Kirby salesperson worst nightmare

[caligula]

Hi Kirbysthebest

I was one of the lucky people who rarely worked in the field. My area distributor was Will Hart of Oak Park Kirby. Oak Park was a suburb of Chicago, and my job was to assist in hiring the new recruits and training them on the demo process. After I took them on two weeks of demo's where I did one, and the trainee assigned to me for that day did the next, I fine tuned them, then turned them over to another Kirby trainer who did the 'field' training. However, while some of my trainees knocked doors, that was not the bulk of our demos. Ours were from home shows, grocery give away's, free carpet shampoos, and so on. In addition, I trained our phone crew to set-up demo's following the procedure I stated earlier.


 


In addition to working for Will Hart, I was also asked to go to San Diego, California in September 1979 to January 1980 to fill in for the trainer at Pacific Coast Kirby when the trainer suffered a slight stroke.  My last Kirby office was for distributor John Adams of Lombard, Illinois, my job there was to help him build his sales crew. However, in each case, I worked mostly in the office, or one on one with the new trainees.

 

[kirbysthebest]

We were in Illinois at the same time

Just different parts. I was working the the Macomb area. I loved fair season and homeshows. Tommy Baird in Springfield had a crew that had twin girls in a Corvette that sold more machines than anyone in our division that year.

I had one time that I sold the machine so well that the lady of the house was crying because of the dirt. I gave it to her for my cost, I felt so bad. She was such a sweet lady, they were friends of my step-father so I knew she wasn't putting on, and they were farmers so they were not rich people.

 

[caligula]

Hi Kirbysthebest

I was born on September 2, 1950, in Wallingford, Connecticut, about 40 miles away from the Electrolux factory which was in Old Greenwich. In September of 1972, when I was 22, I got a job offer to work for the Indiana Dunes National Park in Chesterton, Indiana, which was only 50 miles from Chicago. Fate stepped in and I wound up in Dubuque, Iowa, where I started as a salesman for Kirby. In 1977, I ended up in Oak Park, Illinois as a training manager for Kirby, and stayed in that area living in nearby Naperville, turning my home into the headquarters for the V.C.C.C. producing the newsletters till May of 95 when I relocated to San Diego, California, and got out of the vacuum cleaner business and into nursing, dealing with hospice care. In January of 2011, I ended up here in Northern Pennsylvania. I'm now retired, and starting to get back into vacuum cleaner history and restoration.    

 

[tolivac]

When selling the Tristars with a freind-we did the "door Knocking" thing-was just before prospects could schedule a demo of ANY DTD premium vac over their websites.When door knocking you run into prospects rich or poor.The rich ones most likely have a cleaning or janitorial service clean their homes-so right away they are not good prospects.So you try the "middle" neighborhoods.
I feel the Kirby can do better than ANY straight suction machine-agitation by its roller brush is the diffrence maker-same light as comparing any straight suction machine against any roller brush upright or even canister.I do like my Kirby and Pig TOGETHER!!The Pigs huge bag will take along time to fill.When vacuuming new carpeting you do get SOME dirt-but mostly fluff.I vacuumed afreinds newly installed carpet with one of my Royals and the cloth dump bag-Was just as well-I had to dump it several times!And the cloth dump bag is GREAT while picking up Host,Capture,or other dry carpet cleaners.Bet the Kirby and NSS lashup would be GREAT for doing fresh,new carpet or picking up Host type cleaners.Esp if you use the dump bag on the NSS-that will hold something like TWO BUSHELS of fluff!
Yes,we can say just about ANY DTD Premium vac will be still going long after that TTI Hoover,Dirt Devil,Eureka or whatever plastivac has bit the dust literally and sent to its final internment at the landfill-its FINAL emptying!And getting reduced in size in the back of the trash truck!

 

[caligula]

Two things I hate about selling vacuum cleaners.

While I have always loved the demo process, I'm not fond of door knocking, and hate closing a sale.


 


The door knocking problem goes back to 1968 when I was working for Electrolux, and promoting the new 1205. I'd just been trained, and loved the demo. I was also a seventeen year old kid obsessed with vacuum cleaners, so I was eager to hit the street and tell people of the 1205. The first door I knocked on was that of an older woman, and as I started to go into my pitch, she closed the door in my face! I was crushed, that killed it for me, like popping a balloon. That feeling of rejection never left me, and while I've had a lot of good sales with both Electrolux and later Kirby, the fear was always there. Fortunately, I became a trainer for Kirby. As my manager knew this phobia, I never knocked doors, and only went on preset appointments.


 


As for closing, people who know me say that I'm too kind to be a salesman. I loved to demo, and did in a way that mixed showmanship, theater, and excitement of showing a great product to people. Then, after setting up a great display, with test cloths everywhere, I went for the close. I was gripped with fear as I wrote down "549.00 complete," and handed it to the husband. Reaction was mixed. I wanted to hug the guy who reached for his checkbook, and secretly cursed the guy who said "we can't afford that!" This meant fighting to get the sale, which I did, and usually got the sale. But the worst, the very worst was when I had a trainee with me, and had to swallow my fear. I've used every sales technic in the book, and worked my butt off landing sales, while not letting my trainee know how scared I was.

 

[tolivac]

But then--is the sale where the customer is writing you a check--even asks without question "how much" BEFORE you even set up to demo and take the vacuum out of the box-in that case you switch gears and show the prospect the differences between the new vac and their old one and how to use it.It was in New Bern,NC where we ran into two prospects that bought before the machine was pulled out of the box-avid TriStar owners-same manner as avid Kirby,'Lux,Filter Queen,or Rainbow owners.The prospect even serves you soda or coffee and a snack!!

 

[ralph123]

I would think a vacuum collector / vacuum expert would be the Kirby salesman's biggest nightmare. Imagine the look on the Kirby salesman's face when he finds out that he will have to do the cleaning test against all 100 of his vacuums. Or the vacuum expert who knows that the last vac loses and insists that his vacuum gets to go after the Kirby for a rematch.

 

[floor-a-matic]

Straight suction Compact outperforming a Kirby? I was vacing carpet with a Compact C8 (using metal rug tool) & got a nearly full bag of dirt