"Can I Welcome You to the Kirby Family?"

On December 26, 2008 a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman came to my door, offering to give a "free demo" of their latest product. Having experienced such an event literally six months prior (without purchasing the vacuum) and, considering I teach marketing courses, I agreed to let him in so long as I could video tape his presentation for educational purposes. His entire presentation was over an hour long and this video (which I was finally able to edit) is a considerably shortened version of his lengthy sales pitch. Kirby's are expensive vacuums -- $2595 was the retail price I was given, so the salesmen are trained in very "old school" sales tactics. Overall, I was impressed with the salesman's presentation, despite my decision to (again) not purchase the product. In closing, I just have one question: "Can I welcome you to the Kirby family?"

Category:

Education

Tags:

• kirby
• vacuum
• sentria
• expensive
• cleaning
• sales
• marketing
• door-to-door
• in-home
• products
• education
• Scott Fetzer Company
• Berkshire Hathaway
• Cleveland
• Ohio

[cllumley]

He did a good demo, I sold them for a year, sold 124 machines and did not make much money at all.....  There are bad dealers out there but there are also good people out there too. The Bad apple scenerio. I stopped selling them not because they are a bad machine but I often felt bad that I knew some people were not really able to afford that amount of money out of their budget at one time...

[iamdoctorious]

@cllumley A friend of mine worked for Norwest Financial (Wells Fargo) several years ago and he would write loans so people could buy a Kirby. Inevitably, he said they couldn't keep up with the payments and the bank repossessed the vacuum!

[shaeguitar]

that was a good demo but the close was absolute garbage. what was his final offer?

[iamdoctorious]

@shaeguitar It's been so long I don't recall, but by that point I didn't want to drag it on since I wasn't intending to really buy it.

[StompTheCourt]

I mean this in the nicest way possible lol I worked for Kirby for about 6 years and you my friend are a dick haha I mean seriously you wasted this kids time to film Kirby's sales techniques lol that's messed up buddy.

[iamdoctorious]

@StompTheCourt I didn't waste his time; now he is "Internet Famous!" :-) Seriously, though, I was completely up front with him at the beginning -- guess he thought it was worth trying, maybe he could have "sold me."

[757Roy757]

I was brought in for a job selling kirbys they gave a demo something like that.After they said the price I lol'ed and just left.There is no way I could keep a straight face trying to sell a vacum cleaner for $2,500

[RyanSellman1]

I'll just get a Dyson DC25, which is FAR superior to the Kirby, and save myself $2,045.

[chaos0691]

@sandmonkey322  You got that right! Did You ever get paid?

[punkyt0ast3r]

@iamdoctorious

I almost got roped into their game. I went in for an interview and the secretary told me it was an electric company type deal........get to the second half and we're talking about vacuums...wtf? lmao

I never went back.