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Took a sales job, quit after 12 hours

Share your FTE moment...

100ToOne

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As you've probably read before, I own and run a local grocery store.

After having my relative run the store for sometime, I thought why not get a sales job? I would learn sales, make relationships and learn more about different markets.

The job was that we would sell portable wi-fi routers by using door to door technique where we basically enter every shop and ask them if they would want to buy the offer.

This company called DirectSales gives all it's employees a ten days sales training course.
They basically teach you the following (and that's what we had to do for 12 hours later) :

You enter the shop by introducing yourself and colleagues. You'd then tell them about the wifi router and its features, showing them that it costs 77 dollars in the main shop (which is a big lie). HOWEVER because of some local occasion (the sales guy can choose whatever he sees fit, for example christmas, easter, ramadan w/e) there will be a draw and whoever gets the pick will get a free wifi router with a pre-paid card.

So what happens next is the sales guy asks for your ID in order to enter you the draw by sending the photos through watsapp. The sales guy then chooses one guy from his own choice and says "The system has chosen a winner!" and makes a big happy moment that the person has won!

Everyone cheers! Everyone's happy! The people gather around to congratulate him.

The sales guy takes out a contract sheet and starts filling the paper in order for the guy to receive his gift. After the sales guy fills the contract, he then asks the guy who won to pay 33 dollars to his colleague and sign a one year agreement to pay 18 dollars a month for the card subscription. WTF. Many people reject and disagree on what the hell is going on. But out of 20 shops, one person accepts and buys the offer thinking he has won more than 70% OFF even though the sales guy clearly said in his intro talk that whoever wins will get it for free!


WHAT THE F*ck.

Lol, 12 hours later - I quit.


Is this even allowed? Has anyone experiences this shit before?
 
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Mattie

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Is this even allowed? Has anyone experiences this shit before?
Seems like a lot of door to door salesmen use similar techniques. I remember people trying to sell me rainbow vacs numerous times and I'd listen to the whole thing, but never bought one.
There was the Amway thing about listening to all these tapes, and get so much money for the other people you recruit. You go to all these seminars. They're pyramid schemes.
There's another on Beauty Control that tells their sales people they will get gifts and similar money for how much they sell and who they recruit.
There's all kinds of companies that do all kinds of tricks of the trade.
I never was quite into selling any of it.
Mary Kay, Avon, Kirby Vac, I don't remember everything.
I've watched people try this stuff and others. There were some health foods one time as well.
Pampered Chef is good at getting you to buy so much, tell you you're saving money by buying more, and getting as many people to buy from you.
I just never felt it was truth when I ever listen to stuff.

Usually when they spend like an hour or two trying to convince you why you should buy a product, I really don't buy into it. The longer you try to convince me, the more I feel you're trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

They do this with buying time shares as well around the world. All the money your saving if you buy one. You can go to all these places.
 

The Abundant Man

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Kevin88660

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I sell financials. They are heavily regulated.

I have to write mini-essays of need analysis to justify the purchase made by my clients.

If you like to sell things professionally then consider selling financials.
 

1step

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Andy Black

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LaraJF

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Ah, men. I'll tell my husband that something is 40% off, and he'll say "But that means it's 60% on."

As for the sales tactic, that business won't last long. There will be a lot of chargebacks and unhappy people saying it wasn't what they signed up for.

There are so many better resources out there to learn sales. I love Brian Tracy although he'll repackage stuff and sell it as new. (He's really good at selling)

Find a need and work to help others rather than try to just sell. And get their email address so you can keep them in your system and remind them of new things and reward them for loyalty.

Thanks for such a vivid description. You must have been dying laughing on the inside wondering if it was a joke.
 
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minivanman

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Speaking of quitting... Sunday evening I went to my friend's shop. It was right at the end of the day and 2 couples walked in about the same time. Both couples were really nice to him, shaking his hand.... the 1st couple bought a washer. I figured I'd help him since no one else was there so I grabbed a dolly, moved some stuff around and wheeled it over to their pickup. They started barking orders at me like I was their servant.... but I never said a word since it was his business. Then, the 2nd couple bought a portable ac/heater so I wheeled it over to their car and they were telling me I shouldn't be working on Sunday and asked if I had tomorrow off. I said.... oh, it ain't as bad as it looks. lmao They said something as they were getting in the car but I forget what they said. When they all left I said.... you realize they thought I worked for you and that's why they weren't as nice to me as they were you. lmao I said.... I QUIT! While we laughed about it, if I had actually been his worker, I would have felt really bad. I never treat workers like that. Actually, I'd probably treat the worker better than the owner.
 

mdivljina

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Ah, men. I'll tell my husband that something is 40% off, and he'll say "But that means it's 60% on."

