The Southwestern Company Alumni Blog

One of the challenges that I encountered when recruiting college students for the Southwestern Company summer program, was conveying to a non-business major how sales experience would benefit them.  Most of us quickly learn once we leave academia that everything is some form of sales.  That statement has been validated every time I talk to a Southwestern alumnus that is not in sales. 

This year at the Southwestern Great Recruiters Seminar (GRS), Whitney Ferré spoke about how valuable her Southwestern experience has been in her everyday life. 

“In my current roles as author, artist, restaurateur, and mother, not a day goes by that I do not draw on the skills I learned both selling books and recruiting a team.  I am constantly having to convince someone about something.  It is ALL sales and it is ALL about how well I can communicate with people.”

Whitney sold books with Southwestern for four summers (1992-95).  She was a top salesman, top recruiter, and a top manager–a triple threat.  Fourteen years after leaving the bookfield, Whitney came back to share how tapping into your right brain can positively impact your success.

“The right brain voice is completely present, while the left brain is thinking past or future. The left brain gets frustrated with specific details, while the right brain looks at the big picture. I think you have to be in your right brain to be open to ‘coincidences’ or trusting that even though you’re not in your comfort zone, that things will be provided for you.”

After leaving Southwestern, Whitney began helping hundreds of people find their creativity as founder of the Creative Fitness Center. The Center first gained national recognition on HGTV.  Today she continues her outreach leading corporate seminars, teaching art classes, and as a creativity expert on television & radio.  Whitney is also an artist, a wife, a mother, and a co-owner of Rumours Wine Bar that builds communities around food, wine, and art.  Whitney recently published her first book, The Artist Within: A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit (Turner).  In Whitney’s book she discusses the principle of tapping into your right brain in order to use all of your resources in everyday decision-making.

“I had a blast speaking at GRS because I know what it takes to be successful as a recruiter and I have had 14 years since my Southwestern career to gain valuable hindsight that I was excited to share.  I feel all of my experience has led to this moment when I am busy selling and promoting my book.  The message in my book is so important because it proves that our right brains have a powerful voice that we are not hearing, a powerful perspective that we are not seeing and that it has access to valuable mental skills that we are simply not using if we do not access this voice!  My last summer on the bookfield was my “right brain summer”.  I went from 5000 units to 8900 units and from a 35 person team that sold ZILCH to a #3 team.  How?  I accessed the RIGHT side of my mind that did not get caught up in the details or frustrated at individual results.  I was completely tapped in to my vision of selling a TON of books and having a top team.  Because of the strength of my vision and the right brain voice inside my head, I trained my team more effectively and I hit steak EVERY single day on the field.  It did not matter what temporary circumstances tried to trip me up, I knew it was all going to work out and it did!  That is a ‘right brain performance’.”

It seems that the sales experience can benefit the artist and the artist can also positively impact the sales experience. 

Learn more about tapping in to your right brain at creativelyfit.com. 

Whitney was also featured in Her Nashville.  Click here to read the online exclusive.

The Los Angeles Times

“Pearson looks at the door-in-the-face as a simple matter of mathematics. If he stops at five houses, one will buy.

‘One thing you’ll never survive with in this business is trying to plan your time or your money,’ he says. ‘I’ve gone out and worked, and sometimes I don’t get any business till noon. And then after noon, it all just falls into place. What would have happened if I’d have quit at noon?

‘The trouble today is, people don’t want to work.’” 

Reading Art’s story gave me a sense of pride in how I chose to make my living for those eight years I worked with Southwestern.  Door-to-door selling is most often viewed with the perception of the shady magazine crew operating out of a white van that quickly moves from town to town.  I know that many of us that carried the Southwestern samplecase can go back to those communities we worked in and, as we drive down those familiar streets, recall the names of the many people that touched our lives.  When you treat people right your sales area becomes your community filled with people you consider family.

Former Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove once told me that twenty-five years after he had sold with Southwestern he happened to be going by the town he had sold in his fourth summer.  He decided to visit his host family from that summer.  The little old lady he had stayed with was now quite elderly, but fondly remembered Ronnie and the summer he spent there.  Having no idea he was at the time the Governor of Mississippi, she looked him dead in the eye and asked what he had done with his life.

I am so thankful for the people I met on the bookfield.  From my amazing and generous host families, to my customers and even those who simply shut their doors–they all served a purpose in the lessons I learned.  I am also thankful there are salesman like Art that allow me to say with pride that I was a door-to-door salesman.

Click here to read the full LA times article on Art Pearson.  You’ll be glad you did.

In fact, I’d like to thank Mr. Neville, the fourth grade teacher at Bow Elementary in New Hampshire, for being my golden name my third summer on the bookfield.  His testimonial and recommendation of the Volume Library boosted my sales tremendously.  A recognizable name has always been a great way to build trust.

Recently The Tennessean published a slideshow of photos of the Southwestern Company and several of the locally famous alumni who have worked in the summer program.  It includes local Tennessee alumni:  Former Metro Councilman George Armistead III; Tennessee entrepreneur Jim Ayers; US Representative Marsha Blackburn; Retired Southwestern CEO, Ralph Mosley; Tennessee entrepreneur Ted Welch; Tennessee entrepreneur Sam Kirk; and current Southwestern CEO and Chairman, Henry Bedford.

National alumni included:  Former Federal Prosecutor, Ken Starr; Texas Governor, Rick Perry; and Evangelist and Best-Selling Author Max Lucado.

Also included in the slideshow are various photos of Southwestern headquarters on Atrium Way in Nashville and student dealers in training at “Sales School.”

In seeking out our “Rich and Famous” alumni, it has been the bookpeople whose names may not jump out at you that intrigue me the most.  Many of our alumni who have created successful businesses and lives do not live in the public eye.  They have taken the skills they learned at Southwestern and have become the “Millionaires Next Door”. 

Check out some of our Alumni Spotlights  and look for more success stories of Southwestern alumni in the coming weeks.

Who do you know that sold books that should be on our “Rich and Famous” list? 

Dortch grew up on a farm north of Nashville, and heard about selling books from a friend. As he said in an interview here several years ago, “He told me you could make as much as $200. That was during the Depression, and I was on the farm – that was real money to me.” He began selling while still a teenager. At the recommendation of J.B. and W.E. Henderson, his sales managers, he attended the University of Richmond, graduating in 1941. Dortch and his wife, Sis, later endowed Richmond with scholarships for deserving young people, who became known as Oldham Scholars. They did the same for U.T. Knoxville in 1999.

 

Dortch influenced thousands of young people, and through them, thousands more. He believed strongly in advising students to do what was in their best interest, and was a living example of the truth behind Edwin Markham’s great quotation that what we put into the lives of others comes back into our own. One of the young people he mentored throughout his early career later donated $500,000 to the University of Tennessee-Martin to help establish the Dortch Oldham Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurial Studies. Dortch’s influence, represented by countless acts of generosity and kindness, will continue to multiply to the benefit of all society. 

 Click here to view Dortch’s obituary.