I had an appointment with a vacuum salesman today. I watch the presentation and he’ll shampoo two rooms to my house. “Sure,” I said. A previous salesman’s from a different vacuum company had given a presentation about a year before and really laid the guilt trip on me for not being willing to buy his vacuum. He asked if I wanted to live with the dirt in my house.

This one took me down on a little of the guilt trail but not too much and not in such an as obvious of a manor. He was not as offensive and heavy handed as the previous salesman. But I could tell when I was being ‘played’. He had some good one liners which I liked he admitted he had come up with some and had borrowed some other lines from other representatives. And he would make various compliments about items in my house to butter me up. 

During the presentation he did a lot of emphasizing of how the vacuum did such a good job. All salesmen’s have a dirt detector that will deposit the dirt on a white piece of paper so that you can see how well the vacuum picks up. This current vacuum seemed to match the same quality of work as the competitor.

The salesman did a good job in presenting how the vacuum can be used for multiple purposes that were not mentioned by the competitor. I liked the thought of vacuuming a mattress to catch all the dead skin though, I have the theory that it could also be thread particles that are also deposited on the ‘catch dirt’ paper. Then he gave me the price – ouch!

This is where the other ‘play’ was done. Where the salesman calls the supervisor and offers alternative prices when I’m not willing to bite because I don’t want to go into debt paying for a vacuum at the price they were offering. This back and forth went about three times.

While he was on the phone he was actually giving a sales pitch to me while ‘pretending’ he was talking to the supervisor. So I don’t know if there was really a person on the other end. It’s possible the operator just drops off after answering the phone so the salesman can give me an additional sales pitch without being obvious. During the possible ‘pretend conversation’ he told the supervisor how much I loved the vacuum and that he was sure I would take the offer etc. etc.

During this discussion I was offered a lower payment per month and yet when I would add the months together, it was more expensive by several hundred dollars so that ploy didn’t work. Use a calculator so that you can see how much something is going to cost. Doing the calculations can help catch when I’ being ‘told’ I was given a ‘better deal’ it was actually worse.

I do like the vacuum because we had this brand as a child. I made a counter offer. His ‘silent voice’ supervisor made an offer. I doubt the salesman would admit if there really was a person on the other end if I asked. So I didn’t. I did tell him once to not ‘play’ me. I accepted the offer given and now I have a new vacuum. But it was interesting to see the techniques employed.

I just wanted to present some of the techniques I saw in this salesman’s presentation. I wonder what the base cost is without the hike up? hummm