Door-to-door sales really sucks

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was shoveling snow and a guy approached me about switching to Comcast cable. I will never get Comcast again after the lousy service I have received off and on over the last ten years so I let him down easy and went about my business.

But I was just thinking about what a lousy job this guy has. It’s freaking cold outside. The sidewalks haven’t all been shoveled and this guy I trudging around in it to make a living.

When I was a kid, I sold stuff for shit like like Cub Scout fundraisers but it wasn’t like I was doing it for a job.

I just wonder what kind of a commission the guy must get on a sale to even make it worth his while.

2

I have no sympathy for door to door sales people. If I want or need to buy something, I’ll go to the store, or go online, or otherwise make contact with a company. This is not an age where it’s hard to buy stuff, and door to door sales people are sometimes nothing more than would be criminals looking for easy pickings. And a lot of scammers work door to door, too. Plus a lot of them don’t seem to be able to read the “No Solicitors” sign I have on my door.

The people who are repairing power lines, or doing road work? They have my sympathy, especially when it’s over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. They are improving life for all of us. And generally they don’t interrupt me unless it’s actually necessary.

3

Yeah, it can’t be fun. I have a had a crappy job or two in my day and so I can have empathy for someone who is trying to earn a living - but that doesn’t mean I want them bothering me!

4

I feel sorry for them.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Some poor bastard who for whatever reason, can’t get another job. Wanna buy some of my crap?
Some poor bastard who?
Never mind.

If it’s about changing to some other provider (like gas or electricity) that I basically don’t care about, I’ll brighten the poor bastard’s day. If it’s a battery-operated draxcellerator with a coupon for high pants and a jaunty hat on offer, I’ll politely decline, offer them a drink of water and tell them something nice about their pitch.

I just think that it’s such a hard way to make a living, being all arseholey is like kickin’ someone when they’re down.

Just because they sell crap doesn’t mean they are crap.

5

Perhaps this is a good thread to ask this question (and perhaps not):
MST3k featured a two part short ‘Hired’ from I guess the 1930s or 1940s (haven’t seen it in years), which featured a new Chevy salesman.
OK, this salesman seemed to be selling cars and trucks door-to-door (in what appeared to be a suburban neighborhood).
I realize that they had many different types of door-to-door salesmen back then, but a new car dealer? Was this by any means common then?

6

I guess it’s like puppy mills - the only way to stop puppy mills is to not buy the little guys you feel sorry for in the mall. The only way to get rid of this horrible door-to-door sales job is to not support it.

That salesman may starve, but he’ll make life better for salesmen forever more.

7

Well, how exactly were people supposed to get to the dealership to buy their first car? :wink:

8

I had to slam the door on a door salesman once. Usually we don’t answer the door if we’re not expecting someone, like friends or pizza delivery, but my sister was moving that day and we were going in and out. In her frazzled state, my sister opened the door thinking she had locked me out, only to be greeted by a guy from a cable company. My sister said she didn’t have time for it that day, he responded with the “But did you know your whole neighborhood is losing money on this?” spiel. She told him she was busy and was actually moving out, so he asked her where she was moving to, and it would be a good idea to get cable with them to start off because there were these GREAT DEALS. At was then I came out from the basement and heard this portion, so I was thinking “WTF? He did not just ask for permission to stalk my sister” and took over the conversation, basically saying “Get lost. Not interested” and he responded with more “But you can save money!” bullshit. So being nice wasn’t cutting it, and I said to him “Step back because this conversation is over. It ends with this sentence.” And instead of stepping back, he continued with a “But-”

Door. In. Face.

9

I BRIEFLY worked as a door-to-door salesman for an energy company. It’s the absolute worst job I’ve ever held.

I got $20 commission for each customer I signed up. However, that $20 got taken out of my next paycheck if the customer canceled within the first month (which often happened as soon as the customer’s spouse got home and found out what they did - part of the script was actually talking customers out of waiting for their spouse to decide!). There were also bonuses if I signed up 5 customers in 1 day, which only happened to me ONCE. Aside from that, I didn’t even get a base salary. The work is great for natural salesmen who were able to get 20+ customers a shift (they would even put the highest paycheck of the week on the office bulletin board - some people were making $1000+ a week!)

