If you're job hunting, you probably skip every ad that says, "Commission Only.”

Naturally, you want to put bread on the table, pay the bills, and have some fun, and how are you going to do that if you bring home a check with goose eggs where real numbers should be, right?

But you may be missing out, if you dismiss every straight-commission job as being a bad bet. Some of them are potentially very lucrative—they have to be, to attract salespeople who are prepared to act as entrepreneurs.

When I left Time-Life, after rising in sales to management, I decided to concentrate on my graduate school education, so I simply couldn't work 12 hours a day five days a week, plus Saturday mornings.

I was prepared to work hard, but part-time.

The only positions I found that matched that requirement were straight commission opportunities. Having bills to pay, I called about one ad in the morning, interviewed at noon, and I was on the phone, making my first sale, and commission that afternoon.

In fact, I got really lucky. I closed the first person with whom I spoke!

That commission, by the way, was worth $36 to me, which was about five times the guaranteed hourly rate I would have received from a similar position.

Needless, to say, I overcame my fear of being a commission-only salesman, on the spot!

What this enabled

me to do, only two years later when I finished my Ph.D., was to start my own consulting business on a shoestring. Because I had proven to myself that I could sell under pressure, without a guaranteed check at the end of the week or month, I freed myself to follow my dream of reporting only to me.

Every independent businessperson is a really commission salesperson, so if this is your dream, check out those Help Wanted ads, again!

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