August 2023 Blog Topic: What was your first sale as a business owner? Share about it. If you are NOT a business owner: Share a time when you supported a small business and the experience.
By Wil Becker with Turning Leaf Solutions
When I was 13 years old, we lived on the Ft. Meade Army base. There was a local newspaper that delivered 2 papers a week: on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I was hired as a delivery boy for them. That also means that I was expected to help sell new subscriptions. This was totally new to me, and I wasn’t sure if I could make a sale for the newspaper.
I don’t remember my training at all. I do remember one specific evening when I was out selling with the newspaper rep and a crew of other kids that were also delivering newspapers on Ft. Meade. I remember going door to door with free copies of the latest edition of the paper and handing them out while pitching the paper and talking about all the local news and events that get published twice weekly. I keenly remember standing on the sidewalk about 10 feet from the home and the man of the house, standing in front of his door. I remember the feeling of excitement and triumph as he agreed to sign up and take delivery of the newspaper.
That night, I sold more subscriptions than the other kids and I sold the most, new subscriptions the paper had for several months. There must have been about five of us kids, and the reward for sales that night was packs of playing cards plus a sales commission. I brought home somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 or 10 packs of cards!! That put me in the ballpark of 35 new subscriptions! It was a real high to close another sale and then move on to the next house. I didn’t realize how well I did with sales of new subscriptions, until several months later, when I was cut a $400 commissions check! That was the total I had made over the few months that I had gone out and sold new subscriptions.
It is now, as I write this and frame that experience for this month’s “Led Me to This” blog, that I realize my experience was much more formative than I ever realized. It helped me to see there is always money to be made when I put in the work.
