Auctioneer Carrie Hands says that while more and more women are getting
into this field, auctioneering remains a male-dominated occupation. She studied
auctioneering at a school in Mason City, Iowa, in 1994.
"I was somewhat of a rarity," she remembers. Back then, she says, there
were eight women in a class of 65 students.
In 2009, her son attended auctioneering school and there was only one woman
in a class of 15 students.
Hands really enjoys what she does for a living. "It is fun," she says.
She operates an auction company with her husband John. "But it's high pressure.
We work well under pressure," she comments.
"Anybody can get up there and call numbers, but if you don't have product
knowledge, you're dead in the water. And you need to know how to promote a
product. There's a lot that goes into the final day. It's like putting on
a play," she says.
"You have to have your ducks lined up -- that means your merchandise as
well as your buyers. It has to be promoted properly, displayed properly."
Hands encourages young people thinking about this as a career to do lots
of public speaking. "You need to have some accounting experience or knowledge
of accounting. And you have to love what you do," she adds.
"A lot of people look at us and say, 'You've got to be crazy to work this
hard.' But it's something that I love to do. Every auction is different and
every one is a challenge."
You'll also need great people skills, she says. "You've got to convince
the people that you are the person to do the job for them, and you'll do the
best you can do. Then you've got to work with your buyers. You have to be
in control. You can't let the crowd control you," she says.
As a young man, Joe Tarpley was working for a bank that became involved
in an auction. Being the low guy on the totem pole, Tarpley was sent out to
do the grunt work.
"I was the youngest guy there, sent out to line up the equipment on the
lot. I got caught up in the excitement of the bidding and the calling," recalls
Tarpley. Working closely with the auctioneer, he realized that this job was
a gas. That was over 30 years ago.
Now, Tarpley is a veteran. He's moved a lot of merchandise and sold some
strange things in his time. Believe it or not, one of those things was the
town of Parrott, Georgia. For decades, the town had been owned by one family,
passed down through the generations.
"It was an old southern town," Tarpley remembers. "Nearly every building
-- the general store, the bank, the mercantile store, the grocery store, the
service station -- was owned by these three brothers. They got it from their
fathers, and their fathers got it from their fathers. They owned the whole
town and several thousand acres of land.
"Well, they had all passed away and there were about 20-odd heirs. They
decided they wanted to sell everything. The only thing still operating was
the service station, but the stores were still full of stuff. So we sold all
the land, all the buildings and all the personal property out of the stores.
The entire town sold for about $4 million."
Sometimes the jobs Tarpley works on involve such a variety of locations
-- and such large sums of money -- that he finds it strange to never meet
his client face to face.
Tarpley cites the example of a large corporation that had bought up a chain
of restaurants. They wanted to close out some of the locations and auction
them off. Tarpley oversaw the auction.
"We were awarded the contracts for about 15 of them from Florida to Georgia,
Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana and Ohio. I went to all these sites myself. Every
time I'd come, they would have a representative there, but it was always a
different person at every site," he says.
"We set up the closings with local attorneys in every one of those towns,
but never did I actually meet the people I was representing. We had all those
sales over about a four-week period, yet all of my dealings were either over
the phone or through mail.
"I could tell that the reps at the sites didn't really work for the company.
They were just there as reps for these particular deals. It was strange to
move that amount of merchandise and never meet my client."
Perry Wiggins has been an auctioneer since 1992. He shares Tarpley's sentiments
on the volume of merchandise that goes through the auction house.
"The dollar volume is really rather mind-boggling when you think about
how much is moved nationwide," says Wiggins.
"We're located in a small rural town, about 50,000 people, but there are
four full-time auction houses in this region alone. The average auction company
in Midwestern rural America will do about $1 million of volume a month."
Dealing with this volume of sales means you have to like "the sell," especially
in auctioneering, which involves two separate sales jobs in one.
"I like the sell," explains Tarpley. "You sell your client on the idea
of having an auction, then you sell the purchaser on coming to the auction
and buying. You've got two selling jobs every time you do one. You've got
to like that."
But more important than salesmanship is the desire to help people. Both
Wiggins and Tarpley feel strongly that this is a big part of the job's satisfaction
for them.
"You're helping people," says Tarpley. "Many times, when you're representing
somebody, you are selling their entire life's work. You're selling for the
farmer who inherited the farm from his parents. Maybe he's decided to get
out of the business, or he's in debt.
"We sold off a textile plant in Rome, Georgia -- $1.25 million in one-and-a-half
hours. It was one of the five oldest companies in Rome and we were selling
it off. You've got to be people-oriented for that. It's a sensitive time."
Wiggins elaborates on this: "For me, the most satisfying part of this business
probably comes at the end of the auction when you sit down with your seller
and say to them, 'You had a problem that looked insurmountable three weeks
ago, and today we've solved that problem,'" he says.
"If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't stay. When your seller's happy
and your buyer's happy and the deal is consummated, that's one of the greatest
feelings there could be."
A crisis is often a motivating factor behind an auction, says Wiggins.
"It may be because papa dies and there's no income, so they've got to sell
the business or the home.
"Maybe it's a divorce or a separation, or maybe it's debt-related. Whatever
it is, our clients are often carrying a pretty big emotional load with them.
If everything's successful, it's a great feeling."