It's obvious you've never been in outside sales. Please don't take that personally. Hearing 100 "no's" for one "yes" day after day is tough. It takes drive and thick skin. The summer solicitors, at least the residential pest control ones, are just doing it for a summer job. If you notice most of them are probably under 22 following a script. They aren't professionals. They're just trying to get a signature, not build a relationship. This is another reason why I would never do residential. It's just make the sale and move on. On the commercial side you build a relationship and partner with the customer.If they followed the rules it wouldn’t be that bad.
Around here most solicitors need a solicitation license from the city.*. First thing I do is ask to see their license if they appear on the door and I answer. Most don’t have one and they disappear when I ask. A few try and argue with me. I’m not sure why solicitors think arguing with a potential customer who didn’t ask you to come by will make a sale.
If they tell me they’re just in the neighborhood and the neighbor “over there” with some generic wave recommended me I just laugh.
Residential cold calling is soul sucking because they choose to make it so. If they were polite and followed the rules and didn’t lie or make up stuff then it wouldn’t be soul sucking.
* the solicitors who don’t are political signature gatherers, missionaries and related, I think school kids selling stuff (no one gets mad at them anyway), and a few other edge cases. But commercial sales isn’t one of the no-permit-required cases except maybe the school kids I mentioned.
Commission sales is not for everyone. That's why there's a lot of turnover. NOBODY let's you make a lot of money because the job is easy,
You're a tech guy that can sit at a desk all day and pound keys. I could never imagine doing that. I tried inside sales once. Too confining. Outside sales allowed me to be a cowboy. Leave me alone to do my job and you'll know if I'm working by my weekly and monthly numbers. Unfortunately, I worked for a public company so after about 5 years they started a lot of micro managing. The final straw was when they put an app on our phones that tracked what time we left our homes, how fast we were accelerating, how hard we were braking and turning, if we exceeded the speed limit, and if we were using our electronic devices. Company vehicle and phones, but it didn't affect their insurance rates because they were self insured. I got tired real fast not being treated like an adult.
