Let me get this straight.
You think your wife and yourself spending hours listening to high-pressure sales talk (getting you pissed off) is worth suffering just to get one floor of your house cleaned? :eek: 
I have a cleaning lady. She does a splendid job all round my house (and is polite). It costs £8 / hour ($16 / hour).
My SO stupidly agreed to have a vacuum cleaner salesman come to our house to give a demonstration.
OK…never been through this before so we let him in the next day.
He did a great job in his demonstration and I actually thought, “hmm…not bad, maybe we should buy one.”
Then he told us the price.
It was something about $1700. I laughed out loud. I was thinking $200!
Needless to say, there was a problem.
The guy started in on his pitch, but I couldn’t stop laughing. He sort of got pissed offed about it and I got the giggles and couldn’t stop.
One year later, we ripped up all the carpeting and put in PERGO flooring for the entire house - and it was still cheaper than buying that vacuum cleaner.
He will call again, you realise?
It isn’t over.
Having had a few short term sales jobs years ago I know how the sales pitch works. Closing is all about getting the sucker to agree with all the benefits that the product has and then convincing them that money is no reason to not buy it.
I was amused recently when an old friend told me his methods for dealing with marketting people. He either tells them that he is in the same field as whatever they are selling:
“I was only interested in seeing your vacuum cleaner because I sell vacuum cleaners, many of which are better than yours.”
“As it happens I am a financial planner…”
“I am a travel agent…”
“That’s good siding, and I should know I fit siding for a living but…”
Or he amuses himself by pig headedly refuting the sales pitch:
“If I could save you 10% on your phone bills that would be a good deal wouldn’t it?”
“No, I think that would be a very poor deal, surely you could save me far more than that.”
“But you are not saving that now.”
“No but now that I know that I can save money I would want to save much more than that, wouldn’t you?”
“But I could also give you 200 free SMS calls a month. That would be handy wouldn’t?”
“No, that sounds terribly mean of you. Why not 500 or even a thousand.”
He says that a minute of talking in a loop in this fashion often has telemarketers yelling at him trying to penetrate his apparent stupidity.
Good tips, don’t ask.
One I’ll add:
The ONLY reason you should ever give for not buying is “I don’t want it”. The salesman will ask why you don’t want it. Don’t step into that trap.
As soon as you give the salesman any other reason, then he has a point of attack. If you say you can’t afford it, then he can back you into a corner with easy monthly payments. If it makes too much noise, the salesman will “prove” how much quieter it is than competing models. If you don’t want to vacation in the same place every year, the salesman will explain how you can trade your timeshare for various other locations.
But if you “just don’t want it” the salesman has no lever with which to pry at your resolve.
Say “No, thank you,” politely but firmly. Repeat as necessary.
I once had a double-glazing salesman knock on the front (double-glazed) door. He started off on his spiel about how fantastic his company and their product was, then asked if I wanted an estimate for replacement windows.
I suggested he walk around the outside of our fully double-glazed property and tell me exactly which windows he proposed replacing. Oddly enough, he left very soon afterwards.
The most fun I’ve ever had with a salesman was someone who phoned looking to sell me a conservatory. I said I wasn’t interested, he was persistent and eventually asked if he could send me a brochure. I said yes, but only to get him off the phone. Brochure duly arrived and went straight in the recycling box. Salesman rang again, asked if I’d received and read the brochure. I told him it had arrived and I’d binned it. He started on his sales spiel again, and despite several times being told that I wasn’t interested, he was still angling for a home visit.
So I made an appointment with him. He called round on the day, I saw him get out of his car and look at my home. Then he got back in the car and drove away. Seems I’d forgotten to tell him I lived in a third-floor flat.
:eek: 
From The Far Side: “The Arnolds feign death until the Wagners, sensing awkwardness, are compelled to leave.”
Seems like it could work with salesmen as well…
If you invite them into your home, does that give them some sort of power? Or am I thinking of vampires?
