Is Sales the Best Job for Summer?
By Tanner Gonder
Come August and September, everyone always talks about the amazing summer they had. Everyone seems to have great stories, whether their summer consisted of messing around, working a crappy job, interning for a big company, or living with mom and dad. No matter what route you choose to take with your summer plans, you will always feel like you could’ve done it differently (and better). But what if there was a job that could allow you to have the fun summer you always dreamed of while also paying for your tuition and teaching you key skills necessary for the working world? One specific job is door-to-door sales — also known as summer sales. For those unaware, summer sales is a job that sells services or products door-to-door, usually in a place across the country from where you typically reside. Some of the bigger services sold are pest control, security systems, tv subscriptions, and solar. This job takes place during summer break, hence the nickname “summer sales.” Although summer sales can get a ton of hate (I will get to this later in the article) it can be highly beneficial to both people’s lives and their resumes.
Financial Freedom
The biggest benefit associated with summer sales is the financial freedom that it brings. In another article linked here, I shared the secrets of staying out of debt during your studies. Staying out of college debt is extremely difficult and can require a lot of hard work. Summer sales is a job that can provide you year-round income with leftover money to treat yourself (and someone special). The average cost of college is $35,000 a year, and while prices at Southern Virginia are slightly lower (around $20,000),anyone applying for graduate school or school elsewhere will have to pay a whole lot more. While this may seem like a daunting figure to outearn, it is very possible to earn that much while doing sales. The average earnings of a first year rep is anywhere from $15,000 to $35,000 (Fox Pest Control). This is a huge chunk — if not all — of the college expenses that you will typically acquire during the year. This will free up your life and leave you more room to study, have a social life, and enjoy college while you still can.
Fun, New Experiences Await
Most people want to spend their summer vacation having fun with their friends and family. Everyone wants the summer time to relax and have fun without the stress of deadlines. Most people don’t want to be working all summer long trying to make enough money for school in a nine-to-five job. The downside to relaxing and having fun over the summer is how far relaxation can set you back on your course to financial freedom and obtaining your dream job. However, by working a nine-to-five job, you typically won’t make enough money to pay for school, requiring you to obtain a second job over the summer (or during the school year)… Then your social life goes in the dumpster. Sales offers the chance for you to have a great time over the summer; seeing new sights without the feeling of grinding all the time in a boring job. You also get the chance to work with your friends and do fun things together on the weekend.
Jeff Teichert, owner of the Fox Pest Control Providence Branch, says
“When you do hard things, like sales, with your friends you all grow closer together and bond in ways you wouldn’t do through anything else.” Door-to-door sales can be really challenging, but when there’s people working with you, fighting the struggle with you, it helps your friendship grow even stronger. Not only are you working with amazing friends, but you’re also seeing new places and meeting new people. This translates into the perfect summer experience; working a job that pays the bills and having a killer time with your friends all summer long.
Become a Leader Through Hardship
In sales, you can face a ton of rejection. Mentally, it’s one of the hardest jobs out there. These challenges can help you grow considerably in both your personal life and life at work.
Taylor Bowers from the Career Center puts it this way,
“There is likely going to be a lot of rejection as you try to find people who want to purchase your product, so, sales can help people face hardships in a job, and hopefully learn how to adapt to situations to find further success.”
These hardships or challenges can help you learn essential skills to help you succeed later in life both as an employee and as a parent. The skills you learn through hardship will become essential for growth and development. One of the hardest skills to learn and develop is leadership. Leadership is a skill that is cultivated through enduring hard times and helping others to overcome their own obstacles. Sales gives you more than enough opportunities to experience hardship and endure through it, while growing in the process. This allows you to help others through hard times.
“When others choose to be led by you, this shows that you are a leader to them” (Teichert). Leadership is needed in every job. “The goal of any leader is to empower them to reach their full potential.”
Sales is all about empowering people to reach goals and learn skills that they wouldn’t learn in any other environment. This can mold any person to become a great leader and become a future employee that any company would die for.
Why Sales are Hated On
Although a sales job can be a huge opportunity and blessing, it’s not for everyone. I firmly believe that everyone can learn to sell as long as they are willing to work hard. With that being said, summer sales is a huge commitment. It requires people to live far from home in a stressful, fast-paced environment. It demands a lot from people because if you don’t make sales, you don’t make any money. This can be extremely stressful for people… there’s no guarantee that they will be able to make money. A good friend of mine thought that he would try summer sales out one year. He’s a very hard worker and I thought he was really going to get the hang of it. He has great social skills and is a very likable person. However, after a few very difficult weeks filled with stress and anxiety, he decided to head home for the remainder of the summer. He just couldn’t quite get the hang of it and thought his time and resources would be better spent elsewhere. Even though my friend had all the positive signs that he would do well, it just didn’t work out for him (which happens to a lot of people). Another friend of mine did really well as a sales rep and made some really good money. He finished out his first year and decided he just didn’t want to do it again. When I asked him why he didn’t do it again, he said that he was tired of how bad people treated him while approaching people through cold calling. Sales is extremely challenging. Even though people have all the right qualifications, sometimes it just doesn’t work out for them. However, even by trying this job and learning the skills, it will help anyone out and open their vision to a whole new world of possibility. Even though my two friends had very different experiences, I know that they both had positive takeaways and learned a lot, even if their time was short.
