July 7, 2018 by Philip Lewenstein

Pushy Door-to-Door Vacuum Cleaner Salespeople Are Like Partisan Politicians: They Lack the Art Of Persuasion

I have never invited a door-to-door salesperson into my house to demonstrate vacuum cleaners. In fact, my wife is the expert family consumer and user of vacuum cleaners, and she doesn’t entertain door-to-door vacuum-cleaner hawkers. Nevertheless, I was appalled to read the April 17 Star Tribune story “Vacuum sales take pushy to new level: door-to-door tactics by company frighten, anger residents in several cities.”

Pushy door-to-door selling is particularly annoying in itself but also because it is a metaphor for the uncivil, bullying, polarizing discourse that pervades today’s political climate, starting with our president.

The Star Tribune’s description of door-to-door selling contrasts with my childhood memories. I recall members of Junior Achievement, school fund-raisers, and girl scouts coming to our door, pleasantly describing their products or services.

Pushy door-to-door selling also contrasts with my experience as one of the leading salespeople in junior high-school fund-raising campaigns and my brief experience selling Watkins products door to door. Watkins Inc., based in Winona, is America’s original apothecary manufacturer featuring a diverse line of personal care, home care, remedies, herbs, spices, and baking products. Founded in 1868 in Plainview, Minnesota, Watkins has relied on door-to-door selling but now also uses the internet and national retail outlets for its catalog of several hundred products.

As a teenager, for a month or so, I and a friend sold Watkins products door to door. I don’t recall how this experience originated, but I have vague memories of knocking on doors in the low-income central hillside areas of Duluth and, if invited in, showing housewives our catalog and sample products, then hopefully taking orders. We were friendly and polite, not pushy.

Today, I am cautious in answering my door to find aggressive door-to-door sellers of roofing, siding, and other products—offering “free estimates.” It is unclear whether they are licensed under city regulations covering peddlers, solicitors, and canvassers.  I do, however, welcome girl scouts and school fund-raisers.

The Star Tribune reported that homeowners in various parts of the metro area have found themselves opening their doors to salespeople who, according to police reports, use over-the-top sales tactics to hawk vacuum cleaners.

“Several homeowners point to representatives with Burnsville-based RG Enterprises, in particular, for arm-twisting they find annoying, confusing, and downright scary,” the Star Tribune story said.

According to the article, the salespeople reportedly spend hours showing off their Kirby vacuum cleaners until they’re asked to leave. Then they become rude and resistant, according to the pattern noted anecdotally and in police reports.

These rude, aggressive salespeople have failed to learn the art of persuasion, as articulated by Mark Bowden, a former writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of several books including two I recently finished—Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam and Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw.

In teaching argumentation to my composition students, I always read one of Bowden’s newspaper columns, “The lost art of influence,” because he effectively relates his first encounter with the basics of the lost art of persuasion to a man of his father’s generation who had begun his working life as a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman.

Bowden told the man that selling vacuum cleaners sounded like a difficult and unpleasant job, knocking on doors and trying to sell something most people already had. However, the salesman said it was a great job, meeting the challenge of turning no into yes.

The salesman offered Bowden quick lessons in salesmanship that Bowden later found spelled out in greater detail in the disciplines of classical rhetoric. The door-to-door pitch focused on the basics. Rule One, Bowden reports, is to be likable, presentable, and pleasant—say something nice, tell a joke or a self-deprecating story, put the potential customer at ease, letting the customer know you appreciate the customer’s point of view. I observed this principle in action as my colleagues sought to persuade Minnesota legislators to adopt our agency’s higher-education policy and budget proposals.

Bowden says that in political argument, it is important to acknowledge up front whatever truth or strength there is in an opposing point of view. “Smart people disagree with you for a host of reasons, some of them good,” Bowden says.” Graciously give ground where you can.”

Second, the salesman would make his pitch, the easy part, Bowden says. Then, came the inevitable objections: “I just bought a vacuum cleaner,” or “I can’t afford it.” Bowden says that his friend’s company had done “an amazingly good job of preparing him for every conceivable obstacle to the sale.”

The old salesman told Bowden that “it was very rare for a customer to offer a reason not to buy that I could not answer. If they already had a vacuum cleaner, this one was better. If they couldn’t afford it, we had easy payment plans. You name it, whatever objection they raised, I was ready.”

The hardest lesson for advocates to learn, Bowden says, is that “to persuade, you must anticipate and refute objections. It means exposing your convictions in advance to thorough, skeptical scrutiny.

“Being persuasive is hard because it demands you consider that you might be wrong. To refute opposing points of view capably (and winningly), you must first really hear opposing points of view.

“There is a catch here, Bowden continues. “Sometimes you might find that after really hearing an opposing viewpoint, you can’t refute it. Then you must do the unthinkable: Change your mind.”

For Bowden, reviewing the principles of persuasion is important because we live in a time when honest discussion is often drowned out by the noise of partisan cheerleading. “More and more, cable TV shows, blogs, radio stations, websites, and magazines exist to openly advocate a political agenda, ideology, or product,” Bowden says.

This partisan, political cheerleading can be compared to obnoxious vacuum-cleaner salespeople described by the Star Tribune. Both the pushy salespeople and the partisan pontificators lack knowledge of the principles of persuasion. They don’t know how to listen and when to stop shouting. They need to learn respect and, most important, how to practice the art of influence.