Three roles cause more outside-sales misclassification than any other, because each one looks like sales work from the outside while the regulation asks a narrower question: whose sale is this work actually for? A route driver who also takes orders, a merchandiser who sets up a display, and an employee who prices out a competitor’s shelf are doing visibly different jobs, but the same test decides exemption for all three — does the employee’s own effort lead to the employee’s own sale, or does it support a sale someone else will close?

For a driver who also sells, § 541.504 asks whether the driving and delivering is incidental to and in conjunction with the driver’s own outside sales, which is what makes the primary duty making sales rather than hauling product. The regulation lists what to weigh: how the driver’s duties compare with a plain truck driver’s and a plain salesperson’s, whether the driver carries a selling license where one is required, whether delivery amounts are fixed by standing arrangement rather than moved by solicitation, how the job reads in hiring specifications or a collective bargaining agreement, whether the driver gets sales training or attends sales conferences, and how much of the pay tracks sales volume rather than a flat rate. A driver who is a customer’s only sales contact and is paid on volume sold, or who talks new prospects and established customers into taking on more product, generally qualifies. A driver who restocks vending machines, delivers a set quantity to the same accounts call after call without the sale being affected by the driver, or arranges shelves and rotates stock without furthering the driver’s own sale, generally does not.

§ 541.503 draws the identical line for promotion work: putting up displays, clearing spoiled stock, or restocking shelves is exempt only when it is incidental to and in conjunction with the employee’s own sale — a manufacturer’s representative doing that work to close the representative’s own order is covered, but a company representative who tends a chain store’s shelves and consults with the manager without ever obtaining a commitment to buy has done no exempt work, because nothing about that visit closes or moves toward closing a sale. The same reasoning reaches an employee who never sells at all: someone sent out to record a competitor’s prices or shelf placement, with no order to write and no sale of the employer’s own goods to make, cannot have making sales as a primary duty — there is no sale on the other end for the work to be incidental to, so the outside sales exemption has nothing to attach to.