Over the course of the 3 weeks I held that job before I finally quit, I made maybe $100 total, had two police encounters and wasted nearly 200 hours of my life. This was all in March btw, most of which was when snow was on the ground. Why? Because it’s the time of year when people have higher heating bills, which gives them more incentive to try to save money in that area.

One of the happiest points of my life was last year when I happened to pass by that office, and saw it abandoned.

10

About two years ago my wife responded to an ad in the paper for a customer service job and they told her to come in at 10 a.m. the next day for what she thought was supposed to be an interview
When she showed up and saw the job entailed selling knives door to door, she immediately turned around and walked out.

Anyway, Kirby salespeople are the worst. About a year ago, one came to my house when I was at work. My wife answered the door and they talked their way in by offering to shampoo our carpets (which was something we’d been meaning to do). Anyway at the end, she told them that I was the one who made the major purchasing decisions in our home (the things cost almost 2K). They persisted and kept trying to get her to sign on the dotted line, but they finally relented and said they would just come back later. Anyway when I got home, we just agreed not to answer the door when and if they came back.

They didn’t come back that night, but a few days later I was out mowing my lawn, and I see this van pull up. Out jump two sales people. One goes up to the door and my wife answers. The other one comes up to me and before I have a chance to react, he goes into his spiel, saying he was there the other day and that he just wanted to take a few minutes to demonstrate his machine for me. I told them outright that I wasn’t buying anything, but he insisted that I see the machine anyway, takes one up to the door and leaves the other salesperson there while he goes back to the van and drives off.

So, the other salesperson, a woman in her 20s comes in, and starts doing the demonstration. She would vacuum a small spot on the carpet for a few seconds, turn the thing off, and take out a little circular filter to show me how much dirt it picked up, and just did this over and over again, putting a new filter in each time.

When the guy came to get her about 45 minutes later, I told him once again I was not buying anything. He kept cajoling and finally got down to a payment plan of about $13 a month. But I just repeated no and finally he got really pissy saying that I needed to protect my investment and that everyone in the neighborhood was buying a machine - which was an outright lie, as the saleswoman had earlier said that they hadn’t sold any where we lived (I felt too bad for her to call him out on the lie in front of her. She seemed to sort of be embarrassed to be there and gave off the aire of someone who had been suckered into a job they didn’t like).

I finally got him to leave, but only after wasting a perfectly good Saturday morning.

11

I feel bad for them, but that doesn’t make it okay to bother me in my home, so if “Sorry, no thanks.” is sufficient to get rid of them, that’s fine. If they persist past that, they are getting full-on bitchery, I’m not skipping any steps.

Comcast actually sent someone by here recently, with a “free upgrade” thing, and I called Comcast and told them that if they ever again sent someone to my house to bother me at 8:00 pm, I’d switch providers.

It’s a serious pet peeve of mine. This is my home. When I wish to interact with other people, I’ll either leave this place, or invite them here. If you haven’t been invited, assume you’re not welcome.

12

I do feel bad for the door-to-door guys, too. But like most of you guys I won’t buy anything that way, even if it IS a good deal, just because I would wish door-to-door sales would just go the way of the dinosaur. I wish it wasn’t a viable business model.

My policy is to hear the spiel (the first 10 seconds) then to give them a polite “not interested” whilst simultaneously closing the door. They’re never going to get a sale off of me, and they’ll stay forever if you keep talking to them, so I figure I’m doing them a favor by sending them on to “greener pastures” (i.e. some house where they DO have a snowball’s chance in hell of selling something) Therefore, I’m actually increasing the salesman’s hourly take by abruptly shooting them down. Yep. I’m so helpful. Go, me! :wink:

I do make exceptions for Girl Scout Cookies. Love those Thin Mints. :slight_smile:

13

Yeah, I’ve posted about being a Kirby salesman before, for about 3 weeks. Worst job I ever had, but it taught me a lot about people. A lot of people are too polite to just ask you to leave and the salesmen are taught never to leave unless they have a sale or are directly told to leave. It was a scummy business and I’m glad I didn’t stick with it. If I ever get a Kirby salesman at my front door, he’s gonna vacuum my whole house! :wink:

14

I posted about selling tropical plants door-to-door. Out of a van. We “rented” the plants from the company every day, picking them out from the company floor and loading the van with them, and driving to a neighborhood, or other local city. Then park, and walk from one house to another, or business, or stop a person on the street.

