Summer sales a big risk but yields big rewards for students
When students are promised five-digit sums of money to travel to a different part of the country and go door-to-door to sell services like cable, pest control and home security systems during the summer, some jump at the opportunity.
But it’s a hit-and-miss business.
“I only lasted about a month before they basically said, ‘You’re not doing very well to justify staying out here, so we’re going to end up sending you home,’ and it wasn’t like they gave me a choice to stay,” said Jared Barnes, a USU student majoring in special education. “I was still making enough that I could’ve probably survived, but it was still pretty rough.”
Barnes was in Tyler, Texas, during the summer of 2011, selling for Pinnacle Security, a company specializing in home security alarm systems. Barnes said after he was told to go home, he had to live with his girlfriend for about a month before he found an apartment and a new job.
He said it was difficult because the managers who trained him prior to employment were elsewhere doing their own sales.
“They kind of expected you to just be on your own and go out and do it, so it was really tough,” he said. “I was making a lot of mistakes, and there were times where you just get discouraged because you would walk and try to knock on as many doors as you could, but when it comes down to it, if you’re getting a lot of ‘No’s,’ you’re going to get pretty discouraged.”
He considered making a career out of sales because he had the potential to make big money, but decided against it.
“After that experience, it was really tough for me to say, ‘I’ll go back to that eventually and do that,’ because it was such a huge risk that I took,” he said.
But Barnes’ experience isn’t necessarily typical – he encouraged others to try it for themselves to see how much they enjoy selling.
Mike Rees, who worked as a manager for Orem-based Vantage Marketing in 2013, said he has a high opinion of summer sales.
“If you can find a good team, a good area to go sell in, I think it’s a great idea,” he said. “It gives you just tons of skills and experiences that you’ll really never get anywhere else.”
Rees, a senior in exercise science and communication studies, sold pest control contracts with Vantage in the Washington, D.C., area for the last three summers. He said the tricky thing about summer sales is the steepness of the learning curve.
He said it’s a different experience for those who think they can do well in sales after coming back from a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“It’s just so different,” Rees said. “A lot of people think they can just come off a mission where they’ve been knocking doors and they know how to get rejected. They know how to talk to people, they know how to be persistent with people, and they think ,’Yeah, I can totally be a salesman,’ but it’s way different.”
He said the skills needed to succeed in sales can only be learned in the “school of hard knocks” during the first couple months of the first summer.
But an LDS mission is not a prerequisite for success.
“I’ve seen people who haven’t served a mission who’ve just crushed it, done really well, and I’ve seen people who’ve served a mission who’ve done horrible,” Rees said.
A lot of what leads to success, Rees said, are good communication skills and good work ethic.
“Everyone that I’ve seen consistently not do well either had really, really bad social skills, or they had really poor work ethic,” he said.
Bryan Hinkson, a USU student majoring in chemical engineering who sold pest control for the last two summers, said there is a certain personality that summer salesmen need.
“If it’s hard for you to talk to people, you’re probably not going to succeed very well,” Hinkson said. “You’ve got to become friends with whoever it is; if they think you’re trying to sell them something or scam them in some way, it’s not going to work out. If you’re shifty and can’t talk to people very well, it’s going to be hard.”
Hinkson sold for ProGuard Pest Control in California in 2012 and Pointe Pest Control in Pennsylvania the next year.
Hinkson said he was single when he worked in California and married when he went to Pennsylvania. His wife, Tiffany Hinkson, worked tech for Pointe, doing the actual pest control in houses.
Bryan Hinkson said he had a lot of fun when he worked sales and was single, but the job cuts into family time.
“You’re trading your time away from your friends and family, which is really hard,” he said. “People who are married, unless their wives are going to be out there selling with them, I personally feel like it’s not as good of an experience.”
Despite the drawbacks, summer sales positions have benefits. Rees said he has zero debt, all because of summer sales, and has saved enough to pay for things he wants to do in the future.
“I’m looking at going to med school, so I think of myself already as being like $200,000 in debt,” he said. “I’m just saving all my money as much as I can and living poor during the school year, but it’s nice because I’ve never had to worry about paying for school, I’ve never had to worry about paying for cars, tuition; when it comes up I just take care of it immediately, and I’ve got the money to take care of it.”
– ej.jungblut@gmail.com
Twitter: @JungblutEric