One of the greatest times of my life was when I was working door to door sales selling encyclopedias. I sold P.F. Collier Encyclopedias off and on for about six years and they were the best and some of the worst times of my life. I loved the job once I got the hang of it. At first I thought I never would sell anything. Not that we were allowed to use the word "sell". Our job was to "place libraries" in families homes and it took me three weeks of pounding doors to get the hang of it.
The sales pitch itself was a thrill for me. To go out and say the exact same things over and over and get the same reactions was amazing to me. Of course the whole pitch or "presentation" as we called it was a con. We used the same pattern of presentation that Caesar used. First we introduced ourselves and our idea, then we described our problem with it, in our case, how to let people know it existed, and then tell the people how they could help us with our problem and what we would do for them in return. We only "interviewed" couples so there would always be a co-signer available and we would tell them that we had just spent eleven million dollars and nine years of research on a new home learning program but our problem was how to tell people about it. We couldn't explain a whole new concept in learning in a sixty second commercial and we couldn't hang a sample set on everyone's door. So, we decided to carefully interview families in different areas and place a few libraries in each neighborhood and let the finest form of advertising, word of mouth, speak for us through our families. You wouldn't believe how people would try to qualify to be the family for their neighborhood! We had to find out if they had a checking account and a listed phone to sell to them so we had different ways of finding out right away. The cowardly way was to ask if they had received a flier in their returned checks telling them we would be in the neighborhood. No? Well, then did you by any chance get a phone call from the company telling you we would be stopping by? No? Is your phone listed? But I preferred to be daring and use a more direct approach like,"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we are looking for the more established families in the area, such as, have you lived here long enough to have established local checking and have a listed phone?" All the while we would be sizing them up looking at their home and if they had children and if they seemed to buy a lot of things for their children. Once we deemed the family qualified to view our wonderful library we would start them off showing them preschool learning books, and then story books, and maybe one other thing like a set of classic story books and then we would whip out the encyclopedia broadside and spread it on the floor before them saying "What do you call these?" The answer was always a dull "encyclopedias" but we were prepared for that and would turn it around immediately by saying, "Yes, we still call them that because they are numbered one to twenty four and listed A through Z and they look a whole lot like encyclopedias BUT have you ever seen an encyclopedia that could teach you how to sew, knit, dance, fly a plane or even how to turn a Volkswagen into a helicopter?" And of course they hadn't and we had their attention again and went on to show them a prospectus of the set containing all the best pages of the set in one book. We would constantly qualify them to the sale. After showing them each item we would question each of them, "Would you use this if it were placed in your home?" After showing the encyclopedias we would make the first mention of money . We would tell them we would place the library in their home if they would agree to tell a few friends about us and just send us their spare change. We'd pull out a mini encyclopedia that was a bank and ask our families to put their spare change in it every day and round it off to $20. a month and send it to us for ten years. Then we would do the conversion to the real money. We would say that we were getting complaints about the ten year plan, and wasn't there an easier way to handle it? Of course there was! We would tell them we had a three year plan where they would use the same bank, but conscientiously save all of their change for the bank and even tell them to not give change at stores but instead use bills and bring the change home for their bank. We found that most families had forty, fifty, sometimes sixty dollars in their bank by the end of the month!! We would just ask them to round that back to forty dollars a month and send it in. This would save the family seven years of saving change! And since it would also save the company seven years of book keeping we would reward the family with LOTS more books!! And then we would pull out science libraries, how to books, growth and development books, dictionaries!!! All for just telling a few friends and saving change!!!!!
And, by golly, it worked. If there was ever a snag we were trained to handle any objection the couple might come up with. My favorite that worked in almost any situation was, "John and Mary, I think you like what you see, I really do. But I feel that there is something getting in the way of your enthusiasm. I'd like to remind you that this isn't like buying a car where they jack up the price more the more you say you like it. We can only place this library with families who absolutely love it. So, I'm going to have to ask you to put your scepticism in another room while I ask you one more time before I am forced to disqualify you, do YOU (pause) DEFINITELY (pause) like what you have seen?" Badabing badabang! I had a sale. Another favorite was the "circle of knowledge"; to Agree, Re-explain, and Re-qualify. "I understand you believe you can't afford this right now. We will work with you in any way we can because we know the most expensive education you can give a child is a poor one because they pay for it for the rest of their lives. Do you feel that thirty cents a day is too much to invest in your child's education?"
