You are right sir...I just read that in my city you have to pay for a permit to go door to door. A lot of people do not realize this. Those sneaky cats.... :p

Fixed it...

Maybe the best idea. There isn't enough time to get proficient at a complicated sale. Selling meat is simple (not easy, but easy to learn) and selling home improvement leads is easy to learn and pays well.

I'd just call a home improvement company and ask if they have door to door canvasers that gather leads for the reps.

When I was selling in people's homes, my new sister-in-law asked me why I sold by going door to door. I said "I used to go window to window but I got arrested".

I think I mentioned before that I bought a box of "No soliciting" signs for a buck each, and sold them for ten dollars each, when the person didn't buy a vacuum cleaner from me. It was partly a joke, but it paid for my gas and meals.

What I didn't mention (I don't think) was that I also spent the afternoon just selling the signs.
I sold several every hour.

If I had absolutely nothing except $100 and had to survive, I'd go to a Wal-mart or K-Mart and buy a box of something I think I could sell for 5-10 times my cost.

Here is a source that I used to use to buy cutlery sets to give away for in home appointments...you can sell most anything wholesale from this company and make a good profit.
Enjoy.
https://www.maxam.com/

A JW couple went to my door once and their pitch was really odd, it went something like this:
The devil is trying to influence us via shows like Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire slayer. Do you watch Buffy? What does the Bible say about this? Come and find out.

I am obviously not the prospect for this kind of pitch but how is that supposed to even work?

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Gordon
I read your reply about headlight cleaning and am very interested in getting a fee copy of the report.

Thanks in advance

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These are all fine ideas for a summer job.

But after the sale is made...you have to actually do the work. And that's what takes the time.


Here's an idea. I sell these air purifiers in my store for $395. They sell easily. There used to be a company called Eco-Quest (maybe still in business) that had an MLM empire built on these machines. I remember selling 17 in a day at a mall one Christmas season.

You can actually buy these in bulk from China (maybe a minimum of 200) for about $65.
But you can buy them one two at a time on E-Bay. That's where I buy them now.

Here's a link.
Home Air Purifier Ionic Ozone Ionizer Cleaner 3500SQF Fresh Clean Smoke Remover | eBay

No, I'm not an affiliate.

I knew a guy that would sell two things: A service to spray paint the address numbers of the curb and installing water heater insulation jackets.

Both were easy sales, although it may be better to sell the large "stick on" numbers for addresses now a days. The sales pitch revolves around how it could save your life because fire, police and ambulance services often have issues finding a residence right away because they can't see the street address. I know this to be true from having driven a taxi for many years. Have a supply of numbers and/or spray paint and some stencils.

The water heater insulation jackets actually save people a lot of money on their utility bill and will pay for themselves very quickly. You can get them at any Lowes or Home Depot.

Unfortunately, no. It used to be that just about anyone could learn how to sell things to people and make a great living doing so.

But, sales and selling is one of those "old school" professions that almost no one practices these days.

That's cause no one buys anything anymore. They all just stopped one day...and that was that.

We're just a bunch of old timers here talking the "good ol' days".

You can go back to sleep now.

Ron

If your goal in life is to end up flogging ebooks to fund your retirement on a forum such as this... then yes, this works real well...

Amazingly, most people don't go on E-bay to check to see if they can buy it cheaper. They will go on Amazon however. The important thing is the brand name. Give it your own brand name. Buy stickers and put them on the front of the air purifiers. Most people doing a search use the brand name in their search. This one company in China must have 50 different brand names for the exact same unit. When you buy from them in bulk, they will print the brand name for you and even customize a box. But the people selling on Amazon have their own brand names.

To sell without a mall booth, I used to just go business to business, and ask them if they would like to try it for free for 3 days.....if they agreed to that, I'd ask them if they just wanted to use it for two weeks as a trial. The difference is that they paid me up front, and I'd give them a refund if they called me back within 2 weeks. 75% kept the air purifier. I was selling them at the time for $599 or $699.

