Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“Okay, sit down,” he said. “It’s my fault. I’ve been letting Lisa show you. Nothing against Lisa, but she doesn’t always follow policy. Let’s write this one together, step by step. Carats total weight? Three, right? Three-point-oh-seven. That’s accuracy, Bobby. That’s what I am trying to teach you. Just like it says on the tag.”

L isa was good on the floor, and I watched her to learn, but the best saleswoman we had, and Mr. Popper’s personal favorite, was a woman — almost a girl — named the Polack. She sold without lying, and she had an energy you admired. People said she was the most beautiful woman in Fort Worth, Texas. She had won contests. Except for her eyes she could have been Jewish, or Moroccan. There was something about her that reminded you of a wide, shadowy desert. She had a thick eastern European brow and greasy lips. There were hail dents on the roof and the hood of her big green Mercedes. One time she took me to lunch in her other car, a wine-colored Cadillac convertible.

I was jealous of her. Jim treated her with an odd respect, because she was the one who had convinced him to come into the jewelry business. Jim was only a customer when he first met her. This was three years before I joined Jim in Texas. He was twenty-one years old and Kirby vacuum cleaner’s youngest regional sales manager. He was buying a stainless steel Cartier for an institutional client of his, Jim said. And he thought he would buy a case of Montblancs for his top sellers if they would make him a quantity discount. It was almost Christmas and the sales floor stood ten deep with buyers. It was the fat time. Jim stood in a corner away from the entrance doors next to a tall marble pedestal ashtray and smoked.

I had heard him tell the story a hundred times. After a while Jim grew bored of watching all the selling and he shouldered his way to the Patek and Breguet case. There was the Polack. Industry people said that the Polack took her first job as a jewelry salesperson because she liked the sex that went with jewelry. But that was not it. She was there because she liked the way the money smelled. “She didn’t know the first damn thing about jewelry,” Jim always said when he told the story. “Back then she didn’t even know how to sell. That was the first thing I noticed about her, in fact. Money. She even smells like it. That woman knows money better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

She was showing a platinum Patek Philippe to an elderly Vietnamese man in a black suit. Jim stood next to the old man.

“You don’t want one of those,” Jim said to the customer. “No name recognition. You want the Rolex. The Rolex is what you need. See?” He pulled back his cuff to show the old man. Jim had won it two years before. “Ten thousand Kirbys in one year,” he said. “That’s more than thirty vacuum cleaners a day. Five million seven hundred thousand dollars gross.” It said Kirby right on the dial. Not every company can do that with a factory dial. Kirby had a special deal with Rolex USA.

“That looks pretty good,” the man said to Jim. “But I prefer this one.”

“What do you think? The Rolex or that one there?” Jim asked the saleswoman.

“Let me take the links out of your watch,” she said to Jim. Jim always wore his watches loose, the same as I did. That’s where I learned to do it. The Polack probably planned to keep the links for the store or for herself. “To wear it like that is not good for the watch. This man knows what to buy.”

The Patek cost as much as five Rolex Presidents. But Jim did not know that, then.

“It’s comfortable that way,” Jim said. “Let’s see it on his wrist. I bet that watch looks great on him,” Jim said to her.

“It is a handsome watch,” the Polack said. “Old,” she said.

“Not old,” Jim said. “Distinguished.”

“That is what I said,” she said. “Sophisticated. You listen,” she said.

She wiped the Patek she was selling with a diamond cloth. The salesman next to her winced. But he did not correct her. Dust from the diamonds would scratch the soft metal of the head and the sapphire crystal.

“Try it on,” Jim said to the man.

The Polack put the watch on the man. She handled the man’s fingers and wrist like she was fixing a broken machine.

“Do you have a mirror?” Jim asked her.

“Of course,” she said. “I have a mirror,” she said. She went to find one. Jim nudged the man with his elbow as she walked away.

“Look at that. That’s something.”

They smiled at each other. The old man was missing all of his top teeth except two, one on either side, which looked like yellow fangs. He admired the watch on his wrist. He had slender, muscular wrists and the elegant Patek looked right on him. The pale platinum belonged on his leathered skin. He could see himself feeding his enemies to the crocodiles in the moat behind his mansion. The Polack returned with the mirror and angled it on its brass stand to show him the watch on his arm. There they were, the three of them, together in his own country. The deep jungle. Tigers coiled and watchful beneath the shadowy canopy. Hot wind in the saw grass. The rain boiling in the low clouds.

“Oui, c’est ça,” he said. “That is the one.”

“Power,” Jim said. The old man looked at him. “That’s what it says. Achievement. Victory. That’s triumph right there. Strength, too.”

The old man studied the watch.

“When’s the last time you bought yourself a Christmas present?” Jim asked him.

He fought the smile, but it appeared on its own. “I admit this is the first time,” he said.

You wait for that smile. You come to doubt you ever saw it. Then some customer lights it up at you and you recollect that you are not duping them at all, but helping them.

“I like this watch,” the man said. He nodded to the Polack.

She ran his credit card and then found Jim on the showroom floor.

“Good going, Mr. Suit,” she said. “But you are a suit. I can throw you out. I do not need a man to do it.”

“Nice sale,” Jim said.

“We have good watches,” the Polack said. “These are my own watches.”

“A guy like that is hard,” Jim said. “He worked for his money. Doesn’t trust anybody. Orientals are tough, the toughest.”

“So, Suit, you sell for Rolex? You are here to arrest me?”

“Arrest you? I sell vacuums,” Jim said. “But today I’m here to buy. You want to make another sale?”

“You don’t look like a vacuum cleaner man,” she said. “You are too young. My mother is someone who loves vacuum cleaners,” she said.

“Sensible woman,” Jim said. “But don’t kid yourself. Everyone loves a good vacuum cleaner.” When I was thirteen and fourteen, visiting him for the summer, I drove around with him and heard this pitch over and over. It was one of my favorites. “Love is the word. A good vacuum cleaner is an investment. A good vacuum cleaner you own for life. Pass it down to your grandkids. Save it for the next generation. Change the belt once a year and it will never age a day. Hardwoods, concrete, carpet. Everyone wants clean floors. Clean floors are like expensive shoes. Walk into someone’s house, what’s the first thing you notice? The shoes and the floor. They go together. Nothing worse than a dirty floor. White trash. Slovenly. It doesn’t matter if you have a maid, you still need a good vacuum cleaner. You can’t expect her to get your floors clean with a Hoover. You think a Hoover will last twenty years? Cheap plastic, too many parts. You can buy one at Target. Can you buy a Rolex at Target? Manolo Blahniks? Kirby vacuum cleaners have been the world’s leading professional vacuum cleaner for the home for more than half a century.”