The Close is really just the Opening

It was 9:18 in the evening when the doorbell rang. That's pretty late for uninvited guests, but when I looked through the peephole I saw a distorted image of my neighbor, so I opened the door.

Turns out, it wasn't my neighbor at all. It was a lady trying to sell vacuum cleaners, and she quickly launches into her sales pitch while my wife is trying to dress my daughter for a bed time that passed 18 minutes ago.

Now, normally I'm a sucker for a good sales pitch. I think all salesmen are at heart. But I've dealt with this vacuum cleaner thing before. The thing is, our entire house is floored with hardwood and ceramic tile. Even the bedrooms and closets are all floored with hardwood. There is not a stitch of carpet in our house other than the welcome mat and a throw rug in the master bedroom.

So when she finishes her brief spiel I say, "Good luck, but unfortunately we don't have any carpet in our house at all. You are standing on the only carpet we own."

She doesn't bat an eye. She continues as if I were a bad actor who forgot my lines and the real lines were "Tell me more!"

"It only takes 20 minutes for a complete demonstration" she tells me with a smile as fake as my sister's diamonelle ear rings.

"A demonstration of WHAT?!" I asked, now more than disappointed in her complete lack of concern for my needs, than I am irritated that she has interrupted our daughter's bed time routine in order to try and sell me something I cannot use, and demonstrate it on carpet that I simply don't own.

I really try not to be rude to sales people. I love to hear a good pitch. I study them. I love to be sold because I love to FEEL the psychology that goes into it. I love to analyze what I'm feeling and why. You can get a doctorate in marketing for just a few hundred dollars spent buying things sold by good sales people.

But this lady was not good. She was offensive. She didn't care the least about what I needed or how she could help me. All she wanted was to make the sale at any cost.

And the cost would have been mine.

This sort of vampire marketing might be effective when you are just trying to make a sale and then skate town. But if you are serious about building long term relationships, getting re-bookings, generating good word of mouth, and ultimately building a long-term, sustainable business model; If you are interested in spending your time doing something other than going out every day, pestering people, lying to them, and struggling to sneak past their defenses so you can hoodwink them into buying something they don't need then getting out to cash the check before they put a stop payment on it, then you need to realize that "the close" is not the end of the process.

It's just the beginning.