The_Salesman, Part 4

children or even a pet dog. If they actually are married then this may well be their third or fourth marriage.

The salesman will get two or three leads a day. There will be an appointment at 11AM and another at 3PM and another at maybe 7 PM. They will work six and even seven days a week.

One national home improvement company – one so vile and litigious that they will not be mentioned -- brags that they have 600 salesmen. Public records show that they do about $120 million a year. A huge portion of this revenue is from earnings on interest from the self-financed fully secured home loans (at even 14.75%) but let’s pretend that all of it is from the sale of just their products.

That works out to $200,000 in product sales per salesman per year. That is about $17,000 in sales per salesman per month. At a 12% commission (which the salesman may never see) that is about $2,000 a month in income per salesman.

The salesman is working from 9 AM to even 11 PM six days a week, even 300 hours a month, for that money.

Sears has about 1,200 salesman across the country and does about $460,000,000 in home improvement sales. That works out to about $380,000 in gross sales per salesman and about $45,000 a year in commission per salesman. Would you work at Sears six days a week and 10 hours a day for $45,000?

In the case of Sears, they have people who are called “FSMs.” These are supposed to be experienced people who can help other salesman make sales. In reality these people are alleged by many disgruntled salesmen to suck up the really good leads for themselves and leave the poor salesmen with the leavings.

The reality is that few people can actually do this kind of job. Most starve. Seemingly, only ice cold near-psychopaths, or at a minimum sociopaths, can make the really big bucks. And they really do.

Only the not-named-here-company, Home Depot, and Sears are truly nation-wide home improvement companies. They seem to be extremes of the industry. The not-named- here-company is evil. They are litigious. They destroy their customers. Sears’ salesmen use nearly the same sales tactics as the other company but it has been Sears that’s been sued instead. Sears seems to have some vestigial soul.