[HN Gopher] Life as a door-to-door salesman
___________________________________________________________________
Life as a door-to-door salesman
Author : acqbu
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-11-23 08:15 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tampabay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tampabay.com)
| brookst wrote:
| I empathize with them. It's an NP hard job.
| greatpostman wrote:
| I have a friend that makes 450k running a door to door solar
| panel sales team. Two years ago he was making about minimum wage.
| There's a huge premium for being willing to knock on strangers
| doors
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| There's always big money in immoral shady dealings.
|
| Sorry, I know that's snarky and rude. And there's definitely a
| big gray line of morality in life. They're not actively
| murdering anybody. Not directly. But their moral framework by
| definition is drastically different than mine - we have chosen
| our own spots on that gray line and they're incompatible.
|
| (I've been exposed to various sides of that line, including
| being recruited and going through brainwashing I mean training
| for various door to door sales gigs).
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| It's not inherently immoral to be in sales. If you actually
| do believe that solar panels are a good investment for a
| house and believe the company you're working for does good
| work, working to inform other people of this would be from
| your view a moral positive. In practice of course it is easy
| to end up lying to increase your paycheck, or fooling
| yourself into believing your company is good because your
| paycheck relies on it. But if someone chooses a good company
| and doesn't lie to potential clients, I think that's fine.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > It's not inherently immoral to be in sales.
|
| Technically correct, but if you avoid doing the immoral
| things, you will probably notice that your more experienced
| colleagues make much more money than you. And if you refuse
| to improve your performance, you will probably get fired.
| notahacker wrote:
| Depends a huge amount on where you work. You're not
| getting enterprise deals through cheesy pressure sales
| tactics, and you're not _renewing_ enterprise deals by
| saying yes to everything.
|
| You're also unlikely to be earning less doing that than
| telling people they get a discount if they sign the
| contract before checking out any other window companies
| and sign up to the great value financing plan...
| dghughes wrote:
| At an old job we had to go to a "retreat" of a sort where
| the sales guys and technicians all schmoozed.
|
| The company had made sales do tech work and techs do sales
| work neither side liked that. Sales guys just ignored it
| and called techs on a Friday afternoon to take the tech
| call they didn't have time for (yeah right). Techs worked
| days and were also on call sales didn't have to be on call.
|
| At the meeting sales guys were slick with fancy suits,
| greased back hair (yes in 2008?) and had company cars.
| Techs were in golf shirt and jeans company trucks full of
| parts.
|
| We all had to take a test you were scored on your responses
| and given a colour. All the sales based on their responses
| were put in one colour group yellow I think and all the
| techs in green. Like oil and water.
| greatpostman wrote:
| Immoral? What? It's humiliating and confrontational, but not
| immoral
| kurtreed wrote:
| I think the issue is that there's an externality: you go
| around annoying people.
| noasaservice wrote:
| It is. Advertisement IN ALL FORMS depends on deprecating
| (aka: shitting on) real conversation to supplant it with
| "buy crap".
|
| The more advertisements are present, the less effective
| they are, and the worse genuine conversations get.
|
| Door-to-door sales relies on people not actually being rude
| - in fact, it depends on it. And it tries to rush people to
| rapid hastily thought-out sales by triggering fight or
| flight. I have no issue in threatening them with criminal
| trespass and respond in kind if they refuse to leave.
|
| It's a whole other thing if _I_ am looking for X, and I
| seek people /companies that provide X. That's consensual,
| and doesn't serve to destroy communication and
| conversation.
| p0zero wrote:
| Certainly immoral. Sales people are the scum of the earth.
| Just ask literally anybody,
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I don't think sales, in general / in principle, has to be
| immoral. There's shades and details etc. We can argue value
| to business vs value to consumer, but in general sales,
| there's nuances. But we are not talking general sales here
| - we are talking door to door salespeople specifically.
|
| The article focuses on the sales person and for reasons of
| focus or otherwise, ignores the heard of elephants in the
| room - what happens to the buyers afterwards.
