Anyone who has a class in Cabell Hall has seen the chalkboard ads, with their vague but enticing message:"Work part-time around class. $12.50 base appointment."
It's tempting to call the phone number. Thoughts of money-for-nothing dance in your head and a self-scheduled job would be perfect for a college student's busy day. Plus, how hard can it be to make a simple appointment?
Those who do respond to the ad get to embark on an adventure in capitalism so remarkable that it takes two interviews and a written questionnaire just to find out what the job actually is:
Selling knives.
Yes, knives
-- utensils that most American families already have a set of and aren't thinking about replacing anytime soon. The subject of cutlery tends to lie in the dusty back corner of people's minds -- which is the precise reason Cutco Knives, Inc. is in business.
According to salesman and third-year Engineering student Matt Soccoli, knives are easy to sell because "most people don't have good knives, and they don't usually go out to look for new ones."
Soccoli and other student knife-sellers work for Vector Marketing, a firm licensed to sell products made by CutcoSeveral other companies, such as Fortune Marketing and Collegeworks, use students as salespeople, but Vector is "the largest college student recruiter in North America," said regional manager Graham Bostick.
Vector hired more than 40,000 college students nationwide last summer, Bostick added.
Selling Cutco products is a huge draw among college students for the same reasons implied in the crude chalkboard ads: selling fits into a busy schedule, and it brings in the cash. Salespeople can earn $12.50 for making a sales presentation, even if the customer doesn't buy a single blade.
First-year College student Gray Huffman made $400 in just one week of selling Cutco. Carter Garrison, a freshman at Virginia Tech, made $600 in his first week and a half.
On the top end, Soccoli, one of Cutco's top 100 national sellers, made $17,000 in one summer of selling.
Breaking into the business
Soccoli, a Charlottesville native majoring in systems engineering, has definitely thrived on the Cutco approach. This past summer, his second as a Cutco salesperson, he sold enough knives to catapult him to 86th place -- nationally -- among Cutco's college representatives.
Soccoli's relaxed demeanor and leisurely-paced speech aren't what one would expect from a successful salesman. But his face lights up as he talks about Cutco.
"I love my job -- I think it's the best job ever," he said. "It gives you great experience for life, because if you can sell yourself, you can sell anything."
He first heard of Cutco when his best friend made a sales presentation to his family.
"I thought 'this is silly,'" he recalled. But he still found the job interesting enough to call his friend's boss and apply.
Just like Soccoli did, Cutco salesperson hopefuls must go through an application process as rigorous as it is secretive.
Applicants have to pass an initial interview and a screening, then fill out worksheets filled with questions reminiscent of a college application, such as, "Why would you be valuable to Vector Marketing?"
Those who make it this far go on to a group interview with other applicants and put on a mock sales presentation -- without even knowing what they will be selling.
"Any time we asked what it was, they'd say, 'I can't tell you right now,'" Huffman said.
Even when applicants find out what they're selling, they aren't guaranteed a job. Caitlin Thurnauer, a freshman at Syracuse University, recalls the final stage of the process she went through when she sold for Cutco in summer 2001. "They had us all sit down in a room and unveiled the knives that we'd be selling, and then they gave us a presentation on the wonders of Cutco," Thurnauer said. "The whole time, managers were watching us, and if they didn't like how someone reacted to the knives, they would ask them to leave at the end."
After all the interviews, writing and scrutiny, a choice group with a job selling Cutco emerges. They go through three straight days of five-hour training sessions, where they learn far more than just good things to say about the knives.Salespeople are trained to gauge the personalities of various types of buyers, learning to use different selling approaches accordingly.
Cutco follows a policy of not selling "door to door," or soliciting unknown customers. So the seller's final task is to compile a list of names and phone numbers of every friend, relative, acquaintance and former baby-sitting client. These are the people to whom they will try to sell knives.
Every time sellers make an appointment, they ask for references to make new appointments with, and their clientele keeps branching out in this way. They receive $12.50 just for making appointments to present the knives, and receive a commission of 10 percent or more depending on their output.
Needless to say, Cutco's salespeople can make large amounts of money in a very short time.
Corporate culture
One of the most unique aspects of the Cutco experience is the corporate culture.
"We're looking for sellers with a good work ethic and a positive attitude who look to the future," Bostick said.
First-year College student Teri Taylor found this out the first time she went to a group meeting with her regional manager. "She said, 'How is everyone doing today?' and we had to clap our hands in unison and say 'Awesome!'"
Daily phone calls with the manager to discuss sales are mandatory, which Taylor added, "is pretty annoying when your manager calls you at 8 o'clock in the morning."
Each regional division of Cutco holds three regional conferences every summer to keep, as Bostick said, an atmosphere "of excitement about the future and about themselves."
Taylor recounted the conference she attended last summer.
"It was a like a religious revival," she said. "Every time they mentioned other brands of knives, the audience would boo. A girl came on stage to talk about how Cutco had changed her life and how she could finally afford her own apartment. In the middle, she started to cry
it was strange to see someone break down crying, talking about selling knives."
In Taylor's view, the high-pressure atmosphere was "like a cult," where everyone had to be "gung-ho" about making sales.
But some sellers have grown fed up with constantly calling increasingly distant acquaintances for the sole purpose of making money. After he ran out of immediate friends and family to call, Huffman recalled, "I didn't want to do it any more. I felt sleazy."
Taylor felt the same way, noting she felt like she was taking advantage of people. Facing rejection wasn't fun either.
The again, Taylor added, "I made between $2,000 and $2,500 that summer."
Soccoli acknowledged that working for Cutco is "not for everybody," but he added that "no matter how long someone works there, they can still learn a valuable lesson about what kind of job is good for them."
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