Expert Door-to-Door Salesman Cleans Up : It May Be a Dirty Job, but Somebody Has to Get Out There and Do It

SAN DIEGO —  Saturday morning, 8:30. Another day, another injection of hope and hoopla coming up.

Bob Schropp, 57, is sitting in the meeting room along with Jerry Sturn, 67; Ed Franken, 76, and other, younger, members of the intrepid troop of men and women who take to the streets each day.

It’s a bit like a schoolroom before the teacher comes in. Jerry’s playing with his “I You” tie. It suddenly comes alive with an electronic rendition of “Love Me Tender.” He’s the joker of thebunch. Fate probably gave him the choice of salesmanship or music hall.

The incredible thing is, they all look unbelievably young for their age. Is it the door-to-door salesman’s life? Or is it the type attracted to the life?

Sturn and Schropp both sport the Electrolux ring on their hands, a gold and diamond incentive prize with a big “E” in the middle.

“Rich Does It Again!” says a sign at the top of a list called the Vice President’s Club: Rich Luisi of New Jersey has made an incredible 1,010 sales in a year, about half a million dollars’ worth.

Sturn’s talking about “Old Charlie,” who used to work in Mission Hills. He got a phone call asking him to bring a vacuum cleaner to a wedding for someone to give as a present, and when he got to the reception, he counted 18 couples whose parents had bought vacuum cleaners from him to give as presents.

“But that’s the way it was,” Sturn said, “when you had salesmen selling everything from Watkins Liniment to encyclopedias to brooms and brushes. Regular beats.”

A list on the wall tells you what incentives you’ll get if you make 26 sales (a microwave oven, a mini-Wurlitzer), 50 sales (a stuffed mountain bobcat, a wingsailer), 100 sales (100 shares in Sara Lee, 500 ounces of silver) . . . .

Then Bob Burks, the branch manager, comes in. He switches on a video machine. Everybody stands up. The National Anthem? Onto the screen comes a jolly chorus line surrounded by Electrolux products. Suddenly, the music blasts. Everybody in the room is singing. It’s the Electrolux song.

Open your door to the Electrolux show

We’d like to show you just a while

Electrolux Cleaner’s the name that you know . . .

Schropp, Sturn and Franken all bellow it out. Just like the peppy companies of old, just like the Japanese companies of today. They believe. They have to, if they’re going to persuade others.

With television providing top-notch salesmanship without even having to knock, with more houses empty during the day as both spouses work, with many people afraid to answer the door, what real reason is there for them to continue? As one sales guru, William H. Whyte, put it: “By every rule of scientific marketing, direct canvassing is so patently uneconomic that it has no place in the new era.”

But companies like Amway, Culligan and Electrolux seem to take no notice, and do just fine anyway. In 1985, Electrolux in San Diego passed the magic $1-million annual sales barrier. Knocking on doors. The great American Way of bringing it to you is alive and well.

It’s almost time to get back out there. Some leads are distributed, then Bob Burks sounds the clarion:

“OK, gang! Let’s get out there and make a million!”

So what does it take to be a good salesman? It takes only a day on the road with one to discover that a pleasant personality and belief in your product are not enough:

“Uh, hi! My name’s Bob. I’ve come to shampoo your carpet, as per our phone conversation with you . . . ?”

He is up some wooden steps of a steep block of apartments in South San Diego. First call of the day, 11 a.m. A guy in the 30-to-40 age range stands holding the door half-open, looking out at this middle-aged stranger in gray jacket, pink shirt, red tie, big grin, a boy’s blue eyes and a Julius Caesar halo of gray hair. Schropp, an Electrolux door-to-door man for 20 years, is ready for action.

Except he doesn’t notice a small sign on the door that reads: “As Salaam Alaikum. Please Remove Your Shoes Before Entering Our Humble Abode.”

“Did you, ah, get the call from our sales personnel--shampoo?” Schropp asks.

“No, sir. The other way round. We wrote you a letter, complaining about the shampooer we use. One of yours. It shampoos the dirt in, man! You’d better come in.”

Schropp looks thunderstruck. This isn’t what he had on his pink slip. This is a complaint card, not a lead. But in he goes to the lion’s den, armed only with his sweet tongue and his genuine faith that no product of his company would be capable of such a crime against carpets.

A copy of the Koran sits on the table. A thin yellow carpet spreads over the sitting room.

