Door to Door Sales

I just wanted to share an experience with you.I knocked on 40,000 doors, 
once, in the Seattle area and I'm rather proud of it. In the tradition of 
the old style Americana Fuller brush salesman I was selling a book door to 
door. To get any type of typical response rate I had to get the numbers up 
so I had a quick speel and knocked on 200 doors a day, Monday through 
Saturday, for 9 months.

Sales and marketing are a fascinating industry. It's what makes America 
great. Go to any executive in any large company and they'll tell you sales 
is the most important job in their company. That's why I did it. I wanted 
to understand sales.

I still don't understand sales. My best guess is that personal prejudices 
get in the way. I'm not a closer I'm just a numbers guy. For my sales 
technique, the best I could figure, from the door to door experience is 
that if I just have a pure and unjudgemental spirit then sales come easy. 
If I have any preconceived notions about customers, then sales won't work.

My experience knocking on doors was mechanical. I said the same speel over 
and over again and tried to feel positive so I wouldn't have any anger or 
animosity showing through in my presentation. The speel went something 
like this: "Hello. My name is Ken Bushnell with Publishing Enterprises. We 
just published the Exploring Washington guide with over 5,000 camp grounds 
and public access points defined for your fun and enjoyment ... " As I was 
saying this it was important to hand the person a copy of the book. If 
they took it there was some interest to work with.

Some days sales were good and some days sales were bad for no apparent 
reason. If I got in an argument with someone before I left on my daily 
trek I thought it was an end to a any kind of a successful day. Yet I was 
surprised when that day would turn successful after the second or third 
door. There was no calculating a successful day. Other days that I was 
sure they would turn out great turned out pounding fist awful.

The neighborhoods on the other hand seemed to make a big difference. If 
you lived in Seattle in the mid eighties you might have an idea of the 
types of neighborhoods and their associated ethnic and economic status. 
South Park, for example, was poor and on the EPA's hazardous site's list, 
right across the street from industry. It had a large Mexican population 
with a moderate degree of ethnic diversity. A real Working class. People 
worked hard and had little time or money for gentrification. Yet it was a 
pretty good area for selling books. I sold some and felt it was an 'okay' 
area for selling.

Beacon Hill was associated with oriental ethnicity at the time. Again 
nothing fancy architecturally, just maintained, lived in houses, owned by 
hard working people, with the occasional affluence expressed in beautiful 
oriental gardens and architectural improvements. I had some of my better 
days in the area.

Wallingford was a different flavor. It had a reputation of upper middle 
class, of people with enough disposable income to gentrify their houses, 
and it was, fast, being remodeled with sunrooms and indoor hydroponics. 
Wallingford just reeked of disposable income and upwardly mobile yuppies.

You just get a feeling, when you knock on a door, about the nature of the 
people. Most of the time people answered with a scowl. I would try to add 
the right 'lilt' to my presentation to get them to turn around and if they 
didn't show a little flexibility in their scowl or take the book from my 
hands I would move on.

A surprisingly large percentage of people, maybe 20% - 30%, opened the 
door with a smile. Sometimes the smile was just that, induced by 
medication, sometimes genuine. If the individual even started to change 
expressions and take an interest in what I was saying, kaboom! Lighting 
struck. I had an opportunity to make a sale and gave my speel its best 
spin.

It was difficult to determine, at times, whether people were interested in 
what I was saying or me being there. We are biological beings and they say 
80% of communication is non verbal. Often someone would be smiling and 
they'd even nod a couple of times, but they were just studying me. They 
didn't hear a word I was saying, but as one biological being to another 
their curiosity at this creature that had knocked on their door could be 
studied better if they had a slight smile on their face. Sometimes they'd 
take the book and sometimes not. When they did and kept looking at me I 
was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a sale.

I needed to sell one or two books minimum, a day in order to eat. I was 
living in my car and swimming a mile a day in the public pools in order to 
shower, clean and shave. Thus my overhead was only a dollar twenty five a 
day for pool rental. I could eat at fast food restaurants. It was 
devastating if I went out one evening and didn't sell any books.

I sold four books in South Park. I don't think there are even two hundred 
houses in South Park so I could only sell there one day. West Seattle was 
fairly consistent, maybe two or three a day. A lot of yuppies and I spent 
as little time as possible in the gentrified neighborhoods making more 
sales in the medium income areas of West Seattle.

Surprisingly one of the most successful neighborhoods was Queen Anne. 
Queen Anne is a very rich, upscale neighborhood, restored long before the 
yuppies got there, and the people were surprisingly friendly. Queen Anne 
has to be one of the nicest places on the planet. Even the apartments 
produced sales. Wonderful people the Queen Anne ites. Rich california and 
Hollywood people bought a lot of it in the nineties, so I don't think its 
like that anymore, but it still gives hope to the rest of us.

