We learned our sales spiel.. We learned how to use the visual aids. We learned how to properly demonstrate the machine.

We were psyched to hit the streets and start making big money.

The pay structure is a scam. The customer isn’t scammed by it but the sales team is. For your first sale you get a $50 commission. Yes, that’s right. Sell a $2000 machine and make only $50. But the percentages increase as you sell more machines. If you sell four or five (I don’t remember which) you get a vacuum for free. You can sell it or give it away. Most would choose to sell it and keep the $2000. Once you get the free machine, you are back to a low commission (I don’t think it went all the way back to $50) and have to sell your way up the commission ladder to another free machine.

Tristar vacuum

The math doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Sales calls are scheduled three hours apart, at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm. The sales spiel takes two and a half hours. Yes. If you let a Tri-star salesman in your house, you are stuck for over two and a half hours. And they are persistent and tenacious devils. They will stick around until they finish their entire sales pitch.

The sales pitch is so long, it only leaves 30 minutes to get to the next appointment regardless of what part of town it’s in. If you sell a machine, the customer gets the one you were using so when you leave, you have to go back to the office to get another machine and then get to your next sales appointment. It just can’t happen that fast unless your sales call is 5 minutes from the office.

Realistically speaking, it is impossible to make four sales calls a day. And those sales calls are dependent on the office people doing their jobs of getting you appointments. If they screw up, you are screwed.

Besides being long, the sales calls are high pressure. If you can’t make the sale, you call the office manager who talks to the people and gives them more sales talk. I found the whole thing uncomfortable. I thought I would get used to it though.

Here’s how they make a lot of money.

When you are in training, your first sales calls are “practice calls” to friends or family. And their reward for their kindness in letting you practice on them is to be subjected to the high pressure phone call with the office manager.

I had two practice calls. The first was with my parents who patiently let me do my talk as I cleaned up the den. They did not buy a machine. I wouldn’t let them. They talked to my manager and politely declined his sales pitch. He spoke with me afterwards and asked me how I couldn’t even sell a machine to my parents. When I told him I was planning on selling five and giving them the free one, he looked disgusted.

My second sales call was to a married couple I was friends with. They were not rich but they had two German Shepherds. In my demonstration I sucked up enough fur to make a puppy from carpeting they had just vacuumed with their Hoover. They were sold. The machine practically sold itself. I knew they weren’t rich and I practically begged them to not buy it but they had to have it. So I had to sell it to them.

Because I made a sale, I got to attend the next sales meeting. At that meeting, I met everyone who had sold a machine. Out of about 15 people there, 10 were from my training class that had just concluded a few days earlier. A couple had sold two already. Four people were from the class from the week before mine. And one person was from the class two weeks before mine. I don’t think they ever had give a free machine to any sales person. And if they did have to give one away, it was no big deal. That $2000 machine probably costs them under $200 to make.

When I saw no “old timers” among us, I saw the pattern and I understood the Tri-Star business model. Instead of just looking for qualified leads, they hired people whose practice sales calls would yield enough sales to make the weekly training sessions profitable for the company. It was sneaky, smarmy and exploited the weaknesses of the unemployed but it was also kind of brilliant.

They expected a huge turnover of salespeople and they were more than OK with that. The more people they trained, the more machines they sold to people who didn’t even know they wanted a new vacuum cleaner.

Upon seeing that no sales person lasted long in this company, I turned in my resignation. I wasn’t going to bust my ass any longer on what was obviously a road to futility. I didn’t make much money but I learned a lot about vacuum cleaners and shady business practices.