Summer Sales Program
The company recruits between 2,500 and 3,000 college and university students each year to sell educational books, software, and subscription websites during the summer months. Student dealers come from over 300 colleges and universities in North America, South America, Africa and Europe.
The president of Southwestern Advantage admits that selling books door-to-door is "incredibly hard, frustrating work," and not for everyone. Experienced dealers say the program provided them needed funds, boosted their confidence, and taught them to stick with a project despite adversity. Almost a third of the company's first-year dealers quit within 20 days, often with hard feelings. Some of these first-year dealers share stories about losing money, facing upset homeowners, and unfriendly dogs. They call the company everything from a cult to a scam.
Read more about this topic: Southwestern Company
Famous quotes containing the words summer, sales and/or program:
“Taffeta phrases, silken phrases precise,
Three-piled hyperbole, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical—these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
I do forswear them.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The damned are in the abyss of Hell, as within a woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members, because as they have employed all their senses and their members in sinning, so shall they suffer in each of them the punishment due to sin.”
—St. Francis De Sales (1567–1622)
“George Shears ... was hanged in a barn near the store. The rope was thrown over a beam, and he was asked to walk up a ladder to save the trouble of preparing a drop for him. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am not used to this business. Shall I jump off or slide off?” He was told to jump.”
—For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)