JANUARY 8, 2024 – No element of the Southwestern sales formula was a mere suggestion. The daily start time, the evening finish time, the daily door-knocking quota, the get-yourself-across-the-threshold quota, the give-your-pitch quota, the closing quota, the closing procedure, the weeks-end letter to your booster back home, and the weeks-end report you turned into your sales manager, and of course, every word of the sales pitch was part of a carefully devised and market-tested system was a suggestion. Every piece was obligatory not only if you wanted to succeed but if you wanted to avoid the shame of abject loserhood. A sharp existed between these two polar opposites, and Southwestern had imprinted that divide on the consciousness of every salesman.
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Fortunately, Saturday’s depressing weather had yielded to less abysmal conditions Sunday and actual sunshine by the break of dawn Monday. To avoid territorial overlap, our sales managers had given each of us a carefully delineated map identifying the borders within which we could operate. Our respective areas were quite large, and purposely so—Southwestern wanted its salesmen to cover the entire greater Buffalo area.
My zone ran all the way from Cheektowaga (though not Mikolon’s neighborhood) to the inner city of Buffalo proper. I’d use a marker to keep track of the streets I covered, and fortunately so, because in some developments the houses all looked very much the same from one street to another.
Getting to your territory every day—then farther into it, as the days progressed—could be viewed as an arduous commute, requiring the acquisition of a bicycle, if you didn’t own a car, or a great excuse to walk miles before you had to knock on a single door. The downside to that upside, however, was that you weren’t going to sell any books until you reached a door (or more likely, your 100th door). Another minus was that at the end of the day, and I do mean day, because you weren’t supposed to arrive “home” before nightfall, you had to find your long way back.
On that first day, I aimed for the eastern edge of my territory—the border closest to Mikolons’ neighborhood. It was a good mile away, and to meet the 8:00 start-time, I left the house at 7:45. I would’ve felt self-conscious lugging my red “gas can” sales kit with me, except at that hour the main drag to my destination was largely devoid of traffic. After all, it was Memorial Day, and clearly the general public was taking full advantage of the chance to sleep in.
The point was driven home when I turned down the first street inside my territory. Nothing was moving—not even birds or squirrels. Many of the 50s-style little box homes had a big front picture window, and in almost every one, the drapes were drawn. Cars were parked in the street and driveways, but not a one showed any sign of going anywhere soon.
At 8:05, I checked my watch for the eleventeenth time since I’d left Mikolons’ house. If Southwestern expected me to knock on a door or ring a doorbell in that particular neighborhood starting at that particular time, they were out of their corporate minds. I just kept walking—slowly—up and down the neighborhood, waiting for some sign of movement. When 8:30 rolled around with drapes still drawn, I worried how I would report my late start on my first weekly sales report.
At just past 8:45 I heard saw a side door open at the house on a cross street straight ahead of my approach. Out stepped a live human. I’ll never forget the sight: a stack of pink curlers, a commodious faded pink robe, dirty white slippers. I could readily discern, however, that the human hadn’t appeared for my benefit. She was taking out the garbage.
Nevertheless, it was a human being, and if I was going to find some version of salvation by making my first call of the day before 9:00, here was my opportunity. I strode up the driveway apron with all the confidence I could muster. The woman caught sight of me just as she reached to pull the screen door open to re-enter her house.
“What do you want?” she asked in a tone signaling that whatever I might “want,” she wanted nothing to do with it.
“Uh, do you have kids?” I said in a spectacular fumble of the pitch I could say in my sleep. As my awkward words broke the silence of the neighborhood, I thought uncharitably, If she has kids, too bad for them.
“I’m not interested,” she said. “And don’t get any closer.” With that she disappeared into her house.
It was 9:30 before I summoned enough courage to knock on my first door—well down the street and out of sight of the curler woman’s house.
And so it went that Memorial Day morning in 1974. At about the 20th house I got myself invited across the threshold. As the day heated up, I rebounded enough to deliver my pitch as it was designed to be presented. It didn’t result in a sale—and I struck out with the Bible Stories book and the Medical Encyclopedia, but at least I would have a tally mark in the “Number of Full Presentations” column of my sales report for “Monday.”
The spin we’d been trained to emphasize was “education.” As time wore on, I began to see its efficacy. At every house where you were lucky enough to get someone to open the door, at the bare minimum, even if they weren’t interested, weren’t buying, weren’t slamming the door in your face, you were supposed to get intel on the next door neighbors.
You extracted information by saying and asking, “[Okay/Thank you for your time/whatever], but before I say ‘Have a nice day,’ . . . the folks next door . . . do they have kids?”
If the answer was “yes,” you followed up with a question about approximate grades in school. Our target market was the household with children from about third grade through high school. If the answer was “no,” there were no kids next door, you might give the medical encyclopedia a shot, but the big commission was on the one-volume encyclopedia. And you also asked, “Oh, and the folks next door, do they have names?” You’d be surprised by how many people laughed at that line—and gave me their next-door neighbors’ names.
The education “spin,” of course, went hand-in-hand with children. What parent—smart, dumb, well-educated or not—would say “no” to the question, “You’re interested in your children’s education, right?” The pitch was geared accordingly to seize in the predictable affirmative response.
I didn’t make a sale that first day, but I knocked on a lot of doors and rang countless doorbells, one household at a time, block after block, up one street and down another. By the time the sun went down, I was mentally and physically exhausted. If I couldn’t claim to be a student of psychology or sociology, I was certain I’d endured one very intense psychological and sociological experience. Yet, I’d just scratched the surface of those departments.
I was also starving. When I turned onto West Sobieski street and was within sight of the Grand Hilton, the Mikolons’ house, all I could think about was a can—maybe two—of turkey Chunky soup.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
