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It's getting bad out there. Banks have stopped lending.
Customers have stopped buying. Toshiba, Siemens and EasyJet have all issued profits warnings in the past few days. Chrysler is shutting down for two weeks in July.
I know! Why don't we hire loads of new salespeople and get them out on the road, knocking on doors? That's bound to change our luck.
It is not April 1. The idea of reviving door-to-door selling comes from the Boston Consulting Group. The distinguished consultancy recently published a paper in their "Opportunities for action" series called "Door-to-door sales: the forgotten channel".
"Two factors drive sales in the door-to-door channel," the paper says, "the number of feet on the street and the number of sales per rep per day." To cut down on unnecessary travelling time, BCG recommends "providing [reps] with dense territories close to their homes or to the sales office. Reps should be encouraged to work their areas relentlessly and revisit each address several times".
Is business that bad? Are we that desperate? Maybe there really is another Depression coming. Or perhaps nostalgia has prompted BCG into calling for armies of latter-day Willy Lomans to be dispatched on to the streets. Not that the consultants are completely unfeeling about this. They recognise that "selling door-to-door is a difficult job even for a 'born salesman'. The ego can take a tremendous beating."
So what can employers do to heal these psychological wounds?
"Companies can help counter feelings of rejection by sharing the stories of successful salespeople," Boston Consulting Group says, "and by arranging for new salespeople to shadow seasoned professionals as they confront challenging situations."
The authors of this paper, Dylan Bolden and Tom Lutz from BCG's Dallas office, should be made to see Arthur Miller's great play Death of a Salesman. There they would hear Linda Loman, Willy's wife, explain the realities of his job.
"The man is exhausted. A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man," she says. "He drives 700 miles, and when he gets there no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him. And what goes through a man's mind, driving 700 miles home without having earned a cent?"
Re-education
But BCG doesn't just need cultural re-education. It needs business re-education as well. The cost implications of its proposals are pretty scary. "Frequent training sessions are important in order to keep reps informed about new sales techniques and product changes," it says. Ker-ching!
"Since many door-to-door salespeople are young and may lack maturity, constant oversight of their activities in the field is necessary to ensure consistent quality." Ker-ching!
"To recruit enough salespeople, the organisation has to target more people than it needs. It can only do this if it has dedicated recruiting resources, including a call centre, multiple venues and sources for recruiting." Ker-ching!
"Most vendors need day-to-day management." Ker-ching! and Ker-ching! again.
Whenever I need clarity on the tricky business of selling, I call Neil Rackham, author of the seminal Spin Selling and reliable deliverer of common sense. His verdict on door-to-door?
"A bad response for hard times," he says.
"Face-to-face [selling] has to have some value, you can't just be a 'talking brochure'," Rackham adds. "But people are sent out with a minimal understanding of the product and the pitch.
The cost pressures don't allow you to do anything else. Once you have exhausted your small network of friends with money you have nowhere to go."
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