Vector Marketing Success Story:
Tony Chivari

For Tony Chivari, selling CUTCO wasn’t just a summer job; it was the key to landing a job right out of college with Spiegel where he is currently Senior Vice President of Marketing and Internet.

Armed with sales experience from two summers of selling CUTCO, Tony’s resume contained evidence that he was fluent in the language of sales and that he had a clear understanding of business. That’s why fresh out of graduation at the University of Chicago, his resume caught his employer’s attention. What’s more, during his job interview he applied the presentation skills he learned selling CUTCO to sell himself and get the job.

“Selling CUTCO is a unique opportunity to get truly valuable experience that’s going to help you get that first job out of college. The training was outstanding – it’s professional business-level sales training. To get that experience in school really gives you a head start on everyone else,” Tony said.

He went on to say that the basics that he learned giving CUTCO demos is still applicable in his work today. In fact, he explained that in his current position it’s all about getting the right product to the right person at the right time with the right presentation, all know-how he gained presenting the CUTCO product in homes.

But beyond gaining presentation skills, selling CUTCO was were Tony began to see how business operates. He said he got to the point where he could make a certain amount of money by calculating how many demos he had to do. Because he understood that making a profit isn’t a mystery it’s math, he planned for success by taking the percentage of people who actually bought after a demo and multiplied that by his average sale.

“The process of doing sales presentations lays the ground-work for you to learn about return on investment because you start to manage the numbers. And you learn what levers to pull to increase sales,” Tony said.

Selling CUTCO was a money-maker for Tony and helped him with his college expenses. He also enjoyed the experience of selling a great product and said new reps should have faith in the product.

“I never had to worry selling the CUTCO product. I always heard good stories from family and friends about how much they liked their CUTCO and sometimes they wanted to buy something more,” Tony said.