My First Experience with Sales

Like many kids who grew up in the United States, I gained my first experience with sales when I was about 9 years old selling lemonade. My friend and I took the morning to make the lemonade, test it on his family, then set up a table right next to the road in front of his house. Cars would come and go, and people would stop to buy a cup while on their walks. One of the neighborhood bullies even stopped by to buy some, but pretended like he was choking and collapsed on the ground for a few moments. At the end of the day, we earned a nice $7 in the span of an hour and a half; not bad for two 8 and 9 year old boys.

At the time, I didn’t really know what I was doing. In my mind, all I needed to do to start selling lemonade was have the drink, a table, and sit there for about two hours waiting for people to flock to my stand in search of the oasis that was my humble beverage stand. I didn’t know anything about finding a prime location to increase traffic flow, setting up signs to advertise our stand’s presence, or measuring how much lemonade mix, sugar, water, and ice we used to create the best price to sell in order to maximize our profits. But looking back, I learned some valuable lessons about selling that I was able to take forward in my life.

One lesson I learned was finding the best location to sell. Regardless of how good of a salesman someone is, setting up shop in the front yard of a secluded neighborhood is probably going to have a negative affect on how much they sell. Had I walked down the road to the park, I probably would have been able to earn much more money than I did. Picking a good location is probably one of the most important aspects when opening up a business.

Another lesson I learned comes from the bully who pretended to choke. No matter how good your product may be, no matter how fairly priced it is, or how kind you can be to a customer, someone is always going to find someway to complain or make an issue out of something. It’s important to know how to deal with such a situation. I could have said something mean to the kid or called him names, but instead I stayed quiet and just let him finish his little “complaint” and go on about his way. No matter how unjustified someones complaint may be, dealing with it in grace is always the best way to go about things even in the worst of situations.