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Title: Selling Things

Author: Orison Swett Marden

Joseph F. MacGrail

Release Date: March 31, 2019 [EBook #59176]

Language: English

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Orison S. Marden

SELLING THINGS

BY
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
AUTHOR OF “PUSHING TO THE FRONT,” “PEACE, POWER AND PLENTY,” “THE
VICTORIOUS ATTITUDE,” ETC.

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF

JOSEPH F. MACGRAIL
INSTRUCTOR IN SALESMANSHIP AND EFFICIENCY FOR MANY LARGE SALES AND
INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
Thirteenth Thousand

TO MY FRIEND
CHARLES M. SCHWAB
THE MASTER EXECUTIVE, PRODUCER, SALESMAN.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE MAN WHO CAN SELL THINGS 1
II TRAINING THE SALESMAN 6
III THE MOST IMPORTANT SUBJECTS OF STUDY 14
IV MAKING A FAVORABLE IMPRESSION 19
V THE SELLING TALK OR “PRESENTATION” 28
VI THE APPROACH AND EXPRESSION 33
VII THE ABILITY TO TALK WELL 37
VIII HOW TO GET ATTENTION 42
IX TACT AS A FRIEND-WINNER AND BUSINESS-GETTER 47
X SIZING UP THE PROSPECT 62
XI HOW SUGGESTION HELPS IN SELLING 71
XII THE FORCE OF CHEERFUL EXPECTANCY 79
XIII THE GENTLE ART OF PERSUASION 86
XIV HELPING THE CUSTOMER TO BUY 94
XV CLOSING THE DEAL 105
XVI THE GREATEST SALESMAN—ENTHUSIASM 112
XVII THE MAN AT THE OTHER END OF THE BARGAIN 119
XVIII MEETING AND FORESTALLING OBJECTIONS 125
XIX QUALITY AS A SALESMAN 133
XX A SALESMAN’S CLOTHES 139
XXI FINDING CUSTOMERS 148
XXII WHEN YOU ARE DISCOURAGED 155
XXIII THE STIMULUS OF REBUFFS 163
XXIV MEETING COMPETITION: “KNOW YOUR GOODS” 177
XXV THE SALESMAN AND THE SALES MANAGER 184
XXVI ARE YOU A GOOD MIXER? 189
XXVII CHARACTER IS CAPITAL 207
XXVIII THE PRICE OF MASTERSHIP 213
XXIX KEEPING FIT AND SALESMANSHIP 226
APPENDIX—SALES POINTERS 250
SELLING THINGS
 CHAPTER I
THE MAN WHO CAN SELL THINGS
Cultivate all the arts and all the helps to mastership.

The world always listens to a man with a will in him.

Soon after Henry Ward Beecher went to Plymouth Church he received a letter
from a Western parish, asking him to send them a new pastor. After describing
the sort of man they wanted, the letter closed with the following injunction: “BE
SURE TO SEND US A MAN WHO CAN SWIM. Our last pastor was drowned while fording
the river, on a visit to his parishioners.”
Now, this is the sort of a man that is wanted everywhere, in every line of
human activity, the man who can swim, the salesman who can swim, who can
sell things, who can go out and get business, the man who can take a message to
Garcia, who can bring back the order, the man who can “deliver the goods.”
The whole business world to-day is hunting for the man who can sell things;
there is a sign up at every manufacturing establishment, every producing
establishment for the man who can market products. There is nobody in greater
demand than the efficient salesman, and he is rarely if ever out of a job.
Only a short while ago two companies actually went to law about a salesman
who transferred his connection from one to the other, his original employers
holding that he had no right to do so, as he was under contract (at a $50,000
salary) to them.
In spite of the fact that thousands of employees are looking for positions, on
every hand we see employers looking for somebody who can “deliver the
goods”; a salesman who will not say that if conditions were right, if everything
were favorable, if it were not for the panic, or some other stumbling block, he
could sell the goods. Everywhere employers are looking for some one who can
do things, no matter what the conditions may be.
There is no place in salesmanship for the man who waits for orders to come to
him. He is simply an order taker, not a salesman. Live men, men with vigorous
initiative and lots of pluck and grit, men who can go out and get business are
wanted.
 It should not be necessary to prove that training is needed for success in
salesmanship or in any business. Yet, because men have been compelled for
centuries “to learn by their mistakes,” to pick up here and there, by hard knocks,
a little knowledge about their work, there has been a prejudice against trying to
teach business by sane, scientific methods. Besides, in former times, the working
man and the mere merchant were supposed to belong to a low class of society,
apart from the noble and the learned, and little attention was given to their needs.
A man, too, was believed to be born with a natural aptitude for salesmanship or
business building, and this was supposed to be all-sufficient.
To-day there are many men and women attracted by the big profits in
salesmanship, who would like to become salesmen and saleswomen, but they
feel they have not this natural aptitude to insure permanent success.
It is true that, just as certain men and women are born with natural gifts for
music and for art, so certain men and women have, in a high degree, the natural
qualities which enable them to succeed in selling either their brain power or
merchandise. But while it is true that some people have more natural capacity
than others, it is not true to-day, and it was never true in the fine arts, in athletics,
or in commercial pursuits, that the untrained man is the equal of the trained man.
Man is always improving Nature, or, if you prefer, he is always helping
Nature. Central Park, New York, is more beautiful because the landscape
gardener has been helping Nature; the farmer is the reaper of bigger and better
crops because he is following the advice of the chemist, who tells him how to
fertilize the soil; the Delaware River and Hell Gate have become more easily
navigable, because the engineer has removed obstacles which Nature had placed
in those waters; Colorado’s arid lands are irrigated, thanks to the skill of the civil
engineer; the horticulturist aids Nature by grafting and pruning; the scientist
comes to the help of human nature with antiseptic methods in surgery; and the
inventor shows Nature how electricity can be put to numberless practical uses.
Let us not fool ourselves; we need to study, we need to be trained for every
business in life. And in these days the training by which natural defects are
overcome and natural aptitude is developed into effective ability can be obtained
by every youth. No matter how great your natural ability in any direction, in
order to get the best results, it must be reënforced by this special training.
The untrained man may get results here and there because he has natural
ability and unconsciously uses the right methods. The trained man is getting
results regularly because he is consistently using the right methods.
 Business men no longer attribute a lost sale, where it should have been made,
to “hard luck,” but to ignorance of the science of salesmanship.
The “born” salesman is not as much in vogue as formerly. Business is
becoming a science, and almost any honest, dead-in-earnest, determined youth
can become an expert in it, if he is willing to pay the price.
It is scientific salesmanship to-day, and not luck, that gets the order.
 CHAPTER II
TRAINING THE SALESMAN
The consciousness of being superbly equipped for your work brings untold satisfaction.

Efficiency is the watchword of to-day. The half-prepared man, the man who is ignorant, the
man who doesn’t know his lines, is placed at a tremendous disadvantage.

A student seeking admission to Oberlin College asked its famous president if

there was not some way of taking a sort of homeopathic college course, some
short-cut by which he could get all the essentials in a few months.
This was the president’s reply: “When the Creator wanted a squash, he
created it in six months, but when he wanted an oak, he took a hundred years.”
One of the highest-paid women workers in the world, the foreign buyer for a
big department store, owes her position more to thorough training for her work
than to any other thing. Between salary and commissions, her income amounts to
thirty thousand dollars a year. Speaking of her place in the firm, one of its
highest members said to a writer: “We regard Miss Blank as more of a friend
than an employee; and she came to us just twenty years ago with her hair in pig-
tails, tied with a shoe string; and she was so ill fed and ill clothed we had to pass
her over to our house nurse to get her currycombed and scrubbed before we
could put her on as a cash girl. Without training, she would probably have
dropped back in the gutter as an unfit and a failure. With training, she has
become one of the ablest business women in the country.”
There are a thousand pigmy salesmen to one Napoleon salesman; but if you
have natural ability for the marketing of any of the great products of the world,
all you need to make you a Napoleon salesman is sound training and willingness
to work faithfully. With such a foundation for success you will not long be out of
a job, or remain in obscurity, for wherever you go, no matter how hard the times,
you will see an advertisement for just such a man.
The term “salesmanship” is a very broad one; it covers many fields. The
drummer for a boot and shoe house, the insurance agent and manager, the banker
and broker, whose business is to dispose of millions of dollars’ worth of stocks
and bonds—all these are “salesmen,” trafficking in one kind of goods or another
—all form a part of the world’s great system of organized barter.
 There are three essentials which must be considered in deciding on
salesmanship or any other vocation, namely: taste, talent, and training. The first
is, by far, the most important of these essentials, for whatever we have a taste
for, we will be interested in; what we really become interested in, we are bound
to love, sooner or later, and success comes from loving our work.
To find out whether or not you are cut out for a salesman, you must first
analyze the question of your taste and your talent. In this matter, however, it
should be borne in mind that human nature, especially in youth, is plastic, and
that we can be molded by others, or we can mold ourselves. Even though one
has not a strong taste, naturally, or a decided talent for salesmanship, he can
acquire both, for even talent, like taste, may be either natural or acquired. By
proper training in salesmanship, which means the right kind of reading,
observing and listening, and right practicing, we can develop our taste and
ability so as to become good salesmen or good saleswomen.
The basic requirements for successful salesmanship are good health, a
cheerful disposition, courtesy, tact, resourcefulness, facility of expression,
honesty, a firm and unshakable confidence in one’s self, a thorough knowledge
of, and confidence in, the goods which one is selling, and ability to close. True
cordiality of manner must be reënforced by intelligence and by a ready
command of information in regard to the matters in hand. It will be seen that all
these things make the man as well as the salesman—when coupled with sincerity
and highmindedness, they can’t but bring success in any career.
The foundation for salesmanship can hardly be laid too early. The youth who
uses his spare time when at school, in vacation season, and out of business
hours, in acquiring the art of salesmanship will gain power to climb up in the
world that cannot be obtained so readily by any other means.
Fortunate is the young man who has received the right kind of business
training. No matter what his occupation or profession, such training will make
him a more efficient worker. Many youths have had fathers whose experience
and advice have been valuable to them. Others have been favored by getting into
firms of high caliber. As a result they have been in a splendid environment
during their most formative years, and in so far have had an inestimable
advantage in success training.
Many people have the impression that almost anybody can be a salesman, and
that salesmanship doesn’t require much, if any, special training. The young man
who starts out to sell things on this supposition will soon find out his mistake. If
salesmanship is to be your vocation you cannot afford to take any such
superficial view of its requirements. You cannot afford to botch your life. You
cannot afford a little, picayune career as a salesman, with a little salary and no
outlook. If salesmanship is worth giving your life to, it is worth very serious and
very profound and scientific preparation and training.
I know a physician, a splendid fellow, who studied medicine in a small,
country medical school, where there was very little material, and practically no
opportunity for hospital work. In fact, during his years of preparation his
experience outside of medical books was very meager. Since getting his M. D.
diploma this man has been a very hard worker and has managed to get a fair
living, but he is much handicapped in his chance to make a name in his
profession. He has a fine mind, however, and if he had gone to the Harvard
Medical School in Boston, or to one of the other great medical schools where
there is an abundance of material for observation and facilities for practice in the
hospitals and clinics, he would have learned more in six months, outside of what
he gathered from books and lectures, than he learned in all of his course in the
country medical schools. His poor training has condemned him to a mediocre
success, when his natural ability, with a thorough preparation, would have made
him a noted physician.
You cannot afford to carry on your life work as an amateur, with improper
preparation. You want to be known as an expert, as a man of standing, a man
who would be looked up to as an authority, a specialist in his line. To enter on
your life work indifferently prepared, half trained, would be like a man going
into business without even a common school education, knowing nothing about
figures. No matter how naturally able such a man might be, people would take
advantage of his ignorance. He would be at the mercy of his bookkeeper and
other employees, and of unscrupulous business men. And if he should try to
make up for his lack of early training or education, he must do it at a great cost
in time and energy.
Successful salesmanship of the highest order requires not only a fine special
training, but also a good education and a keen insight into human nature; it also
requires resourcefulness, inventiveness and originality. In fact, a salesman who
would become a giant in his line, must combine with the art of salesmanship a
number of the highest intellectual qualities.
Yet in salesmanship, as in every other vocation, there is not one qualification
needed that can not be cultivated by any youth of average ability and
intelligence. Success in it, as in every other business and profession, is merely
the triumph of the common virtues and ordinary ability.
In salesmanship, as in war, there is offensive and defensive. The trained
salesman knows how to attack, and he knows how to defend himself when he is
attacked. Everything contained within the covers of this book has for its object
the most effective offensive and defensive methods in selling.
 CHAPTER III
THE MOST IMPORTANT SUBJECTS OF STUDY
“Salesmanship is knowing yourself, your company, your prospect and your product, and
applying your knowledge.”

The qualities which make a great business man also enter into the making of a great salesman.

Salesmanship is fast becoming a profession, and only the salesman who is superbly equipped
can hope to win out in any large way.

Different authorities agree pretty much on the subjects which must be studied
or understood in the making of good salesmen, although they classify in
somewhat different ways the headings under which salesmanship should be
studied.
Mr. Arthur F. Sheldon, for instance, in his able Course, has divided the
knowledge pertaining to scientific salesmanship under four heads: 1, The
Salesman; 2, The Goods; 3, The Customer; 4, The Sale. The “Drygoods
Economist” has some excellent courses on salesmanship, in which they use
almost this identical classification, treating the subject under the four general
divisions: 1, The Salesman; 2, The Goods; 3, The Customer; 4, Service. Mr.
Charles L. Huff has added to the valuable data on salesmanship a book in which
he gives the following five factors as the headings under which the subject of
salesmanship should be covered, namely: 1, Price; 2, Quality; 3, Service; 4,
Friendship; 5, Presentation.
Every salesman is really teaching the customer something about the goods. He
is, so to speak, a teacher of values, or if you prefer, “a business missionary.” In
order to teach well he should have these most valuable assets: first, right
methods of meeting customer; second, thorough knowledge of self, of goods, of
customer and conditions; third, ability to meet competition, both real and
imaginary; fourth, helpful habits; fifth, good powers of originating and planning;
sixth, a selling talk, or something worth while saying; seventh, properly
developed feelings, which will add force to what he says.
In a brief and helpful course on salesmanship “System,” a business magazine,
gives great emphasis to the value of dwelling on five buying motives—1,
Money; 2, Utility; 3, Caution; 4, Pride; 5, Self-indulgence, or Yielding to
Weakness.
If a salesman will keep before his mind these five points, and if he appeals to
the human traits they indicate he will become a master in closing deals.
A great many methods are used to-day for rating employees, just as Dun and
Bradstreet rate firms. According to Roger W. Babson, there is a Mr. Horner, of
Minneapolis, who rates his salesmen and trains them along these lines:

HABITS OF WORK

1. Idealism
a. Understanding of business
b. Selecting Policy to suit age and
2. Intelligence
condition of applicant
c. Self-culture.
3. Hopefulness
4. Optimism
a. To clients
5. Uniform courtesy b. To office force
c. To fellow agents
6. Number of daily interviews
7. Concentration or effectiveness of work,
as to waste of time or energy.
a. To company
8. Loyalty b. To organization
c. To fellow agents
9. Attention to old policy holders
10. Enthusiasm.

A final and very vital point to consider is this: Why do salesmen meet
opposition?
 Mr. Huff, in his very practical and interesting book on salesmanship, has
classified under six general heads the causes of opposition. These are: First,
Prior Dissatisfaction; Second, General Prejudice; Third, Buyer’s Mood; Fourth,
Conservatism; Fifth, Bad Business; Sixth, Personal Dislike for Salesman.
It is up to the salesman to analyze the customer and decide just which of these
six points of opposition is causing him to lose business.
Just in the degree that he can locate the exact trouble, and then overcome it in
the proper way, will he be able to get the business which may seem at first
absolutely beyond him.
Any or all of these six causes of opposition will not overwhelm the master
salesman, but the mediocre or indifferent salesman is bound to collapse when
confronted with any one of them. And if he does not train himself to meet and
overcome opposition he is doomed to failure, or at least to a very poor grade of
success—not worthy the name.
Remember, Mr. Salesman, it is always up to you. Develop your brain power,
and then use that power for all it is worth.
 CHAPTER IV
MAKING A FAVORABLE IMPRESSION
Go boldly; go serenely, go augustly;
Who can withstand thee then!—BROWNING.

The personality of a salesman is his greatest asset.

A Washington government official called on me some time ago, and before he

had reached my desk I knew he was a man of importance, on an important
mission. He had that assured bearing which indicated that he was backed by
authority—in this instance the authority of the United States—and the dignity of
his bearing and manner commanded my instant respect and attention.
The impression you make as you enter a prospect’s office will greatly
influence the manner of your reception. It is imperative to make a favorable first
impression, otherwise you will have to spend much valuable time and energy
and suffer a great deal of embarrassment in trying to right yourself in your
prospect’s estimation, because he will not do business with you until you have
made a favorable impression on him.
Some salesmen approach their prospect with such an apologetic, cringing,
“excuse me for taking up your valuable time” air, that they give him the idea
they are not on a very important mission, and that they are not sure of
themselves, that they have not much confidence in the firm they represent or the
merchandise they are trying to sell.
Approach the one with whom you expect to do business like a man, without
any doubts, without any earmarks of a cringing, crawling or craven disposition.
Enter his office as the Washington official entered mine, like a high-class man
meeting a high-class man. You will compel attention and respect instantly, as he
did.
Your introduction is an entering wedge, your first chance to score a point. If
you present a pleasing picture as you enter you will score a strong point. Here is
where you must choose the golden mean between cringing and over-boldness. If
you approach a man with your hat on, and a cigar or cigarette in your mouth, or
still smoking in your fingers; if your breath smells of liquor; if you show that
you are not up to physical standard; if there is any evidence of dissipation in
your appearance; if you swagger or show any lack of respect, all these things
will count against you. If you present an unpleasing picture, if there is anything
about you which your prospect does not like; if you bluster, or if you lack
dignity; if you do not look him straight in the eye; if there is any evidence of
doubt or fear or lack of confidence in yourself, you will at once arouse a
prejudice in his mind that will cause him to doubt the story you tell and to look
with suspicion at the goods you are trying to sell.
A salesman once entered a business man’s office holding a tooth-pick in his
mouth. You may think it was a little thing, but it so prejudiced the would-be
customer against him at the start that it made it much more difficult for him even
to get a chance to show his samples. The business man in question was very
particular in regard to little points of manners, and was himself a model of
deportment.
I know of another salesman who makes a most unfortunate first impression
because he has no presence whatever, not a particle of dignity; he is timid and
morbidly self-conscious, and it takes him some minutes after he has met a
stranger to regain his self-possession. To those who know him he is a kindly and
genuinely lovable man, but he does not appear to advantage at a first
introduction. He is a college graduate, and was so popular and stood so high in
his class that he was proposed to represent it at commencement. He was
defeated, however, on the plea that he would make such a bad impression on the
public that he would not properly represent the class.
Self-possession is an indispensable quality in a salesman. It is natural to the
man who has confidence in himself, and without self-confidence it is hard to
make a dignified appearance or to make others believe in you.
What you think of yourself will have a great deal to do with what a prospect
will think of you, because you will radiate your estimate of yourself. If you have
a little seven-by-nine model of a man in your mind you will etch that picture on
the mind of your prospect. In approaching a prospect, walk, talk and act not only
like a man who believes in himself, but one who also believes in and thoroughly
knows his business. When a physician is called into a home in an emergency, no
matter how able a man may be at the head of the house, no matter how well
educated the mother and children may be, everybody stands aside when he
enters. They feel that the doctor is the master of the situation, that he alone
knows what to do, and they all defer to him. Everybody follows his directions
implicitly.
 You should approach a possible customer with something of this professional
air, an air of supreme assurance, of confidence in your ability, in your honesty
and integrity, confidence in your knowledge of your business. Your professional
dignity alone will help to make a good impression, and will win courtesy. It will
insure you at least a respectful hearing, and there is your chance to play your part
in a masterful manner.
A publisher who has a large number of book agents in the field, advises his
men to act, when the servant answers the door bell, as though they were
expected and welcome. He tells them, if it is raining to take off their rubbers, if it
is muddy or dusty to wipe off their shoes and act as though they expected to go
in.
The idea is to make a favorable impression upon the servant first of all, for if
they were to behave as though they were not sure they would be admitted,
apologizing for making so much trouble and assuming the attitude of asking a
favor, they would communicate their doubt to the servant, and would not be
likely to gain admittance, not to speak of an audience with the mistress. In short,
the carrying of a positive, victorious mental attitude, the radiating of a vigorous
expectation of getting a hearing will get you one.
The agent who rings a door bell with a palpitating heart, with a great big doubt
in his mind as to whether he ought to do it, and who, when the door is opened,
acts as though he were stealing somebody’s valuable time, and had no right to be
there at all, will create a prejudice against him before he opens his mouth. And
before he gets a chance to plead his cause he will probably find the door closed
in his face.
You should seek admission to a house as though you were the bearer of glad
tidings, as though you had good news for the family, as though you were
conferring a real favor on them by calling their attention to what you have to
sell.
Whatever you are selling, whether books or pianos, hardware or drygoods,
your manner will largely determine the amount of your sales. There are salesmen
who approach prospective customers just as though they not only did not expect
an order, but rather expected, if not to get kicked out, at least a polite invitation
to get out.
I was in the office of a business man recently, when a man of this stamp came
in and crept up to him with a sort of a sheepish expression on his face, as much
as to say, “I know I haven’t any right here, but I have come in to ask for a favor,
which I feel sure you won’t grant.”
“I don’t suppose you have an order for me to-day, have you?” he said. Of
course, the man, without a moment’s hesitation, said, “No.” And the salesman
crept out as though he had almost committed a sin by entering at all.
Now, there is something in every manly man which despises this self-
depreciating spirit, this false self-effacement, this creeping, cringing, apologizing
attitude, which robs one of all dignity and power. If you approach people as
though you expected a kick, you are pretty sure to get it. It may come in the form
of a gruff refusal, of a snub, or of a polite invitation to get out, but you are likely
to get what you invite—a rebuff of some kind.
If you approach a man at all, do it in a brave, vigorous, manly way. Do not
ruin your cause by giving him a contemptible picture of you at the very outset.
At least let him see that you are self-respecting, manly, that there is nothing of
the coward in you. Even if he declines to give you an order, compel him to
respect you, to admire you for your dignified, virile bearing. No one cares to do
business with a person he cannot help despising, while a man who creates a
favorable impression will at least get a hearing.
We recently asked a representative of a big concern how he managed to do so
much business with people whom very few salesmen can approach.
“Well,” he said, “I will tell you. One reason is that I never go to a man as
though I had no right to. I do not creep into his office and look as though I
expected a kick or a rebuff. I walk right straight up to him in the most manly and
commanding way possible, for I am bound to make a good impression on him,
so that he will remember me pleasantly, even if I do not get an order. The result
is that men who are very difficult to approach often give me business they refuse
to others because I am not afraid to approach them and to say what I want to say
pleasantly, without mincing or cringing or apologizing.”
This man says he has little difficulty in getting into the private offices of the
most exclusive business men, presidents of banks, great financiers, high officials
of railroads and other representatives of “big business,” and that they are his best
customers.
To sum up, your attitude, the spirit you radiate, your personality, will have
everything to do with your salesmanship. The impression you make will be a
tremendous factor in your sales. For this reason you should never approach a
prospect until you feel that you are master of the situation. Then you will carry
the conviction and give the impression of mastership, and that is half the battle.
 CHAPTER V
THE SELLING TALK OR “PRESENTATION”
Talk to the point; talk with reason; talk with force; talk with conviction.

