Insider Info

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."