|
| Vast majority of door to door sales is predicated on
| anything from severe informational asymmetry to outright
| fraud. It has to be - there's a REASON why they're paid so
| much per sold account. It's hard work and it's swimming
| against the tide. From experience, they are trained and
| incentivized to find a weakness, with ferocious persistence
| and evolving methodologies, and will thus statistically
| exploit those with weakness. They _pray_ on the very best
| of human emotions and instincts - unwillingness to be rude,
| eagerness to be friendly, to relate. They _build and
| exploit implicit trust_. Their product is by definition not
| good value - if unconvinced, imagine same product but for
| the price minus the salesperson commission. As I mention in
| more detail in parallel thread [1], nothing about average
| door to door salesperson is real - they 're not your buddy,
| they will not hold your hand through the process, they will
| not be there to help you or answer your calls if/when
| things don't work out. As primary outcome of their
| endevour, they collectively reduce our trust in each other
| and faith in humanity.
|
| (And like anything else in the wide and exciting world of
| MLM-likes, there's layers. Not only do the salespeople
| target the elderly/vulnerable, The door to door salespeople
| themselves are targeted to be recruited from specifically
| vulnerable or impressionable, and overall success rate of
| the profession is lousy. Very few doctors or engineers
| become door to door salespersons - a struggling minimum-
| wage worker or a new immigrant are the typical pools; I was
| the Venn diagram of both. I don't expect your friend to
| relate the true nature of their job to you, or likely even
| to themselves. But see if you can talk to their average
| buyer and get their thoughts).
|
| Want more? Tune in the next episode of the grouchy cranky
| old man, where I rip into real estate agents :=>
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33718726
| lazide wrote:
| A lot of people (overall) benefit by having someone overcome
| the friction people have built into doing things to provide
| them interesting options. Sometimes even the people buying.
|
| Sales doesn't have to be, and in larger places often isn't,
| immoral.
|
| Without it, we'd all frankly be a whole lot poorer in many
| ways.
|
| But hot damn, the immoral ones sure do seem to make a lot of
| money fast. At least before the cops show up.
| p0zero wrote:
| You mean there's a huge premium for being willing to scam
| people and lie to their faces? How old are you?
| notch656a wrote:
| The people that buy these things tend to be the elderly. I
| shamefully worked as a telemarketer when I got my work permit
| as a child; almost no one at their top mental acuity game is
| buying this shit on a whim from these kind of techniques.
| It's pretty sad. And almost all the 'salesmen' were high on
| xanax and other anti-anxiety medication to deal with both the
| rejection and to drown away their feelings about what they
| were doing.
| notahacker wrote:
| I did door to door charity fundraising and there's a more
| straightforward reason why the people that engage tend to
| be the elderly: they're in all day (and quite likely to be
| bored enough to talk to strangers on doorsteps even if or
| especially if their mental acuity is great).
|
| Obviously it varies: at the other end of the spectrum I
| suspect people calling random mobile numbers pretending to
| be Microsoft get most of their "business" from a small
| number of elderly people even though they're least likely
| to answer the phone.
| tedmiston wrote:
| What is the scam here exactly? Inflated equipment prices?
| Distorted ROI? Something else?
| iBotPeaches wrote:
| Not sure of the legality of it, but I've enjoyed just recording
| the solar sales folks to knock on my door and turning it into a
| blog. I enjoy researching the claims brought forward to see how
| many of them I can debunk.
| gt565k wrote:
| Who falls for these door to door salesmen's Bs? I hate these guys
| knocking on my door. Really just wanna punch them in the face.
|
| If I needed something Id go and buy it, don't need some pushy
| sleazy salesman trying to trick me.
|
| These door to door sales are so bad for the consumer there are
| even laws in states that state you have 3 days to back out of a
| contract signed during a door to door sale.