The demonstration is what sold it. Put a little ammonia on a handkerchief and let them smell it. Then turn on the air purifier for about 30 seconds with the handkerchief hanging in front of it. Then let them smell it. No odor at all, even though the handkerchief is still damp.

Small retail stores, pet stores, furniture stores, garages, gyms, shops....these air purifiers really work.

If they came to my house.. I might buy one! LOL

For me it's like a flash back in time, lot's of old memories, so before you write your book here is one last snippet from my old memory bank, it is real and these are more important than made up stories.

It relates to 100% cold calling and knocking on doors that I was doing at the time selling electricity churns, so these people had no idea I was about to knock and change their power provider in a few short minutes, and more importantly the words I used to do that.

So before the words, I was no newby to this game of tapping doors but this was a new product for me to sell, and the average conversion or sale was 1 every day or every second day, and the commission was around $200 from memory. That said I start out on day one for this new company tapping doors.

I still remember to this day, that day was the absolute pits as far as weather goes, it was sleeting rain, and it was so cold my lips were turning blue and my body was turning into a frozen wet icicle, so first of any illusions that this job was for soft weeners is out of the question, the environment you work in can be very very hard. I remember calling home to my wife that day and saying, "go out and buy me some thermals"

Needles to say on day one I sold 0 sales, and from memory it took me almost the week to sell my first sale. I am telling people this because even as a semi pro or what ever (as I never see myself as that) I was unable to close down sales.

It is important that any huff and puff that your an instant superstar is put to bed, as (in my case it is not true), as an analogy and probably the best way to describe it is like split testing a sales page.

You go out, and you start with a pitch and then over the coming days and weeks you really need to analyse everything, what works, what does not work and why. This is also where getting to listen and learn from any old timers really does help.

But you must keep split testing no matter how long it takes, this will separate a winner from average. Also very important to learn is your tone and volume of speech, in that if a person has a loud squarwky voice or loud or super quite shy voice, the odds of somebody wanting to listen to you for more than 5 seconds is really going to go against you.

When I was training new tappers the best way I could explain this was to say, use a milk n honey voice, and by that if you have ever had a sore throat and then had a warm glass of milk and honey, you would tend to speak in a smooth relaxing sound, that's what was needed here and if anything a little lower in volume but not much so people had to concentrate to listen to you.

Ok from starting with maybe one or two sales in the first week, and remembering that the average may have been 3 - 4 sales a week or $600 - $800 of which most people were happy with, I kept split testing my spill until after 3 weeks it was where I wanted it, this shows that it does take time to get things right sometimes.

This was my end result spill. for the best part as I can remember it,

"Good Morning / Afternoon, My name is Pete and I am working with xyz electrical, today I am here speaking with you on how you can save some extra money on your electricity bill, (small pause) which in turn allows you to keep some extra money in your pocket. Do you have a few moments available so that I can show you how this can work for you?"

That was it short and sweet, nothing fancy and yes it did take 3 weeks to perfect, but that pitch delivered with milk n honey, opened doors and had people inviting a complete stranger inside their homes like it was Christmas, and instead of selling 2 - 3 sales a week I was selling 2 - 4 sales a day, now over the week that changes the average earner from getting $600 - $800 to 5 times that amount making the average $2000 - $4000 or an average week in and out $3000 in the middle, and now your earning 3 times the average paid worker and more.

And if were to go out tomorrow and do it all again I would expect to start at the bottom and take the time to rise to the top, but once there just try and stop me now type thinking.

So do not expect miracles on day one but work hard and learn then yes expect results from your hard work.

Now I must get back to some other work, been fun stepping back, but now I feel bloody old.

Yes Kurt I agree 100% especially those now with the tesla back up battery, I see this as something you could learn and be in for a good 10 - 20 years, good money, solving a problem, it does tick a lot of boxes and will be where people move to to get away from the pain of higher power bills and getting away from the reliance on the grid.

a perfect choice.

This is a niche I keep looking at... I would bet top dollar if you could put together a system that did 1 thing and one thing only, you could make a killing.