As for the sales tactic, that business won't last long. There will be a lot of chargebacks and unhappy people saying it wasn't what they signed up for.

There are so many better resources out there to learn sales. I love Brian Tracy although he'll repackage stuff and sell it as new. (He's really good at selling)

Find a need and work to help others rather than try to just sell. And get their email address so you can keep them in your system and remind them of new things and reward them for loyalty.

Thanks for such a vivid description. You must have been dying laughing on the inside wondering if it was a joke.

Although Brian Tracy is great I've never really got much real info for him, like brass-tacks kind of info. It's always about mindset... or I just haven't gotten into the material deep enough haha.

On the other hand, I really liked Tom Hopkins's The Art of Selling Anything or something like that. I liked it so much that I'm listening to it again on my commute. If you're really interested in learning sales, I'd suggest you start there.
 

Mattie

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How are you saving money if you're paying money for something?
Well ha ha...you're not saving money if you're buying anything in life. Fortunately, I come from a family of treasure hunters. I just watched and observed them get into these situations and learned from observing their mistakes. Fortunately, the only way you save money entirely is never spending it, but that is not possible to live. You have to spend money.

Just an example: When I did get married back in 2000. I bought a $1,500 dollar wedding dress for $150.00 at a wedding shop brand new. I could have spent $1,500 dollars on any dress in the store. Some women just happened to have this dress on layaway, had it tailored by a seamstress to fit her. In the meantime her finance and her decided they weren't getting married. That made the opportunity for me to step in and say, "I will buy it for the cheaper dress."

So, yes, I saved myself money. I also made all my own invitations because I had been Graphic Arts school, and saved a lot of money that way.

My family has always been creative and we went to hobby lobby and bought all the materials and made just about everything for the reception and didn't look to bad and saved $1,000 of dollars to someone else selling me stuff.

I happened to have known a culinary chef who was an artist that did a hell of a job on creating the food to look like I paid $1,000's more.

I really got away with not going into debt for a wedding and paid for it as I planned it for a year. Had a limousine, and no one could tell how much money I spent or saved. I had a cello, pianist.

I think it depends on who you know and what talents and gifts they have to help you create something awesome.

The other thing is bridal dresses for the wedding party. Some stores have clearance at certain times of the year, so I found the same thing for them just searching around instead of forcing people to pay $1,000 dollars for dresses. lol

Seriously, any time I see people spending $25,000 or more on weddings, using credit cards, taking out loans, making their friends broke because they want a dream wedding, I roll my eyes. If you have the money and your wealthy, that's a different story. But, when you're the average folks who don't have the money to begin with and really end up divorced in a year to 5 years, it's quite dumb.

It did cost me just as much for the wedding as the legal fees for a divorce. And even with the divorce, I was like I don't need the debt from a lawyer either.

Just because there's a salesmen with a pitch doesn't mean you have to buy everything in sight just because it's for sale.

I believe this goes with Casino's. They'll invited you to come spend your money, give you this card to rack up points, and if you have so many points, they'll give you a free room, or some other type of gift from the store.

I remember back in 1999 going there thinking this is really nuts. "You want me to give you my money while I play a few slot machines, and then when I waste enough money, you'll give me a $10 gift from your gift shop, or a $150 dollar night stay?

I never went in a Casino with more than $50.00. Sometimes I left with more, sometimes I lost it all. Fortunately, it was my budget, because I didn't care to lose my a$$ on Gambling like so many other people do.

I knew a person who would sneak out of their home at night and drive up north two hours a way and spend all their house payments and utility money, their whole bank account and paychecks on gambling. And that is quite dangerous living when you have a family.

I painted my house myself one time, and it saved me money. And you couldn't tell the difference. I come from a family who works on houses. lol I believe it's more how your raised. If you have a family of Entrepreneurs, it's kind of you notice some things you don't have to pay others to do if you can do it yourself. I've spent lots of time at Menards and other hardware stores.
 
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Xeon

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I hear and read about people here saying sales is the no. 1 skill to make money. However, most of the time, it's always about cold-calling one-to-one or the traditional door-to-door.
How would this even translate to eCommerce where you obviously can't cold-call strangers asking if they want to buy your product on your website LOL

Maybe persuasion is the key.
 

100ToOne

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Thanks for such a vivid description. You must have been dying laughing on the inside wondering if it was a joke.

Haha I was! For a while...until I felt really bad for these people.

At one point, one grocery shop owner told the two sales guys that rushed him with the offer to stop talking, and he looked at me and said: "I feel this guy wants to tell me something you guys are not telling me...let's hear what he has to say...", and he was correct I wanted to shout KICK THEM OUT. But sadly I didn't and the 'sales manager' started a new bullshit story to 'relate to the customer'. Fortunately he didn't buy and that's good.