“You see, we’re Muslims here,” the man says. “We don’t just use the carpet to walk on. We prostrate ourselves on it five times a day. It’s got to be clean.”

“Oh, God,” Schropp groans, through the gritted teeth of a positive expression. He resorts to his vacuum cleaner. He plugs it in, inserts a white tissue between the suction tube and the bag. Without moving in to debate the subject, he says: “Well, first, of course, it’s got to be vacuumed before you shampoo. Let’s just see here . . . “

He switches on, gives a couple of back-and-forth swipes, switches it off, opens it up, picks out the swatch of tissue, and looks at it.

He shakes his head.

“Ho, boy, look at this,” he says. “I mean, you’ve got to get the surface dirt out before you start shampooing.”

The tissue has a tube-shaped pile of dirt on it, a stark gray quarter-inch pile on the virgin white cloth.

“Look,” says the homeowner, “I’m a teacher, but I do some of this on the side, for people I know. I have experience in it. I vacuum before I shampoo and then six hours after. But people say to me, like the last one: ‘Thanks for trying, but don’t bring that machine back.’ ”

Schropp is down at the car. Should he go back into the fray, and shampoo, just to show this guy that his machine works, or should he cut and run? It’s been 45 minutes already. He’s not making any money.

He finally decides. “I wouldn’t want to leave just one spot in the carpet,” he says, back up at the house. “And I haven’t time to do the whole thing. So why don’t you vacuum real, real good. Let us know how it comes out. Here’s my card. And we’ll go from there, OK?”

Schropp is back at the car. “If they’re all like that . . . God!”

At 57, you’d think a man would have the stuffing for this sort of thing knocked out of him. Not Schropp. He has the look and enthusiasm of a 40-year-old. He has his name on the company plaques--particularly four great months in ’84 when he was Electrolux’s San Diego Sales Rep of the Month. Not up there with the whiz-kids selling 1,000 units a year, but solid.

But door-to-door went out the window years ago, didn’t it? Haven’t shopping malls, two-car families, television advertising, direct mail, and now direct TV-shopping taken over? Isn’t the guy on the doorstep holding his snake oil kind of, well, dated?

Maybe not. There are 15 salesmen working out of Schropp’s branch of Electrolux on any day. Each of them talks to 30 to 40 people a day, getting the foot into maybe four or five doors, selling possibly one or two units. (In San Diego, the average Electrolux salesman will make between $20,000 and $45,000 a year, plus perks.)

Sure, there do seem to be fewer coming to our doors, and intercity traveling salesmen figures are way down. But nationwide statistics for door-to-door salesmen show the opposite: In 1972, 2 million salesmen rang doorbells to sell $4 billion worth of goods and services. Currently, at any one time, 2.5 million are selling direct. Through 1987, 5.5 million will have tried it. If they match last year, they will sell $8.5 billion worth of goods. Plus, Electrolux, watch out: Hoover is said to be getting back into direct sales under the title Phase 4, currently being tested in Florida.

Don’t forget Avon, which didn’t get to be the world’s largest cosmetics company by sitting waiting for customers to show up. Even back in ‘72, Avon had almost half a million saleswomen out there in deepest suburbia worldwide, catching customers where they’re most vulnerable--in their lairs.

Since World War II, people have been predicting the demise of the door-to-door salesman. Technology would take over, they said. Highways and everybody having cars would make the big warehouses and shopping malls too accessible, they said. Volume trading would make it impossible for the little guy with one machine in his hand and one line in his car to compete in choice or especially price, they said. All business college logic, every economic argument pointing to the extinction of this very American phenomenon. And who today would choose to do it as a job? Living on the absolute direct version of capitalism: no salary, no expense account. You sell, you eat. You don’t, you face your wife.

But maybe the arguments haven’t taken into account human nature. The San Diego Police Department licensed 1,190 door-to-door salesmen last year. And they certainly haven’t taken into account Bob Schropp, who works outside the city.

“I like to do this,” he says. “Why otherwise would I suffer through it? It’s a helluva way to earn a living. I could be sitting in some office drawing automatic salary, without a worry in the world. It’s crazy, but I just like it. Keeps me out. Keeps me young. I like people. I like the smell of the next sale, the greatest one, just around the corner. It hooks you.”

So on we go into the suburbs, like surfers searching for the perfect wave, surely rolling in right now over the far horizon.