Let your selling talk be direct, natural, and as brief as possible.

Much has been written on the question of a selling talk, and there is no little
misunderstanding on this all-important subject. Every one who has “a story to
tell” has what may be called “a selling talk”; that is to say, a best way of setting
forth what he has in his mind. Some prefer to call it the “presentation.” A
“presentation” may consist of a few sentences, or it may consist of a half hour’s
talk. Salesmen in many lines cannot prepare a fixed story or address, such as
would be given by a statesman addressing a legislative body, or by a clergyman
in a sermon, or by an actor giving a monologue, and yet, large numbers of
salesmen, through failing to have a simple, clear, carefully worded talk, fail to
get a customer interested in their merchandise. The question of a selling talk
should be left to the judgment of the sales manager. He will be well qualified,
ordinarily, to tell just what this should consist of, and, also, when to make
exceptions to the use of a selling talk. Inspiration will not come just when the
salesman wants it. Many points get lost in the convolutions of the brain. Too
much or too little talk may be indulged in, unless a salesman knows just what he
is going to say and how to say it. Do not be misled, however; there are many
men who speak poor English, and who do not have what would properly be
called a “selling talk,” yet they succeed as salesmen. These men do, however,
know the merits of their goods, and they have a peculiar way of putting it up to
the customer to judge for himself.
I once saw nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of underwear sold, with scarcely a
word spoken. The salesman spread out his goods, and the buyer examined them
hastily, but carefully, and made the selection, simply asking by what number the
goods were known, and the price. I saw not long ago, about five thousand
dollars’ worth of furs (muffs and neck-pieces) bought, with very few words
spoken. In both these cases it must be remembered that buyers and sellers were
well known to each other; there was mutual confidence; the houses were
reliable, and unsatisfactory goods would mean loss of future business, as well as
a return of the goods.
 There are certain main selling points which can be selected and should be
selected for every line of goods. Some of these selling points will be more
effective with one class of customers than with another. Here is where the
salesman’s judgment comes into play. Let us take the single example of the
white goods business. In this line, there are five main selling points which I once
heard given by Charles A. Sherman, of Sherman & Sons, leading merchants, of
New York. These five points are:
1. Artistic merit of goods, beauty of design, etc.;
2. Intrinsic value;
3. Comparison with rival goods;
4. Degree of conformity to prevailing modes or fashions.
5. Adaptability to buyers’ needs, price, etc.
Around these may be woven a brief or a lengthy talk, according to the needs
and the disposition of the customer with whom the salesman is talking. Let your
selling talk be direct, natural, and as brief as possible.
The presentation of your proposition involves, principally, a clear, simple and
suitable description of your goods. The cleverest salesmen arrange the points in
a logical order, working up from the least importance to the strongest.
Always put the question of price off just as long as possible, unless the price is
so low that this point alone adds much to the other selling points, as for instance,
setting forth the prices in a 5 & 10 cent store, or giving the prices of special
bargains.
Be willing to answer all questions and objections made by your customer, but
forestall, as far as you can, the objections he is likely to make. You can do this
by exerting the power of a strong personality, especially by showing much
enthusiasm, which tends to burn up the objections a customer is inclined to
make. No matter how positive or how graphic you are in your descriptions,
always be natural, otherwise your mannerisms will detract from the effectiveness
of your talk.
The best authorities consider it a decided handicap if the customer “turned you
down” at the start by a negative answer, or a negative attitude. When you foresee
that the customer is about to say, “No,” or to turn away, strive to keep his mind
in the balance until you can attract his attention to some new features of your
goods, or to some old features, in a new way.
 The length of time given to a presentation, will vary with the goods and with
the customer. Experience with each particular line, and the advice of your sales
manager always should be followed.
On the floor of the Stock Exchange there is no such thing as a presentation, or
the getting of favorable attention, in the strict interpretation we give to these
words. Men are there alert to give favorable attention to certain securities. They
know in advance the strong points of these securities, and when the right price is
quoted the decision to buy will come quickly. This holds true in many instances
where staple goods are offered at current prices.
 CHAPTER VI
THE APPROACH AND EXPRESSION
 No matter how well posted a man may be in the science and technique of salesmanship, his
actual sales will depend very largely upon his personality.

“The man or woman wishing to present to me a business proposition,” said a

high class, successful merchant, “must have a good address and an agreeable
manner and appearance, or he will not get a hearing. The reason is, it would be
impossible for me to see half the people who approach me with schemes;
therefore, I reject without a hearing all those that are not presented by people
who have an agreeable manner and good address. I take it for granted that a first-
class proposition will be presented by a first-class man, and vice versa.”
Whether the customer comes to you, or you go to the customer, there are
certain very simple things to keep in mind. The first is the important part
personality plays in selling. The appearance and the manner of a salesman,
together with the tactful enthusiasm which he manifests, and the concentration
which he puts into his work, all tend to inspire confidence. The salesman must
consider his customer’s business, and sometimes his social position. The
temperament, also, of the customer, as well as the best time and place to see him,
must be taken into consideration. One of the things so often neglected by
salesmen is to get points of contact from the surroundings, such as pictures on
the wall, books and papers on the desk, as well as from the prospect’s attire.
Keep in mind these four aids to a right approach:
First: Entertain a feeling of equality with your customer.
Second: Remember that you have a favor to bestow. Assume the rôle of a
benefactor.
Third: Show friendliness. There should be the heart-touch in every real
approach.
Fourth: Be observing. Look for suggestions in your surroundings, for a point
of contact.
We express ourselves not only through the words we utter, but by the tone of
the voice, the expression of the face, our gestures, and our bearing. All five of
these elements should be carefully considered, because the salesman who would
have the greatest success not only must be understood, but he must be felt. It is
important to be clear and forceful in our language, and for this purpose a
thorough knowledge of English grammar and rhetoric will aid the salesman.
The accompanying chart should prove helpful.
 EXPRESSION

“When all is said and done, it is the choice and use of words that determines
whether or not we succeed in expressing our thoughts and feelings clearly and
adequately.”—“Manual of Composition and Rhetoric,” by Gardiner, Kittredge
and Arnold.
The five elements affecting expression of ideas are:

Rich,
Refined,
1. Voice Deep,
Modulated,
Full, distinct articulation.
Before sale,
2. Bearing During ”
After ”
In talking,
3. Gestures ” displaying samples,
” presenting reading matter or contracts.
4. Facial expression.
Violated by
1. Slang;
2. Obsolete words;
a. Purity
3. Provincialisms;
4. Foreign words;
simple 5. Newly coined words.

Diction Results from

1. Thorough knowledge of
suitable subject;
2. Extensive vocabulary;
b. Precision
3. Power to discriminate;
4. Use of specific for general, or
general for specific term, as
5. Language idea requires.
One idea at a time;
a. Unity
Stick to subject.
Have clear ideas and use
appropriate words.
simple b. Clearness Use good grammar. Beware of
technical words.
Style
c. Energy or Results from brevity, clearness,
suitable Force directness and judicious use
of figurative language.
Smooth, euphonious speech;
d. Elegance or
Alliteration.
Harmony
Read best authors.
 CHAPTER VII
THE ABILITY TO TALK WELL
“Words have worth, only when properly expressed.”

It is the conquest, the conquest of the heart, by words that speak kindliness and assure
confidence, which distinguishes the prosperous salesman, justly proud and progressive.—HENRY
FRANK.

Many a man with a good brain fails as a salesman, or remains a mediocre one,
because he has never learned to express himself with ease and fluency. A lame,
hesitating, poverty-stricken speech is fatal.
The ability to talk well is to a man what cutting and polishing are to the rough
diamond. The grinding does not add anything to the diamond. It merely reveals
its wealth.
It is an excellent thing to cultivate readiness in conversation, for this will
incidentally develop other powers.
Every salesman should have a good broad working vocabulary. To hesitate
and feel one’s way for words in trying to make a sale is fatal. The salesman must
express himself easily, clearly, and forcefully, otherwise he will be placed at a
certain disadvantage. He must be not only a fluent talker, but also a convincing
one.
The ability to talk well is a great aid to success in any line of endeavor, but if
our heads are empty, mere facility in words will not help us much. Not “words,
words, words,” but “points, points, points” win. This is especially true in
salesmanship.
A good salesman should be well read on general topics as well as in his
special line. There is no other way in which a person will reveal a shallow or a
full mind, a narrow or a broad one, a well-read or a poverty-stricken mentality so
quickly as in his speech.
To be a good conversationalist, able to interest people, to rivet their attention,
to draw them to you naturally, is to be the possessor of a very great and valuable
accomplishment. It not only helps you to make a good impression upon
strangers, it also helps you to make and keep friends. It opens doors and softens
hearts. It makes you interesting in all sorts of company. It helps you marvelously
to get on in the world. It sends you customers, it attracts business.
It is a deplorable fact that indifference of speech is one of the characteristics
of the American people. We are not only poor conversationalists, but we are poor
listeners as well. We are too impatient to listen. Instead of being attentive and
eager to drink in the story or the information, we have not enough respect for the
talker to keep quiet. We look about impatiently, perhaps snap our watch, play a
tattoo with our fingers on a chair or a table, twitch about as if we were bored and
were anxious to get away, and frequently interrupt the speaker before he reaches
his conclusion. In fact, we are such an impatient people that we have no time for
anything except to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd, to get the
position or the money we desire.
Poor conversationalists excuse themselves for not trying to improve by saying
that “good talkers are born, not made.” We might as well say that good lawyers,
good physicians, good merchants or good salesmen are born, not made. None of
these would ever get very far without hard work. This is the price of all
achievement that is of value.
To be a good talker one must be a good observer, a good listener, a good
reader, a good thinker, and a clear speaker. It will not do to mumble or to slur
over your words. You should speak distinctly, plainly, and not too rapidly. Don’t
talk like a drone or a parrot. Put force, thought and feeling into your words; fill
them full of meaning, so that people will want to hear what you say.
You know what an impression a great orator makes upon an audience when he
measures his words and sends them out with deliberation, with feeling and force.
They are infinitely more impressive than the excited, impassioned shouting,
which comes from an over-wrought mind.
Readiness in conversation is largely a matter of practice. But the voice,
especially the American voice, needs to be trained.
There is nothing more disagreeable than a harsh, discordant voice, unless it be
the high-pitched, nasal intonation so characteristic of our people, or the whine
which is frequently heard from those who are narrow-minded and discontented.
A low, clear, well-modulated voice indicates refinement and should be carefully
cultivated by the salesman who wishes to express himself forcefully.
It is very difficult to convince a prospect that he should buy your merchandise
when you are pleading your cause either in high-pitched, sharp, shrill tones, or in
mumbling or nasal ones which have no magnetism, no attractiveness in them.
 A clear, deep, melodious voice tends to unlock minds and to win confidence,
while a harsh, shrill, discordant voice antagonizes us.
The ability to talk well, to interest and hold others, increases our self-respect,
our confidence, and gains us a ready entrance to places from which we would
otherwise be excluded. If you expect to be a first-class salesman, a man of power
in any line of endeavor you should cultivate your voice and practice the art of
conversation.
 CHAPTER VIII
HOW TO GET ATTENTION
You must interest your customer before you can hope to influence him.

“Shape your argument in harmony with conditions; don’t try to force a square block into a
round hole.”

There are three principal ways in which to get the favorable attention of a
prospect; the first is “affording pleasure;” the second, “exciting admiration,” and
the third, “arousing curiosity.” As often as possible we should combine all three.
If our words and our expression radiate genuine, cheerful good-will, then the
customer is pleased to meet us. We can cause him to be still more pleased, if we
praise, in a very tactful way, some of the good qualities which we quickly
observe in him.
Our appearance, from head to foot, is what causes admiration. We should
always be well groomed; hair properly cut and carefully arranged; teeth well
cared for; eyes bright; linen immaculate; clothes well pressed; cuffs and collar
free from frayed edges. Loud colors and loud jewelry always detract from the
power of the salesman. Heels that are not run down, and shoes that are well
polished, are final factors to consider.
We arouse a customer’s curiosity by asking him suitable questions. It is a good
idea to prepare him for the kind of an answer you expect, by some positive
suggestion, before you ask the question. For instance, a man who wishes to sell a
beautiful piece of jewelry can say: “I consider this a very beautiful stone, which
has been set most artistically.” Then he can say to the customer; “What do you
think of that jewel?” Invariably, the customer will tend to agree with him, and
this helps to get their minds together.
The late Elbert Hubbard used to say that he always began an advertisement
with the statement of an incontrovertible fact. The public read it and agreed. It
could give rise to no antagonistic or opposing train of thought. It established a
coördinate bond between the writer of the ad. and the reader. Then Hubbard
followed with statements concerning the article advertised. With these the reader
might not agree, but at least he started reading the ad. in a friendly spirit.
 Remember this: it is never best to begin to talk much about your goods until
you have secured real attention, not simply a civil attention, for courtesy’s sake,
but the genuine thing. Real attention is “a thought spiller and a thought filler.”
The customer “spills” his thoughts, and “fills” in the salesman’s thoughts.
Some salesmen have found it a big advantage to get the customer to do some
little thing for them, such as holding a sample, loaning a pencil, getting a piece
of paper on which to figure, etc. Requests for favors of this kind, however, must
be made in a tactful way. The idea back of this ingenious method is to start the
will of the customer acting according to the salesmen’s will.
If the moment seems favorable you should take the order at once and dispense
with all salesman’s art; but after taking the order, proceed to strengthen the
customer in his decision by calling attention to certain strong points of merit in
your goods, and certain strong reasons which you believe will make the
customer glad he has made his purchase. Be careful, however, to avoid over-
talking. This is a blunder that has cost many a man dear.
The art of a salesman shows itself in his ability to focus his energies quickly
and to size up his prospect in many respects at a glance. He must see what kind
of a temperament he has to deal with. He must know what to do and what to say
to each particular man. Before entering a strange office he has no idea what sort
of a man will confront him, whether one who is fat or lean, of a nervous or a
phlegmatic temperament, whether vigorous or in delicate health, whether a thin-
skinned, sensitive man or one of a coarse type with a rhinoceros hide.
In calling on regular customers, the salesman must be alert for passing whims
that modify their disposition. He must take in a man’s mood at a glance. If he is
in a bad mood, he cannot approach him as if he were in a happy mood, as though
he had just had some good news. He must be able to tell by his appearance
whether he is pleased because business is booming, or whether he is disgruntled,
his mind clouded either by business or domestic troubles. In fact, a salesman
must be able to recognize quickly and deal adequately with all sorts of men and
moods, and business conditions, or he will fail at the start to get the sort of
attention on which his sales depend.
 CHAPTER IX
TACT AS A FRIEND-WINNER AND BUSINESS-GETTER
Tact eases the jolts, oils the bearings, opens doors barred to others, sits in the drawing-room
when others wait in the reception hall, gets into the private office when others are turned down.

Whether you get an order or not, leave a good taste in your prospect’s mouth so that he will
always have a pleasant recollection of you.

Some time ago a man and his wife went into a large store in an eastern city to
buy a chandelier. The man, in a rather querulous tone, asked to be shown a
Renaissance chandelier. “Now, be sure,” he said to the salesman, “to show me a
real Renaissance, small and not too expensive.” The salesman perceived he had a
difficult customer to deal with, but one who appeared to have a fixed idea in
mind. Being extremely tactful, he knew his first task was to humor his customer,
and then try to find out exactly what type of fixture had been pictured in his
mind. By cordiality and an exchange of remarks on general subjects, the
salesman eased the man’s mind, and by skillful questions found out exactly what
sort of chandelier he wanted. Then he expressed himself pleased at having a
customer with clear ideas about the sort of article he wished, as it made it so
much easier for the salesman to suit him.
Only tact could ever have won over that man and satisfied his whim.
Blessed are they who possess tact! Let them rejoice and be glad in the
possession of an inestimable gift, and let those who have it not bend all their
energies to its acquisition.
Tact is one of the greatest aids to success in life. As a friend-winner and
business-getter it is invaluable. One prominent business man puts tact at the head
of the list in his success recipe, the other three things being; enthusiasm,
knowledge of business, dress.
I know a man who solicits subscriptions for a periodical, who has such an
exquisite way of ingratiating himself into others’ favor that he gets nine
subscriptions, on an average, out of every ten people he solicits. His tactful
approach has won you over before you realize it, and it is much harder for you to
refuse even the thing you do not want than to take it.
Tact enables you to pass sentinels, gates and bars, gain an entrance to the very
sanctum sanctorum where the tactless man never enters. Tact gets a hearing
where genius cannot; it is admitted when talent is denied; it is listened to when
ability without it cannot get a hearing.
As “every fish has its fly,” so every person can be reached, no matter how
odd, peculiar or cranky by the one who has tact enough to touch him in the right
place.
What is this miracle worker called Tact?
Tact is variously defined as “Peculiar skill or adroitness in doing or saying
exactly that which is required by or is suited to the circumstances”; “It is the gift
of bringing into action all the mental powers in the nick of time”; “It is a
combination of quickness, firmness, readiness, good-nature and facility.”
Webster’s dictionary gets at the kernel of this wonderful quality. Tact, it says, is
“adroitness in managing the feelings of persons dealt with; nice perception in
seeing and doing exactly what is best in the circumstances.”
It is in “managing the feelings” of his customer that the tactful man scores his
strongest point. It is in sensing his moods, in being able to put himself in his
place that he is always equal to the situation, that he always exercises that “nice
perception in seeing and doing exactly what is best in the circumstances.”
One of the best means of acquiring a tactful manner is to try to put yourself in
your prospect’s place, and then act toward him as you would like to have some
one act toward you in like circumstances.
You are very busy, troubled about a lot of things. You may be short of capital,
you may have big notes coming due, business may be dull, many things may
have been going wrong with you. You may have come to your office upset by
domestic troubles, you may not feel well, however well you look. Perhaps
yesterday was broken up by all sorts of interruptions. You started out this
morning resolved to do a splendid day’s work, and hoping that you would not be
bothered with callers. Perhaps you do not feel like talking business. You may
have a lot of things on your mind which are perplexing you, hard problems to
solve; the reports of business put on your desk this morning may have been
anything but encouraging.
In fact, you feel “out of sorts” and wish you did not have to see anybody all
day. You are longing for a little time to yourself to think things over, to get your
bearings, when in comes a salesman’s card. You do not want to see him and
would give most anything to get rid of him, although there may be a possibility
that he has something that you would like, but you do not want to see him at that
particular time.
“Why couldn’t the man have come some other time?” you ask yourself.
Against your will you say: “Well, tell him to come in.” You feel grouchy,
grumpy, you do not even feel like greeting him pleasantly, and you growl out a
“good morning.”
The salesman sits down. Your whole mind is braced against him. You do not
care to see him, to talk with him. Everybody braces against a salesman. He is
usually put in an unfortunate position. Instead of trying to make it easy for your
visitor you make it hard for him. You make no concession if you can help it. You
make him fight every inch of his way for your favor.
The tactful salesman sees your mood at once, and he knows he has a hard
fight ahead of him; he has to win you over inch by inch. You begin to make all
sorts of excuses; you do not need new stock at present, business has been dull,
your shelves are loaded down with goods, and you tell him that times are bad,
the outlook is anything but promising. He does not oppose or contradict you. On
the contrary, he sympathizes with you; he is patient, courteous, affable, but all
the time he is trying to get the thin edge of his wedge into your mind. He knows
what would win him over if he were in such a mood; his wife or mother
probably knows. He has to be won over; force, argument, reason, logic will not
do it, only tact will do the trick.
If you have made a study of human nature, learned to size up people quickly,
you will sense a prospect’s mood, even though he should try to conceal it, and
you will have no difficulty in imagining yourself in his place. He has the same
human qualities and the same fundamental passions as yourself. You must
always be ready to pour oil on his wounds, not vinegar.
A salesman must not only use all his resourcefulness in business logic, but he
must bring into play all his powers of pleasing. He should always come to his
customers in a cheerful mood. No matter how upset he feels; no matter what
unfortunate news he has had in the morning’s mail about his sick wife, or the
children lying almost at death’s door, he must not show any sign of his troubles.
A salesman may be in just as unfortunate a plight as his customer is, and even
worse, yet he is forced to hide his feelings, and must try to “make good” under
all circumstances.
The tactful salesman is “all things to all men.” Not that he is deceitful or
insincere, but he understands different temperaments, different dispositions,
different moods, and readily adapts himself to all. He keeps his finger on the
mental pulse of his prospect, and keeps track of his mental attitude. He knows,
for instance, that the moment a prospect shows signs of being bored the
salesman should quit, and try later, or otherwise he will prejudice his case fatally,
so that the next time he calls this bored suggestion will come to the mind of the
prospect, who will refuse to see him.
I was recently talking with a man who said that a salesman who did not know
his business had just taken a half hour of his valuable time, trying to sell him a
bill of goods that he really did not want. He said the man did not know enough to
see that he was making no impression, that he was not convincing him. And
although he took out his watch several times, turned around nervously in his
chair, kept taking up letters from his desk, making all sorts of hints and
suggestions for the salesman to get out, yet he still kept on trying to make a sale.
The only redeeming quality about him, he said, was his persistency.
Now, ill-timed persistency is simply lack of tact; there is nothing praiseworthy
in it. You should be able to tell by the look in your prospect’s eye whether you
are really interesting him or not, and if you are not you cannot convince him that
he needs what you have to sell.
Getting solid with a prospect, making a favorable impression upon him,
unlocking his mind, is very much like making love to a girl. You cannot
browbeat, you cannot be arbitrary or disagreeable; only the gentle, attractive,
tactful methods will win. The least little slip on your part may close the door
forever. No force will answer, it is all a matter of attraction and conviction. No
level-headed man is going to buy until he is convinced, and tact is the most
powerful convincer in the world.
Tact is never offensive. It is always a balm, allaying suspicion, and soothing
and pleasing. It is appreciative. It is plausible without being dishonest,
apparently consults the welfare of the second party and does not manifest any
selfishness. It is never antagonistic; it never opposes, never strokes the fur the
wrong way, and never irritates.
Little seven-by-nine salesmen are constantly putting stumbling blocks in their
own path. They are always “putting their foot in it.” They persist when
persistency is ill timed. They make some unfortunate remark or allusion. They
are not good students of human nature; they put up a poor sort of an argument,
the same sort of talk to every man, to men of different prejudices, different ages,
different dispositions. In other words, they are not tactful, and they are all the
time tripping themselves up, getting into snarls, and making blunders which lose
them business.
Some one says: “The kindly element of humor almost always enters into the
use of tact, and sweetens its mild coercion. We cannot help smiling, oftentimes,
at the deft way in which we have been induced to do what we afterwards
recognized as altogether right and best.” There need be no deception in the use
of tact, only such a presentation of rightful inducements as shall most effectively
appeal to a hesitating mind.
A public school teacher reproved a little eight-year-old Irish boy for some
mischief. The boy was about to deny the fault when the teacher said, “I saw you,
Jerry.” “Yes,” replied the boy as quick as a flash, “I tells them there ain’t much
you don’t see with them purty black eyes of yours.” The native wit of that
youngster would make him a good salesman. We do not know whether it
appeased the teacher, but it certainly showed a readiness to size up and deal with
a delicate situation that would have done credit to an older head.
The following paragraph, in a letter which a merchant sent out to his
customers, is an example of shrewd business tact:
“We should be thankful for any information of any dissatisfaction with any
former transactions with us, and we will take immediate steps to remedy it.”
Think of the wealthy customers that have been driven away from big
concerns, by the lack of tact on the part of a salesman. A successful business
man recently told me his experience in buying a suit of clothes at one of the
leading clothiers in New York City. “The salesman who waited on me,” he said,
“showed me various suits of all colors and styles. He did not interest me in any
particular one. He distracted my attention, being plainly indifferent and showing
that he did not care whether I bought or not. After spending an hour’s time, I left
the place in disgust. I said to myself, ‘A house carrying thousands of suits, and a
good salesman, should certainly sell me one suit.’ I went to another house. Then
the purchase became to me more than anything else a study of salesmanship,
how various salesmen handle customers. The salesman at this other place gained
my confidence right at the start, showed me only three suits, interested me in a
particular one, showed me why I should buy that one, and within eighteen
minutes’ actual time I paid the price, and now I am enjoying the wearing of that
suit.”
This shows how even the best quality of merchandise will go back to the shelf
unless handled by a conscientious, tactful salesman.
It is true that there are always certain customers in every large establishment
who are very hard to convince. They are suspicious, and often very disagreeable
and difficult to get on with, but their patronage is valuable, and every employer
prizes the salesman who can handle these difficult customers, who can please
them and send them away friends instead of enemies of the house.
It must be remembered that the real test of salesmanship is the ability to
handle difficult customers. Most people don’t realize what is best for them to
buy; they can’t make up their minds without the salesman’s help, or they are
peculiar in their nature and require tactful management.
Many women make a business of going about among the department stores,
perhaps without the slightest idea of buying anything. It becomes a sort of fixed
habit with them. Some of them have a chronic habit of indecision. They will run
about the stores for weeks before they make up their minds to buy a thing that
they need. They are so afraid that they will see something cheaper and much
better suited to their needs after they have purchased that they postpone
purchasing as long as possible. If they want a pair of shoes, a dress, a hat, or
some other article, they will go round all the stores in town looking, or
“shopping,” as they call it, before they buy.
I know of a very clever saleswoman in a big store who has marvelous skill
and tact in approaching these “lookers” or “shoppers” and turning them into
customers. She begins by asking if the lady has been waited upon, and if there is
anything she can do for her? With a pleasant smile, in a very sweet voice, she
gets into conversation with her, and before the habitual “looker” realizes it she
has become a purchaser.
To know what to do, what to say, at just the right moment is capital a thousand
times more valuable than money capital, for a man with rare tact will start in
business without a dollar and make a greater success than the tactless man who
starts with a fortune. How many people in this country to-day owe their success
and fortune more to the possession of tact than to ability? Tact will distance
ability without it every time.
A man who with a party of friends had been fishing a long time became quite
disgusted because he did not get a bite when everybody else was pulling in the
speckled trout. After awhile he discovered that he had no bait on his hook. He
might have been fishing there yet and never have had a bite.
Everywhere in society and in the business world we find men fishing with
baitless hooks. They have no use for people with fine manners. They are gruff,
uncouth. They do not believe in catering to the feelings of others. They have
never learned the art of baiting things. They call a spade a spade. They have no
use for frills, for decorations. They believe in striking out straight from the
shoulder every time, no matter what the conditions.
Many tactless people go through life trailing bare hooks and they wonder why
the fish do not bite. They do not know how to adjust themselves to conditions.
They are misfits. They appear to have been fitted for some rougher sphere and to
have been dropped by accident to the earth amid conditions totally unsuited to
them.
The tactless salesman is a misfit. He must either learn how to bait his hook
properly, or else go into some other business for which he is better fitted.
 CHAPTER X
SIZING UP THE PROSPECT
The art of all arts for the leader is his ability to measure men, to weigh them, to “size them
up.”