| Retric wrote:
| Oddly in theory I agree, but both myself and my parents where
| quite happy with door to door salesman purchases.
|
| Door to door sales doesn't need to be a scam. It's perfectly
| viable to calculate when individual subdivisions are the right
| age to need new siding and then send a sales guy around.
| Similarly selling solar roofs are exactly the kind of thing
| people are likely to be happy with but don't consider. If the
| sales guy is also knowledgeable enough to give a solid estimate
| and talk about financing options it's cheaper for the company
| than sending people to drive around and make lots of estimates.
|
| At the other end, you also have people running outright scams
| or selling dubious products at insane markups.
| bombcar wrote:
| The only "legit" door2door I've seen is when a contractor
| will be in the neighborhood working on one house and he has
| someone mention it to the other houses if they want to get in
| on it (think tree trimming, etc) at a discount because
| they're already there.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Door to door tree trimming offers are typically from
| companies that don't trim but rather half-kill trees by
| topping them in my experience.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah I'm specifically referring to good companies
| mentioning they'll be in the area. It's hard to find and
| there are still scammers.
| notch656a wrote:
| Most commonly the elderly and mentally disabled. Occasionally
| they have a retirement or come into a windfall, it's just a
| matter of statistics until the door-to-door guy finds them and
| parts them of it before the next guy does or before someone
| responsible takes control of their finances.
| lostdog wrote:
| These salespeople push scammy loans, so they even hurt the
| already-poor elderly.
|
| Imagine getting up in the morning to bankrupt someone's
| grandma for the rest of their life like this guy from the
| article.
| jawns wrote:
| > If I needed something I'd go and buy it, don't need some
| pushy sleazy salesman trying to trick me.
|
| In 2021, more than $285 billion was spent on advertising in the
| United States. Why? Because while you might think you have an
| "If I needed something I'd go and buy it" mentality, the
| evidence has clearly shown that most people can be influenced
| to buy things other than what they already recognize as a need.
|
| Door-to-door salesmen are a form of advertisement of services,
| and for certain industries they can be more effective than
| print ads, billboards, etc.
|
| Not that I necessarily like having my day interrupted for a
| sales pitch; I almost invariably don't answer or turn them
| away.
|
| But I'm just saying that if you have ever responded to any form
| of advertisement, the "If I needed something I'd go and buy it"
| line is probably missing the mark.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Best I can tell, advertising is a whale game. Much like how
| mobile gaming is predicated on a percent or so of users who
| will sink an ungodly amount of money into skinner boxes, I
| suspect advertising has a very large effect on the habits of
| a relatively small fraction of the population. So it's quite
| possible that the average person could say, truthfully, "If I
| needed something I'd go and buy it", while advertising is
| still wildly profitable.
| kurtreed wrote:
| Thankfully it's illegal now in some jurisdictions.
| spoils19 wrote:
| This is the problem with modern America. Door to door sales
| used to be an honored tradition and a way for more Americans to
| get to know each other intimately. The rise of the internet has
| eroded this sacred social connection we used to all share.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| When was it honored, and what was honorable about it?
|
| Was this about the time when they were selling encyclopedias?
| pigeons wrote:
| That doesn't seem that long ago, that's how I got my
| encyclopedia set.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Really just wanna punch them in the face.
|
| I had half the mind to when some asshole decided to show up and
| bang at my door in the evening, hours after typical business
| hours and asked me to take some survey. If someone is knocking
| in my door in the evening, it better be fucking important.
| weberer wrote:
| >I hate these guys knocking on my door.
|
| You can just put up a "No solicitors" sign on your front gate
| and they'll keep walking.
| rurp wrote:
| We must live in very different places. I have never seen
| those signs make a bit of difference.
| mindslight wrote:
| The problem with a "no soliciting" sign is there is no
| penalty for violating it. And given these people are
| already violating social conventions by harassing you, they
| don't particularly care.