Did I ever feel guilty? Not of any sales I ever made. I would look at the money spent by the family on outdoor and indoor toys and games and I am a firm believer in books being important to have in the home no matter what if they have the money to spend. I did feel bad when working with one of my managers who had a hard time getting in doors for some reason unless the people were dirt poor and he would write them up on the ten year plan while I played with their undernourished kids feeling like he was stealing from the family but thankfully most of his sales went down in the credit check. Otherwise, it was great fun for me and I would try to make it fun for the family, too. I would be in their home from one to sometimes three hours so I had to be somewhat entertaining! I've had families call me later to tell me of things like new births in the family and invite me back over many times. If a family ever firmly objected I would stick to my guns and fold up my stuff saying, "Well, that definitely isn't the reaction I was looking for so I will get out of your hair now!" and I'd make a quick graceful exit and go on to another family.
I have to add that there was a whole other story going on behind the scenes. We traveled in groups every Thursday through Sunday to surrounding cities and often go out of state so there was always romance springing up in the crews and fights and everything you could imaging went on on the road trips. We constantly had new people to train on the trip and that was part of the reason for the trips. It separated the rep from his or her friends and family to be completely ruled and dependent on the sales managers. The management, which I was quickly a part of, worked the people constantly to eat, sleep and live for placing libraries. I just realized that in a lot of ways our business resembled a cult. We would isolate the reps from everyone they knew so they wouldn't talk them out of working door to door and we even had our own language beyond using "placing libraries" for "selling encyclopedias". A family ripe for selling to was a "moochy" family, a "dredge" was a low class person, a "blanker" was someone who didn't make a sale which was referred to as writing up a family.
We sang crew songs on the way the "field" every day while we looked for each reps "area" and selected them a pick up point. The songs were rewrites like:
"The minute I knocked on the door,
I could tell they were a qualified family,
The phone was listed and employment was fine,
It seems like I've written them up a thousand times in my mind!"
Can you name that tune? It was great fun and designed to hype up the workers and relax them before hitting the field. One manager went so far as to explain that you sing with one side of the brain and think with the other so it was to rest the thinking side before working it. Whatever, it was one of the things that make working door to door sales a nostalgic memory, and, as far as PF Colliers goes, only history as there are no book crews these days. WE all knew the computer age would catch up with us as well as just the changing times. It became more and more dangerous to drop people off at five p.m. and pick them up at ten p.m. as workers were attacked more and more in the field.
I still remember every word of my book presentation and almost every song we sang. Indeed, I could name off reps and tell stories about them for hours if there was anyone to listen to the history of book sales. Instead it rests in my heart as one of the most exciting and educational times of my youth. I don't think I would be half the person I am without this in my past. I think I'll go sing a crew song to my granddaughter and see if she recognizes the tune...
The sales pitch itself was a thrill for me. To go out and say the exact same things over and over and get the same reactions was amazing to me. Of course the whole pitch or "presentation" as we called it was a con. We used the same pattern of presentation that Caesar used. First we introduced ourselves and our idea, then we described our problem with it, in our case, how to let people know it existed, and then tell the people how they could help us with our problem and what we would do for them in return. We only "interviewed" couples so there would always be a co-signer available and we would tell them that we had just spent eleven million dollars and nine years of research on a new home learning program but our problem was how to tell people about it. We couldn't explain a whole new concept in learning in a sixty second commercial and we couldn't hang a sample set on everyone's door. So, we decided to carefully interview families in different areas and place a few libraries in each neighborhood and let the finest form of advertising, word of mouth, speak for us through our families. You wouldn't believe how people would try to qualify to be the family for their neighborhood! We had to find out if they had a checking account and a listed phone to sell to them so we had different ways of finding out right away. The cowardly way was to ask if they had received a flier in their returned checks telling them we would be in the neighborhood. No? Well, then did you by any chance get a phone call from the company telling you we would be stopping by? No? Is your phone listed? But I preferred to be daring and use a more direct approach like,"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we are looking for the more established families in the area, such as, have you lived here long enough to have established local checking and have a listed phone?" All the while we would be sizing them up looking at their home and if they had children and if they seemed to buy a lot of things for their children. Once we deemed the family qualified to view our wonderful library we would start them off showing them preschool learning books, and then story books, and maybe one other thing like a set of classic story books and then we would whip out the encyclopedia broadside and spread it on the floor before them saying "What do you call these?" The answer was always a dull "encyclopedias" but we were prepared for that and would turn it around immediately by saying, "Yes, we still call them that because they are numbered one to twenty four and listed A through Z and they look a whole lot like encyclopedias BUT have you ever seen an encyclopedia that could teach you how to sew, knit, dance, fly a plane or even how to turn a Volkswagen into a helicopter?" And of course they hadn't and we had their attention again and went on to show them a prospectus of the set containing all the best pages of the set in one book. We would constantly qualify them to the sale. After showing them each item we would question each of them, "Would you use this if it were placed in your home?" After showing the encyclopedias we would make the first mention of money . We would tell them we would place the library in their home if they would agree to tell a few friends about us and just send us their spare change. We'd pull out a mini encyclopedia that was a bank and ask our families to put their spare change in it every day and round it off to $20. a month and send it to us for ten years. Then we would do the conversion to the real money. We would say that we were getting complaints about the ten year plan, and wasn't there an easier way to handle it? Of course there was! We would tell them we had a three year plan where they would use the same bank, but conscientiously save all of their change for the bank and even tell them to not give change at stores but instead use bills and bring the change home for their bank. We found that most families had forty, fifty, sometimes sixty dollars in their bank by the end of the month!! We would just ask them to round that back to forty dollars a month and send it in. This would save the family seven years of saving change! And since it would also save the company seven years of book keeping we would reward the family with LOTS more books!! And then we would pull out science libraries, how to books, growth and development books, dictionaries!!! All for just telling a few friends and saving change!!!!!
