It never ceased to amaze me the different kinds of folks who would find themselves knocking on strangers' doors to try to somehow get invited inside to pitch a set of encyclopedias. If you're imagining there's some sort of background or personality type that would correlate with such a career choice, you are wrong. If you're a faithful reader of this blog, you've already met Mitch, Andy, Andrew, Ann, John, Richard, Ray, Gloria, and others. Believe me, in my six months in the trenches of travelling door to door encyclopedia sales, there were many more, and they were all so different.
I guess most were from middle class families, but of course Richard had been a penniless Jamaican immigrant. The only generalization that is somewhat accurate is that about 80% of salesmen were men. But other than that, the lovely rainbow of Vancouver's diverse city was pretty much covered. Chinese, Jewish, evangelical Christian, angry feminist, long-haired rock musician, redneck, ex-soldier, pothead, high school dropout, college dropout, college graduate, Swedish immigrant, Jamaican immigrant, Bahamian immigrant from England (Jackie. She was so cute and perky!), an Indian (from Punjab) and an Indian (from a North Vancouver reservation).
Now that I mention it, remind me to tell you about the Indian and the Indian some day. What a couple of characters.
But as diverse as the sales crews were, I must admit that our customers were not quite so cosmopolitan. In fact, the vast majority of sales occurred in just two general demographic sets: rednecks and Indians.
By rednecks I mean white people lower-middle to middle-middle class living far from major urban areas, preferably in trailer parks. The trailer park angle is one worth exploring in a separate post. And as for Indians, you can look forward to a post called "Selling to Indians" coming soon to a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman blog near you!
