I recently re-subscribed to The New Yorker with an introductory offer of six months for $26 or something like that with easy cancellation if I don't want to continue the subscription at full price, $119, or something like that.
The August 8, 2022, issue with the drawing of two bicycles chained to a "no parking sign" on the cover has an essay that is worth the price of a full year's subscription: under "American Chronicles," and article with this heading: "The Hard Sell: A door-to-door salesman's quest to rebrand his profession."
I was a door-knocker for one full summer back in in the early 1970s. Hardest job I ever had?
Even in this 12-page article -- one page devoted to a full page photograph -- the featured salesman, Sam Taggart says the second-hardest job in the world is door-to-door sales, second only to the military.
Most lucrative door-to-door sales right now? Selling solar panels. Next: pest control.
D2D selling has grown into a much bigger deal than when I did it.
But the actual job -- the actual sales job -- is no different than how I remember.
Number one: rejection. For every sale I made, I must have had nineteen rejections. Sam Taggart says successful salesmen turn rejection into an "asset," or a goal.
Number two: successful salesmen -- passionate about their product and believe in it.
Number three: successful salesmen learn how to "size up" a potential customer and adjust their spiel.
From which state -- which state -- do the largest number of (and perhaps the most successful) salesmen come from?
I'll answer that later.
Hint: the men from this state get two years of training by selling Jesus door-to-door, which, they say, is the hardest product to sell.
More on this later as I find time.
AAPL is up $1.51 / share on a day when the market is a) falling; and, b) waiting for the Delphi oracle to speak.