I’ve been in some form of sales most of my life, from encyclopedia sales in multiple states and with my own people, professional fund raising as the branch manager, and aluminum siding, and other products, and when I left sales, I went into mostly doing service plumbing, because the first guy who hired me to make me a service plumber, paid strictly on commission, which was the only way that I liked getting paid.
The encyclopedia sales was the best for me, there was a lot of money in it and there were a lot of interesting work condition payoffs, like for some reason 19 year old girls being the best hires and the hard partying and daily classes that go with the business, and the deference that you get from other salesmen who thought of the door to door men as the Green Berets of sales.
Once I needed 4 T-Birds and I could do the entire deal over the phone, another time I was looking at Cadillacs, and the dealer would drive them over to my office to run them by me.
I always felt bad doing sales, even though I was always top salesman and have never been second in sales at any place that I have ever worked, including in plumbing, I was very happy to find a way to combine my sales talent and my pleasure in helping people, with a service that I felt better about.
I will say that I was actually making my best money at the professional fund raising, but I just couldn’t take the huge percentage that was in it for me, it tore me up inside. I did that after I had already done a year as a plumber, and I quit it to go back to service plumbing on commission, I have never plumbed when I wasn’t paid on straight commission, at the last company that I worked for, being the last time I worked for anyone besides myself, that meant that I only worked a few hours a week, and didn’t work Thursdays, and I collected commission off the people that I managed, which isn’t bad for plumbing.
I guess I averaged about 20 hours a week of twisting a wrench for them, and I still out sold every one else, always.
I remember some more about that last job for another plumbing company, I didn’t work on Thursdays because that was the day after my club meeting, and I didn’t take calls before 11:am, and I didn’t want to be in the field after 2:pm because of traffic.
So in reality I doubt that I actually worked many 20 hour weeks, a salesman can make even plumbing, a nice little job.