|
| "Soliciting will be rewarded with refreshing lawn
| sprinklers." Not that I'm a fan of watering lawns in
| general, but if I had a problem with solicitors I might
| have to install a few.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Lol, not in the city my friend. They will literally argue
| with me about how what they are doing isnlt solicitation.
| They truly believe that after starting out arguing with a
| complete stranger, they will somehow rope me into a sell. I
| told him he was soliciting, he ignored my sign and wanted him
| to off my property. He refused, I asked for his name and then
| he tried to fight me. I almost went out and purchased a gun
| because some unhinged individual was mad at me and had my
| address.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| The Globesman by Documentary Now! is just genius. They door to
| door globe salesmen at one point lament the atlas salesman keeps
| beating them to new territory.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81m8vygf_8Q
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Well that must mean that the atlases are more up to date then
| the globes.
| cateblanchett wrote:
| it's based on the documentary 'the salesman', but you don't
| even need to see both. they did a perfect job of parodying.
| version_five wrote:
| The guy in this article will be able to turn his skill into a 7
| figure job easily if he goes into enterprise software sales.
| nunez wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| Rejection/objection handling and sheer persistence aside, I'm
| unsure if many of the sales tactics employed in door-to-door or
| high-pressure sales cross over into enterprise software sales.
|
| From what I've seen, high-pressure sales relies heavily on
| manipulation (i.e. invoking feelings and emotions within the
| customer to drive them towards an outcome) over value, and
| encourage volume (i.e. grinding, hitting as many houses/people
| as you can) over quality (i.e. qualifying, qualifying again,
| then maintaining those relationships for as long as possible,
| providing value all throughout). They're the same techniques
| that people high on MLM pyramids or closers in call centers
| employ. FUD can go a long way.
|
| Also, enterprise sales cycles are much, much longer. Six months
| is fast in this space. The deal sizes are much larger, so the
| process is worth it, but because high-pressure sales typically
| deals with much smaller amounts, closing fast is key.
|
| More emphatic people can probably make the switch easily, but
| the less-sophisticated hustlers and pseudo-grifters would get
| outed pretty fast. Interestingly, the reporter of this article
| stated that the salesman they followed is interested in going
| into real estate and has already dabbled in crypto, where those
| personalities tend to do very well.
|
| Also, many of the sales folks that I've interacted with did not
| have high-pressure sales backgrounds. In fact, many of them
| were engineers at one point or another!
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Door-to-door rooftop solar array sales are mostly a scam, it's a
| high-pressure low-information sales tactic and a terrible deal
| for the average homeowner.
|
| Installation issues are shockingly common. Lots of new, poorly
| sealed holes in the roof being the biggest concern.
|
| Here's a review I found of Spartan (employer of the man profiled
| above):
| https://www.facebook.com/dodgyjanet/posts/10158647440200887
|
| In leaving this review I hope to save one family the frustration
| and financial pain that working with Alex Lake of Spartan Solar
| has caused us. Please feel free to reach out if you want specific
| details. We did not do enough research - and ended up fronting
| the money for the project on a loan that gave a kickback to
| Spartan Solar. In conversations with us (and in all their
| marketing literature), Spartan solar states that you will not pay
| anything until your solar panels are up and running. For us -
| this is not the case at all. The project is 10 months old and we
| are paying both hundreds of dollars a month for electricity and
| the full monthly payment for the loan (which inconveniently
| removes any leverage we might have with the installer if we had
| dealt with them directly). We have been paying both bills for the
| last six months - Spartan has ignored my complaints about this
| misleading advertising to date. Our Solar panels were installed 8
| months ago and are still not functioning. This is a sellers
| market and it is hard to get time with the installer, the city,
| and utility company - so I'm not surprised about this insane
| delay- but I am literally doing 100% of the work I was assured I
| would not need to do if I worked with Spartan Solar. I was
| assured we wouldn't need to worry about coordinating these events
| and the Spartan team would have our backs. Due to communication
| problems between Spartan and their subcontractors about the need
| for a new main electricity panel our project was delayed multiple
| months. Two days ago we finally received permission to operate
| our panels. When we turned on the switch, they are not working
| however Spartan have not returned our calls/emails about this
| issue and we have had to chase the subcontractor to try and fix
| the situation. The subcontractors are unable to come and look at
| the problem until next month, and so we are still stuck paying
| for a non-working solar system and racking up large electricity
| bills in the hot California summer months. I'm today's market,
| solar installations are a commodity and the most important way to
| offer value to a customer is through effective communication.