On that same day, they found a poor person with as it seems like some mental issues, not crazy but something I don't know, anyway these sales guys found he had 30$ in his wallet somehow and they made him sign a contract for one year, gave him the device and took his money and ran from the area...what can you call these guys besides crooks?
 
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ideasunlimited1

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Thank you for distilling Kohl's entire marketing strategy in one sentence. Seriously. The entire draw at that store is "LADIES, DO YOU SEE HOW MUCH YOU HAVE SAVED BY BUYING THESE JEANS?!" To which I then buy more I had intended, and then I get to my car, see the receipt and ask, "how did I save anything when $21.99 is the basic, competitive price of Levi's?"
 

TonyStark

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With around 50% unemployment rate, I am still trying! Thanks for the motivation :p
In the meantime, learn a practical trade (welding, painting, computer engineering, etc). It doesn't just need to be sales and marketing (it's already super saturated as it is). There is plenty of jobs out there, just most of them are out of your skill set.

Or why not work on increasing sales at your grocery store?
 
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100ToOne

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In the meantime, learn a practical trade (welding, painting, computer engineering, etc). It doesn't just need to be sales and marketing (it's already super saturated as it is). There is plenty of jobs out there, just most of them are out of your skill set.

Or why not work on increasing sales at your grocery store?
Really good point. I did learn video editing, some web design and I was recently looking to really focus on learning computer engineering/programming.

As for increasing sales at my grocery store I do that too currently at day time and in the afternoon I try to learn like you mentioned a high income skill...
 

ShamanKing

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I hear and read about people here saying sales is the no. 1 skill to make money. However, most of the time, it's always about cold-calling one-to-one or the traditional door-to-door.
How would this even translate to eCommerce where you obviously can't cold-call strangers asking if they want to buy your product on your website LOL

Maybe persuasion is the key.


How about cold emailing? lol you are correct. I met man who built a multi-million headset retailing company and he said most of his business comes from eCommerce.
 

ShamanKing

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Really good point. I did learn video editing, some web design and I was recently looking to really focus on learning computer engineering/programming.

As for increasing sales at my grocery store I do that too currently at day time and in the afternoon I try to learn like you mentioned a high income skill...

Do you accept ebt? or what forms of payment do you not take.
 
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Devampre

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As you've probably read before, I own and run a local grocery store.

After having my relative run the store for sometime, I thought why not get a sales job? I would learn sales, make relationships and learn more about different markets.

The job was that we would sell portable wi-fi routers by using door to door technique where we basically enter every shop and ask them if they would want to buy the offer.

This company called DirectSales gives all it's employees a ten days sales training course.
They basically teach you the following (and that's what we had to do for 12 hours later) :

You enter the shop by introducing yourself and colleagues. You'd then tell them about the wifi router and its features, showing them that it costs 77 dollars in the main shop (which is a big lie). HOWEVER because of some local occasion (the sales guy can choose whatever he sees fit, for example christmas, easter, ramadan w/e) there will be a draw and whoever gets the pick will get a free wifi router with a pre-paid card.

So what happens next is the sales guy asks for your ID in order to enter you the draw by sending the photos through watsapp. The sales guy then chooses one guy from his own choice and says "The system has chosen a winner!" and makes a big happy moment that the person has won!

Everyone cheers! Everyone's happy! The people gather around to congratulate him.

The sales guy takes out a contract sheet and starts filling the paper in order for the guy to receive his gift. After the sales guy fills the contract, he then asks the guy who won to pay 33 dollars to his colleague and sign a one year agreement to pay 18 dollars a month for the card subscription. WTF. Many people reject and disagree on what the hell is going on. But out of 20 shops, one person accepts and buys the offer thinking he has won more than 70% OFF even though the sales guy clearly said in his intro talk that whoever wins will get it for free!


WHAT THE F*ck.

Lol, 12 hours later - I quit.


Is this even allowed? Has anyone experiences this shit before?

I worked for a company called Modern Water Solutions that was terrible. I stuck it out for a while, but left when I realized I was losing money going to work. They are evil crooks IMHO and I wouldn't trust what is said about them anywhere online. They make fake reviews and the whole 9 yards.

They said that if we did 40 showings a month we would get $2800 for the month, regardless of whether how many clients bought the overpriced water system. Sounded good. That was a huge lie. If you didn't sell the unit ($2500-$3600) you didn't get paid. Also you had to use your own vehicle and fuel. They shipped me out hours away from the city and when I got to some houses, no one was even home because their office people were incompetent.

When I went with a "top salesperson" to train, he didn't close or sell a single person. They also required us to read from a script while presenting. The copy was lame and the demonstration was misleading(the soap used wasn't average dish soap.)

