I did it one summer.
We trained with a 300-page manual and ritual chanting. Kirby's target was the infirm, the credulous, the ignorant and the impure of heart. The whole gig was a scam. We introduced as "demonstrators" not legally entitled to sell. If you let us into the house, we stayed for three hours or until cops were called (that was the Kirby briefing). We lured appointments with a "free $20 value silver gift. You cannot buy. All you have to do is listen." We targeted young children ("your child plays on this rug? Here is the filth he breathes." There was a handy demonstration filter sample). We went to the bedroom and vacuumed the mattress. "This is putrefacted body ash, ma'am. It is dead skin. To sleep in your own dead skin is the source of many infections. " Around about 11 p.m.--all demos began at 8 p.m.--the weary householders, man and wife (no demos for wive only: that allows them to say "I have to consult my husband") would be fed up, outraged, and very angry. Ask me to leave? WEll, OK, but now I reveal that in fact I am a sales trainee. If I can sell this machine to you, I am promoted. Therefore I will make the first payment for you right now, $22 in cash. Please help me. But they don't want a Kirby Home Sanitation Unit that can also polish their car. And its sooo expensive, even with the low monthly payments. Now I say: OK, let's do this: I just made the first payment. Use the machine, enjoy it--don;t make any payments yourself, and it will take them six months to repossess the machine if they ever get around to it. I get my sale, you get $22 cash and a free silver gift and the use of the machine. Everybody wins.
Many saw the logic. If they didn't--mind you it;s 11 p.m. and everybody is wondering why they ever let me in the door--I performed a nervous breakdown for them. I was in such trouble. I had to call my supervisor. He asked to speak to the homeowner. "Did he try to sell you a machine?" Well, he sure did. "What! That is illegal!vI'll be there in 10 minutes." So we would wait for Brad. Brad would arrive and chew me out and tell the people because the law was broken, he was legally obliged to give them the Kirby free. Sign this special contract. Brad would write on it, "Christian not a salesman, contract approved by Bradford". And they did. Brad was the best closer I ever saw.
Almost every contract written by Kirby after a demo sale was sold to a collection agency the next day. In almost every case the machine was eventually repossessed and the collection agency went to work. That was the business plan. My commission was $90. If Brad came to close, he took half.
There were 12 of us were on the Kirby demo team in Scotch Plains NJ in the summer of 1964. Most were high school teachers. One was a reverend, elegant black man, who sold one machine per night for 30 days in a row. In August the teachers asked me to a breakfast meeting. This is a scam, they said. I agreed, having just sold a vacuum to a black family with no rugs because they were too polite to kick the white kid out who was trying to earn money for college (my father was a surgeon with a Hinckley sailboat). So we all quit together, most of the sales force.
Not long after the cops closed the operation down, and there were indictments. Not of Brad--he fled the day we quit.
As a newspaper editor later I twice assigned undercover reporters to become Kirby salesmen. Both stories were hilarious and much the same as mine, although with more marijuana (time had changed). Greed of the greedy exploited by the smarter and greedier.
My education continues, but that was a kick start. I don't think that elaborate scam would work today, with Yelp, Twitter and cell phones.
It was easier to sell vacuums in a vacuum.