| Here is where we were frustrated most with this whole experience.
| Make sure you do business with a company listed on the better
| business bureau.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I can echo your sentiment. My install is seriously delayed both
| by the city permits and the installers (who've now broken two
| panels). Luckily I only paid 25% upfront and the other 75% will
| be handed over on completion. So I'm sitting pretty with a new
| roof and uninstalled panels and while they have to figure out
| the cost issue. I'm only able to say this because my deal was
| to pay upfront without financing.
|
| For context, install and inspection were supposed to be done in
| July. It is now nearly December.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That's the thing. The article makes them implicitly sound like
| heroes - they sacrificed SO much for a dream, the dream of
| serving the customers. They're solar evangelists. The new
| generation of motivated do gooders. Wish everybody's child was
| like that!
|
| But it's bs, I'm sorry. There's a reason nobody trusts door to
| door sales people. There's reason they target the elderly.
| There's a reason why they have a book-rack of sales techniques.
| There's a reason they're pushy and persistent and chameleons.
| And they get a significant paycheque for no actual service to
| the client.
|
| I work from home with my father in law who's a curmudgeony
| grouch, yet once a week I have to leave a work call as I
| overhear them penetrating his defences. And then three weeks
| later there's an article in the local newspaper about X number
| of elderly scammed by door to door salespeople selling driveway
| repeir or duct cleaning or solar panels or roof replacement or
| whatever.
|
| There is NO alignment of interest between you and the door to
| door salesperson. They have one goal and one goal only and that
| is making the sale. Nothing else is real, they're not your new
| buddy, and they will not be there for you after you sign.
|
| (source - various ; I've been a home owner, have had family
| scammed, read a lot, and oh yeah, was a poor immigrant and went
| for several trainings to be door to door sales person and saw
| the insides of the machine)
| bwi4 wrote:
| My grandmother suffered Alzheimer's, but wasn't ready to
| leave her home, so my uncle moved in with her.
|
| She called him at work to ask for her checkbook... two men
| had knocked on her door, convinced her that a tree on her
| property needed to be cut down, proceeded to cut it and leave
| it there, then demanded $400.
|
| Uncle rushed home and ran these guys off, refusing to pay,
| but it was a dangerous scam. All it would have taken is one
| to distract her while the other helped himself inside the
| house.
| smaccona wrote:
| This is staggering to me for a different reason. Having a
| single tree cut down (and removed, which I guess they
| didn't do) in our neighborhood costs in the vicinity of
| $4000-$10,000.
| johntb86 wrote:
| If you have a chainsaw, you can pick the tree, and you're
| not worried about where the tree will land (it's far
| enough from anything important), cutting down a tree is
| pretty quick work. Making it land in a small area is
| difficult, and removing it is laborious.
| rcpt wrote:
| Tree removal and tree trimming are generally different
| services. And $400 to cut down a tree is pretty typical.
|
| Nothing about that story sounds like a scam to me.
| jtbayly wrote:
| To drop a, as far as we know, perfectly healthy tree and
| leave it in the yard?
|
| We had a guy who was doing work in the neighborhood offer
| to take down a big beautiful Maple tree in our back yard.
| He tried to instill fear of the tree.
|
| So many people are easily tricked into taking down
| perfectly healthy trees because they are big. What a
| loss.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>Nothing about that story sounds like a scam to me.
|
| I mean, that's just... naivete? Lack of experience?
