Door-To-Door Salesmen: If You’re Selling, I Ain’t Buying |
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I live in the nexus of salesmen - or so it seems. At least once a week, we get a visitor looking sell something. Two young ladies knocked on my door the other night. When I answered, they introduced themselves as Beth and Jenn. They had me guess why there at my door. I guessed that they were selling magazines - 92% of the time it’s magazines. Jenn, who did 95% of the talking, informed that it was not magazines, but “periodicals.”
One thing I’ve from these solicitors is that they are brilliant. Whatever trick or line you have, they have a counter-line waiting. The first thing these ladies did is ask if they can come inside since it was cold out. When I’m home alone, I don’t particularly enjoy letting total strangers in my home. However, it was hard to say no them with their chattering teeth. Against my better judgment, I let them in.
Once inside, they looked around to see what they could use against me. First they saw a picture of me and my wife. They started to ask about her and if she’s into fashion (because they have fashion magazines). Our Red Sox drink coasters caught their eye and they asked if I was interested in sports (the ESPN magazine was worth over 3000 points). Score a couple of points for them, they’ve got me engaged in conversation.
For the next 5 minutes, it’s a great game of tennis. They keep on serving pitches for magazines, I keep giving excuses for not buying them. Jenn goes as far as writing up a slip for ESPN The Magazine. It’s only $60 for 52 issues - plus $15 in shipping and handling. As Jenn said, “the mailman needs to get paid too.” She then gives me the slip (with two smiley faces) and her hot pink pen to sign away my $75 for a magazine that I don’t want. When I explain that I don’t want the magazine, they get disappointed, “You don’t want to us to go to Europe?” At that price, no I did not. I finally convinced Jenn and Beth that I wasn’t going to buy. I promptly looked up the price on ESPN. It didn’t take me long to find that I could buy 26 issues for $26 - and get a free fleece.
I despise the companies behind these promotions, but I have to admit that they have a great business plan. They get aggressive salespeople, offer them the chance at big prizes, in an effort to sell overpriced products. Their “innovation” or “product” is quite often marketing - and trying to trick or guilt people in bad deals. I have to remind myself this every time the come to my door.
How do you deal with door-to-door salespeople when you don’t want the product?
Image Credit: The Hotspot Online
This post deals with: ... and focuses on:Dumb Purchases
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 Propeller25 Responses to “Door-To-Door Salesmen: If You’re Selling, I Ain’t Buying”
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June 25th, 2008 at 10:39 am
We just had a salesman come yesterday and he stayed for an hour and a half. I thought I was going to pull my hair out. I wanted him to stop with that lame vacuum. THen at the end he said it costs 3,000 OHHH MY GOD!!! Why in the world woudl anyone pay that much????
You can get a great vacuum for 300 bucks and then in a year throw it away and get antoher one. I mean come on???? How lame!
June 19th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Re-reading my comment, I just realized that it implies that people support outsourcing. Clearly what I meant was that most people support putting a stop to outsourcing.
June 19th, 2008 at 6:02 am
To those of you who refuse to answer the door for anybody, keep this in mind: not everyone who comes to your door is trying to sell you something. I work for an organization called Working America. We go door-to-door in the community talking to people about issues like outsourcing, affordable health care, and secure retirement. If they support these issues, which it’s kind of hard not to, we sign them up to join our organization. Of course their information is not sold or given to any other organizations. We just use it when we lobby politicians, so we can show them that people in our communities are concerned about these issues, and force them to make changes.
We’ve had a number of successful campaigns in states throughout the country, pushing to raise the minimum wage and put progressive politicians in office.
So while I realize that it’s incredibly annoying when a person you don’t know comes to your door for any reason, just remember that when someone comes to your door, you might actually want to hear what the person has to say. Of course, if they end up trying to sell you something or change your religion, then by all means respectfully tell them you’re not interested and close the door. But at least give them the chance.
Plus, it makes us feel bad to have doors slammed in our faces, or to be ignored by people who are obviously home. At least be nice about it.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:34 am
This blog post has been included in the “Carnival of Money Stories #51″ at Life Lessons of a Military Wife. Hope you will drop by and read some of the many other wonderful entries received this week!
March 13th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Regarding the magazines, it’s interesting to hear that some people are selling those door to door. I’d be interested to know which ones, because there are some titles that cannot legitimately be sold over the internet.