Confessions of a Travelling Salesman. Timothy Lea
If I can slow the machine down I will be able to restrain my natural impulse.
But, alas! In my eagerness I only succeed in turning the switch the wrong way and the bed suddenly becomes a bucking bronco. While I cling on for dear life (i.e. mine), the bed responds by trying to touch its toes and emits a high-pitched whining noise.
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ I howl, and I am not referring to anything that Miss Stokely is dishing out.
‘I can’t,’ pants Miss Stokely. ‘It must be jammed. U-r-r-r-gh!’
I brush aside her fumbling fingers and wrench at the control savagely. So savagely that it comes away in my hand. The strength of a Lea in an emergency is as the strength of ten.
‘Oh my Gawd!’ The bed is now throwing a fit and the noise is enough to wake the dead. If not the dead, some of those approaching that condition. As I fight to prevent myself from being hurled to the floor, I am aware that a host of senior citizens are hunched in the doorway drinking in the spectacle.
Ker–plung!!! Suddenly there is a noise like a spring snapping free of its mooring and the next thing I know I am lying under Miss Stokely’s swivel chair at the other end of the room. I raise my head as Miss Stokely’s pink body subsides with the wreckage of the bed. There is a long drawn out whirring noise which ends in a desperate, dying wheeze.
I think it comes from the bed.
CHAPTER TWO
I am not sorry to leave the Super Cromby, the atmosphere being a trifle icy after my little session with Alma. Doctor Carboy, particularly, is very narky but though he says it is because of the damage to his equipment, I know it is really because he is not overchuffed about me having it away with his bit of crackling. Sid, too, is tight-lipped for the same reason. Ever since Rosie moved in to cramp his style, he has been very dog in the mangerish about my excursions into nookyland.
Another source of irritation has been provided by one of the old geezers who was watching us on the job. He has had a stroke – excitement I suppose – and Carboy is trying to blame me for that. All in all, I reckon I am well out of the blooming place.
Knuttley Hall is very impressive. All lawns, gravel and ivy, and it is difficult to think of it in connection with HomeClean Products. Difficult that is if you fail to see the bleeding great hoarding by the gates: ‘HomeClean Products, home on the range!’
I report to a ferret-faced bloke behind a desk in the hall who calls me ‘Mr. Lea’ and looks me up and down as if measuring me for a coffin. He directs me to my room and informs me that HomeClean’s Chief Training Officer will be addressing us before the evening meal at seven o’clock. This gentleman is about fifty years old and looks as if the last person he loved was his mother many years before. His voice is totally expressionless and he drones on for half an hour about ‘Finest Company in the world … wonderful export record … first rate products … unparalleled opportunities for advancement … hard work … satisfaction … hard work …’ I try and pay attention but after about ten minutes it is all I can do to keep my eyes open. I try and keep awake by concentrating on my fellow trainees. Most of them are about my age and a few of the keener ones take notes. On the whole they seem to favour the short back and sides and earnest expression and I am certain they have a great future behind them.
One thing that is disturbing me is the lack of birds in the place. We have been told that we will not be let out for three weeks and that we will only be allowed in the bar on Saturday nights. Dish out a see-through haircut and I might as well be in a monastery.
After supper, which is of the brown windsor, fish fingers, peas and mashed potato variety – e.g. first-rate compared with anything my mum ever dishes up, we are divided into syndicates and start learning about the HomeClean product range. I have been expecting a spot of early shut eye on the first night, so evening classes do little to raise my spirits above knee-level.
The bloke who takes us is called Brian Belfry and has one of the worst-fitting sets of false gnashers I have ever seen bouncing round his cake-hole. He also starts off every sentence by saying ‘I am certain you will agree …’ so that I become bleeding determined not to agree with him on principle. In the days that follow I learn that this is a ‘key selling phrase’. The idea is to get the customer nodding along with you right from the off. Regardless of what the product is, you wag your head up and down and say that you are certain that the customer will agree that its clean, simple lines and clasically elegant styling, combined with its tastefully chosen colour scheme, will blend harmoniously with any kitchen setting. While the customer, who is too good mannered to suggest that you must be joking, digests this, you bash on to explain that the product has forty-seven unique features and has undergone one hundred and twenty-three different tests before leaving the factory. By this time the customer should be on his hands and knees begging to be allowed to buy one, but if there is any sign of wavering, now is the moment to remind him that your product is the only one on the market with multiflibinite gunge nurglers. You point out casually that products not possessed of m.g.n. have been known to fall apart after three weeks or explode with distressing loss of life and limb. If the poor sap has still not signed on the dotted line, you remind him of the unique HomeClean easy payments plan (no other manufacturer charges such high interest rates), HomeClean’s unique after-sales service plan (most other manufacturers don’t make you pay for both spare parts and labour during the guarantee period), or HomeClean’s unique trade-in terms (most manufacturers will offer you more than two pounds for your old washer when you buy a spanking new one costing well over a hundred quid).
The most important thing to remember is that you must close the sale with a positive proposition, e.g. ‘If you do not buy this product I will beat you to death with it.’ If the customer is bigger than you, then less dynamic, but equally effective methods are available. ‘Well, Mr. Prospect, I am certain that you will agree that this wonderful, life-enriching product is remarkable value at only ninety-nine pounds, ninety-nine new pence, and if you sign here I will have one rushed to you as soon as the strike in our Baluchistan factory is over.’ Or, even better, give the poor sucker an option. ‘Right, Mr. Prospect. Would you rather pay for this wonderful product in cash or with our easy deferred payments plan?’ In this way the poor mut has blurted out one of the alternatives before he realises that he hated the sight of the product in the first place.
This business of prospect participation is taken very seriously by our instructor, genial Brian Belfry, whose easy smile conceals a streak of ruthlessness which makes Attila the Hun seem like an eleventh century Beverly Nicholls. He stresses that the prospect should be encouraged to contribute to the dialogue so that he does not feel he is being pressurised into making a purchase. The kind of contributory phrases a salesman likes to hear are – ‘Yes’, ‘of course’, ‘naturally’, ‘I’ll take six, please’, and so on. Hence the ‘I am certain you will agree’ bit. In this way the prospect is nodding all the way to the guillotine.
But supposing a prospect raises an objection? Hear him out. The shrewd salesman can always turn an objection into a product advantage: ‘Yes, I know, Mr. Snotty. The Scrubamatic does not have castors like other washing machines, but that’s what we call our Stability Factor or S.F. for short. Independent tests at the Cumbach Research Laboratories – I have the figures back at the office if you would like to see them – have proved conclusively that there is a danger of unmoored machines running wild and destroying kitchens, and even whole housing estates – I expect you remember the Neasden disaster of ‘69? Now, I’m not saying a word against our competitors’ products, many of them are absolutely first rate machines, but if I had kiddies in the house’ – etc., etc.
It’s a doddle, isn’t it? Note the subtle reference to competitive products. ‘Never knock a competitor’ is one of HomeClean’s ‘Golden Precepts’, but what it really means is, never do so too openly. In the hands of the skilled salesman no competitor is safe. ‘Of course, Madam, the Hotchkiss Wash Wizard is a marvellous product, there’s no getting away from it. But there are one or two little things that I personally am a trifle wary about – but that’s probably just me being over-fussy, I suppose. I mean, I know it’s supposed to be an advantage that