The one thing you ask? Ill answer with a question... when the power goes out and you have a gas furnace, you don't have heat right?

Since I do have a EE degree.. the concept is not so hard.. a panel, a battery a quick little circuit that says hey the power is out, and switch to the battery / solar solution. - just have never made the time.

The only thing electric on a gas furnace is the ignitor ( for newer systems ) the internal circuits that are primarily 5 and 12 volt, and the blower. absolutely nothing a decent battery and an inverter couldn't power.

No. Sell something. Sell anything. Just stick to it. It's not just that it will pay you more per hour than you could ever make doing these mini-tasks on Fiverr....it's that learning how to sell something is a valuable skill. Maybe the most valuable.

Sales ability is always in demand, and always pays well.

There is almost nothing that creates a sense of security like knowing that you can always just buy something and sell it....and make a good living at it.

Selling is counter-intuitive for most people . And most people are culturally conditioned to be repelled by the idea of actually selling something. But for the 1% that can? The ability to understand human nature, motives, needs, and emotional triggers? I can't think of a more valuable skill.


Except joint ventures of course. We are fools for doing something other than joint ventures.

Of course, everything you say is true. And experienced salespeople eventually discover the advantage of working other lists, Referrals are a form of joint venture. And selling by creating alliances with other vendors is about as good as it gets.

I was being a little silly when I said "Except joint ventures of course. We are fools for doing something other than joint ventures."

But I do want to point out that the vast majority of people selling, will never get to the point of exploring joint ventures. Even career salespeople.

In my own personal selling, my biggest leaps in business came from studying marketing...not personal selling, and applying those ideas to my personal selling.

And joint ventures (and similar structures) created huge surges in income.

But when I talk to audiences of sales people about marketing....their eyes glaze over. To them, it's an alien concept.

In my book on selling advertising, I say that the single most intelligent thing you can do is study advertising. How it works, how to create sales from ads. How to attract the buyers for your advertising clients. I explain why trying to actually make your client a profit is in your best interest...how they will buy consistently if you make them a profit, and how you would be unique among the other ad reps.

I've read the same advice in a few masterful books on selling advertising.

But I've yet to meet an ad rep, in any media, that has the first clue in how to make an ad actually pay. And I've met thousands. The concept is totally alien to them.

And the concept of marketing is totally alien to the vast majority of salespeople.

I'm about half way through writing a new book titled Marketing To Sell. But it's a labor of obligation (to myself), and a effort to put the information out there for a few enterprising salespeople. It won't sell well. Most salespeople still think that learning better closes is the secret to more sales.

I have to admit a prejudice. I love the idea of cold calling. It's inefficient and difficult for most to learn how to do it well. But people that make it work, and do it well are heroes to me. Just like the guy selling potato peelers at Times Square. These guys are selling, really selling in the purest sense of the word. They are creating their fortunes out of nothing but wit and ambition.

To me there is something beautiful about that.

I know little of wedding cakes, however a quick search indicates that wedding cake evolved from many little things being created by lots of different specialists. So yes, by making one big cake they avoided all the hassle of dealing with lots of different individual specialists...

No.

They ran a PPC ad on the smoke and drum net, an early version of arpanet...

Henry Ford sold his cars by advertisement and catalog. He gained publicity by entering races and winning them. I do not remember anything about him sending salesmen out door to door.
Here's some of his early ads. They invite people to go down to his showroom, or to receive a catalogue. This is the equivalent of a website call to action and it's getting (attracting) people to come to him. Not sending people out to try and sell his cars door to door.

Also note he advertised in the horseless age magazine. A highly targeted audience. He didn't send someone out to call on every subscriber, one at a time. Instead he advertised and allowed those who were "most likely to buy" to come to him.

Ha, me too.
My sideline to my consultancy was a small software house. We had an arrangement with a mobile phone company where we would sell their products to our clients (sound familiar? ). They gave us each a phone. Mine was like a small briefcase, all battery with a handset on top. Weighed a ton. I think it had about one hour talk time....
Ah the good old days...

