I learned that I was no good at sales around age 18. I was looking for work and was offered a sales job on commission with ADT, the alarm company, or at least an organisation performing door-to-door sales for them.
They started off by teaching me how to break into houses. It sounds strange but they actually did. For about 30-40 minutes in a cold hall with stale coffee we were informed about various techniques on how to break into houses. The thinking was that if we came up against stubborn home owners that said they didn’t need a home security system for whatever reason that we would be able to counter it with why they did because we knew how burglars think.
I was paired up with an older lady as my mentor. She was only a couple of years older than me and had been doing this for only a few weeks. Plus she had a car so she could drive us around to and from our sales area.
I wasn’t good at selling house alarms. My heart wasn’t in it. I figured this out fairly quickly. It all came to a head at the end of a long evening with no sign-ups when we arrived at a house with evidence of a recent break-in, namely a boarded up front door. My mentor said if we can’t sell to this home owner we should give up.
The home owner turned out to be a little old lady who had indeed been burgled recently. She had no money for an alarm. In fact she couldn’t even afford a contractor to fix her door. Her nephew had boarded up the door where a glass panel had been and had dropped off a new lock but had yet to return to fit it. Each night she would prop a dinning room chair up against the inside of the door for extra security as the door could not be locked. She would barely get any sleep each night from worrying.
Being a nice guy, she set about fixing us both a cup of tea while I got to work fitting the lock using a screwdriver set retrieved from under a sink. I left feeling good about helping someone, but with no money nor aptitude for sales, but with knowledge of how to break into houses.
Thanks ADT.