Times are tough at Premiere Properties. It seems that the salesmen are not making the required number of sales, so the head office has sent one of their top men to give them all a motivational speech. Alec Baldwin's character, an intensely profane man named Blake, introduces them to a sales contest in which the prize for first place is a Cadillac. The prize for second place is a set of steak knives. The prize for third place is immediate dismissal from the company. Ed Harris, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey round out the all star cast. Hoping to salvage their jobs before the contest is over, they desperately try to cut corners and engage in activities that are less than ethical.
Jack Lemmon plays Sheldon "The Machine" Levene, a veteran salesman who is at the end of his rope, emotionally and financially. He pleads with the office manager played by Kevin Spacey to give him access to the new Glengarry prospects, but to no avail. Lemmon gives one of the best performances of his film career as a broken man with increasingly limited options as far as selling real estate is concerned. He makes phone calls and even goes out to see a potential client, but all of his leads are dead ends.
Time is also running out for Dave Moss and George Aaronow (played by Ed Harris and Alan Arkin respectively). They have less than impressive sales records and Aaronow is the sad sack of the company, a poster boy of an ageing salesman who passed his prime a long time ago. Moss decides that to get out of their unfortunate predicament they should steal the Glengarry leads and sell them to another high profile salesman known only as Jerry Graff (he is never seen in person by the audience).
Al Pacino was a supporting actor in the film, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar award for his role of Richard Roma, the smooth talking salesman on a hot streak. He has also convinced one of his new clients to sign an expensive real estate contract (a cameo appearance made by Jonathan Pryce). He has pulled in most of the company's sales and is contemptuous of Dave Moss and his endless complaining. In the last thirty minutes of the film, the office has been robbed and miraculously, Levene has made a breakthrough and sold more than $80,000 worth of property.
The police question each man and determine that is was not Moss or Aaronow that was responsible for the robbery. Kevin Spacey's character, John Williamson, discovers that it was Levene who stole the leads and sold them to Jerry Graff. In the final moments Levene offers to give Williamson a substantial cut of all his sales. And as it turns out, Levene's last sale was bogus because his customers wrote a bad check. Williamson said, "They just like talking to salesmen." It's the end of the line for Levene, and the movie ends with him being called into Williamson's office by the police.
