Over the next several months I made a lot of aqaintences and proceeded to sell a lot of products, I was back! Doing what I did best, relating to people and selling them a great product. To me this was fun. I still wasn’t making as much money to be able to do this full time. Part of doing this business was not just sales but networking. Networking was new to me. You have to get as many people signed up under you as you can. Not everyone is a salesperson. At least that what most people believe.
Through the years I have come to believe that all people are salespeople on some level. Think of the first time you talked that boy or girl into a kiss, or when you talked your folks into something special that you really wanted. Even Darlene was a great salesperson when she refused to move in with me and then I asked her to marry me. We both got what we wanted in that deal, with me coming out on the better part.
When you encourage someone to doing something, that is selling. Now convincing them that they are a salesperson is a tougher sell. You do this through building a relationship with that person. In a way when I first started out selling back when I was eight years old, my mother was actually laying the ground work for networking. By me making a list of all of my friends and neighbors and family, I was starting to network. That was my foundation. Those rules still apply now. You must go to family, friends and neighbors and other acquaintances. Make the list and scratch them off one by one. I had this opportunity with all of the women that worked in the factory. At this time I was new to understanding this and took me a while before I understood it.
I found that selling a good quality product very easy, but I ran into to a lot of negativity when it came to getting people to sign up to any program. Most people love to be sold to, not as many want to sell to. In this part of sales I found the number one reason why people in sales give up. They take rejection so personal. If Colonel Sanders had given up after a few rejections there would be no Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. He went all across the country trying to sell his recipe to other restaurants owners for just five cents a chicken sold as royalty. He was turned down by hundreds before he made his first sale. He didn’t take rejection personal.
After only being out of the Marines for for months, Darlene and I were married. I married one of my sisters best friends and in turn the love of my life turned out to be my best friend. We got married in her church as I was Catholic and she was Lutheran. She would have married me anywhere but she always wanted to please her mother. Her mother didn’t like Catholics much so I was not her most favorite person in the world. On the other hand my father was a strong Catholic and he didn’t care much for Lutherans. It was to be a challenge to get him to step foot in a Lutheran church.
It was a cold snowy and icy Saturday in January. The church was beautiful. All of our friends and family was there. Darlene had wrote our own vowels, and it was like going back to school trying to remember them let alone recite them with all of the people listening and watching. For the most part it was a small wedding nothing glamorous except for my new bride. We both came from families with little money so we paid for most of the wedding ourselves. The reception was held at my parents house. It was a wonderful wedding and party. There would be no honeymoon until our twenty-fifth anniversary.