A great authority on salesmanship said: “Any one can call upon a prospective
buyer and go away without an order.” It is up to the salesman to get what he goes
after. If he knows how to size people up readily, he will be far more likely to get
what he goes after than the man who can not do this. The ability to read people
at sight is a great business asset.
Marshall Field was an adept in character reading. He was always studying his
employees and gauging their possibilities. Nothing escaped his keen eye. Even
when those about him did not know that he was thinking of them, he was taking
their measure at every opportunity. His ability to place men, to weigh and
measure them, to detect almost at a glance their weak and their strong points,
amounted to genius.
If General Grant had had the same ability to read politicians and to estimate
men for government positions that he had for judging of military ability, he
would have made a great President. Unfortunately, he was obliged to depend too
much upon the advice of friends in those matters. The result was that, as
President, he did not maintain the high reputation he had made as a general.
The salesman ought to make a study of his power of penetration, of his
character-reading ability. He ought to make it a business to study men and the
motives which actuate them.
To be an expert in reading human nature is just as valuable to a salesman as a
knowledge of law is to a lawyer, or as a knowledge of medicine is to a physician.
The man who can read human nature, who can “size up” a person quickly, who
can arrive at an accurate estimate of character, no matter what his vocation or
profession, has a great advantage over others.
The ability to read human nature is a cultivatable quality, and we have a great
opportunity in this country, with its conglomerate population, to study the
various types of character. It is an education in itself to form the habit of
measuring, weighing, estimating the different people we meet, for in this way we
are improving our own powers of observation, sharpening our perceptive
faculties, improving our judgment.
The salesman who knows anything about human nature, for instance, doesn’t
need to be told it won’t do to approach a big business man, the head of a great
establishment, as one would approach a small dealer. He will follow a different
method with each, according to their different standing and temperament.
No two mentalities are exactly alike, and you must approach each one through
the avenue of the least resistance. One man you can approach through his fads. If
he is passionately fond of music or crazy about golf; or if he is a connoisseur in
art, in sculpture, or in any other line, this may give you a hint as to the right line
of approach.
If you see by a man’s head and face that he has a strong mentality, that he is,
perhaps, “from Missouri,” you must approach him through argument, through
reason. You cannot approach him in the same way you would an impressionable,
fat, jolly-natured man. Then the man who is selfish, domineering, imperious,
who thinks he knows it all, the man to whom you never can tell anything, must
be handled in quite a different manner from any of these.
Some men will take a joke, others will consider it an impertinence. One man
is only convinced by logical argument; another by the judicious use of flattery.
The frigid mental temperament will not respond to pleasantry; nothing but cold
logic will appeal to him; the expansive, good-natured man is often reached
through his fad or hobby. Sometimes you get a point of contact with your
prospective customer by finding that you belong to the same lodge. Of course, it
is always a good thing to find out as much as possible about a man before you
call on him. Such knowledge often gives a great advantage in sizing him up
properly.
If you are a good reader of character, however, you get at a glance an
impression of your prospect that is fairly reliable. You can tell whether you are
facing a little, weazened, dried-up soul, a man who is stingy, selfish, grasping, or
whether he is a man of generous impulses, magnanimous, open-minded, kind-
hearted. You can tell whether he is good-natured, jolly; whether it will do to
crack a joke with him, or whether he is austere and stern; whether you can
approach him in an easy, friendly manner, or whether you must keep your
distance and approach him with a proper sense of his dignity and importance.
Even if your prospect only assumes a stiff, stand-off demeanor you must treat
him as though it were perfectly natural, otherwise he will be offended.
 In sizing up a man the first thing to do is to make up your mind what kind of a
heart he has. If you conclude that he has a good heart, and that he is honest and
above board, even though he may be cold in appearance, and may prove a bit
close-fisted, you will stand a much better chance in doing business with him than
you would with a man with small shifty eyes, and the earmarks of shrewd, sharp
characteristics apparent in every feature and every look.
You can read a man by his facial expression much better than you can by the
bumps on his head, because the muscles of the face respond to the passing
thought and reflect the idea, the emotion, every phase of the mental state. You
know how quickly a joke, something funny, is expressed in the facial muscles;
how quickly they respond to any mental state-disappointment, bad news,
discouragement, sorrow, anger. The muscles of the face, its varying expressions,
change with the thought. In other words, the facial expression indicates the
condition of a man’s mind. By this you can tell whether your prospect is in a
good or a bad humor, whether he is a human icicle, cold, unfeeling, or a human
magnet, tender, kind, sympathetic.
Salesmen who are poor judges of human nature, who cannot size people up,
often have to batter away a long time at a wrong approach when, otherwise, they
could sail right into a man’s mind through the right avenue. By making head
study, face study, man study, an art, you can very quickly get your line of
approach. Then you will not blunder and lose time in trying to set yourself right.
Many a man calls upon a prospective buyer and goes away without an order
because he didn’t know how to size him up. He had never studied this important
side of his business.
Remember that if you make a wrong approach you may have hard work to get
a hearing at all; your prospect may close his mind against you at the start, and
you may not be able to get into it, no matter how earnestly you try, when, if you
had approached him along the line of least resistance, you could have sailed right
in. In fact, the man would have invited you in.
Do not be hasty in your judgment or make up your mind too quickly in sizing
up people. Hold your decision in abeyance until you have read off the character
hieroglyphics written on the face and person, and in the manner, for all these are
significant, and each means something. In other words, read all the earmarks or
character labels on a man, get in all the evidence you can before acting on your
first quick impression, because a great deal depends on the accuracy of your
judgment.
 Every man’s face is a bulletin board; it is a program of the performance going
on inside, and the important thing is to learn to read it not only quickly, but
accurately.
The facial expression, the attitude, the manner, the language, the look of the
eye, are letters of the character alphabet which spell out the man. Everything that
is natural, spontaneous, unpremeditated, is indicative of certain qualities he
possesses; and if the man is putting on, if he is posing, you can pierce the mask
of pretense and discount it.
If you are a good reader of character, after a few minutes study you can put
together the letters of the impressions you have received and spell out the sort of
a man you have to deal with, for he is covered all over with tags visible to those
who have learned to read them.
Some people judge character largely by a particular feature—the mouth, the
chin, the eye, the nose, etc. Napoleon used to depend a great deal upon the size
of a man’s nose. “Give me a man with a big nose,” he used to say when choosing
men for important positions. A large nose is supposed to indicate great force of
character. It is said that every one resembles in greater or less degree some
particular animal. Many people base their reading of character on this animal
clue. Look out for the fox face; beware of the wolf face, the bird-of-prey face,
for it is believed that the man who bears a strong resemblance to some animal
will also usually have many of that animal’s characteristics.
The main point for the salesman is to get the right start in approaching the
buyer. If he makes a close study of human nature he will seldom if ever make a
mistake in sizing up his man.
 CHAPTER XI
HOW SUGGESTION HELPS IN SELLING
The ability to influence or induce people to purchase what you have to sell is a mental art that
will repay cultivation.

“Salesmanship is the art of selling to the other fellow something he needs but doesn’t know
it.”

“A sale is a mental thing. It results from harmonizing certain mental elements which enter into
all common agreements between men.”

A sharp-witted lawyer after successfully defending a man accused of horse-

stealing, asked him in confidence, after the trial, if he were really guilty.
“Well, Mister,” replied the man, “I thought at first I had took the critter, but
after listening to your speech I concluded I hadn’t.”
The power of suggestion may be used for base and illegitimate ends or for
honorable and legitimate ones. It is his suggestive power which makes the
smooth, long-headed promoter dangerous. He uses it to make people buy what
they do not need, or to palm off on them fraudulent or spurious goods. The
victims of these unscrupulous promoters, when under the influence of a
suggestive anæsthetic, will mortgage their homes, their furniture, draw their last
dollar from the savings-bank, borrow every dollar they can, to obtain the thing
which is made to appear so desirable that they cannot see how they can get along
without it.
Now, suggestion is just as effective when used for a lawful and honorable
purpose as for an unlawful and dishonorable one. One salesman succeeds where
others fail, largely because of his greater suggestive power. He draws such a
vivid description of the merchandise he is selling, makes it seem so very
desirable, that his prospect feels he must give him an order. The salesman knows
he is selling a good thing that it is to his customer’s advantage to buy. The
transaction is therefore of mutual benefit to both parties, the buyer as well as the
seller.
Suggestion has been defined as “whatever creates or inspires thought.” As a
science, suggestion “shows us how to start and steer thought.” The five senses
are the channels which bring us impressions from without. “An act of the will or
some association of ideas” brings impressions from within; this latter is auto-
suggestion.
Suggestion can help you to upbuild and develop yourself, to educate and train
yourself in spirit, mind, and body. “In building up character a man must have
spiritual and moral backing.” “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” This is
the essence of auto-suggestion. “Thought is a creative force.” It is a “motive,
impelling, sustaining” force. Hence, when auto-suggestion keeps thought
“working in the right direction” we have a powerful backing in all our
undertakings. By thinking definitely, steadily and strongly on useful and exalted
sentiments we come into the realization of our thought aspirations. Briefly, we
create within what we mentally desired steadily and intently. Thus we may build
our character, ever “improving, developing, and adorning.” Suggestion is our
“working force.”
“It (suggestion) can also help you to shape the desires and direct the will of
the customers you seek to influence.” In the first place, we direct the will of our
customers by our very personality, which has been developed through auto-
suggestion. Then the various steps of attention, interest, desire, and, finally,
resolve, in the customer, must be induced by suggestion. He must forget himself
and his own senses, ultimately; or at least, he must have had all his faculties so
brought into harmony with those of the salesman that he readily accepts the
salesman’s ideas. “If you remember that suggestion is merely the working of the
subjective mental force,” says Mr. Sheldon, “and if you consider that the activity
of the subjective mind is in ratio to the strength and depth of the suggestion, you
have a pretty clear idea of the use that may be made of suggestion in the progress
of a sale.”
I have heard the story of a preacher, in Washington, who told his congregation
so dramatically and so convincingly that all humanity was hanging over hell by
the single thread of a cobweb, that, when the climax was reached, one man, a
very learned one too, was clinging frantically to a pillar.
The simple study of psychology reveals that the activities of the will must be
stirred up by approaching and capturing the outlying sentinels, namely the
intellect and feelings. We get attention through the senses, increase attention to
interest through the intellect, change interest to desire through the feelings, and
finally, in decision we have induced the will to act. To be sure, there is no
mathematical dividing line, no architecturally apparent flights of steps;
nevertheless, the true salesman is perfectly conscious of the different stages of
progress of the customer’s mind, and he leads him easily and naturally from one
to the other. The importance of this point in selling is emphasized by a writer in
“Business Philosopher,” who says: “It is just as reasonable to expect your
prospect to reach a favorable decision without first having been brought through
the three earlier stages—attention, interest and desire—as to expect water to run
up hill.”
A sale is a mental process, and depends largely upon the quality and the
intensity of the mental suggestion, and the confidence communicated to the
would-be purchaser’s mind.
Suggestion is properly used in the conduct of a sale when it is unobtrusive,
and in no way savors of the pompous, swaggering, hypnotic methods of the
impertinent intruder. Suggestion should be “honest and well aimed.” It should
help the customer’s mind and inspire confidence. Suggestions to the customer
should have for their object “not to overcome or dethrone the will, but simply to
guide and influence it.” Hypnotism, consisting in dethroning a man’s will, is “the
complete setting aside of the objective mind.” Every salesman should study
psychology. He should be able to understand the mental laws by which the mind
of his prospect acts, so as to be able to read his mental operations.
Character is largely made up of suggestion; life is largely based upon it.
Salesmanship is pretty nearly all suggestion.
The salesman should always keep in mind this great truth,—“The greatest art
is to conceal art.”
Suggestion, by its very nature, is subtle, if rightly used.
The salesman who has great skill in the use of suggestion helps the mind of
the customer, without making him feel that any influence is being exerted. He
leads his customer to buy after the same method by which Pope suggests men
should be taught:
 “Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.”

Let the customer feel that he is buying, not that you are selling to him.
Professor Hugo Münsterberg, in an article on the psychology of salesmanship,
said: “If the customer knows exactly what he wants, and has made up his mind,
no suggestion is needed.” It is then a case of letting well enough alone. An ill-
timed or negative suggestion may spoil a sale, as in the following instance.
A farmer once went to town to buy a self-binder. He looked at one binder and
was so well satisfied that he was about to buy it. At this point the salesman said:
“I’ll tell you, this binder has given us very little trouble.”
Now, this farmer wasn’t looking for a binder that was going to give him even
a little trouble. He had troubles of his own. That one suggestion scared him
away. He went out and bought a binder from a salesman who said, “This binder
has given us excellent satisfaction.”
In the offices of a New York business house there is a quotation framed,
which serves the purpose of a very effective suggestion. This house is in the
paper business, and, naturally, they wish to impress upon all buyers the value of
using good quality paper. Here is the quotation which, I am sure, has suggested
to many customers the advisability of buying good quality paper: “A printer
recently uttered this truth: ‘Printing doesn’t improve the paper any, but, for a
certainty, good paper adds considerably to the appearance and worth of
printing.’”
Psychology in selling is in reality only a new name for the principles which
good business men, expert salesmen, have used in all times. Diplomacy, tact,
cheerfulness, the good-will habit, and the suggestion of confidence—all these
form an important part of business psychology.
 CHAPTER XII
THE FORCE OF CHEERFUL EXPECTANCY
The habit of expecting great things of ourselves, expecting the best things to come to us, calls
out the best that is in us and brings the best to us.

Anybody can get “no” for an answer. A negative attitude attracts a negative response—and
most people become negative without realizing it.

If I had a school of salesmanship I would make a specialty of the philosophy of expectancy. I

would never lose an opportunity of driving home this philosophy of expecting to make good. I
would drive home this lesson of expecting success, expecting to win out, until it should become a
dominant note in the salesman’s life.

When a boy I used to go trout fishing in a rough New Hampshire stream with
a noted fisherman. He understood the trout and their habits; he knew where the
good holes were and the rocks behind which the big trout were waiting. I would
fish on one side of the stream and he on the other, and he would catch as many
trout as he could carry, while I caught very few.
When this man started out to fish he would say he knew that he was going to
get a big string of trout. Whenever he threw in his line he expected to get a trout.
I, on the other hand, had no such hope or confidence, I did not know trout and
their habits as he did, and I did not expect to catch any. The consequence was I
hardly ever got a bite, while the trout nearly always went to his hook.
This is just the difference between a cracker-jack salesman and a poor one.
The former knows his business thoroughly and expects to succeed. He
approaches his prospect with the air of a conqueror, as a man in the habit of
winning. The latter is not well posted, or he fears he won’t succeed. He goes to
his prospect in fear and trembling, with doubt in his mind. He doesn’t believe he
will get an order, and, of course, he doesn’t.
You should approach every prospect courageously, confidently, not only at the
top of your physical condition, but also at the top of your mental condition. You
positively must be hopeful, you must expect to take an order. Doubt, fear, or
anxiety will queer your sale, because you will communicate whatever is in your
own mind to your prospective customer. We radiate our moods. Our doubts and
fears are very contagious.
 If you carry your goods in a hearse you will not sell them. Do not approach a
customer with a long, sad, disappointed countenance, as though you had just
returned from a funeral. Remember you are a salesman, not an undertaker. Go to
him with a face filled with hope and cheer, with confidence and assurance.
If you are a winner, your whole canvass will be conducted as though you
expected to change the prospect’s mind before you get through with him, no
matter how antagonistic he may be, or how determined at the outset not to
purchase.
There is a good deal of truth in the remark, “If you cannot learn to smile, you
cannot learn to sell.” The best salesmen are cheerful, optimistic, hopeful. They
appreciate the commercial value of a smile, of always looking pleasant.
Optimism is contagious. Everybody likes a sunny soul.
I knew a young man who would not impress people as having any marked
ability, and yet this young man got fifteen thousand dollars salary, and did
business enough to warrant it. He had a perfect genius for making friends.
People seemed to be drawn to him as naturally as iron filings are attracted to a
magnet. Everywhere he went he was the center of a circle, whether on a train, in
a store, or in a hotel corridor. Everybody wanted to get near him. He seemed to
radiate a hearty good cheer and good-will towards everybody. There was nothing
mean or narrow about him. He was generous to a fault. He was always ready to
jump up and grip you by the hand and shake it as if he was really delighted to
see you—and he was. There was nothing put on. He loved everybody and
wanted to help them. He was in some ways not a good business man, but his
customers always anticipated his visits, and would say, “Isn’t it about time for
Charlie to be around? It does one good to see that fellow. He is all sunshine.”
Everybody knew him on his Western route, which he traveled for years. The
hotel clerks all liked him and they tried to give him the best room possible
whenever he came, often saving one for him for days. He was always given the
best seat in the dining-room and the best waiter, and when the orders were called
off in the kitchen the waiter would say, “Give me an Al steak for Charlie, for he
is such a good fellow.” Wherever he went the door flew open to him. He did not
have to push hard, as others do, to get in, for everybody knew that when he came
it meant a good laugh and pleasant memories.
A strong determination and tenacious persistence will sometimes enable a man
to become a fair salesman, even when he lacks a pleasing personality or a
persuasive manner. He conquers from sheer force of continual pounding, until he
wears his would-be customer out. But a pleasing personality, charm of manner, a
sunny disposition, an optimistic outlook upon life, genuineness, honesty of
purpose, and simplicity, when accompanied by a positive mentality and robust
determination, are the qualities which win out in a big way.
Everything depends upon the attitude of mind with which you approach a
difficulty. If you are cowed before you begin, if you start out with an admission
of weakness, a tacit acknowledgment of your inability to meet the emergency
that confronts you, you are foredoomed to failure. Your whole attitude lacks the
magnetism that attracts success.
A book agent sometimes comes into my office, and I know by the way he
enters that he does not expect to make a sale. Instead of walking with his head
up, with an air of confidence and assurance, he sneaks in, apologizes, and asks
me to please do him the honor to give him two or three minutes of my valuable
time. He has lost his first chance by making a bad impression upon me, and it
takes more time than I can give him to overcome it. He is beaten before he
begins.
Quite another sort of agent calls on me occasionally, and I always buy from
him whether I want what he has for sale or not. He enters with such an air of
modest assurance, such confidence and expectancy in his bearing; he is so
cheerful and interesting, that I positively cannot turn him down. He wins at the
very outset by making a good, quick impression upon me, and getting my
confidence.
Dr. Frank Crane, in an article on “A Consumer’s Views on Salesmanship,”
gives the salesmen among other valuable points, these:
“First of all, be good-natured. I here and now confess that nine-tenths of what
induces me to buy, is the ability of the seller to jolly me along. Cheerfulness and
signs that you feel good, enjoy life, and are full of glee inside, are better than a
letter of introduction from Mr. Rockefeller. Avoid personal intimacies. Let me
talk about myself, and look interested while I am explaining, but don’t speak of
yourself any more than you can help. Take an ax and chop the pronoun ‘I’ out of
your vocabulary. What do you care?—Jolly me along.”
When Dr. Crane says to “jolly” him along, he does not mean that a salesman
should be frivolous, or deceitful. He simply means that he ought to make a
customer feel good, make him realize his importance. Show your customer that
you are interested in his needs and his problems.
If you really believe in your heart, and expect, that you are going to sell, you
will communicate your faith to your prospect. This faith suggestion, if
vigorously backed by the magic of polite persistence, and consistent
cheerfulness, will tend to produce results like itself, just as the doubt, the failure
suggestion, produces a failure result.
 CHAPTER XIII
THE GENTLE ART OF PERSUASION
He is great who can alter my state of mind.—EMERSON.