Wallingford, on the other hand is the most horrible place on the planet. I 
had figured Wallingford would be just like Queen Anne but it was like the 
brick wall hit me in the face. Not so. Wallingford, is I swear, one of the 
most evil, foreboding places on the planet. It was populated by Yuppies. 
Self indulgent Yuppies who not only seemed to have to say no, but worked 
hard to find the most demeaning way to do it. Everything I knew about door 
to door selling told me Wallingford should be a good neighborhood, so I 
kept trying, a day here and a day here, when I got the chance. All told I 
spent five days in Wallingford and only sold one book. Very sick place. If 
you want my opinion of what's wrong with the World, it's Wallingford and 
it's environmental green, hydroponic tending, liberals. You can sense 
compassion in people and there ain't none in Wallingford.

There could be a lot of reasons for not making sales in specific 
neighborhoods. If someone went down the street right before you, selling, 
you might as well as move on. You can tell. After only two or three doors, 
you can sense it in the way people answer their door and eventually 
someone will tell you. Having their door bell wrung twice in one evening 
by a salesman is enough to offend anyone and I sympathize with them. If I 
thought or heard someone had been knocking on doors before me I moved on 
not only for the sake of my sales but for common courtesy.

Another major factor is income. If it's a really poor neighborhood what do 
you expect? No money no sales. But I'd grown up in Seattle and I knew the 
Rainier Valley was poor. I just didn't know how poor.

I think it was the fascination of the project and getting this view of the 
city I grew up in. I had to try selling in the Rainier Valley and when I 
got a couple of days ahead I gave it a try.

The population in the Rainier Valley was mostly black (we assumed from 
growing up around here). I had grown up in the white suburbs and I had a 
slightly slanted view of the area through media and story telling cohorts. 
I was surprised when I saw a reasonably well maintained and structurally 
sound neighborhood. Better than South Park. Maybe a patch on a lawn here 
and broken fence there. It just didn't seem that poor. I thought I could 
make a sell, but I didn't.

Once I made it to the front door of some of the houses the poverty was 
evident. No electricity, torn drapes, worn furniture. But you know I saw 
the most amazing thing of all in Rainier Valley; big black women who were 
the friendliest people on the earth. Even though they had no electricity 
and very little else, they'd invite me in with open arms, and in all 
sincerity, to have supper with them, and it happened time and time again. 
Then a couple of doors down from each one there always seemed to be an 
angry black man with such anger in his eyes that I felt it neared a threat 
on my life. The contrast was amazing. The friendliest and the meanest 
people all in one neighborhood. Somehow I think they both sensed my civic 
mindedness and were taken aback that a white guy would be asking them for 
money, so they let me pass through their neighborhood. I didn't sell one 
book in Rainier Valley, but I wanted to see.

Another stark contrast, or rather myth that was changed was on Beacon 
Hill. I had a job telemarketing once and you met an interesting cross 
section of people. In the eighties you had people who would travel from 
town to town in the U.S. working in telemarketing rooms and the industry 
had its own sort of craftsmanship built up. The experienced telemarketers 
time and time again told me to not waste my time trying to sell the 
Orientals because they're the thriftiest of all. I believed them and was 
shocked when I went up onto Beacon Hill and had some of the most 
successful days of my door to door experience. I got the feeling the 
Beacon Hill community respected hard work and an American marketing effort 
and out of that respect, I think, people would buy my books. For that too 
I still feel a great deal of respect and gratitude to the Beacon Hill 
neighborhood.

Individual experiences were diverse. It amazed me that I could walk up and 
down a neighborhood and people didn't seem to know I was there. I really 
felt a sense of solitude walking down a sidewalk. Rarely if ever, did 
someone meet me at the door, which would be an indication they knew I was 
there. If you've ever lived in a rural area you know everyone or every 
thing that comes within a mile of your house, if there's that much space 
between you and your neighbor. On a street with houses every thirty or 
forty feet, it seems we set our boundary at the front door. I suspect most 
of the time people were just watching television.

There was one lady who had all the doors and windows open, even though it 
was snowing and twenty degrees out, one day.

Only once did people call the police, which I'm sure now days would be a 
common occurrence.

Often I'd run across people who just wanted to talk. There are a lot 
of lonely people out there.

I never saw any violence. You hear about all this abuse, fighting, and 
what have you in the media and only a couple of times did I hear any 
yelling. I never saw any violence or evidence of it. People are friendly 
and honest and I think, from this experience, that there is enough 
cohesion is society that we can work together and trust one another. 

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