This makes Jocelyn Wu-Elliott something of a rarity. Not only does she sell cars for a living, but she’s been doing it for the last 26 years.

“I’ve always been in sales of some sort,” said Wu-Elliottt.

After a post-graduation move from her hometown of Corvallis, Oregon, to Hawaii, where her parents were from, Wu-Elliott worked in clothes and waterbed sales. Her path to the car sales industry was very simple: one day she was driving by a car dealership in Hawaii, and she thought she might like to try it.

“The ad said no sales experience required,” Wu-Elliott said. “I went in and got the job the same day.”

What kept Wu-Elliott in the industry is a combination of her desire to help people and her enjoyment of the challenge of car sales.

“I like the challenge when people say no,” she said.

Wu-Elliott is very aware of the fact that she is one of only a few women who have chosen car sales as her profession. But for her it seems to be more of a badge of honor than a barrier she’s had to overcome.

“When I started [selling cars] in Hawaii there was one other woman on the entire island of Oahu selling cars,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘if she can do it, I can do it.’”

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry does have its challenges, she acknowledges, but Wu-Elliott says that she’s never had a problem with a customer because of her gender. In fact, in her experience, being a woman has been a benefit with customers.

“More and more customers want to deal with women,” she said. “They don’t feel as threatened, or as if they are being taken advantage of.”

She does admit, however, that she has run into bias among her car sales colleagues over the course of her career.

“I’ve learned to stand my ground over the years,” she said. “I think I know how to dish it out and I know how to take it.

Her secret for gaining respect in the industry? It’s simple: “sell a lot of cars.”

Nearly three decades after starting her car sales career — including a stint at Poulsbo RV — Wu-Elliott is now a sales manager at Parr Volkswagen in Bremerton. Although she is an experienced sales person and is well-known in the car sales community, she resisted management positions for many years.

“I fought [moving into] management for a long time,” she said. “In sales you have almost no responsibility except to yourself. With management there’s a host of extra responsibilities.”

But she finally took on a sales management position four and a half years ago, and now she finds that one of her most satisfying responsibilities is training new sales staff.

“It’s great to be able to watch someone who doesn’t know anything [about the industry] growing,” she said. “Any sales person can make it anywhere they go.”

Wu-Elliott describes car sales as “helping people through the second biggest purchase of their lives.” And for her the most effective way to accomplish this is to “keep it simple.”

“It’s all about treating people how you want to be treated,” she said. “There’s not a whole lot to do. You’re not really selling anything; you’re just helping them make a decision. You have to listen to the customer.”.