It’s 3 p.m. The door opens, slightly.

“Hi! I’m Bob Schropp from Electrolux. We have an appointment, I believe?”

She’s a young mother in an on-the-way-up neighborhood who has been called through Electrolux’s new idea: telemarketing. They offered her a free shampoo of her carpet just so she could see what kind of job their equipment does. She looks wary. Schropp has been trained to breeze over such reluctance.

“Say, what a great house. And who’s this? David? What a cute little kid! My eldest boy was named David. Now, tell me about your carpets.”

“I want to go to the bathroom,” says David.

“I take it, Pam, you do your own cleaning?” Schropp is on the carpet putting the pieces of his carpet shampoo set together.

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I haven’t since I married. Someone does it for me.”

“Uh, the person who does it, what’s her name?”

“Merced.”

“Well, I’m not sure how much English she speaks, Pam, but we could come over and show anyone how to work one of these things in two or three hours. Boy! My wife--her name’s Barbara by the way, Pam--if I tell her about you and Merced, I’m going to be asking for trouble!”

Schropp is already circling the shampoo suds over the cream-colored carpet.

Suddenly, he stops. Hauls out a sheet of paper.

“Now let me tell you just a little about this machine and how we rate in a nationwide survey. This circular dry-foam system with separate initial vacuuming, Pam . . . “

“David! Not on the sofa. You’ve already spilled my coffee on it.”

“92.3% soap-free “

“David! I don’t want you stepping on the couch!”

“We don’t use any harmful detergents.”

“David. Right. Upstairs! Come on.”

“Now, Pam, I’m just going to show you the shag-pile feature on the upright . . . hmm, let’s see. If I was a plug, where would I be?”

Pam comes down the stairs, a slightly wild look in her eyes. She has a baby in her arms. She turns around and looks back up the stairs.

“Stay, stay there, David. You’ve already woken . . . “

David wiggles down the stairs past her, throws off his underpants, rolls onto the couch and looks back over the top at his mom like a tiger ready to pounce.

“Now, what I’d like to hear from you, Pam, is if you could get your cleaning lady to do this.”

Pam’s trying to fill a baby bottle with the baby still in one arm.

Schropp is shouting over the noise of his upright vacuum cleaner.

“Tell me, Pam, do you ever vacuum between times, between Merced . . . ?”

“No.”

“When was this vacuumed last?”

“Yesterday.”

“Can I see your vacuum cleaner?”

Pam is not getting caught up in the excitement of all this. She points him to a cupboard.

He pulls out an upright. A Eureka. He makes an effort to try to lift it.

“Boy! I can see why you don’t vacuum.”

“I have never vacuumed.”

“Too busy, huh?”

“No. I just never vacuumed. David!”

This is not happening. Schropp has been here an hour. What is supposed to have developed into an empathic dialogue of escalating enthusiasm is still painfully mono. One-sided excitation. It’s time for a desperate last stand.

Schropp is out at the car.

“It’s going to be hard, this one. Money’s no problem, but she doesn’t clean and--do you notice?--no response. I can’t get any feedback from her. I’m going to try to sell her something stronger.” He hauls out the heavy artillery of the Electrolux line: the big-motor tank model.

Back inside, he erects the tank.

“Sharp, huh? Course, this has the auto cord-winder.” Schropp pulls out a tissue, places it between the motor and the collection bag.

“Holy mackerel!” he says a minute later, when he has done a couple of sweeps, switched off and recovered the tissue. His face is doctor-grave. “I didn’t know you had this in your carpet, Pam.”

He holds out the guilty little pile. “Know what this is?”

He rubs it luxuriously around the tissue.

Pam stands clasped by baby, eyes flitting for David’s next initiative.

“Sand. Sand grit, Pam. Did you know that every grain of sand has 26 cutting edges on it? 26! Do you know what that does to your rug?”

The awful truth attempts to make itself felt on Pam’s blank face.

“Every time you walk on your carpet, Pam, your feet don’t wear it out, the sand is sawing the pile off at its base!”

He gives that a moment to register, for despair to spread through the veins.

“Now, there is an answer. If you have a cleaner with a strong air-flow. So what I’m going to do is try again. Uh, question here I’d like to ask you Pam, how often does Merced vacuum this carpet?”

“Once a week.”

