Life in Door to Door sales.

Most people will say they don't have the stomach for Sales much less doing it Door to Door. A little background on me. I recall coming home from school at 13 years old and my mom saying " hey you got a job"! And I'm like umm ok doing what? She said you are going to be a Door to Door salesman selling newspapers. Of which I think my mom has lost her marbles.

Next day the van comes picks me up and there are several kids my age inside and off to the adventures of learning sales.
every day was a learning curve at that age, learning rebuttals, how to speak properly etc. Believe the most fun I had was when it was contest time. Loved always trying to qualify for a trip or to win new pair shoes. Which I did lose that contest of top salesman that month for a pair of Bo Jackson. YES, i am pretty old :). Hottest shoe out at that time and I was top salesman 5 out of 6 months and lost the one I wanted to win the most!

Fast forward 2 years later and I am starting to get older and I decide to get out of selling newspapers Door to Door. I decided I wanted to try some real jobs, since I was now in high school and getting older. So here was a new adventure and it started off horribly. Not sure if I was just conditioned from being independent with Door to Door or what. But I just could not handle people telling me what to do, " the job " part lasted less than a couple years and I either quit them all right off the bat after a week or two or I was just fired. Just was not my cup of tea I guess.

Throughout all of this I was failing miserably in school and really just wanted to work and make money as school seemed boring and so I dropped out. My step dad had said that if I didn't have insurance on my car ( which was an old 1982 Toyota that I saved up for and paid cash) the following month he was kicking me out, sure enough, i couldn't afford it and I was gone the following month. Shortly after that, i had seen an ad in the newspaper for a traveling salesman. " work with people you're age and travel the country" I was like wow, Door to Door sales and I can travel and have all my expenses paid! I was thinking this is the best thing in the world. I went on the road selling chemicals for this company which lasted bout 3 months, was around a lot of druggies and basically, no one really made any money. And we worked very long hours and state to state moving every 1-2 weeks. I knew this wasn't for me and had the owner get me a greyhound ticket one way back to my home state of Ky.

At this time I had learned a lot from Door to Door and I was feeling confident I could do well at it. Next stop Kirby vacuums. Now, this I was enjoying, walking into an office full of enthusiasm and people much older than me, I was gaining all the confidence and sharpening my closing abilities Door to Door. Made me feel like this was the freedom I was looking for and life I could live. Would interact with all these professionals that had been working at the same office for years and making a really good living. I did Kirby for 2 1/2 years and worked for 4 different distributors during that time. 3 of those were crooks and most of the time my paycheck went up their nose. But I learned a ton and become very knowledgable and more educated in sales, as my time with Kirby closed I was now 21 years old look for my next sales challenge. And next up on that list was selling Meat Door to Door. This was on a whole new level and excitement, back in the mid 90's the industry was semi fairly new still with plenty of open markets that hadn't been saturated. Worked for 2 main companies in Kentucky before starting my own companies when I was a few years into at 25 years old. At that time did it for couple years before burning out and wanting to try something new. 7 years felt long enough and the market was starting to change.

Liquidated everything and sold off the vehicles and didn't do anything for the next 9 month to figure out what was in store for me next. that's when i learned B2B ( business to business) Power equipment industry, basically acting and talking in 3rd party to people with telling a story of why the boss has to sale the equipment that you have in the back of the truck. Most of the time going from job site to job site or random businesses, the dumber you act the more successful you were actually and the more money you made. Was a tough job to say the least, rolling up on a job site or a random person that looked like that had money, showing them the equipment, give the pitch of why you're boss said this and that, and 5 minutes later ask that stranger for 6k and hope he says "I'll take it" or " call your boss and ask his bottom dollar" heart gets pumping quick when you have the possibility over making over 1k+ in commission a day. just wondering who was going to be the huckleberry that you could hunt down that day that wanted to buy greed not alway's the need. it was basically all imported from China that looked great but questionable as to how well the quality was. But what a fun 5 years it was, UNTIL the day the economy collapsed in 2008 and people started tightening up with money.

The fun of traveling hustling power equipment had come to an end and it crashed hard. Ended up getting a ' "JOB" . For 3 weeks making $10 an hour going Door to Door setting appointments for a window company. My crew manager which hated his job told me I had too much talent and to get into the storm restoration industry. I had no idea what kind of roofs were or anything but after I got off work I would go home and research the industry and be a sponge and try to absorb it all. So me and my roommate at the time and best friend @davedickeyyall decided to talk our way into the industry as him and I had 20+ plus years of Door to Door experience and see if we could make it work with canvassing and setting leads during hail season for roofing contractors. After 3 weeks of doing window appointments for $10 an hour we quit. I am still friends with that crew manager to this day as it was the best advise I have ever been giving. And now he has a successful painting company.

And now for the last several years, I have owned my own canvassing company in the storm restoration industry and I and my team do a lot of traveling around the country during storm season, this is now my 9th year doing it.

Thanks for reading my story and if you have ever done any kind of Door to Door sales I would love to hear your story.

let's connect
Shawn

I pretty much always liked the challenge of sales but for some funny reason did better door to door with the Southwestern Co in my student days selling study guides (encyclopaedias!) than in an insurance or mobile phone office! Now, when I say I did 'better', I had about 4 weeks of 0 DAYS, out for at least 8 hours, 6 days a week, self-employed and wearing shorts. Even when I shadowed some of our selling superstars of the organisation - we both had zero days!!! Talk about cursed! Tim (Sales Team Leader); 'No Kathleen, if you think you're cursed you will be.' Nuff said. I did finally get selling 'the study guide' after weeks and weeks of selling off the nursery books we had to offer and spending several hours in interested person's homes in Rotherham, also being treated to family dinners (I am sure out of sympathy). Needless to say, I stuck with pernicious dedication to making my summer work a success and was the only student salesperson to have their sales increase at a steady and unshakeable gradient. I had also started smoking and cycling to work which for some crazy reason helped! Thus my 1998 gold certificate stands at working over 75 hours or more per week, collected profit of £2000 and some hard-won achievement. Now, despite being long-term disabled, I am entering into the world of English teaching as a non-smoking fitness freak who's will hopefully never have to cry behind a bush on a council estate again....:)