Stuttering Salesman: How Door-to-Door Sales Changed My Life

People would hang up on me.

One day, a few years after college, I found myself unemployed in Denver. At that time, I discovered craigslist and I looked at their job ads regularly. It was depressing. I thought I wanted to be a writer. I thought I wanted to be a frickin poet. And every day I read ad after ad for sales. Sales. DOOR-TO-DOOR.

No experience necessary.

My life needed something, so I called the number for a job selling framed artwork. A girl answered:

Her: "Do you have a car?"

Me: "Sure."

Her: "Can you come in for an interview in an hour?"

Me: "Ummmm.Yeah."

I met with the owner, guy in his 30s. Nick. I told him I don't know jack about sales and I have this stutter and...he was okay with it. He told me to come back tomorrow for an observation day. He said this job might be good for me.

I came back at 10:00 AM the next day. The cars parked in front of the office were packed with pictures. The girl who was going to show me what this job was about introduced herself. Sarah. It was a madhouse; everyone was saying hi to me then leaving to go sell for the day.

I stood there, tall and naïve, in khakis and a long-sleeve navy blue shirt.

We got in her car. We're going up north to Windsor, she told me. Windsor is a small town about 40 miles north of Denver. We arrived at the Windsor outlet mall. She parked, got out, opened the back door and took out her pitch piece. A pitch piece was the framed picture you showed people when you delivered your sales pitch; you carried it everywhere.

She walked into a yoga studio. The owner was there. She pitched him. Bought 3.
She walked into a Quiznos. She pitched the sandwich maker. No soliciting.
She walked into an insurance company. She pitched everyone in the office. All no.
She walked into a café. She pitched the cashier. He wanted to buy a Dali, but had no money.
She walked into a King Soopers grocery. She had the store manager paged. She pitched him. She asked if she could pitch the employees in the break room. No deal.
She walked into a bank. She pitched the tellers. One of them had just bought a new house and came outside to look at the pictures in the car. Bought 4.

I followed, watched, and listened. In a sort of scared silence.

We did this all day. Pitching people. We went through all the businesses in Windsor. Then she showed me residential selling. She didn't use a pitch piece here. She told me the objective is to get people out of their houses, get them to flip through the artwork in the car. She persuaded one guy, who said he had no money at the door, to come take a look. He liked these two pictures of historic downtown Denver. He pulled two $20s out of his pocket and bought them.

She sold 15 pictures that day. And I ended up with a new job.

The next week I trained. The first door I ever "hit", the two secretaries crushed me before I got my pitch out.

"Thank you, no. No soliciting. Please leave."

In the weeks ahead, I heard everything; people yelled at me, threatened to call the police, threatened to kick my butt, ignored me, escorted me out, and a few said yes.

I was doing it. Selling. Unbelievable, I was making deals with strangers. Deals in parking lots sometimes. I even went on a road trip to sell in Las Vegas for a week. I made more playing blackjack than I did in commissions. Pitching 100 people a day was making me fluent. Well, almost. I continued to stutter, but I dropped a lot of the fear of talking I had. I had been so wrapped up in fear. At the end of a day of selling, I felt like I could handle anything.

Really, anything.

I quit that job after 3 months to go teach English in Korea. And I know I would never have had the guts to do it if it wasn't for my door-to-door sales experience.

Every morning we loaded our cars with artwork and then had a motivational meeting. One morning Nick gave us a pep talk and he wrote a quote on the whiteboard that has stuck with me.

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

---Abraham Lincoln