“OK. Once a week. That’s 52 times a year. Oh, and you said it was done yesterday, so it shouldn’t have anything worth mentioning . . . . What I’m going to do Pam--I know this isn’t your fault, it’s not Merced’s--I want to find out if there’s a problem with the machine you’re using. What I’m going to do is I’m going to vac a spot with your machine, 52 times, one year’s worth! And then we’ll see if there’s still a problem. OK? Here we go.”

He switches on the machine. With each sweep, he counts aloud.

“One, two, three . . . “

In the 20s, Schropp is pointing out how his company’s tank model has so much more power. In the 30s, he’s shouting above the roar about how his company’s machines haven’t cut corners like other companies have by replacing steel with plastic.

“Forty-one, 42, and of course, Pam, don’t worry about those spots, we have a carpet medi-kit--uh, 49, 50, 51, 52. OK! We’ve just done a year’s worth of cleaning here on your machine. Now. Let’s just bring back our tank model to check if there’s still a problem. Pam I want you to try it. Just . . . “

“David! Upstairs! I told you not to . . . “

“Would you do this Pam? Push it, see how it feels. Feels nice, huh? We’re just going to run over it a couple of times and--Fine! Good job. Let’s just take off the top again and--uh oh. Oh, dear. Jeez, Pam. I don’t know what to say. See that? Sand, hairs, still there! Still coming out. It’s not your fault, Pam. Boy, you don’t need a different maid, you need a different cleaner.”

Pam looks at him with a sort of blind look of a snake with its milky safety lids down.

“I’m not going to buy a vacuum cleaner right now.”

“No, I know. Of course.”

This is the moment of truth we’ve been leading to for the last hour and a half.

“Uh, let me ask you this, Pam. You weren’t planning on buying a vacuum cleaner right now . . . “

They both watch as David dumps all the collected dirt back into the carpet.

It’s all getting to be a bit much for Pam. This was supposed to be a simple shampoo, right? Not an hour and a half of pressure, pressure, pressure.

“David! Upstairs!”

” . . . but what you have here, Pam, is half a loaf. You’ve done what you can with what you’ve got. But we’ve got a problem with your vacuum cleaner, Pam.”

He holds her gaze.

“Do you need your husband with you? Like me to stop back? Is there any kind of little confusion? Let me ask you this: If you got a machine that did a better job . . . “

“Not . . . right now.”

“You’re satisfied with the dirt in there? You don’t care if the dirt is in there? TLC is important for this carpet. I just want to know if you’re happy to leave the dirt in the carpet?”

“That wasn’t a good demonstration.”

It’s 4:30. Shadows are getting long. No sale. Two long, unsuccessful assaults.

“Why?”

“Did I sell it? Then you didn’t see a good demonstration. Some fellows could turn that situation around. Crack it. Mind you, lady I sold a machine to last Friday, she called me ‘Columbo,’ you know, the TV character. ‘Columbo, he always gets his man,’ she said. I sure got her. Took me all afternoon, but I got feedback, you see. You could relate. Made a sale. That’s the difference.”

Everything’s packed.

“OK. Next we’re going to try the Cold Knock. Lot of ways, it’s better. You can size up the situation that much quicker. You don’t have to keep digging a dry well. OK. The shampoo approach.”

The shampoo approach is characterized mainly by presenting a sample bottle of carpet shampoo for the woman to hold in her hand. A gift. That makes it difficult for her to leave you. She has entered some silent little contract. We check for signs. If a car’s in the garage, the kind of car, any kids’ toys in the garden, how tidy the yard is.

As the day grows to dusk, then dark, we travel through a dazzling array of presentations, a dizzying variety of rebuffs, excuses. Through them all, Schropp stays bouncing up off that trampoline, success burning on automatic, oblivious to circumstance.

“Hi! My name’s Schropp and I have something for you. Quick question here--lovely house!--do you have a lot of carpets, rugs? Uh, huh. Where?”

“Listen, I’ve just bought a Hoover, and I ain’t gonna get another.”

“We have our own maids. They bring in their own vacuum cleaners.”

“Our friend is a rep for Frigidaire. He says they’re related to your company. He can get us one cheap.”

“Don’t you see the ‘No Soliciting’ sign?’ ”

“Mommy’s not home. Want to see the baby-sitter?”

“We have a Kirby.”

“We have a Filter Queen.”

“I speak no English.”

“Can’t you see we’re just about to eat?”

