What is The Most Rediculous Sales Job You Have Ever Had?

I wasn't actually selling anything but I was doing door to door animal adoptions at one point.

I'll tell you it was one of the worst things I ever had to do before in my life but if I didn't try to find a home, they would be put to death (well its not that simple actually I'll explain towards the end).

When I was running the "specialty" deparment in petsmart, certain dogs would have 1 day to sell, and if I couldn't sell them (these were dogs that nobody wanted, they'd go to like 6 different pet shops prior to ours, we were basically thier last hope - well thats what I was TOLD which led to me leaving petsmart), I knew that the following day they would be euthanized and it sucked because I'd spend 8 hours walking them around the store and showing them off to people.

Naturally you become somewhat attached to the animals (even if for just a day you start feeling like their daddy lol).

There came a point where I got so sick to my stomach when I couldn't get them adopted, that I took the dogs home with me and would walk around my neighborhood knocking on doors trying to find a family. I would keep them as long as possible and if I couldn't get them adopted, then **I** became responsible for bringing them directly to the hospital (to be put down)

Although I wasn't selling anything, and I know this is off topic, but one thing I learned from that experience is you can sell ANYTHING if you are absolutely determined to do so.

Fortunately enough, I didn't wind up taking one dog to the hospital. There was a few dogs I couldn't get rid of, and a nieghbor told me something I never was told at my job (which I should have absolutely known). If I just brought them to the SPCA the SPCA will NOT put a dog down no matter what. Not a single one of my managers even told me this which made me hate everyone I was working with.

Once I realized that fact I eventually just started bringing them all there. This also led to me getting fired however because I cursed out my boss over it. I called him an "evil douchebag" if I rememeber correctly lol. I had asked him WHY these animals were being put down if he already KNEW they could be brought to the spca, and it turned pretty ugly when I realized the answer was merely out of convenience. Not a single person from petsmart was willing to put all these dogs in their car, to take one simple trip to the spca. Because a van would come to get the animals (on their last day) it was more convenient to give the dogs to the people who were going to kill them, rather than voluntarily take them to the spca (I **** you not this went on for my last 2 years there)

This is a **PET STORE** I told myself.

So naturally I never worked at petsmart again after that experience. =/
Someone told me now they don't work with the same company that comes out to euthanize the pets, and apparently they all get moved to shelters now if they can't get adopted (which is good). This was also the reason people were on strike for a while refusing to adopt animals from petsmart. I had not even realized this till like a year later. But the reason we were actually having so many problems adopting the dogs, is people did NOT want anything to do with petsmarts "adoption" program. Seems everybody else in the town knew what was going on except the people actually working at petsmart.

Sorry to mention a non sales job but I figured it might motivate some more people to share their stories.

-Red

Yeah an acquaintance had his own meat business and marked everything up A LOT.

My most ridiculous sales job was selling Cutco knives for Vector.

After high school, I was looking for a way to make some extra cash and found an ad in the newspaper that said they were hiring... I called, went to the interview and got hired. This sales position was selling Cutco knives. These were great knives, however I had to go door to door selling these knives.

I think they had a great product, however not something the average family would purchase. I would start by calling every family in my contact list and setting up an appointment with them by asking them, "Hey, I have a school project and I need to sit down with different families to get their feedback, when can we setup an appointment?" Once I did that, I believe I had 10 appointments... Once I had those appointments, whether they bought something or not, I would then ask them for three families I can contact.

I didn't like the fact that we had to lie to the families about the reason for an appointment, but they told us that the system worked and to not reinvent the wheel so we all did what they asked. I sold some knives, however there were a few families that bought them and then cancelled their order.


I also worked at a call center for Bank of America in the Customer Marketing department which was a complete load of BS. The way it worked is that there were three types of calls:
A = Calling in response to a balance transfer ad
C = Calling for customer service
F = Calling to activate their card

Each A call is worth around $2,000
Each C call is worth around $700
Each F call is worth around $300

Anyway, with A calls most customers would call bitching about the checks and want to cancel them so your total opportunity just rose by $2,000. If you received 8 A calls, 35 C calls, and 10 F calls, that means you were expected to bring the bank $43,500. There are days I made the bank over $100,000, however it is not everyday that I was able to produce these kind of numbers.

There are a lot of clients that call through the C line and just need to make a payment to their card or resolve an issue so we were not able to bring in any cash. Clients that came in through the F line were asking us why the got a representative if all they wanted to do was activate their card.