And, by golly, it worked. If there was ever a snag we were trained to handle any objection the couple might come up with. My favorite that worked in almost any situation was, "John and Mary, I think you like what you see, I really do. But I feel that there is something getting in the way of your enthusiasm. I'd like to remind you that this isn't like buying a car where they jack up the price more the more you say you like it. We can only place this library with families who absolutely love it. So, I'm going to have to ask you to put your scepticism in another room while I ask you one more time before I am forced to disqualify you, do YOU (pause) DEFINITELY (pause) like what you have seen?" Badabing badabang! I had a sale. Another favorite was the "circle of knowledge"; to Agree, Re-explain, and Re-qualify. "I understand you believe you can't afford this right now. We will work with you in any way we can because we know the most expensive education you can give a child is a poor one because they pay for it for the rest of their lives. Do you feel that thirty cents a day is too much to invest in your child's education?"
Did I ever feel guilty? Not of any sales I ever made. I would look at the money spent by the family on outdoor and indoor toys and games and I am a firm believer in books being important to have in the home no matter what if they have the money to spend. I did feel bad when working with one of my managers who had a hard time getting in doors for some reason unless the people were dirt poor and he would write them up on the ten year plan while I played with their undernourished kids feeling like he was stealing from the family but thankfully most of his sales went down in the credit check. Otherwise, it was great fun for me and I would try to make it fun for the family, too. I would be in their home from one to sometimes three hours so I had to be somewhat entertaining! I've had families call me later to tell me of things like new births in the family and invite me back over many times. If a family ever firmly objected I would stick to my guns and fold up my stuff saying, "Well, that definitely isn't the reaction I was looking for so I will get out of your hair now!" and I'd make a quick graceful exit and go on to another family.
I have to add that there was a whole other story going on behind the scenes. We traveled in groups every Thursday through Sunday to surrounding cities and often go out of state so there was always romance springing up in the crews and fights and everything you could imaging went on on the road trips. We constantly had new people to train on the trip and that was part of the reason for the trips. It separated the rep from his or her friends and family to be completely ruled and dependent on the sales managers. The management, which I was quickly a part of, worked the people constantly to eat, sleep and live for placing libraries. I just realized that in a lot of ways our business resembled a cult. We would isolate the reps from everyone they knew so they wouldn't talk them out of working door to door and we even had our own language beyond using "placing libraries" for "selling encyclopedias". A family ripe for selling to was a "moochy" family, a "dredge" was a low class person, a "blanker" was someone who didn't make a sale which was referred to as writing up a family.
We sang crew songs on the way the "field" every day while we looked for each reps "area" and selected them a pick up point. The songs were rewrites like:
"The minute I knocked on the door,
I could tell they were a qualified family,
The phone was listed and employment was fine,
It seems like I've written them up a thousand times in my mind!"
Can you name that tune? It was great fun and designed to hype up the workers and relax them before hitting the field. One manager went so far as to explain that you sing with one side of the brain and think with the other so it was to rest the thinking side before working it. Whatever, it was one of the things that make working door to door sales a nostalgic memory, and, as far as PF Colliers goes, only history as there are no book crews these days. WE all knew the computer age would catch up with us as well as just the changing times. It became more and more dangerous to drop people off at five p.m. and pick them up at ten p.m. as workers were attacked more and more in the field.
I still remember every word of my book presentation and almost every song we sang. Indeed, I could name off reps and tell stories about them for hours if there was anyone to listen to the history of book sales. Instead it rests in my heart as one of the most exciting and educational times of my youth. I don't think I would be half the person I am without this in my past. I think I'll go sing a crew song to my granddaughter and see if she recognizes the tune...
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