Salespeople: What is/was the easiest and/or hardest product you ever sold?

Question

Looking for any good sales stories, funny, impressive, strange.

Product that was almost too easy to sell?

Product that nearly no one on the planet could possibly sell?

Funniest sales story?

Worst boiler room atmosphere?



Let's hear it all.

Answer 1

It's easy to sell chocolates at Christmas and Easter!

Bad stories:

I once worked in a department store that set sales goals equally for all employees, regardless of the number of hours you worked or the time of the day you worked. I worked EIGHT hours per week, mainly Monday and Tuesday nights. Nobody shops on Monday and Tuesday nights! My boss got really mad at me for not meeting my sales goal of about $500 per shift. She didn't know that I knew that the ENTIRE STORE only sold $400 worth of merchandise during my shift. How could I be expected to sell as much in four hours on Monday night as my co-workers did in eight hours on Saturday afternoon? How can one person in one department be expected to sell more than ALL the employees on five floors?

At the same department store I averaged an 11% return rate. In one month it went back and forth between 11% and 12% each week. My boss came to me with the "monthly" sales figures. She ADDED the weekly percentages and "determined" that I my return rate was nearly FIFTY PERCENT! I guess she was absent from school the day they taught the difference between adding and averaging! After that I just quit. I wasn't going to be verbally harassed about an incorrect return rate that was the result of her not knowing how to do math.

Answer 2

I could go on for days with sales stories. I have sold dishwashers door to door. Its true. Was easily the hardest thing ever. I didn't have to carry them with me though, that was good. The easiest thing I ever sold was discount driveway sealers. We literally would walk down the road knocking on doors and offer to seal the cracks in people driveways for 50 bucks. We could nail maybe 1 in 5 people in nice neighborhoods because the value of having it sealed was high. Meanwhile, to seal it took about 10 minutes and about 3 dollars worth of product. It looked nice though. In a good day, we could make 20 sales and split between 2 people, 1000 bucks a day was pretty sweet. The problem was once you did an entire neighborhood, you had to find new neighborhoods, which eventually proved unfeasible. The craziest place I ever worked, and I have worked a lot of sales places, was selling printer cleaner over the phone. The place we worked out of was a complete hole in the wall and we got paid peanuts. I was poor at the time so I took what I could make. But what made it so crazy was that we had a hot manager who would agree everyday to strip down layers of clothing if we sold a certain volume. Unfortunately, the totals to get her completely without clothing were unrealistic and eventually the place was shut down, but boy that kept us coming back to work. There were some days where she was managing in nothing but her underwear. I might still be working there and poor if it was not shut down. Its amazing what motivates us sometimes.

Answer 3

Life Insurance

Answer 4

The easiest is Xango. I love the stuff and have a passion for sharing it with others.