“Don’t struggle up hill when you can work on the level.”

When I was editor of a big magazine I sent an assistant to interview a young

man who had had most remarkable success in the life insurance business, to get
from him the secret of his rapid rise.
When my assistant returned I asked him if he had succeeded in getting his
interview. “No,” he said, “but the insurance manager got me to take out quite a
large insurance policy.”
This was a triumph of the art of salesmanship. The insurance man actually
made his would-be interviewer forget what he had gone after, and induced him
to buy something he had not before thought of buying, yet something which,
undoubtedly, it was to his advantage to buy.
Why is it that one man will so easily change our whole mental attitude and
make us do voluntarily the very thing that we had no idea of doing an hour
before, and thought we never could do, when another might have talked to us
until doomsday about the same thing, and never changed our mind a particle
regarding it? Why is it that one man will convince us that we ought to buy an
article which we were sure a few minutes before that we not only did not need or
desire, but under no circumstances would buy?
Because he is a past master of the gentle art of persuasion.
How little we realize what a large part persuasion plays in our life. The
clergyman, the teacher, the lawyer, the business man, the salesman, the parent,
each is trying to persuade, to influence, to win over others to his way of thinking,
to his principles, to accept his ideas.
Some characters are so tactful, so sunny, so bright, cheerful, and attractive that
they never have to force or even to request an entrance anywhere. The door is
flung wide open and they are invited to enter, just as we invite beauty, loveliness
and sunshine to enter our mind. Their very presence has a subtle influence in
soothing and pleasing. They know how to persuade almost without uttering a
word.
Of the many elements which enter into scientific salesmanship, none is more
essential than that of persuasion.
A salesman often finds a would-be customer’s mind absolutely opposed to his.
He does not want the merchandise, or at least he thinks he does not, and is
determined not to buy it. He braces himself against all possibility of persuasion,
of being influenced to do what he has decided not to do. A little later, however,
he cheerfully buys the article, pays for it, and feels sure he really wants it. His
entire attitude has been changed by the art of persuasion, of winning over, which
was all done by successive logical steps, each of which had to be taken in order,
or failure would have resulted.
The first step was to get the man’s attention,—otherwise the salesman could
have done nothing with him. This of itself is often a difficult matter—to get the
attention of a man who is determined not to look at your goods, who had made
up his mind not to buy, and is braced against you. But a good salesman does not
try to persuade a man to buy until he has not only secured his attention, but also
thoroughly interested him in his proposition. Then he arouses his desire to
possess the thing he has for sale, and when this is done, the sale is practically
over.
I was talking recently with some friends about the rapid rise of a young
salesman which surprised everybody who knew him. One of my friends said that
the whole secret was his marvelous power to persuade people, to change their
mind, to make a prospect see things from his point of view. He said he had never
before met another man who had such remarkable success in changing another’s
mind to his way of thinking. “And this,” he added, “is the essence, the
quintessence, if you will, of salesmanship—the power to make another see
things as we see them.”
Persuasive power, the ability to win others over to our way of thinking, our
way of looking at things, is not a simple quality. It is in reality made up of many
admirable qualities which have more to do with the heart than the head. It is one
of the lovable traits of human nature, which enables one to win out in many
instances where head qualities would be of no avail.
The best and most successful teachers are not always the most learned, but
those who get hold of the hearts of their pupils, whose kindness, personal
interest, and sympathy inspire them to do their best. The same qualities which,
apart from scholarship, make the best teachers, also make the best salesmen.
While education and intelligence are indispensable, it is not so much smartness,
long-headedness, cunning, as the warm human heart qualities which make a
salesman popular and successful.
There is a sort of hypnotic power which passes for persuasiveness, and
enables a man to get orders at the outset, but it is not based on honesty, and in
the long run seriously hurts a man’s business.
A magnetic, spellbinding salesman will often bring to his house larger orders
than some other salesman, but in the end will lose customers and injure himself
and his concern, while the one who does not sell nearly as much to start with
will make many more friends, and will hold his customers, because he looks out
for their interest, and only tries to sell them what is to their advantage to buy. He
will not work off a large bill of goods upon them which he knows in his heart
they should not buy. He studies their needs, and so wins their confidence and
good-will.
The ability to make others think as you do is a tremendous power, and carries
great responsibility. If it is not kindly and honestly used it will prove a
boomerang and injure most the one who uses it. He will soon become known as
a “spellbinder,” and people will not do business with him.
Mere “palaver and soft soap” do not cut nearly so much of a figure in
salesmanship as formerly. The time has gone by forever when a salesman is
chiefly measured by his ability to tell good yarns and crack jokes with his
prospects. Honesty first, is the business slogan to-day. Spellbinding methods are
not in demand. While you may, and should, be as affable as you please, you must
be thoroughly sincere.
Even in trying to approach a man through his hobby, great caution must be
used. If he is a shrewd, long-headed man he is going to see through any
subterfuge, and if he gets the slightest idea that you are trying to “string” him, or
if he sees the slightest evidence of insincerity or cunning, if he sees any plot
back of your eye, your game is up. We must first believe in a man’s integrity,
even though he may deceive us, before he can persuade us to do what we
thought we would not do.
To-day it is the clean, straight-from-the-shoulder talk, cold facts that the
average business man wants. Yet the men of persuasive powers can present those
facts in such a way that the prospect will be made to feel that the salesman is his
friend and acting entirely in his interest. No man relishes the idea of being
“managed,” and, no matter how much he loves flattery, he will question your
motive if you attempt it.
Very tactful and just praise, however, will help your cause considerably with
the average man. Remember that your prospect will be always on his guard
against any sort of deceit. He will be looking for evidences of insincerity. He has
no intention of allowing himself to be duped or gulled. Above all, remember that
there is no substitute for sincerity in any field. There is nothing that will take the
place in our lives of absolute transparency, simplicity, honesty, kindness. The
Golden Rule is the only rule of conduct that will bring true success in any
business.
 CHAPTER XIV
HELPING THE CUSTOMER TO BUY
Satisfied customers are a perpetual lip-to-lip advertisement.

“Help your customer to buy. Don’t merely sell to him.”

A Quaker merchant who had made a fortune in Liverpool, when asked how he
had made it, replied, “By a single article of trade in which every one may deal
who pleases—civility.”
This self-same “article of trade” has been the making of the celebrated Bon
Marché in Paris. The clerks in this famous establishment are instructed to show
people, whether customers or not, every possible consideration. Strangers in
Paris are invited to visit the Bon Marché, and are taken in hand the moment they
enter the store by those who can speak their language, are shown over the whole
place, and every possible attention paid to them, without the slightest influence
being brought upon them to purchase. A similar courtesy is shown visitors in
many well-known American concerns.
It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most. Everybody
knows that the salesman is supposed, at least, to treat a customer decently; but
the over-plus of service, the extra courtesy and kindness, the spirit of
accommodation, the desire to be obliging, the patience and helpfulness in trying
to render the greatest possible service—these are the things customers appreciate
most highly, and these are just the things that tie customers to certain houses.
Whether you are a traveling salesman or selling things behind a counter,
nothing will add more to your success than the practice of that helpful courtesy
which is dictated by the heart rather than the head, or by mere convention.
Doing a customer a good turn has proved the turning point in many a career.
Nothing will make such a good impression upon an employer as the courtesy of
an employee who has so ingratiated himself into the hearts of his customers, and
so endeared himself to them, that they will always seek him out and wait to buy
from him even at great inconvenience to themselves. Every employer knows that
a clerk who attracts trade is worth ten times as much as one who drives it away.
It is said that when John Wanamaker went into business, he paid a salesman
thirteen hundred dollars the first year, which was equal to all the rest of his
capital. He did this because of the man’s wonderful personality, his ability to
attract trade, to please and hold customers so that they would come again.
I know a man who has built up a big business largely because he is always
trying to accommodate his customers, to save them expense, or to assist them in
buying things which he does not carry.
To-day our large business houses make a great point of pleasing customers, of
obliging them and catering to their comfort in every possible way. Waiting-
rooms, reading-rooms, with stationery, attendants, and even music and other
forms of entertainment, are furnished by many of them.
There is a premium everywhere upon courtesy and good manners. They are
taken into consideration in hiring employees just as much as general ability.
Great business firms find it is impossible to carry on extensive trade without the
practice of courtesy, and they vie with one another in securing the most affable,
and most obliging employees possible in all departments. They look upon their
employees as ambassadors representing them in their business. They know that
they cannot afford to have their interests jeopardized by objectionable,
indifferent clerks. They know that it will not pay to build attractive stores, to
advertise and display their goods, to do everything possible to bring customers to
them, and then have them turned away by disagreeable, repellent clerks.
Many young men going into business seem to think that price and quality are
the only elements that enter into competition. There may be a score of other
reasons why customers flock to one store and pass by a dozen half-empty stores
on their way. Many people never learn to depend upon themselves in their
buying. They do not trust their own judgment, but depend upon the clerk who
waits on them. A clerk who knows his business can assist a customer
wonderfully in a very delicate way, by suggestion, by his knowledge of goods, of
qualities, of fabrics, of durability.
The courtesy and affability of clerks in one store pull thousands of customers
right past the doors of rival establishments where the clerks are not so agreeable
or accommodating. Everybody appreciates courtesy and an obliging disposition,
and a personal interest goes a great way in attracting and holding customers.
Most of us are willing to put ourselves to some trouble to patronize those who
show a disposition to help us, to render us real service.
What is true in regard to the man or woman who sells in a store applies with
equal or even greater force to the man who goes on the road to sell.
 The motto of a well-known salesman, “Help your customer to buy, don’t
merely sell to him,” is one that it would pay every salesman to adopt. Put
yourself in your customer’s place, help him with your knowledge of what he
really needs; mix sympathy, kindliness, helpfulness with your sales; you can
give him a lot of valuable points. You are traveling all the time and constantly
coming in contact with new ideas; give him suggestions from other merchants in
his line.
A wide-awake, progressive salesman, without violating confidences, can help
his customers wonderfully by keeping them posted on what his competitors are
doing, on the latest ideas in his line, the new and original methods. You may
know of some novel and striking methods of reaching the public, of displaying
merchandise and arranging store windows, or of reaching customers through
unique local advertising. Give your customer every suggestion you can. You
may see that he is a good business man in many respects, but seriously lacks
something which you could help him to supply. If he finds you are always trying
to help him, that every time you come round you give him some good
suggestions, it will be pretty hard for your competitor to get his order. He will
prize a man who gives him helpful suggestions.
For instance, a salesman I know, who travels for a cutlery and hardware
concern, makes a specialty of keeping his customers posted as to the
arrangement of goods to the best advantage in window display. He keeps track of
the latest ideas, new wrinkles in his line, and gives his customers the benefit of
them. If he sees that any of them are getting into ruts, or that they do not have
good business systems, very tactfully, without offending them, he suggests
certain new devices, say, for saving expense, little short-cuts in business
methods, new ideas in filing cabinets, or some other labor or time-saving device
which it will be to their advantage to adopt. In his kindly, unobtrusive way the
man binds his customers to him by bands of steel so that no other salesman
would have any show whatever in getting them away from him. He has built up
such a large patronage for his house that rival houses have made him most
tempting offers for his services.
The extra service for which he is not paid does more in helping this man to get
and hold customers than the actual routine for which he receives his salary.
Business men who are at a distance from the big centers of trade fully realize
what this extra service means to them, and are glad to keep in touch with a
helpful, up-to-date salesman.
I know a successful merchant who is so afraid that his business will get into a
rut, that his standards will deteriorate through familiarity with his surroundings,
that every little while he invites friends to go all through his establishment in
order to get the advantage of their fresh impressions, their criticisms and
suggestions.
The salesman should always remember that he has an opportunity to pick up a
great many new, progressive ideas which customers, who are closely confined to
their business or who do not have the time to go about much, would not be likely
to know about, and he can render them, as well as himself, a very great service
by keeping them posted and up-to-date. Traveling salesmen are also traveling
business teachers.
I know of no one quality which will help a salesman so much as an obliging
spirit, the desire to be helpful, to accommodate, and to assist buyers.
Large jobbing concerns are finding that it is to their own interest to look after
the interests of their customers, to aid them in every possible way, such as
suggesting attractive ways of advertising, giving them new ideas and suggestions
as to the best arrangement of their merchandise and advising them on other
important points.
Many large concerns aid their customers financially. Mr. H. N. Higinbotham,
Marshall Field’s well-known credit man, was noted for helping customers,
especially when they were financially embarrassed. He often assisted them to get
mortgages and loans, and, in fact, frequently made personal loans to the
customers of his house. Of course affairs of this sort must go to the credit man,
but at the same time a salesman often leads up to them, and thus relieves the
embarrassment of customers.
Some time ago a manager of a large concern told me that he helped a
customer to get a thirty-thousand-dollar mortgage on his property, an
accommodation he was not able to get at the bank on a strictly business basis.
Many small houses, especially in the West, have come to look upon the jobbing
and wholesale houses they trade with as real friends, and whenever they are hard
pushed for money they are the first places they go to for help.
Hundreds of Western concerns, through the initiative of the salesman, owe
their prosperity to-day to the assistance of the jobbing house which carried them
through hard times. When they could not have secured the ready cash they
needed upon purely business grounds, firms accommodated through the efforts
of a salesman become life customers and a perpetual advertisement for the
concern which has helped them, always saying a good word for it whenever
possible.
There are a hundred and one small ways in which both wholesale and retail
salesmen can accommodate their trade. Be alert to do all these trifling personal
favors, which mean so much and cost only a little thoughtfulness.
A word of caution in regard to promises. Guard carefully against making
promises you can’t fulfill. In your zeal to help the customer do not, for instance,
promise deliveries that are next to impossible or very hard for your house. You
thereby hurt yourself, your customer and your firm. Be accommodating, but
always use common sense.
Your customer may forget a lot of things which you say to him, but he will not
forget how you spent your time and energy in trying to show him that which
would be a real benefit to him; your effort to give him new ideas, to show him
how he could be a little more up-to-date; your explaining to him how other
progressive men in his own line were doing things. There is nothing which
makes a better impression on a man or woman than the unselfish effort to please,
to be of service, and the demand for salesmen and all sorts of employees who
will put themselves out to do this is constantly growing. There was a time when
human hogs could do business, provided they had the goods and could deliver
them, but all this has changed; to-day the art of getting on in the world is largely
the art of pleasing.
 CHAPTER XV
CLOSING THE DEAL
Don’t talk yourself out of a deal.

There are many men trying to sell merchandise who are almost salesmen. They seem to have
about every qualification excepting the ability to close a sale.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

A man who was waiting impatiently outside the church for his family, asked
the janitor if the pastor was not through with his sermon. “Yes,” said the janitor,
“he is through, but he hasn’t stopped yet.”
Many a salesman queers a sale by not stopping when he is through—his
tongue outlasts his brain. He has not tact enough to see that when he has
convinced his prospect it is time to close the deal. Others again make the mistake
of lingering after their object is accomplished, squandering their own and their
prospect’s time to no purpose.
If there is anything a business man appreciates in a caller it is a regard for the
value of his time. Every minute is precious with a busy man, and directness,
conciseness of statement, saying a lot in a few words, always makes a favorable
impression.
“When you get what you went after, quit,” said one big selling agent of a
national concern. “Many a sale has been queered because the salesman ‘stuck
ground’ after he had signed his man.”
“I knew a salesman who put over a big deal one afternoon. Then he lighted a
cigar and sat talking with the man to whom he had sold. Presently the telephone
rang. It was a long-distance call from the buyer’s financial headquarters.
Evidently the president of the concern was advising his representative to
economize, to cut expenses everywhere he could, to lay off men, and to buy only
necessities.
“I’m glad you didn’t go,” said the buyer to the salesman, after he had hung up
the receiver; “I find my appropriation has been decreased and I won’t be able to
take those goods now. This saves my writing you to cancel the order.”
 “That salesman always said he talked himself out of that deal. He felt sure that
if he had not been there, the buyer would have kept the goods and would have
started his economy on the next salesman.”
Some salesmen with many splendid qualities talk themselves out of business.
They tire out their prospect, bore him, disgust him. They do not have tact enough
to see that when a prospect begins to move about uneasily in his chair and to
look around the room that he wishes they would get out. Now, when a man feels
pressed for time, or when you no longer interest him, it is a great mistake to try
to hold him or to recover his lost interest. It is high time to stop and close the
deal.
Brevity and directness are the very soul of business, and make a good
impression on a business man. The roundabout talker, the man who prefaces
everything with a long introduction, the man who goes around and around half a
dozen times before he gets to the point, tires and irritates a busy man. Good
business men are direct. They drive right to the marrow of things at the first
plunge; and when a deal is put through, they want to close and go on to the next
thing.
The closing step is one of the most important in any business transaction.
There are plenty of salesmen who can conduct the progress of a sale clear up to
the point of closing the deal quite as well as infinitely better salesmen, but here
they fall down. They cannot gather up their threads of persuasive argument and
reasoning to make a successful close, and when they become panicky they
communicate their fear to the coveted customer, and then the game is up.
Like all other points of salesmanship, the quickest and the simplest way of
taking the final step is the best. Closing a deal is the result of having created an
earnest wish on the part of the customer for what you have to sell. He must have
the “I want it” feeling or you are likely to have trouble. If you have made your
customer want your goods, made him see the profit and the pleasure that will
accrue to him in buying, then the question of closing the deal becomes very
much simplified.
There is a school of experts strongly inclined to what they call “Reason Why”
advertising. I think the “Reason Why” school is strongly entrenched. We buy
things because there are reasons why we should buy them, and the salesman who
can set forth the strongest reasons why, will have the least trouble in closing his
deals. The goods may be all right in themselves, but the sale will not be made
unless you can make the customer see why he, personally, should buy.
 A shrewd salesman will let his prospect or customer handle the samples as
much as possible, and let him do the talking. You watch him. You will learn a
great deal about the operation of the man’s mind. If he shrugs his shoulders and
shakes his head when he picks up a particular sample you had better not talk too
much about that; it will not pay to try to convince him; you had better try
something else, at least for the moment. If you see that he is anxious to make an
impression upon you by his skill and his knowledge of goods, don’t try to switch
him to something else. If he expresses an admiration for a certain piece of goods
follow it up. If it is regarding the color, or shade, do not go too much into the
quality of the texture. Let him take the lead.
In closing, always look for a peaceful and cheerful surrender of the will. If the
standards of the house are high, and if the goods are of a high quality, the
customer will feel quite reassured in surrendering his will to that of the
salesman. He really thinks his will is deciding. Very often he is right, but it is the
duty of the salesman to guide the will of the customer, so that the right decision
will be made with the least loss of time and energy.
The “winner” salesman does not wait for his prospect to say, “You can put me
down for so and so. Yes, I’ll take that.” He uses his own positive mind to guide
and bring to a focus the vacillating, almost-decided mind of the prospect, for he
knows from experience that the temptation of most buyers is to hang off, to wait.
Knowing the processes through which his prospect’s mind is passing, he seizes
upon the psychological moment to close up the thing, to bring the man’s mind to
a decision.
Always be ready to close. Have plenty of well-sharpened pencils, a fountain
pen in good working order, clean order blanks, and every facility at hand for
signing orders. The customer should not be expected to fill in name, facts or
figures any more than is absolutely necessary. When asked to sign his name, the
salesman should indicate clearly the exact line on which the name should be
written. The idea is to make everything so simple and easy that the mind of the
customer does not have a chance to balk. Human nature is peculiar. Very often
men are contrary. They will act against their own best interests, just because they
think some one is trying to compel them to do a particular thing. We all love
freedom.
In closing a deal, have all minor points made clear, such as time of delivery,
method of packing, method of delivery, the way payment is to be made, and all
similar details.
 CHAPTER XVI
THE GREATEST SALESMAN—ENTHUSIASM
“What are hardships, ridicule, persecution, toil, sickness, to a soul throbbing with an
overmastering enthusiasm?”

Enthusiasm is the best salesman. Cultivate it; it is contagious.

You can’t build a fire with the fuel all wet.