There was no standard pitch, but it included some of the products we had, including a palm tree growing out of a coconut. If we sold any, we gave the company $10 each, and kept the extra (if any). Sell a plant for $100? You made $90. Sell it for $5? You lost $5 on the deal.

I lasted a week and a half or so before I quit. I have no sympathy for sales people, even though I am one now. But I don’t use a hardsell pitch like I did then, or like a car salesman. That type will be first against the wall when I become dictator.

15

The insistence on working until 9PM in the Winter was one of the big reasons I quit. The managers’ reasoning is that many people don’t get home earlier than 7pm, and 1 hour of full rounds a day isn’t going to cut it. I didn’t care. I stopped working when it got dark.

I wanted to quit after 3 days. Since I was currently broke, between jobs and looking for work for a while, and this was the first “full time job” I found all year (there’s a thread about this somewhere on this forum), my dad said he was going to cut me off until I found another job if I quit (as I said, I wasn’t actually making money there, despite putting in at least 40 hours a week). I had to show him a police report I got for trespassing before he would finally listen to reason. It turned out that in Rockland county, you need a PERMIT on hand in order to do door-to-door. My company’s attitude was that it was cheaper to pay citations than it was to pay for permits. That was the last straw in a number of sleazy stunts they were pulling.

16

I had the very unfortunate experiance of working for Kirby for a month. Their vacuums are actually really good. Their salesmanship and the guys who do well selling these things door to door are slimey. They lie, they’ll do anything to get in the door and demonstrate how good their machine is and then pressure the customer to buy right now ( no chance for the spouse to say no). Ugh! After that experience I never, ever wanted to work sales anywhere every again. The must send their “good” salesmen to the Slimeball Sales Seminar. Somehow, someone is making money off this – it sure wasn’t me as I guess I wasn’t slimey enough. I quit and went to work for a temp agency. At least I didn’t feel like a criminal then.

17

I used to think that door-to-door sales really sucks until one night when the door was answered by a really hot young blonde dressed in a négligée. Behind the door I could hear her friends giggling and one called out, “Let him in we could use a man’s opinion.”

Well let me tell you Penthouse, once the door was flung back I saw…

Oh sorry, typing in the wrong window.

18

I feel very sorry for door-to-door salesmen, as a family member had a job doing this for a very short time. In the heat of summer I get these bright-eyed young people hauling around an enormous backpack, selling some kind of child-enrichment program. I often see them elsewhere in the neighborhood at the end of the day, all done in. Pitiful. And one time a young guy was selling satellite map photos, complete with frame, taken of my neighborhood. He took great pains to point out that Joe Blow next door bought one, and my good neighbor down the street bought one, and implying that I didn’t want to be left out here!

Really, door- to- door sales are really sad for all concerned. If I wanted a new vacuum cleaner/child enrichment series/satellite google-maps photo of my house, I’d get one on my own. I’m not sitting here thinking 'hm, I have a spare hundred or so dollars to spare, I wonder what I should do with it? Oh, Is that the doorbell I hear?.."

And of course con men, thieves scoping out houses, and taking advantage of the elderly. My mom has had, invited in, TWICE, some guy trying to sell her a new cable TV deal. A complete stranger! She said he told her this great deal was available for only a short time and she better make up her mind fast since he had to leave town at the end of the week! “Sali? Is this a better deal than what I have now?” “Mom, I don’t have the faintest idea. Stay with what you have. And if you keep letting door-to-door hucksters in, they might strangle you and ransack the house.” (hopefully, that put an end to that.)

19

I do not answer my door unless I’m expecting somebody. My friends all know this, so they do not show up unannounced. It is amazing how many (assumed) salesman do not take the hint. My car is there, they can hear my music, the dogs are barking, so they knock/ring repeatedly.

20

I figure that most people doing it right now are doing it because they are flat broke. Others are selling scams and probably don’t know any better; just getting sucked in by promises of vast riches. And that’s a shame.

But if their bosses have earned my contempt for running the door-to-door operation, they haven’t and I won’t treat them like assholes to make a point. A very firm no works.

Never had a Kirby salesperson visit my place. A few people at work have told me about it. What a racket.