Leads were generated by leaving fake lottery tickets door to door (Everyone won.) But, to get their 'prize' (which was misleading as it appeared they won an Ipad) they had to sit through a demonstration. The prize later turned out to be a $20 hotel gift card which was only good at select hotels I had never heard of. Most people hated you the whole time, especially when they realized they weren't getting an Ipad.

A close was only accepted if they talked with the manager and said yes. I would often get them on the phone with the manager and he would call me back after pissed off saying that I shouldn't get them on the phone if they aren't buying it.

Our products were thousands of dollars which most people couldn't afford. Our competitors had better products in the hundreds.

Truth be told, I hate the company and everyone there lol. They use employees to get sales from personal networks (like a MLM, but more evil.) They lie about their compensation. They are hiring new people every month. It's a really awful business practice. The larger corporation also does a similar thing with Air Cleansing systems.
 

Xeon

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How about cold emailing? lol you are correct. I met man who built a multi-million headset retailing company and he said most of his business comes from eCommerce.

I take back everything I said about sales.
Was reading this book called Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion, and I realize that a lot of the old school one-to-one sales techniques, concepts and arts, can actually be modified to a certain extent and be applied to e-commerce websites.

All of a sudden, I start feeling that all these feels so fun lol. You should try out that book if you haven't.

There was a thread here with the title along the lines of How to print money or something similar, where it says how being good at copywriting can get people to willingly open up their wallets and give you their money even if the product is crappy.

I disagree....the Whys of why people buy is the magic, and copywriting is just a tool of that bigger whole.

Side note, I notice that a lot of salesmen like to use shady techniques and heavy psychological manipulation to close sales (otherwise they can't earn commission). Some of it are unethical like what the above poster says, but it's very common. These give "sales" and "salesmen" a very bad rep....
 

WJK

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As you've probably read before, I own and run a local grocery store.

After having my relative run the store for sometime, I thought why not get a sales job? I would learn sales, make relationships and learn more about different markets.

The job was that we would sell portable wi-fi routers by using door to door technique where we basically enter every shop and ask them if they would want to buy the offer.

This company called DirectSales gives all it's employees a ten days sales training course.
They basically teach you the following (and that's what we had to do for 12 hours later) :

You enter the shop by introducing yourself and colleagues. You'd then tell them about the wifi router and its features, showing them that it costs 77 dollars in the main shop (which is a big lie). HOWEVER because of some local occasion (the sales guy can choose whatever he sees fit, for example christmas, easter, ramadan w/e) there will be a draw and whoever gets the pick will get a free wifi router with a pre-paid card.

So what happens next is the sales guy asks for your ID in order to enter you the draw by sending the photos through watsapp. The sales guy then chooses one guy from his own choice and says "The system has chosen a winner!" and makes a big happy moment that the person has won!

Everyone cheers! Everyone's happy! The people gather around to congratulate him.

The sales guy takes out a contract sheet and starts filling the paper in order for the guy to receive his gift. After the sales guy fills the contract, he then asks the guy who won to pay 33 dollars to his colleague and sign a one year agreement to pay 18 dollars a month for the card subscription. WTF. Many people reject and disagree on what the hell is going on. But out of 20 shops, one person accepts and buys the offer thinking he has won more than 70% OFF even though the sales guy clearly said in his intro talk that whoever wins will get it for free!


WHAT THE F*ck.

Lol, 12 hours later - I quit.


Is this even allowed? Has anyone experiences this shit before?
This is not selling. This is cheating. There's no honor in any of this.
 
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MHP368

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Shoulda stuck with it for the experience. Direct sales like that tends to be sort of grey area , its experience book learning just cant get you though

Even if your own venture isnt borderline scammy you'll wish you had some actual hours of face to face persuasion under the belt because eventually you'll be selling yourself to someone.

I remember I was selling kirbys door to door and one of the highlights was "natural" shampoo , idk idk that really means but I closed a deal once by eating some when a customer asked if it was safe for pets.

Thats both a funny anecdote and a an example of "show dont tell" that ill never forget.
 

100ToOne

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Shoulda stuck with it for the experience. Direct sales like that tends to be sort of grey area , its experience book learning just cant get you though

Even if your own venture isnt borderline scammy you'll wish you had some actual hours of face to face persuasion under the belt because eventually you'll be selling yourself to someone.

I remember I was selling kirbys door to door and one of the highlights was "natural" shampoo , idk idk that really means but I closed a deal once by eating some when a customer asked if it was safe for pets.

Thats both a funny anecdote and a an example of "show dont tell" that ill never forget.

Haha he probably bought it because of the entertainment he got.

Maybe I would of stayed if they didn't end the ride back home with smoking weed...which would of gotten us a couple of months in jail around here.
 

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