| Wonderful but unwarranted faith in nature of humanity? I
| was there once myself, so I empathize and understand it,
| but it's also dangerous.
|
| First, there's no reason random people would be knocking
| on your door to cut a tree right then and there.
| EVERYthing about that story should sound like a scam,
| from the get go.
|
| Second, I'm sure you CAN have tree cutting and removal as
| different services. As a consumer, why would you, but
| sure. But - do you really feel this was explained to the
| buyer ahead of time? Do you believe this tree needed
| cutting, based on the random strangers' authority? Why
| were random people walking around with chainsaws?
|
| I get these guys on a weekly basis. "They were just
| walking down the neighborhood and noticed that [my
| gutters needed cleaning | my driveway is in disrepair |
| my roof can use a quick fix | whatever]". Literally every
| time, as I mentioned, there's an article in local
| newspaper few weeks later about elderly being scammed.
|
| What honest, reputable businessperson, especially a
| skilled tradesperson, wastes their time knocking on
| doors? They are in so much demand they don't even need to
| advertise, word of mouth and referrals keep them
| overbusy. We'd all kill for a reputable contractor.
| Whoever knocks on your door in the middle of the day is
| not of that persuasion.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > they will not be there for you after you sign.
|
| This is an important part. Any promises about help in future,
| if they are not in writing, they mean nothing. What actually
| happens when you later call the person, is either they no
| longer work there (and no, the person who inherited their
| place is not going to honor the promises they made, you must
| have misunderstood), or they tell you that the condition for
| their help is you need to buy _another_ expensive product
| first.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Right. It's unfortunately extremely common - even in-store
| clerk for major telecom swill make undeliverable promises
| and assurances; when it's a random, subcontracted, un-
| accountable stranger at your door, there's no limit to what
| they can say in the inherently he-said/she-said scenario.
|
| There's NO earthly benefit to consumer to signing something
| from a door-to-door salesperson. You don't have the
| context, you don't have comparison, you don't have
| background, you don't have information, you don't have
| assurance or proof or trust or anything that it takes for
| you to make a beneficial decision. All you have are eroding
| defenses against a targeted onslaught. At best, at BEST,
| you'll get something you could've gotten with less risk and
| less pressure through regular channels. At worst - well,
| there's no upper limit to the worst. You may get a slightly
| more expensive regular product, or you may get a slightly
| subpar product, or you may end up in any number of various
| nightmare scenarios. There's just no upside.
|
| I'm the nicest, politest, most conflict-avoiding person in
| real life, and known for it. And I _hate_ that they push
| and push and push and make me turn nasty before they 'll
| hear a "No".
| stevespang wrote:
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Lawyer up?
| durnygbur wrote:
| Over here we have spam calls selling solar panels. Every time the
| cunts claim they obtained the number legally from a data broker.
| My prediction is that our local parcel locker provider sells
| phone numbers, or recruitment platforms, one never knows what is
| in their TOS. Then of course there are usual suspects - FAANG.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Argh, I hate the solar salesmen. We get them all the time during
| the warm season. I have a hard time going the rude route and just
| shutting the door on them, but I'm improved a lot in shutting
| down their arguments with three sentences of my own stats. Pretty
| quickly they know I've run the numbers, figured out why it
| doesn't make sense for me, and I've shut down all arguments they
| want to make. Usually they just say "Wow, it sounds like you're
| already given this a lot of thought." Umm, yeah, yeah I have. I
| wanted the numbers to work. I tried to convince myself. Even with
| Project Solar pricing, it does't work for me. So it sure as hell
| won't work if I pay your prices that give you such a nice
| commission.
| fourch wrote:
| [deleted]
| tedmiston wrote:
| Nothing wrong with just not answering. How long are they really
| going to stand there waiting?
| lazide wrote:
| Some people in polite parts of the country have a hard time
| ending a conversation if the other party won't let them (not
| being sarcastic).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-23 23:01 UTC)