Of course, you could always have fun with them if/when they call back to reschedule…
“Is your product good at getting…blood…out…lots of blood…”
plan for the day of the sales pitch, mix up some theatrical stage blood, splatter it all over the carpet, the walls, curtains, etc, have fake body parts laying around, you sit on the couch wearing “bloodstained” clothes, maybe have a large knife/axe/chainsaw/sword/mace/etc within easy reach
or, just totally trash the room they’re planning on cleaning, make it look like a college dorm room, garbage everywhere, total pigsty, refuse to let them leave until it’s spotless
try to sell them something, maybe a competitor’s vaccum
speak only in gibberish (or binary)
pretend to have Tourettes syndrome
pretend to be mortally terrified of vaccums, whenever they switch it on, run around the room, screaming…
as they’re cleaning the carpet, keep dumping dirt/potting soil/sand in front of where they’re vaccuming, make sure they can see you have a few spare bags of it handy
pour iron filings onto the carpet in front of the vaccum, hopefully they’ll stick to the motor and cause it to burn out or otherwise fail (bonus points if the iron filings are pre-magnetized)
A vampire infestation is actually a rather minor nuisance compared to a commissioned salesperson infestation. It’s kind of like the Far Side cartoon with the woman whose garden has lawyers…
…continuously chain-eat Oreo cookies, like a maniac. Every time he asks you a question, spray the brown, chocolate-y mud everywhere from your mouth… over him, over your furniture, all over your carpet. Always conclude this episode with a nice, BIG, nabisco smile. Just for him…
Or have just a litle bit of blood on the floor. Somewhere that is conspicuous, but could also look like a spot that’s easily overlooked. Occasionally twitch throughout the pitch, getting worse as time goes by, sometimes muttering very quietly about ‘the call of the blood’ or something ‘demanded by the gods’ or ‘burning away the unclean’. Then when it’s time for him to leave just start shaking and laughing maniacly, then throw back your head and yell loudly and wordlessly. Then let your head fall to your chest. After not moving for a few long seconds, you look up with madness in your eyes and say ‘Oh, dear. I believe it’s time to take my medication!’ Next, walk into the kitchen or bathroom (whichever is out of sight of the salesman) and make a whole lot of noise knocking stuff around. Then come out holdong a knife in one bloody shaking hand and a bloodied hatchet in the other. If he’s still there, stop a few paces from him and say ‘I do not need the pills anymore… they tell me so! What do you think?’
He’ll probably think it’s time to leave.
Let them set up their equipment and start their demo, leave the room for a few minutes, then come back in with knife-sharpening supplies and a few rather large blades (Ka-Bar USMC, Spyderco Millitary or Civillian, Buck Buckmaster, heck, even just a machete) and start sharpening them, glancing up occasionally at the salesdrone, then back down to the blade, totally ignore any and all questions, mutter something along the lines of “not sharp enough…NEVER sharp enough…”
take the knifesharpening supplies and try to sharpen a carrot, mutter something along the lines of “not sharp enough…NEVER sharp enough…”
take the knifesharpening supplies and try to sharpen Jello, mutter something along the lines of “not sharp enough…NEVER sharp enough…”
ask the salesdroid if he’d like a snack, go out to the kitchen and wander back in chewing on a fake prop human arm, offer the salesdrone some, if he’s taken aback, ask if it’s because it’s not cooked enough…
Two words;
Paintball Sniper…
…“Mr.Flibble is VERY cross with you…”
We once allowed a window saleman in. Big mistake. But we got rid of him fairly easily. He began measuring the windows, telling us they use the “universial inch” not square or linear. We laughed, and laughed hard, and continued to laugh. Couldn’t stop laughing. He left, nearly in tears.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, except the window salesman.
I guess I’m the only one who feels sorry for the salesman in this scenario. Yeah, the business model sucks, but it’s the business they’re in and how things are done. The more aggressive you are in selling, the more money you make. You don’t make money by being accommodating and forthcoming in sales. Most people I know in sales freakin’ hate it too. They know they’re being assholes and they don’t like it a bit, but it’s their job.
Honestly, if I were a salesperson and I were called over to someone’s house for a “free cleaning” (which is obviously their way of getting leads), it would seem to me that the people who’d agreed to it knew that it was a product demonstration, not a gesture of goodwill. For someone who’s not interested in the product to take advantage of that demonstration with no intent to even consider buying the product is a waste of their time, and I think they’re right to be pissed off when you say “Sorry, we were just interested in getting something for nothing. Thanks for spending your time not getting paid to clean our house; now kindly get out.”
Sorry, no sympathy here, they didn’t HAVE to take a job that requires them to be agressive, annoying prigs, same goes for telemarketers
and FTR, I HAVE worked sales jobs (hourly, commisioned, and salaried) so i know what they have to deal with, if the company didn’t use a sales model that was deliberately agressive, confrontational and demeaning to the salesperson, they wouldn’t have that problem
i’ll never understand the “agressive sales” technique, someone tries the hard-sell on me, i shut down, dig in my heels, and resist, they can’t wear me down, either leave when you are told, or i will find ways of making you leave
Nope. I feel sorry for them too. I don’t particularly care for them either, but I do have respect for other peoples time and effort and I could never bring myself to do this to someone.
The second I see a solicitor at my door, I say “No thank you” and close the door. On the phone, I say “No thank you” and hang right up. I don’t allow it to continue. I don’t care if they are talking. I say it the second I realize they aren’t there to read the gas meter or whatever. My part of the conversation is over the second I say those three little words. Then can continue talking to the door or the receiver if they would like, but I’m out of that equasion. I don’t owe them the opportunity to pitch their product/religion/charity to me if I haven’t invited their contact.
Not liking their sales method doesn’t give you carte blanche to screw with them. It’s wrong.
I don’t want to deal with agressive salespeople. Therefore, I do not invite them into my home under the pretense of allowing them an opportunity to sell me their product by giving me a free demonstration when I know full well in advance that there is absolutely no chance that I will purchase the product, and that I have every intention of tossing them out when they have finished
I’d rather hoover my own floor than prank a salesperson. Screwing with people isn’t my idea of funny.