In addition to balance transfers, we also had to sell products like Credit Protection which was a load of bull**** as well... customers would have to pay 95 cents for every $100 on their account... if they owed $5,000, the would pay under $50 a month to be "protected". I hated both jobs, so that is why I am now an IT Analyst beginning a business in web development and internet marketing.

I had a sales guy who used to sell bull semen or as he called it "a perishable product"

I guess it depends on how you define the term but... I've had 3.

1. Technically a customer service job that we were supposed to transition into account upgrades and cross sells. This was for a utility company in Chicago. I worked with them for about 4 months, starting in November-Feb one year.

I hated it because I talked to a lot of older people who were freezing to death, or single mother's so broke that their kids were getting sick. We didn't really have any leeway to help these people, and were still expected to "sell" them after we provided crap customer service per company policy.

The last straw for me with the company and their "policy" was a woman telling me that her husband was in at home hospice dying from lung cancer, and they were behind on their bill, but it was so cold in their home that his oxygen concentrator was having trouble working and he couldn't breathe, and if I couldn't help her he might die... all the while I could hear his various monitoring equipment, and him coughing and wheezing in the background...

Chicago in the winter is incredibly cold, and to not have heat when you are old, sick or have young children is not cool in my book, no matter how greedy the utility company might be.

2. I sold summer reading classes to kids who were having a hard time reading. Really awesome job at the start, great sales training, but when I realized that the company was intentionally targeting low income families with the intention of baiting and switching them... I had issues. I met my quotas in spite of an impossibly long sales script, and talked to people all day who would cry on my shoulder about their financial status and kid's confidence issues. It took a toll. I got in trouble for being "too nice" and got switched over to the customer service side. Then I quit, because I uncovered more dirt about the company.
They actually invited me back to work for them recently, with a new bonus structure and more benefits if I'd work full time in their phone room instead of at home. I said no.

3. A company with an awesome product geared toward the health care industry. Pay was low but I wanted to learn the product because I saw potential. On my first day of taking calls, I hit the first WEEK appointment setting quota... one my second day, I doubled that...

Then, the floor manager who'd been out while I had such success, got a complex and decided to have me change my entire approach, or she'd make me miserable by yakking in my ear while I was on the phone with prospects. I did. The result? No appointments, and pissed off people.

I didn't last long there because I got a big contract with my own business, and they paid pennies for their expectations. This place also had a really inefficient way of doing things. I have grown up around the health care industry, and they knew nothing about how the corporate structure works that they were trying to break into... when I mentioned that the reasons people were getting upset were XYZ, they got upset, and wanted to continue to spam call basically. They also didn't have enough "seats" to let everyone have their own station, among other things. Very strange...

I offered to be an outside affiliate for their product meaning that they only paid me when I set demos related to my clients or anyone relevant I meet, or happened to make sales for them. They told me "no, that doesn't fit out model" and that was the end of that.

Kirby Vacuums .... need i say more ?

Actually, i take that back, i used to sell tonnage of plastic pellets, over the phone,
that job SUCKED.
Pay was good, but i was calling manufactures and factories.

My job was to convince them our pellets were better then what they were
currently using, and I could only sell in lots of 5 ton increments ...

Lol mine was selling Verizon business solutions door to door. The cool part was that it was lucrative and B2B, but it sucked that it was commission only, and it cost a lot in vehicle operation.

I sold grassheads in the markets.

They were heads made with a stocking and sawdust with seed on the top that would sprout and grow so the grass that grew look liked hair.

We put eyes and little glasses made from wire on them.


The trick to selling them was to say really loudly "they grow this high!!" and extend your hand way above your head.

We sold a stack of those grassheads over about six months.

Then they stopped selling so we closed the stall (we had other stalls).

People would ask "why didn't you work out why they stopped selling?"

I always answered "I had no idea why they sold in the first place...how am I going to work out why they stopped selling."

In business you have to take the opportunities as they come and be willing to move on to the next hot thing.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

Cars. Used cars at that.

It was fun, but it was also the absolute worst. My sales manager was a meth head.

@ Hiles

Tried selling cars for a month but I felt too much like lawn furniture, only on hot black top. lol- Didnt care much for all the loitering all day with your hands in your pockets...baking out on blacktop in a tie, waiting for an "up". Not the ole proverbial cup o tea, knowwhutumsayin?