“Hey, I’m in my pajamas. I’m sick. Do I look like I want to buy a vacuum cleaner?”

It’s dark now. People are looking more incredulous when we ring at the door. Children are peeping from behind curtains. We’re onto the “vacuum cleaner approach,” carrying one so our intentions are clear and we don’t frighten anyone too much. Schropp has a new opening line, too: “Hi! This is your lucky day!”

8 p.m. There’s a dog growling behind the door. We’re at the end of a canyontop cul-de-sac. As a kid opens the door, Schropp reaches out and pats the dog’s head.

“Hey! You can smell my dog on me, can’t you, fella! What a great dog! Say, do you folks have problems with dog fur in your carpets?”

A cat comes leaping over the dog and out past us into the dark.

“Oh, God!” says Mom. “We’ve just gotten him in. Someone get him quick! The other two have already been eaten by the coyotes in the canyon.”

As we come away from returning dog, cat, kids and probably a couple of the coyotes as well back in through the front door, I ask Schropp if this is all in the line of duty. I’m hungry. I’m pooped. Schropp’s continual “Hey, hey, hey!” is exhausting me. Especially since he’s the guy who’s 57.

A couple of houses later, we have actually got our foot in. We’ve even gotten to demonstrate the twin-action pile and shag upright model--and then are politely shown the door because the girls are about to have a makeup party.

But outside, the husband is just arriving home. Schropp goes into a complete repeat performance right out there, using a patch of dirty carpet at the workshop end of the double garage. In go the tissues, out comes the dirt, in goes the plastic bag so Schropp can lift the whole machine up to show how strongly it sucks, up it flips in Schropp’s hands to show how light it is. How many times have we been through this routine? What are we wasting our time out here for?

Then it happens, out of the blue. The three of us are standing here in this garage, somewhere in the canyons of East San Diego surrounded by the black of a silent night when he, the husband, utters the magic words that drown out 10 hours of rejection, excuses, rebuffs, looks that kill:

“I’m impressed.”

Schropp has an appointment to go back next week and follow up with both husband and wife. Suddenly, he has a good prospect. Suddenly he smells that faint approaching smell: success!

A woman slams the door in our faces after that, and a glowering, aggressive husband refuses Schropp’s proffered hand, refuses to believe it’s his lucky day, and tells Schropp to take him and his gift to the house next door. But nothing can spoil the glow.

“People, when they see you standing at their door, they think, ‘Oh, God, there’s one of those bums. . . . They don’t realize, some of us are better off than they are! We have a good company,” Schropp says.

“Our company gives us holidays, conventions, incentives. I’ve furnished my whole house with monthly incentives: TVs, beds, sofas. This month I’m working for a patio set and chairs for the wife. I need 37 sales to make it. It’ll be tough, but who knows?”

We’re in the car at last, driving back to familiar territory. But isn’t it tough on the wife, this life of daily chance?

“Well, she’s accustomed to it, I guess. Besides, it has given us good times. Free trips to the Indy 500--boy, that was fun!--to conventions in Las Vegas, and as I say we’ve furnished the house thanks to them.”

Are any of his kids following in his footsteps?

“Well, no, they’ve all become architects, accountants. I guess it takes a different mentality. You’ve got to be a certain type. My eldest son, David, I don’t know. He was killed in an accident when he was 16. Pam’s little boy had me thinking of him again today.

“As a matter of fact, this job, having to force yourself out among people day in and day out--that helped me a whole lot to get over David, as much as you ever can.”

We haven’t made a sale. We’ve exhausted ourselves, but somehow we feel we fought the brave fight. We drive home talking about all the good times his company has given him. And areas of San Diego he hasn’t tried yet. And ways to overcome consumer resistance.

And we agree that “getting out there” is better than sitting in a shop, like a spider in its web, waiting for customers to come to you. Maybe that’s it. Bob Schropp’s way of selling is not so much door-to-door, it’s nose-to-nose. And that’s what makes it work.

Electrolux, Amway, Avon--they all discovered that basic tenet, which worship of technology disguises: go back to the people. If you can take the three J’s: rejection, dejection, ejection. If you can keep faith in humanity, when it feels like most of humanity doesn’t necessarily have faith in you.

Tomorrow, Schropp will be back at the morning meeting for another fix of hope and hype. Then he’ll be out again, playing Russian Roulette with your houses, looking, as always, for you, the perfect customer.