The other reason that summer sales obtains a lot of hate is how people can change over the course of the summer. If you take an individual and empower them with confidence, social skills, and a hard-working determination, sometimes their egos can grow. These egos often tend to become problem-some if the individual makes a lot of money doing sales (this problem happens quite frequently). It’s important to remember that if you surround yourself with egoistic people, you will tend to become like them. Try to surround yourself with humble and hardworking individuals.
I have also seen the flip side of this issue, where people become exceptionally humble and confident in themselves rather than egoistic. It all comes down to the company that you decide to work with and the people you surround yourself with while working. Not all companies are built the same and not all offices in a company are built the same. Generally speaking, there are some companies that are flat out better than others are. These companies really focus on making sure that their reps have the best experiences possible and receive top-notch training from leaders who actually care about their individual needs. These companies almost always provide everyone with good experiences and lots of growth both in money and in skill. Some companies rarely care about their reps and more about their own performance or making the money off of the office as a whole. This can lead to burnout, underperformance, and loads of stress. Before committing to a specific company, make sure to research them to know if you’ll be treated fairly.
Choose your Company Wisely
Many different companies are represented around campus. Some of them sell far from here while others remain close. Aptive, which has a huge presence on campus, will help you achieve your financial dreams while working far from home, giving you an awesome new experience. Aptive sells a variety of services from pest control to solar. Click here to learn more.
Fox Pest Control, which has many offices in the Virginia area, will help you learn and grow more than any other company and provide you with an amazing experience. Click here to learn more information about them.
Vivint sells security systems and has locations throughout the nation wherever you would want to work. Click here to learn more information about them.
Many individuals selling privately will sell window washing services, and a good friend of mine sells car detailing services door-to-door. These are just a few examples of companies that have influence here at Southern Virginia University. In reality, there are so many companies that will all offer unique experiences for their reps and each company will sell different products or services giving you a chance to find one suitable for you.
Learning Sales Techniques
While doing sales, you will learn various sales techniques (or as some call them, persuasion techniques). Most door-to-door companies specialize in ethical sales. Ethical sales is persuading someone to purchase a product because they actually need the product, or it’s beneficial to them in some way. The art of selling to someone ethically is a skill that translates into many different aspects of life outside of sales. The most important being interviews and showing why you are important to a company or a boss.
Linda Bolton posts this on LinkedIn about why the interview is the hardest part of the job,
All of these important keys to remember and understand before interviewing are principles that are taught on a daily basis through sales. In order to get a sale, you must show the proper body language, know what to say and what not to say, know how to say things in just the right way, and be able to answer important questions that may stump you at first. These skills make the interview process a lot easier and are more likely help you pass through an interview process.
Social Skills
The most important thing that sales will teach you is how to interact with people socially. As we step more and more into the digital age, people’s ability to interact face-to-face with others is slowly declining. No matter where life takes you, it will be imperative that you obtain the skills necessary to interact and excel socially. In today’s society, we lack the discipline to withhold impulses, be kind to those around us, and communicate our opinions without being overpowering. These skills are quickly dwindling and it inhibits us from connecting to those around us. Sales provides a great opportunity to hone in our social skills and step out of our comfort zone socially.
Bowers, talking about skills learned through sales, says
“ Most notably is interacting with people and finding common ground. Every job a person will have will require communication of some sorts.”
I would even go further in saying that almost anything we participate in will require communication and social skills. Some great examples would be a parent to a child, friends, teammates, and of course colleagues at work. All of these groups of people are dependent on you and how well you are able to communicate and interact with them. Due to technology, our ability to interact is on the decline. This alone is a huge reason why sales provides insanely important skills for our life in and out of the workforce.
Summer Sales is a whole lot more than just making a ton of money over the summer and coming home rich. It’s about learning, growing, and becoming a better version of yourself. Although sales might not work out for everyone or be a best fit, I know that even by trying, there will be something that you will learn that will better your future self in some way.
Mike Romney, founder of Fox Pest Control, says
“There is nothing more important that you could be doing over the summer than summer sales.”
He’s right. Everything you learn in summer sales is a priceless skill you can use later on in life. Doing sales will help you grow in more ways and become a great leader in the short time that summer provides. Plus, you can set yourself up for life financially, which is icing on the cake.