Why is it that one salesman can often accomplish three or four times as much
as another? The difference is not always that of ability. It is often a difference in
the effort—in the character of the effort. One salesman tries harder. He adds
enthusiasm and a splendid zest to his work, which increases the quality as well
as the quantity of the result.
Joyous zeal, dead-in-earnestness, will sell more goods than all the technical
training in the world, minus enthusiasm.
How often have I heard salesmen say in the morning that they fairly dreaded
the day’s work, that the hours dragged and that they were glad when the ordeal
was over. They felt no enthusiasm for their employment.
Can any one hope to succeed in life who considers a day’s work an ordeal,
who goes to it as a slave lashed to his task?
An employer measures his employees largely by the spirit in which they do
their work. The salesman who goes to his task with energy, determination, and
enthusiasm, by his very bearing gives assurance that the thing he undertakes will
not only be done, but will be done as well as it can be done. On the other hand,
when a salesman drags himself about as though existence were a burden, when
he takes hold of his work with repugnance, as though he dreaded it, it does not
take an expert judge of human nature to know that he will never amount to
anything.
No matter how strongly and perfectly constructed, or how powerful a
locomotive may be, unless the water is heated to two hundred and twelve
degrees, the train will not move an inch. Warm water, water at two hundred and
eleven degrees will not answer. The water must be at the boiling point.
 No matter how fine a brain or how good an education a salesman may have,
without the steam of enthusiasm, which propels the human machine, his work
will be ineffective. It is the enthusiastic man in every trade or profession, the
man with fire and iron in his blood, whose enthusiasm is at the boiling point,
who makes things move in this world. The half-hearted, indifferent, aimless
worker, who is never aroused to the two-hundred-and-twelve degree of live
interest and enthusiasm in his especial task, is headed for failure. He will never
be his own manager. He is lucky if he succeeds in holding down even a poor job.
The prizes of life are for the dead-in-earnest and enthusiastic. The world has
ever made way for enthusiasm. It compels men to listen. It convinces the most
skeptical. As Bulwer-Lytton once said: “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm;
it is a real allegory of the Lute of Orpheus; it moves stones; it charms brutes.
Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity; and truth accomplishes no victories
without it.”
Knowledge and skill have never been a match for enthusiasm. It multiplies a
man’s power, raises whatever ability he has to its highest. One talent with
enthusiasm back of it has ever accomplished more than ten talents without it.
Enthusiasm is the powder that drives the bullet home to its mark.
To produce the best results, enthusiasm must be steady, continuous, not fitful
or uncertain.
I know a man who is a valuable solicitor if his employers can only keep him
keyed up to the right point, supplied with enthusiasm. When his enthusiasm is at
high tide he accomplishes wonders, but the moment it ebbs he is good for
nothing. And his enthusiasm often ebbs; it is very uncertain. One day he will
impress you as a powerful man, a man with great determination, vigor and push
—he makes everything move; then you meet him on one of his off days, when
the tide is out, and scarcely know him. His mentality is flabby, his courage is
down. He goes about with a blue and discouraged look, and is practically good
for nothing. But when he rallies and his courage and enthusiasm come back, he
is a regular giant.
If this man would learn to control his moods and get complete possession of
himself; if he would strengthen his will so that he should always be ruler in his
mental kingdom, instead of abdicating every now and then and allowing his
pessimism, his blue moods to take control and rule him, he would be invaluable
—a king in his line.
Enthusiasm must be guided by level-headedness or it may defeat its object.
Some people allow their enthusiasm to run away with them and thus greatly
weaken their power and possibilities. While it is an indispensable factor in
salesmanship, too much enthusiasm develops weakness, destroys one’s good
sense and good judgment and one’s ability to convince people. And the power of
carrying conviction to the mind of a prospective buyer is the very marrow of
salesmanship.
I have known over-enthusiastic young salesmen to be so completely carried
away with the possibilities of what they were selling, to exhibit so little
judgment and so much fervor in their canvass, that they aroused suspicion in the
minds of their prospects as to their good judgment.
In cases of this sort a level-headed man will say to himself: “This young
fellow is too wrought up over this article; he is hypnotized by it and has an
exaggerated idea of its merits. No man in this state of mind is reliable; his
judgment is warped. He is honest enough, but I cannot afford to rely on what he
says. He is too enthused to be trustworthy.”
You can be as enthusiastic as you please without overstepping the bounds of
reason. The A1 salesman knows how to steer his course between the enthusiasm
that excites suspicion, arouses distrust, and the enthusiasm that persuades and
convinces. There is now and then one who with abounding enthusiasm, guided
by good judgment and horse-sense, pours his very life into his sale, just as a
great advocate flings his life into his pleading. He is the sort of man who will
win out in any proposition he attempts to put through.
On the other hand, there are lukewarm salesmen who put so little of
themselves into their sale, so little enthusiasm and zest, so little magnetism, so
little diplomacy and tact, and so little of the art of persuasion, that they remain
third or fourth rate all their lives. They barely get a living in a field where the
energetic, enthusiastic man makes a fortune.
The salesman or other worker who gives only his second best instead of his
best, who gives indifference instead of enthusiasm, who doesn’t think it worth
while to fling his soul into his work, never amounts to much. In an age when
increasing stress is everywhere placed on efficiency, and yet more efficiency,
there is no future for the indifferent. Give to the world the best you have and the
best will come back to you.
 CHAPTER XVII
THE MAN AT THE OTHER END OF THE BARGAIN
 A Golden Rule for every salesman: “Put yourself in your customer’s place.”

When you are in doubt as to how your acts will affect another, you must ask yourself this
question, “Would I like to have some one else do this to me?”

Nathan Strauss, when asked what had contributed most to the success of his
remarkable career, replied, “I always looked out for the man at the other end of
the bargain.” He said that if he got a bad bargain himself he could stand it, even
if his losses were heavy, but he could never afford to have the man who dealt
with him get a bad bargain.
There is no one thing that has so much to do with a business man’s success as
the absolute confidence of the public. Confidence has everything to do with
patronage. We like to patronize the firm which has a good reputation, and many
prefer to pay more for articles in a reliable store that guarantees their quality than
to buy similar articles at a much lower price in an unreliable store. People are
afraid to go into unreliable places. They have a feeling that they will be swindled
in some way; that the lower price only covers up poor quality.
You may bring customers to your store once by shrewd schemes and
advertising, but you cannot hold them by this means alone. Unless you satisfy
them, give them good value for their money, you cannot induce them to come
again. But the satisfied customer is a perpetual advertisement. He not only
comes again, but he sends his friends, and they furnish a perpetual lip-to-lip
advertisement which gives stability and permanence to a business.
The man who thinks he is going to make a fortune without considering the
man at the other end of the bargain is very short-sighted. In the long run, the
customer’s best good is the seller’s best good also; and, other things equal, the
man succeeds best who satisfies his customers best, who gains their confidence,
so that they will not only come back, but always bring others with them. In the
same way, the ideal salesman must impress his customers with his honesty,
sincerity and frankness. He must be shrewd and sagacious without being
deceptive. Trickiness, dishonest methods, may procure a man’s orders at the
start, but before long he will find that in selling goods, as in everything else,
honesty is the best policy.
A little while ago I heard a salesman say to a friend, “I don’t care whether a
man sells my goods or not, I sell him every dollar’s worth I can, just the same. If
he is overstocking the store, that is his business. I push my sales just as far as I
can.”
 Now, when this young salesman’s customers find that out, as, sooner or later,
they will, they will distrust him. They will be on their guard against him, and
ultimately he will lose their patronage.
Remember, Mr. Brilliant Salesman, that stuffed, forced orders are dangerous.
They are boomerangs. When, by hypnotic over-persuasion, you work off goods
upon a customer which he does not need, you are likely to hear from him again.
The profits of a single such sale have often lost a salesman the profits of a life
customer. There is nothing so disastrous as a disappointed or a deceived
customer.
Many people are beguiled into buying what they do not need and cannot
afford, because they do not know how to protect themselves from the expertness
or hypnotism of unprincipled salesmen. Especially is this true of colored people
in the South, whose simple, untrained minds are the easy victims of the smooth
oily promoter or salesman.
I have known of negro families who did not have a whole plate, or a knife and
fork in the house, to buy from unscrupulous agents plush autograph albums,
books which they could not read or understand, pictures, picture frames, organs,
pianos, etc., when they were so poor that every member of the family was
ragged, and apparently only half nourished.
Many such agents and solicitors, who travel through the country, live upon the
gullibility of people who are not mentally equipped to protect themselves against
their dishonest wiles.
Every salesman is familiar with the “tricks of the trade” which the
unscrupulous practice, but to which the conscientious man will not resort. His
clean record, his straightforward methods, his reputation for reliability, mean
infinitely more to him than to get an order by driving a sharp bargain, deceiving,
taking advantage of, or hypnotizing his customer. His honesty, his character, is
dearer to him than any gain, temporary or permanent, however great.
Nor is there any great demand for the man whose sole aim is to “deliver the
goods,” regardless of the methods employed. They may be hired by cheap-John
concerns which have no reputation to sustain, but high-class houses will have
nothing to do with them. They know very well that men who practice real
dishonesty in their mental methods, who use unfair means in winning
confidence, only to abuse it, who make a business of overcoming weak minds
for the purpose of deceiving them—they know that such men would hurt their
house, injure their reputation. They know very well that the tricky, dishonest
man who deceives or who over-sells his customer, is not a good man for his
house.
The high-class salesman, like the high-class house, thinks too much of his
good name, too much of his customers’ good opinion of him, to attempt to
practice the slightest deception in his dealings with them. Their implicit faith in
him, their belief that they can absolutely depend upon what he tells them, that it
will not be the near-truth, but the exact truth, his real desire to serve them, these
things mean infinitely more to him than the taking of an order. His reputation for
straightforwardness, for reliability, his reputation as a man, is his chief capital.
He is doing business without money; his only assets are his ability and his
character, and he cannot afford to throw these away or vitiate them by dishonest
mental practices.
Aside from the vital question of character, he is a very poor salesman who
does not study the interest of the man at the other end of the bargain.
 CHAPTER XVIII
MEETING AND FORESTALLING OBJECTIONS
Opposition is the physical culture of determination.

You must have the courage of your convictions, and if you have theories you should be able to
put them to a practical test.

Don’t canvass too much with your legs—use your brains.

There are two kinds of objections which are met by all salesmen—valid and
invalid. Naturally, it is impossible to overcome valid objections. It would be a
mistake on the part of the salesman to try to overcome them. The important thing
is for him to recognize that they are valid, and to abide by the decision of the
prospective customer.
Very frequently, however, what appear on the surface to be valid objections,
are merely excuses. Never accept an excuse as a real objection. Do not come out
bluntly and tell the customer that he is merely making an excuse, or that he is
hedging, but, rather, switch the selling talk on to a little different track, so that he
will see there is no real, good reason for the stand he is taking.
It is not so easy to meet such objections as—“The goods are not suitable for
our needs,”—“The price is exorbitant,” or “We cannot afford to buy now.” But in
some cases, objections of this sort may not be really valid; often they are merely
excuses to put off buying. Here is where the salesman must show his power of
reasoning and persuasion. He should make clear to the customer that, at first
thought, these may seem to be valid objections, but that, in reality, if he will only
think of such and such points and reasons, he will see, after all, he should buy.
No doubt there is far more trouble constantly arising on this score than there
should, because the salesman cannot gently guide the mind of the customer to
where all objections are forgotten. It is human nature to object, find fault, and
pick flaws, and the salesman must be prepared both for the real or valid, and for
the unreal, or invalid objections. Above all he must be prepared beforehand to
answer, and to answer clearly and logically, the many very common objections
which are brought up in connection with his line of goods.
The older, more experienced salesmen and the sales managers, usually, have
thought out the most effective answers to the objections that are ordinarily made.
The young inexperienced salesman must go to them for advice. He must be
posted, if possible at the start, on the right answers to, let us say, the ten most
ordinary objections that are heard in his line of business.
One of the most successful life insurance managers in the United States has
given to his men a standard answer to this very common objection, met by
salesmen when trying to sell life insurance,—“I would like to take the matter up
with my wife.”
The salesman is taught to use the law of non-resistance, and to say: “That’s a
very good idea, Mr. Blank. This is such an important matter you certainly ought
to have your wife’s opinion about it; but, allow me to suggest that before you
take the matter up with her, it would be best to have our doctor examine you, to
make sure that you can pass the physical examination, because, if you told your
wife that you were going to take life insurance, and you then failed to pass the
examination, she would be very much worried about you as long as she lives.”
The prospect will, almost invariably, say—“Yes, you’re right about that—I think
I ought to take that precaution.” It is needless to say that nine times out of ten,
after the doctor has made the examination, it is quite easy to close the sale,
whereas it would have been impossible, or very difficult, had the matter first
been taken up at home, and a lot of objections brought up in the absence of the
salesman.
Some say that you should never risk antagonizing a customer by departing
from the law of non-resistance. Ordinarily, this is sound logic; but just as there
are exceptions to every rule, so there are certain types of men, with whom at
least seeming opposition or an attitude of “take it or leave it” will be most
effective.
There are men and moods and times when only a good knowledge of human
nature and a thorough sizing up of a customer will enable the salesman to get
what he goes after. Also there are occasions when the most expert salesman will
meet at least temporary defeat.
By the time you have exchanged a few sentences with your prospect, you can
size him up fairly well and can get a pretty good idea of what you are up against,
and how difficult a task is before you in order to interest him, to change his
thought, to neutralize his natural prejudice against every one who has anything
to sell, and against you in particular. There is a natural barrier, at first, between
two people who meet under such conditions, and it depends largely upon you as
a man, upon your talk, your ability to open up your nature, to show the best side
of yourself, the attractive, the popular, magnanimous side, whether you gradually
change the prospect’s opposition to indifference, his indifference to interest and
his interest to desire to possess what you have to sell.
You should never argue with a customer in the sense of quarreling or
disputing with him, but there are times when you must reason with him, to show
him he is wrong. Do not, however, make a customer feel “cheap,” or humiliated,
or anger him by opposition, especially in matters outside of your business.
I have in mind a salesman who had practically closed a big order with a
prospect when some allusion was made to the political situation. The salesman
reflected upon the administration, and the prospect jumped on him with both feet
and became so angered that he positively refused to give him the order.
Now, this salesman was not there to discuss politics or to convince his
prospect that he was on the wrong side of any public question. He was there to
sell his goods and not to talk politics.
No matter what happens never lose your head and never, under any
circumstances, show resentment or disappointment or allow yourself to be drawn
into an argument. There is always a temptation to have the last word, and it is of
the utmost importance that you should leave a pleasing picture of your call.
Otherwise when you return the association of a disagreeable experience may bar
you out.
Some sales managers do not believe in paying any attention to objections.
They say it is best to make the salesman so familiar with his goods, and so
enthusiastic about them, that he will forestall all objections, or overcome them
by ignoring them, in the sense that he will not try to answer objections if they are
made, and he will not talk or act as if he expected any to be made. There is a
certain amount of sound philosophy in this attitude, but it is my opinion that a
salesman will have more confidence in himself, and will be better equipped for
many emergencies, if he has been thoroughly coached in the most commonly
met objections, by having good, sound answers right at the tip of his tongue.
Never meet objections by cutting prices.
It is the easiest thing in the world to prejudice a prospect’s mind by offering to
cut prices. He will think you are doing it to get his first order, and that you will
make it up the next time. He is watching you with “all his eyes.” His perceptive
faculties are on the alert, ready to catch any unguarded word, the slightest
contradiction, measuring up the improbabilities in your argument. In other
words, he is trying to find holes in your proposition. It is human nature to brace
up against a new salesman and to try to down him with objections. Don’t destroy
confidence at the start by price cutting.
Remember, objections are, generally, mere excuses. More than half the time
they are not sound reasons for not buying. Therefore, do not take objections too
much to heart. Know how to answer them satisfactorily, but be careful not to
magnify their importance.
 CHAPTER XIX
QUALITY AS A SALESMAN
Integrity is the ground of mutual confidence.

Never misrepresent your goods; when it becomes necessary to do so it is time to quit the
business.

A.J. Lauver, General Manager Burroughs’ Adding Machine, says, “The ideal
salesman is one who is making an honest and determined effort to render a real
service to his customers. He believes thoroughly in the value of his goods and
has faith in the honesty and ability of the house he represents.”
An unqualified confidence in the value of what you are selling will multiply
your selling ability tremendously, just as a lack of confidence in its merit will
greatly diminish your power to make a sale. All of your mental operations follow
confidence. Your faculties will not give out their best unless they are led by the
honest faith in your house and in your goods which generates enthusiasm.
The salesman communicates his faith, or lack of it, to the experienced buyer.
Whatever passes through your mind will be telegraphed with lightning rapidity
to your prospect’s mind. He will feel what you feel. He will sense mentally what
you are picturing secretly, as you imagine, in your own mind. If doubt is there, if
unbelief is there, he will feel them no matter what you may say to the contrary.
He can tell very quickly whether you really believe what you are saying or
whether you are just talking for a sale. He can tell whether you honestly believe
that what you are trying to sell would be good for him to buy or not.
The consciousness that you are representing an absolutely reliable firm, and
that you are selling a superb thing, something which you really believe it would
be as advantageous for your prospect to buy as it would be for you to sell, will
not only increase your self-confidence, but will also lend wonderful dignity and
power to your bearing and your manner, and greater force to your presentation
and persuasion.
On the other hand, if you are conscious that you are selling shams, that you
are merely trying to get a person to buy that which you know will not be of
much value to him, you are immediately shorn of power. The conviction that you
are not doing your fellow-man a good turn, that, on the contrary, you are trying
to deceive him, trying to palm off on him an article which you would not buy
yourself, will make you contemptible in your own eyes and also in the eyes of
the man who is shrewd enough to see through you.
Nothing can take the place of confidence in the quality of what you are
selling. Quality is really the best salesman in the world. The article that is a little
better than others of the same kind—that is the best, even if the price is higher
—“carries in its first sale the possibilities of many sales, because it makes a
satisfied customer, and only a satisfied customer will come again.”
The salesman thinks more of himself when he is conscious that he is giving
his customer the best that can be had. The assurance that it is not possible for
another to beat what he offers is a wonderful tonic and encourager to the seller.
He does not need to resort to “tricks of the trade”; nor does he have to hang his
head or apologize when he approaches his prospect, for he knows that he is
backed by quality and that there will be no disappointment or “come backs.”
A superb quality, like good things to eat, always leaves a good taste in the
mouth, and the salesman who deals in the best knows that he will be welcome
when he goes back for another order to a buyer who has once had a taste of the
quality of his goods.
The reputation of a house noted for its square dealing is of itself a powerful
salesman, and representatives of such a house have a tremendous advantage over
those who represent tricky, sharp-dealing, shoddy houses, where the buyer
knows that he has got to look out for himself, to drive a sharp bargain or get
taken in—and he knows that he is liable to be taken in anyway.
Quality is the best possible advertisement. The salesmen of a house
thoroughly established in the confidence of the public have a comparatively easy
time of it, because they do not have to do nearly as much talking and convincing
as those who represent unreliable concerns. The high reputation of a house is a
great business asset, and a salesman’s best argument. It is not so difficult a
matter to persuade men to buy what they know from experience to be all that it is
represented to be.
When a customer has been in the habit of buying the best, dealing with a
quality house, and has acquired a taste for the best, he does not like the second-
best—only the best is good enough for him.
International sales experts tell us that is where American salesmen fall down,
especially in seeking foreign trade—in South America for instance. They dwell
at too great length on price, and skim over quality. They dilate on cheapness, and
the inference is that the goods must be low grade to be marketed at such a low
price.
No matter how hard pushed you may be, never undertake to sell questionable
goods; never taint your reputation, or smirch your character by becoming the
representative of a shifty, dishonest concern. Resolve that whatever comes you
will not cheapen yourself by stooping to low-down methods, that you will not
sell shabby goods, or deal in cheap-John commodities. Resolve that you will be
a high-class man or nothing, that you are not going to do another’s lying for him,
that you are not going to deceive for a salary, that you are not going to do
anything which will make you think less of yourself, which will make you less
of a man.
 CHAPTER XX
A SALESMAN’S CLOTHES
The apparel oft proclaims the man.—SHAKESPEARE.

The consciousness of being well and fittingly dressed has a magic power in unlocking the
tongue and increasing the power of expression.

In differentiating the essentials of success in selling, a specialty expert said: “I

find that when I am in prime condition physically, and am well dressed, so that I
do not have to think about myself or my clothing, I can put up a much better
canvass, because I can concentrate my mind with greater force.”
In a letter to his home office, a rising young salesman wrote: “To me there is a
great mystery in the influence of good clothes. Somehow I think more of myself
when I am conscious that I am well groomed, well dressed, and I can approach
people with much more confidence.
“When I first started canvassing I tried to economize too much on my
clothing. Some stormy mornings I would start out wearing shabby old clothes
and without fixing up as I should, and somehow I felt cheap all day. I could not
approach a prospect with the same air of victory; I did not feel quite right; I
could not put up as good a canvass, and of course did not make as many sales as
when I was up to the mark in clothes and general appearance.
“I thought at the start I could not afford to dress well, but I soon found that
this was a very great mistake, and that a good appearance is a big asset in
canvassing. I was going through college then, and, as I had to pay all of my
expenses, a dollar meant a good deal to me; but I actually borrowed money to
buy a good suit of clothes, and I found it paid. I felt better when I had that suit
on. I could take more orders, and in a short time returned the amount I had
borrowed. This influence of good clothes is a curious thing, but it is certainly a
power.”
Whatever one’s business, it is worth while to try to ascertain as nearly as
possible the paying point of your clothes. You cannot afford to go much below
or above this point. In some cases it pays to dress superbly, right up to the mark
in every detail, because people judge our business standing by our appearance,
and we cannot afford to give the impression of poverty, especially if we are
representing a prosperous line of business. If a man’s appearance indicates lack
of prosperity, people naturally get a poor impression not only of his own success,
but also of the quality and success of the firm he represents.
A. T. Stewart was one of the first great merchants to appreciate the
tremendous influence upon customers, especially women customers, of good-
looking, well-dressed young men clerks. He would not have a clerk in his
employ who did not present an attractive appearance. He knew and appreciated
the importance of putting up a good front as an asset. He did not care much for
human diamonds in the rough. He preferred a cheaper stone, polished, to a pure
gem, unpolished.
Every progressive merchant knows that a first unfavorable impression on a
customer is a costly thing. He knows that soiled collar or cuffs, a frayed tie,
unpolished shoes, uncared-for finger nails, grease spots on a suit, will not only
make a bad impression, but will drive away trade.
Most large business houses make it a rule not to employ any one who looks
shabby or careless, who does not at least try to make a good appearance, the best
his means will permit, when he applies for a position.
Neatness of dress, cleanliness of person and the manner of the applicant are
the first things an employer notices in a would-be employee. If his clothes are
unbrushed, his trousers baggy, his shoes unblacked, his tie shabby, his hands
soiled or his hair unkempt, the employer is prejudiced at once, and he does not
look beneath this repellent exterior to see whether it conceals merit or not. He is
a busy man and takes it for granted that if the youth has anything in him, if he is
made of the material business men want in their employ, he will keep himself in
a presentable condition. At all events, he does not want to have such an
unattractive looking person about his premises.
You may say that an employer ought to be a reader of real merit, real
character, and that it is not fair to estimate an applicant for a position by such
superficial things as the clothes he wears. You may also say that a customer
should not allow himself to be prejudiced against a man, or the house he
represents, because he is not a fine dresser. But that doesn’t help matters or alter
facts. We go through life tagged all over, labeled with other people’s estimate of
us, and it is pretty difficult to get away from that, even if it is unjust.
Say what we will, our position in life, our success, our place in the business or
professional world, or in society, depends very much upon what other people
think of us, and our clothes, at first especially, while we are making our way in
the world, play an important part in their judgment of us. They have a great deal
to do with locating us.
In a way our lives are largely influenced by other people’s opinion of us, and
we should not be indifferent to it. This does not mean that we cannot be
independent and exercise our own will, but that we cannot afford to create a bad
impression. Suppose, for example, you are a young business man and that every
bank official in your town is so prejudiced against you that they will not give
you credit. You need it very much, but while the fact that you know you are
absolutely honest and absolutely reliable gives you great inward satisfaction, it
does not give you the needed money. The prejudice of the bank officials may be
unfounded, but it acts powerfully against you.
You may know perfectly well that you would make a better mayor for your
town than anybody else in it, but if the majority of the voters are prejudiced
against you, no matter how worthy of their confidence, you will not be elected.
Whatever your business or profession the impression you create will make a
tremendous difference in the degree of your success.
“Every man has a letter of credit written on his face.” We are our own best
advertisements, and if we appear to disadvantage in any particular we are rated
accordingly.
You cannot estimate the influence of your personal appearance upon your
future. Other things equal, it is the young man who dresses well, puts up a good
front, who gets the order or position, though often he may have less ability than
the one who is careless in his personal appearance. Most business men regard a
neat, attractive appearance as evidence of good mental qualities. We express
ourselves first of all in our bodies. A young man who is slovenly in appearance
and who neglects his bath will, as a rule, neglect his mind.
To save money at the cost of cleanliness and self-respect is the worst sort of
extravagance. It is the point at which economy ceases to be a virtue and becomes
a vice. In this age of competition, when the law of the survival of the fittest acts
with seemingly merciless rigor, no one can afford to be indifferent to the
smallest detail of dress, or manner, or appearance, that will add to his chances of
making a success in life.
Remember that the world takes you largely at your own valuation; your
prospective customer will be repelled or attracted by your appearance, and your
clothes are as important as your bearing and manners. In fact they will to a great
extent determine your bearing and manner. It has been well said that “the
consciousness of clean linen is in and of itself a source of moral strength, second
only to that of a clean conscience. A well ironed collar or a fresh glove has
carried many a man through an emergency in which a wrinkle or a rip would
have defeated him.” Our clothes have a subtle mental influence from which there
is no escape.
The consciousness of shabbiness, incompleteness, or slipshodness tends to
destroy self-respect, to lessen energy and to detract from one’s general ability.
In order to dress properly, you must study the colors and the styles that are
most becoming to you, that add most to your appearance. Don’t wear a profusion
of rings or flashy jewelry; don’t indulge in “loud” neckties or anything that
would make you conspicuous. All these things make a bad impression.
An excellent rule for dress is found in the advice of Polonius to his son
Laertes, when he is about to start for the royal court of France.
“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy
But not express’d in fancy; rich not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.”

