Door-To-Door Vacuum Salesman Educates Youths About the Benefits of Direct Sales

If you told Daniel Cook in 1981 that selling vacuums while hitchhiking to and from work would be his key to a lucrative career in direct sales (DS), he probably would have laughed in your face. Cook had been happy to get a job as a junior expeditor with IBM. It was manageable work that provided a decent income and a reasonable amount of job security. So it seemed to be the perfect job for a recent college graduate. Eventually Cook realized he wanted more money, so he took a weekend job with Electrolux selling vacuums.

Cook would be the first to admit that there is nothing glamorous about selling vacuums; but going door to door as a salesman taught him two valuable lessons. First, that he liked direct sales and second that he could make more money doing part time DS work on the weekends than he could working his full-time job at IBM. "I made $42,000 in 11 months doing door-to-door vacuum sales in 1982, so I kept at it," he said.