I lived in southeast asia for a year and a half. Around the 6 months mark I met a girl and she was the 'hard to get' type. Anyway, her parents owned a few market stalls... and, in an attempt to impress, I would go to the market and sell their wares (they sold kitchen equipment--woks, spatulas, etc).
It may have just been the fact that I was foreign or maybe they wanted to hear me **** up the language and laugh, but I attracted quite a few customers when I ventured into that place. Obviously I didn't do it for the money as most are talking about in the thread (the stalls would net around $20 per day) but it was definitely an experience I won't forget.

I guess I wouldn't call this a 'ridiculous' selling job, but it was early in my career. I sold encyclopedias and a set called, I think, The Books Of Knowledge (something like that)...I was young and did ok, actually. It was door-to-door and we also manned a booth in malls to get leads.
What I always found fascinating (then) was how the prospects apparent financial status seemed to have no bearing on whether they bought or not.

Another very early sales job was selling ties at a flea market, where I worked for the owner when he was out of town. I always thought it weird that you would sell ties at an outdoor flea market??!...but we did sell a lot of ties.
_____
Bruce

One time, many years ago when I was broke and had just returned from a year travelling I was a closer for a company that sold horse racing tips. A lifetime membership was $6000 and it had to be closed only via phone. Apparently they had many happy customers, however the whole thing didn't sit well with me so I left after a couple of months. The commisions were very generous though and it got me on my feet again.

I wouldn't work in this industry again, but the company is still there so they must be doing something right.

My goofiest experience was cold-calling a bunch of fitness centers (gyms) and trying to sell them a membership to a Human Resources support community. Needless to say, most of them didn't even know what Human Resources was, much less being interested in a community about it.

Best,
-Mike

I sold ice cubes - I had a neighbor who was an ice cube maker. I went from store to store, city to city. It was a bone-chilling experience, literally and figuratively speaking!

Tru Green Chemlawn - We had a quota and needed to go out and walk peoples lawns to determine what service we needed to sell them which usually took all day. Then we had to go back into the office at 7pm and call everyone of them and try to sell them the service. We were in a sales call room with about 20 other reps and there was a supervisor that walked the floor and stood over you while making your calls and riding you if you weren't making them fast enough.

It truly sucked.

Warren

My story isn't exactly related to sales, but I was a server at an independently owned restaurant for a while when I was younger, so technically it was my job to sell the higher priced menu items to both increase the customers' total ticket price and the restaurant's subsequent profits.

I was constantly tweaking and refining my "approach" to where waiting tables became a science to me and I could literally extract bigger tips from patrons. I also found myself making suggestions to the owner - it was a very laid back family/friend working environment - on how he could streamline different areas of the business to make his systems and processes more efficient and cost-effective. Because of that, I was a valued employee in his eyes and he appreciated my efforts.

Because I was directly responsible for how much cash I took home every night, it provided a strong incentive to try harder and test and figure out what worked best in terms of "selling" food. Sounds simple I know, and it definitely can be, but cleverly applied sales tactics (and customer service) can yield huge profits in the restaurant business and huge tips for the server.

I sold auto warranties - ahem - sorry, vehicle service contracts.

You had to close 1 out of every 10 inbound calls. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but every call counted - whether it was a call you transferred to customer service, a call from someone who was dropped a piece of mail and simply requesting to be taken off the list, or anything else. I had a good pitch to close ratio, but my call to pitch and/or call to close ratio was not that great.

The best thing about this job: I discovered cappucino.

When I was like 19 I sold Kirby vacums door-to-door and I hated it, it sucked and I don't mean the vacum

my very first sales job was selling penile enlargments surgery for a surgeon

he would place lead gen ads in mens magazines and i would handle all incoming to create urgency and the appointment and close the sale

talk about going behind the psych of mens insecurities

One sidenote to the story that I didnt mention is that after they got shut down, I ended up working with the guy who hired me at another job.

He actually confirmed that the owner did indeed "bug" all the offices, as he was a real control freak.

I was a telemarketer for a windshield company, I made pretty good commissions!
Our script was something like this, " Hi, this is Christine, calling from xxx mobile windshields, we're going to be in the area this month, was wondering if you had any cracked or damaged windshields you needed repaired"
The answer was either a yes or no. If yes, it was a pretty easy sale.