Polonius did not mean that Laertes should be extravagant in the matter of
clothes. Far from it; he simply meant that he should dress in a manner befitting
his rank as a representative of the court of Denmark.
The salesman is the representative of his firm, and to a great extent both he
and his firm will be judged by his general appearance, including his clothes,
“For the apparel oft proclaims the man.”
 CHAPTER XXI
FINDING CUSTOMERS
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

The King is the man who can.—CARLYLE.

The hardest problem with any business man is to find customers, that is to say,
desirable and profitable customers. Identical with the problem of finding
customers, is the more difficult one of finding the men who can find the right
kind of customers.
There’s the rub—“To find the man who can swim.” The right kind of salesman
will solve for himself this problem of getting customers as he will most others
connected with selling. How, you ask? This is how the question was answered
recently by a little, short, unprepossessing salesman who is said to have written
the largest amount of life insurance in one of the largest insurance companies in
the world.
Some time ago this salesman went to Canada and at an influential gathering
saw a man whom he sized up as a good prospect. He got his name and address,
found out all about him, his habits and hobbies, one of which was the success of
a big hospital in which he was especially interested. Next day the salesman went
to this hospital, and asked to be shown through it, after which he called on his
prospective customer, told him he had heard of his interest in —— Hospital, and
said, “I have been studying this hospital, also; it is doing splendid work, and I
would like to make a little contribution to its funds.” He thereupon wrote out a
check for $250.00 and handed it to this man. This check was the entering wedge
for a $250,000.00 life insurance policy, which this resourceful salesman soon
after wrote for the man whose pet hobby was the big hospital in question.
The main trouble with most salesmen is that they put the problem of finding
customers up to the sales manager or heads of the company. They want them to
do all the thinking in the matter of where to go, and how to proceed in this
difficult business. Let me say right at the start; there is no iron-clad rule for
finding customers. Some say it is just a matter of “plan and push,” as illustrated
in the above instance.
The Sheldon Course in Salesmanship gives five ways for finding a customer,
namely; Advertising, Window Display, General or Door to Door Canvass,
Selected List Canvass, and Following Up “Leads” or Inquiries.
Many books have been written on the various forms and values of advertising.
It is a well-known fact that much money is wasted through injudicious
advertising, but no successful business man can dispense with the right kind of
publicity. Whether he uses the newspapers, or the magazines, bill-boards, or
cards in street-cars, or novelties, will all depend on the goods and the various
conditions which have to be met in the marketing of his particular product.
Different kinds of advertising should be adapted to each particular territory.
A salesman quickly becomes familiar with such conditions as affect different
places and different seasons, so that he plans his campaigns accordingly. Where
a man has a fixed territory and is handling goods which are used by a restricted
class of people, then the matter becomes relatively simple, although it is
important to be always alert, so as not to miss any possible customers, and so as
to learn well in advance about new firms who may want your goods.
A specialty salesman will have to use more originality in finding customers
than would have to be used, ordinarily, in the wholesale or retail business, where
the home office, or the head of the firm, can map out pretty well just what people
should be reached, and how to reach them. Many salesmen lose a lot of valuable
time, and waste much money chasing from one town to another, or from one part
of a city to another, following up so-called “leads.” Unfortunately, the majority
of these “leads” are answers to advertisements which were so alluring, and
seemed to promise so much for nothing, that a large number of curiosity seekers
have written to the home office, with little thought of buying, and more often
with little ability to buy, what was advertised.
The salesman who has the courage “to go to it,” without any “lead” or point of
contact, is the one who will ultimately make the biggest success.
If you have something to sell, do not be afraid to walk into a man’s place of
business and introduce yourself, telling just what service you are prepared to
render. The only good reason for being in business is because you can render
service. You should feel that you are the benefactor of the man whom you
approach. He may be your superior financially, but in the matter of your
particular article or articles for sale, you should feel that you are his superior, and
therefore you should approach him with the utmost ease and confidence. The big
winners in salesmanship are those who possess the initiative, the originality, and
the poise, which enable them to go out and find customers quickly and
intelligently, covering the biggest amount of territory in the shortest time, and
concentrating their energies.
The use of the telephone in finding customers and making appointments is a
method that requires considerable skill. There are those who believe that it is too
easy for a man to “turn you down” on the telephone. There are others who
believe that it is foolish to waste carfare and time, when you can quickly arrange
matters over the telephone. Experience and native ability must guide the
salesman in the use of the telephone.
So, in the matter of letter-writing,—often where a letter would be thrown in
the waste-basket, or receive a negative reply, a personal call from the salesman
might get a big order. Yet, in many cases the right kind of letters would get the
business and save the salesman much useless expenditure of time, money and
energy.
The day may come when, if our goods are exactly as represented, customers
will make a beaten track to our door, but this will not happen until human nature
has changed very much. The human element enters so much into sales that it is
still quite an important part of salesmanship for the salesman to make personal
visits, so as to get the orders. To be sure, we have the department stores and
specialty houses which have built up a well-known reputation for merchandise
of high quality and reasonable price. These will continue to draw customers,
with the help of wise advertising, but they must employ the right kind of sales-
force to handle properly the customers who visit their places of business.
Finding a customer does not mean simply inducing him to look over what you
have to sell. It means actually inducing him to make a purchase, and satisfying
him so thoroughly that he will continue to do business with you. It is because
finding the customer is so vitally important that the selling end of a business
continues to be, by long odds, the most important department.
No better advice can be given, to sum up, than this: If you would find
customers, study all the means and ways in your power; keep thinking, thinking,
thinking, and the right thoughts will come, then act, act, act. Never wait for to-
morrow. “To-morrow” is a loser. It will never find customers.
 CHAPTER XXII
WHEN YOU ARE DISCOURAGED
The man who has acquired the power of keeping his mind filled with the thoughts which uplift
and encourage, the optimistic thought, the cheerful, hopeful thought, has solved one of the great
riddles of life.

“Don’t hunt after trouble, but look for success,

You’ll find what you look for, don’t look for distress;
If you see but your shadow, remember, I pray,
That the sun is still shining, but you’re in the way;

“Don’t grumble, don’t bluster, don’t dream and don’t shirk,

Don’t think of your worries, but think of your work.
The worries will vanish, the work will be done,
No man sees his shadow who faces the sun.”

A young salesman who has mastered himself and also the secret of success
recently wrote from the field:
“Yesterday it seemed as though everything was going against me. There
appeared to be something the matter everywhere I called, and although I put up a
most determined fight failure after failure met me, until very late in the evening.
I had not then taken a single order, but I made up my mind that I could not go
back to my boarding place until I had done a decent day’s work. It was this
resolution that saved the day, for I took fifteen orders before I got home at nine
o’clock. If I had given up to my discouragement I should simply have said to
myself, ‘What’s the use? This day is gone and I might as well go home, take it
easy, and make the best of it.’ But I said, ‘No, young man, you are not going to
bed to-night until you have done a good day’s work.’
“Many a time such a resolution has saved me when, otherwise, I would have
made a miserable showing. I just make up my mind that no matter what
attractions come in my way, no matter what discouragements I meet, I will
conquer before the night or I will stay up all night. I find that victory usually
follows such a resolution.”
The prospect feels the influence of such a determination on the part of the
salesman. We radiate our moods, our discouragement, or our courage. The man
we approach feels what we feel, and when we approach him with the spirit of a
conqueror, when we go to him with victory in our face, we generally win out.
 A notably successful salesman says that he made his first great hit after
overcoming a fit of deep discouragement, consequent on the loss of his position.
When he got another place he said he started out the first morning with one word
ringing in his mind, “Determination.” He resolved not to return without an order.
He was determined to make that day a red letter day in his life, to show his new
employer what was in him, to convince his prospects. He approached every one
that day with the determination of victory uppermost in his mind.
“One man afterwards told me,” he said, “that I overwhelmed him with my
dead-in-earnestness, won him by my determination.”
The power of the mind, whether favorable or unfavorable, is tremendous.
When a man gives way to discouragement he loses his grip and begins to go
down. The bottom seems to drop out of things, and everything helps him the way
he is going. His thought connects him with all the thought currents of
misfortune, poverty and failure. He attracts those things, for it is a psychological
law that failure attracts failure, discouragement more discouragement, poverty
more poverty. To a salesman discouragement is fatal, for when a man assumes
the discouraged, failure attitude, he loses power and magnetism, there is nothing
inspiring in him, and he not only loses confidence in himself but his fellow men
also lose confidence in him. You will find it next to impossible to make a sale
with a mind filled with discouragement, pessimistic, failure thoughts.
The exercise of a little will power is all that is necessary for the control of our
moods, to change discouragement and depression into courage and hope.
We all know how quickly a child will work itself into a fearful spasm simply
by beginning to pity itself. The more he indulges in self-pity, the louder and
louder will he cry, until he completely upsets his mind and becomes hysterical.
When inclined to be blue and discouraged, men and women are like children.
The temptation is to begin to pity ourselves, then we go on hanging up more
dark pictures on the walls of the mind, until we have our whole mentality
dressed in mourning. It is not very difficult at the beginning of a discouraged
mood to shut it off by resolutely turning our minds in the opposite direction.
Instead of adding to our depression by pitying ourselves the thing to do is to tear
down the black flags, the hideous pictures, the gloomy visions of our
imagination, to clear them all out of the mind, and let in sunlight and joy, peace
and happiness. These will very quickly drive away the gloom and
discouragement, and they are just as ready to enter our minds and to stay with us
as their opposites, if we will only make room for them.
 When you feel downhearted and mentally depressed; when, perhaps, business
is dull and you begin to fear you won’t make any sales this trip, go somewhere
where you can be alone and give yourself an audible self-treatment. If this is not
possible, then give yourself a silent or mental one, the form in both cases may be
the same. But the audible treatment is apt to be more effective, since the spoken
word makes a deeper impression than that which is merely thought or passed
through the mind.
Say to yourself something like this: “I am a child of God, I have a living, vital
connection with the great Source and Sustainer of all things which nothing can
sever. Therefore I have nothing to fear. I have strength and ability to do whatever
it is necessary for me to do. I was made to be successful, to be happy. This is my
birthright and nothing can rob me of it. I will succeed in everything I undertake
to-day. I will be cheerful and happy. I am happy, because I was made for joy and
gladness, not for gloom and sadness. They are foreign to my nature, and I will
have nothing more to do with them.”
Just fill your mind with good, cheerful, uplifting thoughts and you will find
that your feeling will quickly correspond with your mental attitude. After a few
minutes of this auto-suggestive treatment you will be surprised at the complete
transformation of your outlook. It is astonishing how we can brace ourselves up
by auto-suggestion, replacing the distressing, blue, discouraging thoughts with
cheerful, hopeful, optimistic thoughts.
There are men who are usually quite level-headed but who do the most foolish
things when discouraged or suffering from the “blues,” acting under the
influence of their moods, when the brain is clouded, inexact, uncertain in its
processes, instead of clear, active, and well balanced.
Discouragement colors the judgment.
Whenever you see a person who has been unusually successful in any field,
remember that he has usually thought himself into his position; his mental
attitude and energy have created it; what he stands for in his community has
come from his attitude toward life, toward his fellowmen, toward his vocation,
toward himself. Above all else, it is the outcome of his self-faith, of his inward
vision of himself; the result of his estimate of his powers and possibilities.
Self-depreciation is one of the characteristics of those suffering from the
“blues.” Most of us do not encourage ourselves enough by optimistic thinking,
by auto-suggestion.
If you are a victim of your moods, push right into the swim of things, and take
an active part, as well as a real interest, in what is going on around you.
Associate with people. Be glad and happy, and interest yourself in others. Keep
your mind off yourself. Get away from yourself by entering with zest into the
family plans, or the plans and pleasures of others about you.
The expelling power of a contrary emotion has a wonderful effect upon the
mind. The cure for bad moods is to summon good ones to take their places in the
thought and thus force them out.
I know of a woman who was prone to fits of the “blues,” who conquered them
by forcing herself to sing bright, joyous songs, and to play lively, inspiring airs
on the piano whenever she felt an “attack” coming on.
Do not let anybody or anything shake your faith that you can conquer all these
enemies of your peace and happiness, and that you inherit an abundance of all
that is good.
If we were properly trained in the psychology of mental chemistry, we could
change the state of our mind as quickly as we can change our clothing. The
simple fact, however, that two opposite thoughts or emotions cannot live
together an instant gives us the key to the whole matter. Every sane person can
control and guide his mind. He can choose his thoughts, and the good
encouraging thought will neutralize the evil, depressing one. It is just a question
of holding in the mind the antidote of the thought that is torturing us, robbing us
of our birthright, of success and happiness.
 CHAPTER XXIII
THE STIMULUS OF REBUFFS
 It is defeat that turns bone to flint, and gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible, and
formed those heroic natures that are now in ascendancy in the world. Do not, then, be afraid of
defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.—HENRY WARD
BEECHER.

He only is beaten who admits it.

Do not allow yourself to think that you are weak.

The man who has never formed the victory habit is timid, because he does not know that he
can conquer; he doesn’t know his strength, because he has never tested it sufficiently to know
that it will win.

The manager of a big insurance company not long since asked me what books
I would recommend for putting stamina into a salesman who wilted under a
direct “No.”
“We have in our employ,” he wrote, “a fine mannered, well-educated and very
intelligent man. We have thoroughly educated him in the technical part of our
business and have done our best to perfect him in salesmanship, but he is not
attaining the success we believe he should. His defect is his inability to continue
a conversation with a party who abruptly tells him that he is not interested in life
insurance. He states that in a number of such instances he has been unable to say
a word, his throat becoming dry. From the above description it might appear to
you that the man was wanting in courage. We, however, do not believe this to be
the case as his record in the past does not justify that conclusion.”
How do you stand up under a “No”? Do you lose heart? Does your
cheerfulness vanish? Are you conquered then and there? Or does it only act as a
stimulant to more determined effort? Does it brace you to meet opposition, put
you on your mettle, or do you wilt under it?
A salesman who is made of the right stuff thrives upon opposition. He braces
up under rebuffs, rises to the occasion in proportion to the difficulties to be
overcome.
Socrates said, “If the Almighty should come to me with complete success in
His right hand, and an eternal struggle for success in His left, I would take the
left.” It is through struggle, through bravely meeting and overcoming obstacles
that we find ourselves and develop our strength.
A successful business man tells me that every victory he has gained in a long
career has been the result of hard fighting, so that now he is actually afraid of an
easily-won success. He feels that there must be something wrong when anything
worth while can be obtained without a struggle. Fighting his way to triumph,
overcoming obstacles, gives this man pleasure. Difficulties are a tonic to him. He
enjoys doing hard things, because it tests his strength, his ability. He does not
like doing easy things, because it does not give him the exhilaration, the joy, that
is felt after a victorious struggle.
Some natures never come to themselves, never discover their real strength,
until they meet with opposition or failure. Their reserve of power lies so deep
within them that any ordinary stimulus does not arouse it. But when they are
confronted with obstacles, when they are ridiculed, “sat down upon,” or when
they are abused and insulted, a new force seems to be born in them, and they do
things which before would have seemed impossible.
Whenever a motive is great enough, an emergency large enough, a
responsibility heavy enough, to call out the hidden reserve in our nature, latent
energies spring forth which astonish us. The thin-skinned, sensitive salesman
succumbs to the first breath of opposition or discouragement.
It is unfortunate to allow the customer ever to say “No,” but do not let a “No”
overwhelm you. Remember this is your test. If you stick to your guns and don’t
show the white feather a “No” will bring out the best that is in you. Whenever
you hear “No,” call to mind men like Napoleon and Grant, who thrived on
opposition and rebuffs.
It is not an easy matter to find salesmen who are capable of coping with all
sorts of antagonism. But they are the ones in demand. Such men are not easily
argued down—they can put up a stiff fight against every kind of opposition.
Where the weak salesman retires from the field beaten, the man with grit and
stamina is only taking his second breath. He does not let a rebuff or two phase
him. Some salesmen are so weak that they cannot even maintain their own
individuality in the presence of a prospect with a strong, vigorous mentality. He
will annihilate their arguments in a twinkle. They fall down before his onslaught
and say, “Yes, I guess you’re about right, Mr. Blank. I hadn’t thought of that
before. But I guess you know best.” They cannot hold their ground, maintain
their arguments, because they allow themselves to be drawn out of their current
of mental vibration, to be overcome by the current of the stronger mentality.
I know two salesmen who go out from different houses over similar territory
with the same line of goods. One of them sells four or five times as much in a
year as the other. One man starts out with the expectation, the determination to
sell, and, of course, he gets a very large salary on account of his great ability to
sell. The other man gets a very small salary, just barely enough to enable him to
hold on to his job, because obstacles seem so great to him. He returns oftener
with excuses for not selling than with orders. He has not the ability to annihilate
difficulties, to overcome obstacles, which the other man has. He brings back to
his house small orders, or none, because he cannot overcome the objections of
his customers, cannot convince them that they want what he has to sell.
I once saw an advertisement of a big firm for a manager, which, after
describing the sort of man wanted, and saying that no other need apply, closed
with, “The man must be able to cope with antagonism.” Now, the trouble with
the unsuccessful salesman I speak of is: he is not able to cope with antagonism.
He hoists the white flag the moment the enemy confronts him. He has no fight in
him, and surrenders before a shot is fired. When a prospect or customer puts up
an objection he is done. “Well, I guess perhaps you are right,” he says, “it may
be better for you not to buy now.” This salesman lacks stamina. There is not
enough lime in his backbone, not enough iron in his blood. He is a good honest
soul, but he lacks the virility that characterizes the great salesman.
Remember that every weak strand in your character, every hindering
peculiarity, every unfortunate habit, will cripple your sales and mar your success.
Sensitiveness, timidity, shyness, lack of grit or courage, all of these weaknesses
are virtually cutters-down of your ability to sell. Timid, shy or sensitive people
are often morbidly self-conscious. They are always analyzing, dissecting
themselves, wondering how they appear, what people think of them. These
things keep the mind diverted from its real object and are all destroyers of
concentration and power.
Over-sensitiveness is a very serious handicap in salesmanship. The man who
is not able to take his medicine with a smile, who is not able to cope with a surly,
a cantankerous, a quick-tempered or a sharp-tongued customer, has no place in
salesmanship. In other words, a great salesman must be able to carry on his
selling campaign at the points where the ordinary salesman falls down. To do
this he must not be thin-skinned. He must be able to stand all sorts of abusive
talk under which the sensitive, over-refined salesman quails. He must be ready to
push on vigorously at the point where the salesman who lacks grit will quit and
turn back. He must be able to stand having pepper and salt sprinkled on his sore
spots without wincing. He should keep one thing continually in mind: that his
business is, at all costs, to make a sale.
This does not mean that a good salesman must have a rhinoceros hide; that
would make him unfeeling, unsympathetic, and he would lack the human quality
which is so essential in salesmanship. Nor does it mean that he should be
pugnacious or over-aggressive. It simply means that he must be able to antidote
and neutralize the prospect’s thrusts, however cruel or aggravating. In short,
while keeping perfect control of himself, remaining pleasant and agreeable
throughout, he must be able to put up a stiff fight, a dignified, manly fight that
will leave him master of the situation.
This is where the timid or over-sensitive salesman falls short. He is thrown
completely off his base by the vigorous thrusts and arguments of the rough,
energetic business man who doesn’t stop to choose his words. He feels injured at
the slightest reflection upon his ability, his truthfulness, the character of his
goods, or his house. I know a salesman of this sort who will never make his
mark, who flares up, “gets up on his ear,” as they say, whenever his sensitive,
sore spots are touched. He lacks that masterfulness and superb confidence in
himself which make a salesman proof against abuse or opposition. The self-
confident man is impervious to the slights or slurs that make the sensitive man
shrink into himself. He is too sensible of his own dignity to let them interfere
with his business. When the small man, the peppery or morbidly sensitive man,
feels that he must protect his “honor,” even if he lose a sale, the big, broad man
knows that no one can hurt his honor but himself, and that it is best served by
refusing to feel hurt or insulted where in reality no insult is intended.
Another point that works to the great disadvantage of the timid or sensitive
salesman is this: he is afraid to make what is called the “cold” or “straight”
canvass; that is, to approach people without having a “lead” or an introduction.
This is a great weakness, and very often false pride is at the bottom of it. The
man feels above his task. Again, ignorance of goods or of selling principles will
cause a man to lack confidence in himself, and then, naturally, he is timid,
fearful, for he foresees the failure that awaits him when he calls on a customer.
Ignorance is timid; knowledge is bold, courageous. It is not enough to have
possession of yourself if you don’t also have possession of your business, that is,
if you are not thoroughly grounded in the principles of salesmanship. Thus
grounded, if you adopt the right attitude toward your business and toward
yourself, nothing can keep you from success.
Throw off your shyness, your morbid sensitiveness, your timidity. Get rid of
your lack of faith and courage. Confidently expect that you are going to be a
great salesman, a distinctive one, a salesman with individuality, with originality,
with inventiveness, a man of resource and power. Never allow yourself to think
that anything is true about you that you wish to be otherwise, because the
thought you hold in mind is the model of your life building. Think faith, think
courage, think strength, and you will develop those qualities.
The reason why so many of us build so slowly and so poorly is because we are
constantly destroying our building by shifting our model. One day we have
confidence in ourselves, and our mental model is full of courage, hope and
expectancy, and the life forces build accordingly. The next day we are in the
dumps, have no faith in ourselves, are discouraged, and of course these are the
models for that day’s building, destroying the building of the previous day, and
thus many of us go through life, building up and tearing down.
Be consistently courageous, hopeful, confident in yourself and in the power of
your Creator to make you what you long to be, and nobody, nothing on this
earth, can down you.
There is everything in flinging out a superb confidence in yourself, a firm
belief that you are going to win. Expel all doubt and fear, all uneasiness, from
your mind and approach every prospect with the expectation of success.
“Courage,” says Emerson, “comes from having done the thing before.” Your
first success will give you the momentum that will push you on to the next.
Every achievement adds to our self-confidence, the great leader of all our other
faculties. If confidence does not go ahead, the other faculties refuse to go on.
Every time you conquer what you undertake, you add so much to the power of
all the faculties you possess. Just as a snowball grows larger and larger as it rolls
down hill, so our lives grow larger, richer, with each experience. We lose nothing
of what we achieve. It is all added to the life-ball.
Not long ago I asked a very successful man, really a “born salesman,” what he
considered the essential qualifications for good salesmanship. He put in the first
category of qualifications: confidence in your goods, confidence in your firm,
and confidence in yourself, plus enthusiasm, plus earnestness, plus perseverance,
plus hard work, plus enjoyment of your work. In the second place he put: general
knowledge of merchandise. In the third place he put: personality, and under this
heading he included, honesty, neatness of appearance, poise, courtesy, sincerity,
and temperance. The natural born salesman, he said, possesses all of these
things, and in addition, tact, shrewdness, and understanding of human nature.
Now, there is nothing in this list of qualifications that is not within the reach
of every honest intelligent youth who has enough stamina and will power to
make his life a success.
 You are a child of the Infinite; you bear the stamp of the Creator, and you
must partake of His qualities. It is up to you, then, to make good; it is your duty
as a man to show your origin, to stand your ground, to maintain your
independence, your self-reliance, your dignity, against all attacks. It is up to you
to stand for something in your life work, to be counted as one to be reckoned
with in any transaction. It is your own fault if you are sucked out of your own
plane of vibrations by a bully, a fighter, by any one, be he great or small. Selling
honest goods is an honorable pursuit. Bring out your God-given powers.
Improve the qualities He has given you and make your work, make your life
significant. Don’t be apologetic; don’t be afraid; don’t cringe or wilt under
opposition. Feel the importance and dignity of your work and let others feel that
you feel it. Say to yourself, “I too am a son of God, the equal of this or any other
man. I am going to maintain my poise, my individuality, my faith in myself, no
matter what he says. I am as self-reliant, as independent, as forceful as any other
man. I shall not be cowed by any one. I am not going to be downed by an
obstacle.”
You will find it a wonderful help in overcoming obstacles in every phase of
your work to assume a victorious mental attitude, and to carry yourself like a
conqueror. If you go about among your fellows with a defeated expression in
your face, giving the impression that you are not much of a man anyway, that life
has been mostly a defeat, and that you don’t look forward to any success worth
while, you certainly cannot hope to, and never will, inspire confidence in others;
if your face, on the other hand, glows with the expression of victory, if you carry
a victorious attitude, if you walk about the earth like a conqueror, a man victory-
organized, you are headed toward victory. Nothing can keep you from winning
out, because—and don’t forget this—Success begins in the mind.
 CHAPTER XXIV
MEETING COMPETITION: “KNOW YOUR GOODS”
“This is the age of push, struggle and fierce competition.”

