The Good Buck

College students looking for a summer job with status are concentrating this year on lining up positions with ecology groups. Nader's Raiders-like investigative teams, or practically anything to do with film making. But if cash rather than cachet is the main consideration, they could hardly do better than sign on with Nashville's Southwestern Co. to spend their vacation peddling Bibles and reference-shelf books. Last week this longtime seller of books distributed door to door was busy training some of the 8,000 student salesmen and saleswomen who, in the next three months, will become an army of Gospel distributors. They will write up nearly all of Southwestern's $40 million in annual sales--and for themselves make an astonishingly good buck from the Good Book. A salesman's commissions for the summer will average $1,700, though some will hit as high as $12,000.

Though Southwestern has expanded its line of books to 29 this year, it still depends for more than 40% of sales on a few standard works printed and stored in huge quantities, including a $13.95 dictionary, a cookbook and the heavily illustrated, 9-lb., padded-cover Bible (sales: 175,000 volumes at $34.95 each for a book that costs the company about $ 12 to produce). Its youthful sales force in effect works half the year rather than merely the three summer months, because each young man or woman logs nearly 80 hours of selling time per week, or twice normal work time. Except for clerks, accountants and warehousemen, no one in the company collects a salary. The executive staff numbers only 59, and everybody pays his own expenses--including his own phone bill. Even the income of President Spencer Hays, 37, who started going door to door for Southwestern after his freshman year at Texas Christian University, is paid in the form of a commission on every book sold. Hays is a multimillionaire.

Salesmen collect about 45% of the price of each book, thus pocketing almost $16 for every Bible sold. In addition, Southwestern pyramids its commissions to reward the chain of students and executives above the salesman for each sale--and even the students' recruiters, who are often older fellow salesmen. Students who manage to stretch out their academic careers to six or seven years--and build up a big junior marketing force--have earned as much as $24,000 in one summer through sales and such residual commissions.

First-year drummers must attend, at their own expense, a weeklong, 18-hr.-a-day training course in Nashville that is equal parts pregame pep talk and deadly serious sales talk. The recruits, mostly clean-cut kids, memorize their spiel ("Hi, Miz Jones, I'm Joe College, and I'm out here in your neighborhood calling on some of the church people").

They are encouraged to "charge" the front porch of a prospective customer and knock loudly, starting the first call at exactly 7:59 a.m. and spending no more than 20 minutes with any prospect. In training sessions they also spend time shouting, clapping and singing ("Goodbye to no and never,/ Goodbye to doubt and fear. It's a good thing to be a bookman/ And to be of good cheer"). When answering the phone,

President Hays, who seems to be a combination of P.T. Barnum and Norman Vincent Peale, usually says, "Hello. Do you feel healthy? Do you feel happy?

Do you feel terrific?"

In 1968, Southwestern was acquired for $17 million in stock from its previous owners--who were former salesmen--by Los Angeles' Times Mirror Co. Becoming part of a publishing conglomerate has not meant any less freedom for Hays and his youthful band of executives. "We're such an odd company that the new folks just stay away," says Hays. "They can't understand why we won't accept things like the company expense account." The new owners had best not inquire: in each of the past two years, Southwestern's sales have risen by 37%.

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