6 Lessons I Learned as a Door-to-Door Salesman

In the summer of my sixteenth year, I took a job with a company that painted houses.  Their schtick was that they would paint people’s houses for cheaper because they employed students to do the job.  I took the job because it paid a lot better than what I was making working part-time at Burger King, and I could think of worse ways to spend a summer than outdoors.  I didn’t realize at the time of sign up that at least half the job was going to door to door selling the company’s services.

That is how I accidentally landed a job as a door-to-door salesman.  While my career was extremely short lived, I learned a lot from that early experience that I’ve carried over into various jobs and careers since then.

1. There’s no such thing as a natural salesperson

Up until that point in my life, I had always believed that some people could sell, and others couldn’t.  I also believed that I fell in the latter camp.  I was not a big talker.  I didn’t like misleading people.  I didn’t like annoying people.  I didn’t like being rejected.  These were all things that I thought a salesperson had to be able to do.

The first night we canvassed a neighborhood, we went out in a team of five, plus a team leader. I was the youngest, the smallest and the least likely to be a natural salesperson.  A funny thing happened that night, though.  I made more sales than anyone in my team.  Not only that, at the end of the night, when our team leader called in our sales to the regional coordinator, I found out that I’d sold more than anyone in the region.  How could that have happened?

2. Talk slowly

The area we canvassed that night was a primarily French-speaking suburb of Montreal.  I am fluent in French.  However, most would agree that I speak more slowly than a native French speaker (note: only in Quebec could the speed at which I speak be considered slow). The result was that I was more deliberate and more expressive in delivering the sales pitch.

When you speak quickly, people assume that you’re trying to pull a fast one on them.  When you speak slowly and deliberately, they have the time to fully grasp what you’re saying.  If you’re delivering a good pitch, then you want people to pick up every nuance of it.

3. Don’t be over-confident

The typical image of a good salesperson is one of swaggering bravado.  Many of colleagues that night did that image justice.  I, on the other hand, was nervous.  My first attempt at pitching came out more as a plea than a pitch (I didn’t make that sale).  By the second pitch, I was more comfortable, but still not confident.  The result was that I met the clients on an equal footing.  I didn’t talk down to them.  I calmly explained the benefits of the service I was selling without bragging about how great it was.

Just as people are suspicious of fast-talkers, they are suspicious of cockiness.  Moreover, people don’t like cockiness.  They like genuineness.  Are you more likely to buy something from someone you like or someone you dislike?

4. Be personable

It only took me a few attempts before I was ad-libbing from the sales script.  The script was a great script.  It had obviously been refined through experience and by some savvy marketers.  However, if I’d stuck to the script, the people answering their doors would have only known the company, and not me.  Instead, I greeted them with a few details about myself.

By making the conversation personal, I made it harder for people to say no.  It’s a lot easier to say no to a faceless corporation than to say no to a person whom you know something about.  I didn’t tell these people my life story, but they learned enough about me to know who I was.

5. Listen

I spent longer at every single door than any one of my colleagues.  This was not because they were getting doors slammed in their face or because I was talking that slowly.  It was because I listened to every single person who opened the door.  I figured that if I was interrupting these people at home, and expected them to listen to me, the least I could do was listen to them.  I distinctly remember one gentleman who had had his house painted the previous summer by the company I was working for and had had a bad experience.  He railed on about lack of craftsmanship, as well the general lack of pride that youth take in their work.  I listened intently as he sermoned me.

The sale wasn’t going to happen, and I could have cut my losses and ended the conversation early, but instead I listened to every word.  Amidst exaggerations over the moral decrepitude of my generation, there were legitimate points and concerns that I was more well-prepared to address with later clients.

6. Earn trust

The key things that set me apart from my colleagues that night was that I earned more trust than they had.  I did this through all of the methods I mentioned above.  In essence, everything that I thought would make me a bad salesperson made me more trustworthy in the eyes of potential clients.  Building trust is the single best sales tool available.  If you have a customer’s trust, you can sell him anything.  The trick is to keep the customer’s trust, because if you really do sell him just anything, that trust won’t last long.

Other applications

Whether you run your own business, are an employee, work in sales, or work in any other field, sales skills are valuable.  I didn’t realize all of the above lessons that night while breaking sales records.  They became obvious to me years later as I pursued different careers and drew from these various skills.

So what happened to my illustrious door-to-door sales career?  Unfortunately, this story has an anti-climactic ending.  The night in question was a weeknight towards the end of the school semester.  To celebrate my great night, my colleagues took me to a bar for a few drinks.  So, at 2 am on a Wednesday night, an inebriated sixteen-year old rang his doorbell because he had lost his keys at the bar.  Thus ended the briefest door-to-door sales career in history.

What sales lessons have you learned in the course of your life experiences? Do you find sales experience equally applicable to other aspects of business? Have you ever had to leave a job because someone made the decision for you?