“Study your competitor—his manner and method of doing things.”

There are certain lines of business in which the salesman has no competition;
this, however, is the exception. There are many lines in which the competition is
more imaginary than real; that is to say, the quality of the goods of the so-called
competitor is so much inferior to that of the goods carried by a first-rate house
that there is no real competition. The buyer, however, who is usually shrewd,
and, unfortunately, is often unscrupulous, will, if possible, lead the salesman to
think that competitors have given better prices or better terms, and that their
goods are superior. The salesman who is not armed at every point to meet his
tactics runs the risk of being imposed on.
One superlatively good rule is this:—“Know Your Goods.” That will enable
you to meet both real and imaginary competition. By this we mean, be familiar
with the intrinsic merits of the goods you are selling, and know the market
conditions which surround the trade. Read very carefully all the literature and
advertisements put out by your house. Nothing will destroy a buyer’s confidence
more quickly than to find a salesman ignorant of the claims made by his own
house, or of the specific qualities of the goods offered for sale. Salesmen need to
keep themselves fresh and enthusiastic in regard to their goods, not only by
thorough reading of their house organs, and all literature issued with the view of
creating patronage, but also by getting information from every possible source
that will help them in their special line. Outside of what a man can learn from
the printed matter furnished by his own house, he may learn much additional
from leading trade journals and by talking with men who are familiar, in a
practical way, with his line. In getting information from the salesmen of a
competing house it is best not to exchange confidences. Learn all you can in an
open, fair way, but do not resort to trickery, or to any methods which you would
be unwilling to have a competitor use with your house.
The second rule for meeting competition is “Know Competitors’ Goods.” This
again involves not only being familiar with the quality and uses of the goods, but
with the reputation of the manufacturer and his selling agents, as well as the
class of trade to which competitors cater, the class of salesmen they employ, and
the ethics they observe in doing business.
Some believe that three-quarters of all business is done on a friendship basis.
But it is a different friendship than that meant by the accepted term. It is business
friendship, not social friendship.
Naturally, if you do business amicably with a man for a long time you are
“friendly.” You call each other Smith and Brown, possibly “Charlie” and
“Eddie”; maybe you lunch together occasionally. But such friendship is in
nowise like that bestowed on your old neighbors, your college classmates, or
your club brothers.
Many a man who has started out to do business on a real friendship basis has
found out to his sorrow that it can’t be done.
“Friendship and business don’t mix” is an old adage and a true one. You can’t
presume on your intimacy with a man to sell him goods; and it is seldom you can
get his trade away from a successful salesman, even if you have identical goods
and quote the same price. The salesman has become the buyer’s friend too, in a
different way to what you are, but still a friend and deserving of consideration.
No doubt business friendship plays a very large part in business getting with all
salesmen. You know how hard it often is, to break in on the trade of another
man, simply because he has won the friendship of his customers. Keep this in
mind, and do everything to win the friendship and merit the continued
confidence of your trade.
In this connection, remember that “knocking” is bad. When giving the rule,
“Don’t knock,” as a good one for every salesman, I mean simply that a salesman
should not criticise unfairly or bitterly the goods of another. There is no harm in
pointing out the real defects or inferiority of rival merchandise, but it is a great
mistake to show ill-will or to make unkind, uncalled-for criticisms. If it is
necessary to protect a man from buying what is going to cause him a loss, we
should not hesitate in criticizing and pointing out defects, but our criticisms
should be made in a tactful way, so as not to leave the impression that we are
“sore-heads.”
In the next place, avoid the great mistake of young salesmen, and of many
experienced men, who talk their competitors’ goods far too much. I know a
salesman of very pleasing personality who frequently hurts his sales in this way.
He has a way of scattering his customer’s attention by introducing the
possibilities of rival products in his own line. At the present time he is selling
automobiles, and is constantly comparing his car with others, diverting the
customer’s attention, by enlarging on the advantages and disadvantages, the
good and bad points, of rival cars, confusing a man by bringing into his mind so
many things at the same time.
He seems to take delight in exhibiting his thorough knowledge of the points of
those other cars, and, in doing so, he often raises a question in the customer’s
mind as to the desirability of some other than the one the salesman is selling, and
will in many instances postpone purchasing until he investigates the rival cars.
The best salesmen say very little about a competitor’s goods. They simply
explain and emphasize the advantages and good points of their own.
Don’t ignore questions about competitors, and don’t fail to banish from the
customer’s mind all doubts and prejudices, but it is a serious mistake to spend a
lot of time talking about competitors’ goods, when you ought to be sticking to
the merits of your own. Answer quickly all questions, and then switch back to
the excellence of what you are selling. Be so enthusiastic about your own selling
points that rivalry will be forgotten.
In meeting competition, do not be fooled by the question of price. At present,
very many staple lines are of about the same quality and the same price, so that
you must bring out, as a high-grade salesman should, the fact that service is the
main consideration. Show what your house can do in the matter of prompt
deliveries, careful packing, dependability as regards uniform quality, correct
count, liberal terms, etc., and do not forget that the general reputation of your
house is a selling point. The facilities which you have for keeping abreast of the
times, like the employing of experts to do experimental work, thereby improving
your product all the time, is a point of service well worth consideration.
Not the least important of the methods to meet competition is for the salesman
to analyze both the conditions of the people on whom he calls and the territory in
which he works. Any suggestions that he may make to his house will help in the
matter of educational advertising, which always can be used to advantage in
selling.
Above all, a salesman can meet competition most effectively by a strong
personality. Remember that your goods are judged by yourself, sometimes, even,
unfairly; and remember that we are always judged by our weakest points; hence,
in order to hold your old trade from competitors, and to get new trade, you must
possess “business magnetism,” which is another way of saying “a strong
personality.”
 CHAPTER XXV
THE SALESMAN AND THE SALES MANAGER
Every salesman should feel that he is a partner in the business.

The man who thinks he knows it all is taking a header for oblivion.

It is of the utmost importance that every salesman should have full confidence
in his sales manager. There are many peculiar conditions which exist in all lines
of business. The conditions of the trade are best known to those who have
reached the position of sales manager or general manager, and their advice
should always be sought with an open and receptive mind.
In many lines of business, treating and entertaining play an important part.
Often, business can be procured through taking your customer to the theater, or
taking him to your club for lunch or dinner, and quite often an afternoon playing
golf may be the best way to “land” a large contract. There is far less entertaining
done nowadays, however, than formerly. Entertaining is always so agreeable for
the entertainer, as well as for the customer, that many salesmen are likely to
overdo in this respect. They attach too much importance to social meetings
outside of the actual getting of orders; hence, it is wise to abide by what the head
of the firm, or the sales manager, may think in the matter of just how far to go
when expending money, even for cigars that are to be given with the view, not of
bribing the customer, but of getting him in a friendly attitude of mind.
Always be open-minded at the weekly or daily meetings, when instructions
are given by the sales manager. Do not refer to his words as “hot air” and
“bunk.” If you have suggestions, do not hesitate to call his attention to what you
think would be helpful to the other men. Remember that if you really know more
than the sales manager does, it is not going to be long before you will have his
job. If you only think you know more than he does, and you persist in showing
this, either by words or actions, you will soon lose your job.
Written instructions from a sales manager are the best kind. He would always
do well to sum up briefly the main points of his advice, and get them out in the
form of a letter or bulletin. Half a page of typewritten ideas, containing a few
words of inspiration, will work wonders, both for the discouraged and for the
enthusiastic members of his force.
 To get the best results, sales managers should always be friendly and
sympathetic with their men. Harsh criticisms upset a man, sometimes, to the
extent that he will be worried and nervous for several days. Positive and
emphatic reprimands are often called for, but they should always be courteous
and tactful.
And the salesman, when listening to the criticisms of his sales manager,
should remember this old quotation, “Better the wounds of a friend than the
kisses of an enemy.”
Sales managers of the old school believe that finding fault and harsh, driving
methods will get the best results. They are mistaken. “You can get more flies
with molasses, than you can with vinegar,” is a saying perfectly true in its
application alike to the salesman and the sales manager. This does not mean that
the weak-kneed, spineless manager can get good results. Being friendly does not
mean losing dignity. Different men must receive different treatment. There are
lazy men, untidy men, those who do not try to make the most of whatever ability
they have, and men with other more or less grave faults. In dealing with these, it
is necessary to “lay down the law” much more emphatically than with the timid
but ambitious ones.
Marshall Field was in the habit of saying to his employees, “Remember that
the customer is always right.” I would advise every salesman to keep in mind
these words: “Remember, your sales manager is always right.”
A matter you must invariably refer to your sales manager is that of swaying
your customer by gifts. Many people want something for nothing, and a
salesman often thinks that the easiest way to get an order is to use one or another
kind of bribery. This may take the form of rebates, or cash on the spot, or
presents. Be very discreet in such matters.
As a scientific salesman, do not forget to consider the buyer. He is buying
scientifically. He is suspicious. Every one is trying to drive a very close bargain.
He tries to make you yield on price, to make some concessions on payments, to
give special privileges about returning goods, etc. Beware of all these tactics.
Here, again, you must consult frequently, and with confidence, your sales
manager. He knows the tricks of your particular trade, and he will be able to give
you proper coaching.
Be sure, above all things, that if your sales manager had a chance to put an
epitaph on your tombstone it would not be this: “He meant well, tried a little,
and failed much.”
 CHAPTER XXVI
ARE YOU A GOOD MIXER?
Charm of personality is a divine gift that sways the strongest characters, and sometimes even
controls the destinies of nations.

The art of the salesman is akin to that of the orator. Both seek the mastery of the mind, the
sympathy of the soul, the compulsion of the heart.

Personal magnetism in a man corresponds to charm in a woman.

An attractive, pleasing personality makes a striking first impression.

“Getting what you want from kings or statesmen,” De Blowitz said, “is all a
matter of dining with the right people.” Through the power of his charming
presence, his gracious manner, this famous journalist accomplished greater
things at the dinner table, in the drawing-room or ball-room than any other
newspaper man in Europe accomplished through letters of introduction,
influence and special “pulls.” His popularity, his power to interest and please
others, was his strongest asset.
The ability of Charles M. Schwab to make friends, his strong social qualities,
his faculty for entertaining, for making himself agreeable, played a powerful part
in his rapid advancement from a dollar-a-day job to the position of millionaire
steel manufacturer. It was his social qualities which first drew Mr. Carnegie so
strongly to him.
During the Homestead troubles, according to reports, young Schwab used to
cheer Mr. Carnegie with humorous stories and the singing of Scottish ballads,
and the iron master was always in better spirits after a visit from the young man.
There is no other one thing in such universal demand everywhere, in social
life and in business, as the power to attract and please. A magnetic personality
often commands a much bigger salary than great ability with a disagreeable
personality.
I have in mind a young business man, with such a captivating manner, with
such power to interest and please, that there are many firms in this country
which would pay him a fabulous salary for his services.
 We all like to do business, with people who attract us. If we could analyze
cracker-jack salesmen in this country, we should find that they are men who
have a fine magnetic personality. They are great “mixers,” they understand
human nature. They are usually men of broad sympathies, are large-hearted, and
of magnanimous natures.
“Diamond Jim” Brady—James Buchanan, he was christened,—is a shining
example of the ultimate salesman. Mr. Brady has advanced himself to the
position of selling rolling stock and supplies to railroads, and occasionally he
sells entire railroads, making enormous fees as broker. He is perhaps the
personification of “personality” and as a “mixer” he has no peer. His name is
synonymous with “good fellow,” and his list of acquaintances is said to be as
large as that of any other one man in New York.
There is something about one’s personality which eludes the photographer,
which the painter cannot reproduce, which the sculptor cannot chisel. This subtle
something which every one feels, but which no one can describe, which no
biographer ever put down in a book, has a great deal to do with one’s success in
life.
It is this indescribable quality, which some persons have in a remarkable
degree, which sets an audience wild at the mention of the name of a Lincoln or a
Blaine,—which makes people applaud beyond the bounds of enthusiasm. It was
this peculiar atmosphere which made Clay the idol of his constituents. Although,
perhaps, Calhoun was a greater man, he never aroused any such enthusiasm as
“the mill-boy of the slashes.” Webster and Sumner were great men, but they did
not arouse a tithe of the spontaneous enthusiasm evoked by men like Blaine and
Clay.
A historian says that in measuring Kossuth’s influence over the masses, “we
must first reckon with the orator’s physical bulk, and then carry the measuring
line above his atmosphere.” If we had discernment fine enough and tests delicate
enough, we could not only measure the personal atmosphere of individuals, but
could make more accurate estimates concerning the future possibilities of
schoolmates and young friends. We are often misled as to the position they are
going to occupy from the fact that we are apt to take account merely of their
ability, and do not reckon this personal atmosphere or magnetic power as a part
of their success capital. Yet this individual atmosphere has quite as much to do
with one’s advancement as brain-power or education. Indeed, we constantly see
men of mediocre ability, but with fine personal presence, being rapidly advanced
over the heads of those who are infinitely their superiors in mental endowments.
 Walt Whitman used to say that a man is not all included between his hat and
his boots. This is but another way of putting the fact, proved by science, that our
personality extends beyond our bodies. It is not who we are, how we are dressed,
or how we look, whether we are homely or handsome, educated or uneducated,
so much as what we are that creates that subtle mysterious atmosphere of
personality which either draws people to us or drives them from us.
If you are exclusive; if you always want to keep by yourself and read, even
though it be for self-improvement; if you love to get in a seat by yourself when
you travel; if you shrink from mixing or getting acquainted with others on the
road or in hotel lobbies; if people bore or irritate instead of interest you, you will
never make a great salesman. You must be a good mixer, a “good fellow” in the
highest sense of the word (not a dissipater); you must be popular because of your
lovable human qualities, or you will not have that peculiar drawing power which
invites confidence and attracts business. No matter what other excellent qualities
he may possess, the exclusive man is rarely, if ever, magnetic; he doesn’t draw
people to him; on the contrary, he keeps them at a distance.
I know of an exclusive salesman of this sort who for lack of this drawing
quality is making a very poor showing in his business. Although a splendid
fellow in many respects, a man of high ideals and sterling honesty, he is not
popular, because he has never learned to be a mixer, never learned to be a good
fellow, to approach people with a smile and a cheery greeting, to hold out the
glad hand of fellowship.
When he registers in a hotel, even if he has been there many times, he just
bows to the clerk, secures his room, and retires to it at once. He loves books, is
quite a student, but he does not care to be with people any more than he can
help. The other traveling salesmen do not like him. His distant, dignified
personality repels them. In a word, his exclusiveness and his lack of magnetism
have largely strangled his effectiveness as a salesman.
It takes warm human qualities to make a good salesman. You cannot sell
things by the use of mere cold technique, however perfect. You must establish
sympathetic, wireless connection with the prospect’s mind by making him feel
that you are not only very much of a man to start with, but that you have a lot of
human sympathy, and are really anxious to serve him, to put a good thing in his
way.
Some salesmen have no more real sympathy for their prospect than they
would have for a Hindoo image. Their voices carry no more sympathy, no more
real human feeling than a talking machine. The house that employs them might
as well send out phonographs to repeat their mechanical salesman story. They
may hold customers who know that the firm they represent has an excellent
reputation, but they have no power to attract new ones.
There is no other factor which enters so largely into success in business, in
social, and in professional life, as does personality. There is nothing else which
has such an influence in our dealings with others.
It is one of the salesman’s greatest assets. It will make all the difference in the
world to him whether he is sociable, magnetic, with an attractive, agreeable,
cheerful temperament, or whether he is grouchy, cranky, disagreeable and
arouses antagonism in those with whom he deals.
It is not always the man of the greatest ability, the greatest mental power, by
any means, who makes the great salesman. A man may be a mental giant; he
may have a Websterian brain and yet be a pigmy of a salesman. A pleasing,
attractive personality is a tremendous drawing power.
It has the same advantage a sweet, beautiful girl has when you first meet her.
The girl doesn’t have to try to make a good impression; her personality, her
charm, her grace do this without any effort on her part. I have heard merchants
say they looked forward with keen pleasure to the coming of a certain salesman
because he was such a good fellow; he was so sociable, cheery and agreeable.
It is a very difficult thing to resist that magnetic charm of personality which
has swayed judges and juries from justice, and has even changed the destinies of
nations. We have not the heart to deny or refuse, to say “No” to the man or
woman who grips us with the impalpable force of a magnetic personality.
When logic and argument fail, when genius says “impossible,” when pluck
and persistency give up, when influence has done its best and quits, when all the
mental qualities have tried in vain, the subtle something which we call personal
magnetism steps in and without apparent effort wins.
It makes a tremendous difference whether you bring a personality to your
prospect which makes a striking, pleasing first impression, or whether you bring
a cold, clammy, unenthusiastic, unresponsive nature, which makes an indifferent
or an unfavorable impression, one that you must endeavor to overcome with a lot
of long, tedious arguments. It is the personal element which makes the chief
difference between the great salesman with a big salary and the little fellow with
a little salary. The little fellow may try just as hard as the big fellow, indeed he
may try much harder; he may have had a better training in the technique of
salesmanship, but because he lacks the warm, sympathetic, human, sociable
qualities, his industry and hard work are largely neutralized.
I know a man who through the force of his personality is a colossal power in
attracting business. Men follow him, are attracted to him, just as needles are
attracted to a magnet. They can’t very well help dealing with him, he gets such a
magnetic grip upon them. He does not need to make a very strong appeal; his
personality speaks for him.
Phillips Brooks had such a personality. Strangers who passed him on the street
felt his power to such a degree that they would turn and look after him. In his
presence none could resist the pull of his magnetism, of his most wonderful
personality. I was once a member of his Sunday School class in Trinity Church,
Boston, and every one in the class instinctively felt from the first that he was in
the presence of a great, a superb specimen of humanity. He had such tremendous
magnetic power that when he wanted money for any charitable or philanthropic
purpose, he did not have to beg for it, he merely suggested the need of it, and the
closest pocketbooks would fly open. Everybody believed in Phillips Brooks
because of the power of his superb character, the magnetism of his remarkable
personality.
Emerson says, “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you
say.” We cannot conceal what we are, how we feel, because we radiate our
atmosphere, our personality; and this is cold or warm, attractive or repellent,
according to our dominant traits and qualities.
A person who is selfish, always thinking of himself and looking out for his
own advantage, who is cold, unsympathetic, greedy, cannot radiate a warm,
mellow atmosphere because one’s atmosphere is a composite and takes on the
flavor of all of one’s qualities. If selfishness, indifference, avarice and greed are
dominant in one’s nature, this is the kind of an atmosphere he will radiate and it
will repel because these qualities we instinctively detest.
The qualities that attract are out-flowing, buoyant; the qualities that repel are
in-flowing; that is, people who have no magnetism are self-centered, they think
too much about themselves; they do not give out enough; they are always after
something, absorbing, receiving some benefit, trying to get some advantage for
themselves. They lack sympathy, lack cordiality, good fellowship; they are bad
mixers.
Some people are naturally magnetic, but when you analyze their character you
will find they possess certain qualities which we all instinctively admire, the
qualities which attract every human being, such as generosity, magnanimity,
cordiality, broad sympathies, large views of life, helpfulness, optimism.
There is not one of these qualities that the salesman can not cultivate and
strengthen a great deal. If he does so he will get a hearing where others have
thrown back at them the fatal words, “No time to see you to-day—very busy.”
Many upright, honorable young men with political aspirations have been
thwarted in their election campaign because they did not know how to make
themselves popular. Splendid young men, striving for political honors, are
constantly being beaten by men much their inferior in many respects. And this
not because of graft or pull on their opponents’ side, but because the latter are
good mixers. They know how to meet people, how to be good fellows, how to
mix with others; in short they know how to make themselves popular.
We all know what a great demand there is in every line of business for
traveling salesmen who are good mixers, men who have a genius for interesting,
attracting and holding customers.
Whatever your business, your reputation and your success will depend in a
great degree upon the quality of the impression you make upon others. It means
everything, therefore, to young men, and to young women also, to develop a
magnetic, forceful personality.
This is not a very difficult thing to do. Every one can cultivate the ability to
please and the strength of character that will make him felt as a real force in the
world. Knowing the qualities and characteristics that distinguish the magnetic
and the unmagnetic, it is comparatively easy for us to cultivate the one and to
eliminate the other. That is, we can cultivate the generous, magnanimous,
cheerful, helpful mental qualities and crush their opposites; and in proportion as
we do this we shall find ourselves becoming more interested in others, and they
in turn becoming more interested in us. We shall find ourselves more welcome
wherever we go, more sought after; we shall attract people to us more and more,
as we make ourselves personal magnets by fashioning our aura of the kindly
thoughts and words and deeds that day by day go to the making of a rich,
magnetic personality.
In other words, if you cultivate the qualities which you admire so much in
others, the very qualities which attract you, you will become attractive to others.
Just in proportion as you become imbued with these qualities so that they shall
characterize you, will you acquire a magnetic, attractive personality.
A good education is a great advantage to a man or a woman, but most of us
put too great emphasis upon education, upon mental equipment and training. We
seem to think that this is everything, but our personal atmosphere may have
more to do with our success in life, more to do with determining our place in the
world, our social or business advancement, our standing in our community, than
our mere mental equipment.
The first step toward making yourself magnetic is to build up your health.
Vigorous health, coupled with a right mental attitude, an optimistic, hopeful,
cheerful, happy mind, will increase your magnetism wonderfully.
A person having robust health radiates an atmosphere of strength, a suggestion
of vigor and courage, while one who lacks vitality drains from others instead of
giving to them. Physical force and abounding joyousness of health help to create
a magnetic, forceful personality. The man with buoyant, alert mind, with a
sparkle in his eye and elasticity in his step, the man who is bubbling over with
abundant physical vitality, has a tremendous advantage over those who are
devitalized and are weak physically.
To be magnetic you must face life in the right way. Pessimism, selfishness, a
sour disposition, lack of sympathy and enthusiasm—all of these tend to destroy
personal magnetism. It is a hopeful, optimistic, sunny, sane, large-hearted person
who radiates the kind of personal magnetism we all admire, the kind that
commands attention, that attracts and holds all sorts of people.
Above all if you want to have a magnetic, attractive personality, cultivate the
heart qualities. Intellect, brain power, has little, if anything to do with personal
magnetism. It is the lovable, not the intellectual, qualities that draw and hold
people. You must make people feel your sympathy, feel that they have met a real
man or a real woman. Don’t greet people with a stiff, conventional, “How do
you do?” or “Glad to meet you,” without any feeling, any sentiment in it. Be a
good mixer and adapt yourself to different dispositions. Look every person you
meet squarely in the eye and make him feel your personality. Give him a glad
hand, with a smile and a kind word which will make him remember that he has
come in contact with a real force, which will make him glad to meet you again.
If you would be popular, you must cultivate cordiality. You must fling the
door of your heart wide open, and not, as many do, just leave it ajar a little, as
much as to say to people you meet, “You may peep in a bit, but you cannot come
in until I know whether you will be a desirable acquaintance.” A great many
people are stingy of their cordiality. They seem to reserve it for some special
occasion or for intimate friends. They think it is too precious to give out to
everybody.
Do not be afraid to open your heart; fling the door of it wide open. Get rid of
all reserve; do not meet a person as though you were afraid of making a mistake
and doing what you would be glad to recall.
You will be surprised to see what this warm, glad handshake and cordial
greeting will do in creating a bond of good-will between you and the person you
meet. He will say to himself, “Well, there is really an interesting personality. I
want to know more about this lady or gentleman. This is an unusual greeting.
This person sees something in me, evidently, which most people do not see.”
Some people give you a shudder, and you feel cold chills creep over you when
they take hold of your hand. There is no warmth in their grasp, no generosity, no
friendliness, no real interest in you. It is all a cold-blooded proceeding, and you
can imagine you hear one of these chilling individuals say to himself, “Well,
what is there in this person for me? Can he send me clients, patients or
customers? If he does not possess money, has he influence or a pull with
influential people? Can he help or interest me in any way? If not, I can not afford
to bother with him.”
Cultivate the habit of being cordial, of meeting people with a warm, sincere
greeting, with an open heart; it will do wonders for you. You will find that the
stiffness, diffidence and indifference, the cold lack of interest in everybody
which now so troubles you will disappear. People will see that you really take an
interest in them, that you really want to know, please and interest them. The
practice of cordiality will revolutionize your social power. You will develop
attractive qualities which you never before dreamed you possessed.
If you cultivate a magnetic personality you will increase your sales and lessen
your work, besides getting a lot more enjoyment out of life than you otherwise
would.
Remember, customers are drawn, not pushed. Trade to-day is largely a
question of attraction, and the salesman who is the most magnetic, who has the
most affable manners, who is a good mixer, will attract the largest amount of
orders.
 CHAPTER XXVII
CHARACTER IS CAPITAL
 Character is greater than any career.