I thought I would add some things regarding selling door-to-door regarding my 3 year experience selling Kirby vacuums back in the 1980s.

We used door openers to get in the door. When door knocking, I would have a cutlery set in hand (from Maxam) telling people that I make money giving presentations & would be willing to give them a cutlery set or shampoo one room of carpet free.

Follow the presentation you were taught as best as possible. Often over time, you end up taking shortcuts in your demo which I discovered ended up lowering your sales ratio & selling price (& commissions). Why? It's because you didn't show the overall value. You never know what people's hot buttons in a product are. Regarding the Kirby - some people loved the shampooer, some liked the turbo brush & some people wanted all the dead skin out of their bed mattress. Ha - yeah we would vacuum "a portion" of their mattress pulling out tons of dead skin. When I brought a new salesperson along on presentations to train them, I did my best presentations which most often ended up in a sale.

We did a lot of telephone closes at the end of presentations to aid new & experienced reps close the sale with better deals. People see you're talking to the manager/boss which has a psychological effect. As I had been a sales manager, trainer & Area Dealer - I often was the person helping close the deal & telling reps what to say in homes or even talk to the customer directly over the phone. This definitely increased sales. If your training included making calls to your manager/trainer at the end of your presentation... there is a reason for that. If they already committed to buy then you didn't need to make the call & just finished the paperwork.

If you are selling a larger ticket item, pitch the monthly payments instead of selling price. People may not have $700-$1200 cash handy but when you pitch something like $36 a month - you increase sales. Every company selling larger ticket items door-to-door have a finance company in place. Often people would say what kind of deal would they get if they paid cash. That's what you call a buyer signal

Another tremendous way to increase sales is to do trade-ins & discount the selling price. Obviously we traded in vacuums but often I would trade in a wide variety of products on occasion. The question of "Do you have anything around the house that you are willing to trade in to knock the price down?" was a powerful question. Ha - I traded in furniture, stereos, kitchen appliances, farm equipment, pick-up toppers, paintings, etc... . I knew what my cost was so I just needed to figure how much cash I wanted out of the deal. I also then could resell the trade-ins. It would be easier now to resell these trade-ins with Craigslist & Facebook groups. Furniture was a pain as you had to get someone with a pick-up to help you haul it away. Anyway - trade-ins increased sales plus it was kind of fun for both me & the customers.

Always feel good about the product you're selling. Would you like to own it yourself?

Lot's of good info throughout these 3 pages of posts in this thread!

Food is a tough one, for a variety of reasons. Takes just one person claiming that they didn't feel good after consuming something you sold them, to bring down the house of cards.

Doesn't matter if it's the same day you sold it to them or 2 weeks later.

You're guilty til proven innocent.

There are many other things to sell that don't spoil, require special handling or have a limited shelf life.

Why complicate it?

Ron

I don`t think I`ll go ahead with it after all. In june, I just decided to study in advance. For the month of AUgust I`ll likely help a relative sell vegetables in bulk until school starts again.The product is not super exciting by any measures but it means more responsibilities (within my extended family, I`m one of the few with sales experience) and bigger sales volume then going door to door or just a regular sales jobs.

The main thing it`s also safer, it won`t jeopardize my next semester if for whatever reason I choke. I didn't think about the possibility of failure but seeing people discuss got me thinking:

Last sales job I had was selling in telemarketing B2C and tbh the first 3 weeks I sold almost nothing. I already had phone experience but it took me a while before I got the grooves of things and I started hitting good odds at bat. And then you have Claude and tryinghere relating similar experiences in their early careers and I went:

'ok well, maybe err on the side of safety'

Although I've seen the movie several times, I hate these movies. They universally depict selling as something slimy...evil. And they depict salespeople as morally bankrupt desperate losers.

And the truth is, only at the lowest end of the spectrum will you find salespeople like that.

The problem is, that's where many salespeople stay.

When I was in high school, we sold chocolate candy bars to raise funds for a school trip.

I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I contacted the supplier and ordered dozens of boxes of chocolate bars, and just sold them on my own. An easy sale.