers, Alabama Crimson Tide, Carolina Panthers.
Q: What kind of music do you like?
A: All of it. This year, I’ve seen Stone Temple Pilots, Soul Asylum, Limp Bizkit, Riff Raff and Corey Feldman at Oak Mountain. I went to Megadeath and Lamb of God in Nashville a couple months ago. Locally, there are some really good spots here for live music, like The Nick, The True Story Brewing Co., Marty’s PM. Some of those get started later than others. Marty’s PM — that’s more of a late-night place. I’m too old to be out there at this point. I get up at 5 o’clock in the morning. … They don’t even get started until like 2 o’clock [a.m.] One of my buddies used to DJ down there.
Q: If you weren’t doing this line of work, what else might you be in?
A: I always wanted to go into radio when I was younger. I haven’t really revisited that idea. I’ve always been really interested in real estate because I grew up around it. Probably real estate to be honest with you. The only reason I didn’t go into it is because when I graduated, we knew everything was about to tank. … I briefly sold apartments before AT&T offered me a job. They did location service. We had like 80 communities here in Birmingham, and you would call us and be like, ‘Hey, I’m moving to Birmingham in August, and I want a three-bedroom, and I’ve got this much to spend. Then the client would come in, and we would tour them around all the different places. It was a fun job. That would have led to a real estate license, but I came in a really slow season. So I went to AT&T. They were just blowing my phone up, and I ended up staying there for 4½ years until I had done everything I could do for them. … Then I found Diamond.