Manhood overtops all titles.

Character is the greatest power in the world. Nothing can take its place; talents
cannot, genius cannot, education cannot, training cannot. The reputation of being
absolutely square and clean and straight, of being a man whose word is his bond,
is the finest recommendation.
Simple genuineness, transparency of character, will win the confidence of a
customer whether he is prejudiced or not, and the confidence of the purchaser is
half the sale, for no matter how pleasing the speech or the manner of the
salesman, if he isn’t genuine, if he doesn’t ring true, if he doesn’t inspire
confidence, if the customer sees a muddy streak back of his eye, he is not likely
to purchase.
Lack of absolute integrity often keeps salesmen in inferior positions. Take the
average salesman in a retail clothing store. A customer tries on a coat. “How
does it look?” he asks the salesman in a pleased tone.
“Perfect, fine,” answers that worthy.
Then a garment of totally different cut is put on. If the customer seems to like
it, the salesman echoes his view. It is just the coat he should buy.
Pretty soon the customer realizes that the salesman’s advice is worthless; he
won’t tell him the truth as to how the garment looks, fits and hangs; he is intent
only on making a sale. When the customer sees this, naturally he will not buy
there. He will go to another house or to a salesman who will tell him the truth,
who will be honest with him.
Sincerity, genuineness, transparency, carry great weight with us all. Just think
what it means to have everybody believe in you, to have everybody that has ever
had any dealings with you feel that, there is a man as clean as a hound’s tooth
and as straight as a die; no wavering, no shuffling, no sneaking, no apologizing,
no streak of any kind in his honesty; you can always rely on his word. There is a
young man who has nothing to cover up; he has no motive but to tell the truth;
he doesn’t have to cover up his tracks because he has lied once and must make
his future conduct correspond; he knows that honesty needs no defense, no
explanation. His character is transparent. One doesn’t need to throw up guards
against him.
 We all know what a comfort it is to do business with such a man, a man who
cannot be bought, who would feel insulted at the mere suggestion that any
influence could swerve him a hair’s breadth from the right. Is there anything
grander than the man who stands foursquare to the world, who does not love
money or influence as he loves his reputation, and who would rather be right
than be President?
The salesman who has made such a reputation, a reputation of never
misrepresenting, never deceiving, never trying to cajole or over-influence, who
never tries to sell a man what he knows he does not want or what would not be
good for him, who does not try to palm off “out of season” goods or cover up
defects, is certainly a comfort and a treasure both to his employer and his
customers.
How much more comfortable and satisfactory it is for oneself not to have to
watch every step and to guard every statement for fear one will let out some
previous deception! How much easier and how much better it is to be honest
than always to have to be on the lookout for discrepancies in one’s statements, to
be obliged continually to cover one’s tracks!
No training, no bluffing, no tricks, will take the place of genuine sterling
character; your prospect’s instinct, if he is a sharp student of human nature,—and
most business men are,—will very quickly tell him whether you are shamming
an interest in him or whether it is genuine. He can tell whether you are pure gold
or a base counterfeit; and if your character is unalloyed you will establish a
friendly relation with him which will be of very great value.
A good salesman will not fail to realize that the men he approaches have been
swindled many times, and that a hooked trout is shy of new bait. He will not
forget that his would-be customers probably have had many unfortunate
experiences, that possibly they have bought many gold bricks, that their
confidence has been shaken many times by violated pledges, so that they will be
on their guard, and at the outset will look upon every salesman who approaches
them as a smooth-tongued swindler. The experienced man knows that business
chickens come home to roost, that a dishonest policy, any underhand business,
any effort to take advantage will surely be a boomerang for the firm. It is only a
question of time. Every misrepresentation, every mean transaction will sooner or
later cost the firm very dear.
Remember that every sale you make is an advertisement that will either help
or hinder your business. It is an advertisement of the character and general
policy of your firm. It advertises the squareness, the honesty, or the cunning, the
trickery of the whole concern; in other words, the man you approach will get a
pretty good idea of your firm,—their policy and methods of doing business,—by
the impression which you make on him. He can tell pretty well whether he is
dealing with high-class men, whether he can absolutely depend upon the word of
the house, whether he can rely upon their statements, whether he will be
protected, or whether he will have to protect himself by watching and guarding
every little step in every business transaction with the house. He can tell whether
he can rely absolutely upon its doing the square thing by him or not. “A
company is judged by the men it keeps.”
The best salesmen to-day, besides making a study of their business, make a
study of their customers and their wants. Many customers regard such salesmen
as their business advisers, and they give them their confidence, knowing they
will receive from them “white” treatment, that they will only sell them the
merchandise which it is to their advantage to buy.
After he has gained their confidence it would be easy enough for the salesman
to violate it and sell a much larger bill of goods than is to the advantage of the
customer, but the modern salesman knows that this is a poor sort of business
policy. The old-time method of holding up a customer when you get him for
every dollar you can squeeze out of him, and piling onto him just as many goods
as he can be induced to take, and at the biggest possible price, has gone by
forever.
 CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PRICE OF MASTERSHIP
“Three things are necessary, first, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone.”—CHARLES
SUMNER.

“When other people are ready to give up we are just getting our second wind,” is the motto of
a New York business house. A good one for the success aspirant.

“Ships sail west and ships sail east,

By the very same winds that blow;
It is the set of the sails, and not the gales,
That determines where they go.”

“Wrecks of the world are of two kinds,” said Elbert Hubbard. “Those who
have nothing that society wants, and those who do not know how to get their
goods into the front window.”
The way to succeed in salesmanship is to get your goods into the front
window and hustle for all you are worth. Hard work and grit open the door to the
Success firm.
Two college students started out to sell copies of the same book. After some
weeks in the field one wrote to headquarters as an excuse for his poor business
that “everything had been trying to keep him down of late.” The weather had
been so bad he could not get out a great deal of the time; then everybody was
talking “hard times,” and no money, and making all sorts of excuses for not
buying. He said he was so disgusted and discouraged that he saw nothing for it
but to give up canvassing as a bad job.
The other young man, canvassing in similar territory, sent in his report about
the same time. This is what he wrote: “In spite of bad weather and the fact that
everybody is trying to hedge on account of the war scare and the general
business depression I have had a banner week, and my commissions were over
eighty dollars. I get used to this ‘hard times and no money,’ and ‘can’t afford it’
talk, and I just sail right in and overwhelm all these objections with my
arguments. I make the people I talk to feel that it would be almost wicked to let
the opportunity pass for securing a book, the reading of which has doubled and
trebled the efficiency of a multitude of men and women and has been the turning
point in hundreds of careers. I have made them feel that it will be cheap at
almost any price, and that I am doing them a great favor in making it possible for
them to secure this ambition-arousing book.”
This young man sold, on the average, to eight people out of ten he called upon
during the week.
A traveling salesman for a big concern got it into his head that his territory out
through the West was played out. His orders were shrinking, and he told his
employers that the territory had simply been worked to a finish, that there was
no use in staying in it any longer. His sales manager, however, knew the section
well, and doubted the man’s glib statement. He put a young fellow in his place
who had had very little experience, but who was a born hustler, full of energy,
ambition and enthusiasm. On his first trip he more than doubled his
predecessor’s record. He said he saw nothing to indicate a played-out route, and
was confident that business would increase as he became better acquainted with
the territory.
The fact was that, not the territory, but the man was played out. The older
salesman was not willing to forego his comforts, his pleasures, to hustle for
business. He was not willing to travel across the country in bad weather on the
chance of getting an order in a small town. He preferred to remain in the
Pullman cars, to go to the larger towns and sit around in hotel lobbys, to take
things easy, to go to the theaters instead of hunting up new customers and
making friends for the house. He wanted his “dead” territory changed, because
he had no taste for hustling. His successor did not see any lack of life in that
“played-out” route because he was “a live wire.” The trouble was not in the
territory; it was in the man.
At an agricultural convention while discussing the slope of land which was
best suited to a certain kind of fruit tree, an old farmer was called upon to
express his opinion. He got up and said, “the slope of the land don’t make so
much difference as the slope of the man.” It isn’t the slope of the territory that
counts so much in selling as the slope of the salesman; that is everything. In
every business it is always a question of the sort of a man behind the proposition.
It is the slope of the man, his grit, his stick-to-it-iveness, that count most.
No matter how letter perfect you may be in the technique of salesmanship, or
how well posted on all the rules of effective procedure, if you lack certain
qualities you never will make a first-class salesman.
If you lack grit, industry, application, perseverance; if you lack determination
and that bull-dog grip which never lets go or knows when it is beaten; if you lack
sand, you will peter out. Having these qualities you will overcome many
handicaps.
I have known a little sawed-off dwarf of a salesman to wade into a prospect
and, through sheer grit, get an order where the ordinary salesman, with good
physical appearance, would have failed.
This fellow said that grit had been his only capital in life; that when he found
he was so handicapped by his size and his ugly features that he would probably
be a failure and a nobody in the world, he just made up his mind he would not
only overcome every one of his handicaps, but that he would be a big success in
his line. He did everything he had resolved to do, and through sheer force of grit
“made good.” He had paid the price of success, and won out, as will every one
who is willing to pay the price.
Only the weakling prates about “luck,” a “pull,” or “favoritism,” or any other
backstairs to success. Your success and your luck are determined by yourself and
by no other. We are the masters of our destiny. We get just what we want. To be
sure, all of us wish for a lot of things; we would like very much to have them,
but we don’t really want them, or we would straightway set to work and try very
hard by every means in our power to get them. Many of us wish for a position
worth anywhere from ten thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars a
year, but we want to get it without much effort, and to hold it with still less
effort. What we really want is success without effort, an easy job at the highest
market price, like the cook pictured in a recent cartoon, applying for a place. Her
first question is: “And what’s the wages, mum?” “Oh, I always pay whatever a
person’s worth,” answers the employer. “No, thank ye, mum. I never works for
as little as that,” replies the disgusted would-be employee.
Let us remember that there is no easiest way to success in any business or
profession. We are here to develop ourselves to the highest point of our ability;
to be the broadest, ablest, most helpful men and women we can be, and this is
only possible through the assiduous cultivation of our highest faculties. We can
only grow and progress through self-development. No patent method has yet
been discovered by which a man or woman can be developed from the outside.
Abraham Lincoln tells us, “The way for a young man to rise, is to improve
himself every way he can, never suspecting that any one wishes to hinder him.”
Hudson Maxim, the famous inventor, has formulated ten success rules, the
essence of which are, study and work. He makes two vital assertions: 1. “Never
look for something for nothing; make up your mind to earn everything, and
remember that opportunity is the only thing that any one can donate you without
demoralizing you and doing you an injury.” 2. “Man must eliminate from his
mind any belief that the world owes him a living.”
Now, some people differ with Mr. Maxim on this last point. They believe the
world does owe each one of us a living. If they are right, it is pleasant to think
that the world is very ready to pay this debt, when we come around to collect it
in the right way. If we can do any one thing superbly, no matter how humble it
may be, we shall find ourselves in demand. The world will most willingly pay its
indebtedness to us.
Men and women who have won distinction in every business and profession
are unanimous in their agreement as to two cardinal points in the achievement of
success—Work and Grit.
The Honorable Thomas Pryor Gore, the blind Senator of Oklahoma, who
raised himself from a poor, blind boy to be an influential member of the United
States Senate, has this to say on the secret of pushing to the front: “A fixed and
unalterable purpose, pursued under all circumstances, in season and out of
season, with no shadow of turning, is the best motive power a man can have. I
have sat in physical darkness for twenty-seven years, and if I have learned
anything it is that the dynamics of the human will can overcome any difficulty.”
Here, indeed, is encouragement for every youth in this land of opportunity.
Think of a poor, blind boy, unaided, achieving such distinction as Mr. Gore has
won! Think of a blind Milton writing the greatest epic in the world’s literature!
Think of a Beethoven, stone deaf, overcoming the greatest handicap a composer
could have, and raising himself to the distinction of being one of the greatest
composers the world has known! One of this wonderful man’s sayings is well
worth keeping in mind by every young man struggling with difficulties: “I will
grapple with fate; it shall never drag me down.”
It is well also to remember this truth: “Usually the work that is required to
develop talent is ten times that necessary for ordinary commonplace success.”
Men naturally brainy, or with some great gift, have to work most assiduously to
achieve big results. Without untiring perseverance, industry, grit, the courage to
get up and press on after repeated failures, the historic achievers of the world
would never have won out in their undertakings.
Columbus said that it was holding on three days more that discovered the New
World; that is, it was holding on three days after even the stoutest hearts would
have turned back that brought him in sight of land.
 Tenacity of purpose is characteristic of all men who have accomplished great
things. They may lack other desirable traits, may have all sorts of peculiarities,
weaknesses, but the quality of persistence, clear grit, is never absent from the
man who does things. Drudgery cannot disgust him, labor cannot weary him,
hardships cannot discourage him. He will persist no matter what comes or goes,
because persistence is part of his nature.
More young men have achieved success in life with grit as capital, than with
money capital to start with. The whole history of achievement shows that grit
has overcome the direst poverty; it has been more than a match for lifelong
invalidism.
After all, what do all the other accomplishments and personal decorations
amount to if a man lacks the driving wheel, grit, which moves the human
machine. A man has got to have this projectile force or he will never get very far
in the world. Grit is a quality which stays by a man when every other quality
retreats and gives up.
For the gritless every defeat is a Waterloo, but there is no Waterloo for the
man who has clear grit, for the man who persists, who never knows when he is
beaten. Those who are bound to win never think of defeat as final. They get up
after each failure with new resolution, more determination than ever to go on
until they win.
Have you ever seen a man who had no give-up in him, who could never let go
his grip whatever happened, who, every time he failed, would come up with
greater determination than ever to push ahead? Have you ever seen a man who
did not know the meaning of the word failure, who, like Grant, never knew when
he was beaten, who cut the words “can’t,” and “impossible,” from his
vocabulary, the man whom no obstacles could down, no difficulty phase, who
was not disheartened by any misfortune, any calamity? If you have, you have
seen a real man, a conqueror, a king among men.
As we look around at other men, enjoying the good things of life, basking in
the sunshine of success, let us remember that they didn’t get their place in the
sun by wishing and longing for it. They didn’t get to Easy Street by the road of
Inertia. When you are tempted to envy those people, and long to have a “pull” or
some one to give you a “boost,” just call to mind this jingle:
“You must jump in, and fight and work, nor care for one defeat;
For if you take things easy, you won’t reach Easy Street.
Don’t waste time in envy, and never say you’re ‘beat,’
For if you take things easy, you won’t reach Easy Street.”
 There is no royal road to anything that is worth having. Only work and grit
will do the trick. As J. Pierpont Morgan says, “Hard, honest, intelligent work
will land any young man at the top.”
The great business world is always on the hunt for the man who can do things
a little better than they have been done before, the man who can deliver the
goods, the man who can manage a little better, the man who is a little shrewder, a
little more scientific, a little more accurate, a little more thorough; it is always
after the man who can bring a little better brain, a little better training to his job.
With our constantly widening national interests, our enormously expanding
trade, the demand for A1 salesmen is ever on the increase. The young man who
is not satisfied with the ordinary required equipments for salesmanship, but who
will add to this a thorough knowledge of modern languages, especially those
most used in commercial intercourse—German, French and Spanish—will not
have very great difficulty in finding his place in the sun.
The making—or the marring—of your life is in your own hands. “The gods
sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.” Success is on sale in the world
market place. All who are willing to pay the price can buy it. In the final
analysis, success in salesmanship, as in everything else, is simply a matter of
“paying the price.”
 CHAPTER XXIX
KEEPING FIT AND SALESMANSHIP
To keep fit is to maintain perfect health; and perfect health depends upon a perfect balance of
mind and body, unimpaired physical vigor and absolute inner harmony, a mental poise which
nothing can disturb.

There is a vast amount of ability lost to the world through poor health, through not keeping in
condition to give out the best that is infolded in us.

“I want you,” said Philip D. Armour to one of his employees, “to grow into a
man so strong and big that you will force me to see that you are out of place
among the little fellows.”
If you want to be a salesman “so strong and big” that you will be “out of place
among the little fellows,” you must be as physically fit as was John L. Sullivan
in his prime. At that time the mere sight of Sullivan entering the ring struck such
terror into the heart of his opponent that the fight was half won before a blow
was struck. It seemed to the small man like a desperate venture to tackle a giant
with such a superb physical presence. The famous pugilist’s appearance had as
much to do with his success as had his knowledge of the technique of the ring.
If you want to win out (and who does not?) you must enter the ring—the arena
of life—with all the power you can muster, in superb health, at the top of your
condition, capable of putting up your biggest fight. You can do this and come out
with your flag flying if you are good to yourself, if you keep fit. But if you allow
all sorts of leaks of power to drain away your energy, your brain force, your will
power, you will be in no condition to make the fight of your life.
You should be as well prepared physically for the contest as the prize fighter
who is determined to keep his record. Or, like the Greek god Hercules, you
should be able to win largely by the force of your reserve power. It was said that
Hercules made such an impression of great reserve force on his antagonist that
he never had to put forth much strength in wrestling. He won as much by the
impression of confident power which he radiated, as by the degree of strength he
exerted.
In other words, if you do not back up your general ability and special training
with robust health you will be forever at a disadvantage in the game of life. You
must keep yourself fit for your job, always in a condition to do your best or you
will be handicapped in the game.
It is the law of life that the “weakest shall go to the wall.” Frailness of body is
an inevitable handicap in life. Physical weakness largely discounts the
possibilities of achievement. The slow but striving tortoise may beat out the hare
in the race. The steadfast, plodding student may take the prizes of life which his
more brilliant competitor never attained. But the tortoise, though slow, is sound
of body. Cripple him and all his plodding will avail him little.
True, there have been weak men who have done wonders in life in spite of
frailness and physical infirmity. But they are only the exceptions that prove the
rule. Alexander Pope, “the gallant cripple of Twickenham,” sewed up in canvas;
St. Paul, short in stature, of inferior presence and almost blind, are types of the
men whose great souls overcame their bodily weakness. Cæsar, Pascal, Nelson,
were other types of the indomitable spirit which can not be limited by sickness
or infirmity. But, in the main, the man who “makes good” has good health.
As a salesman you carry all your capital with you. You are in business, but
you carry everything connected with it, your factory, your sales department with
you. Your machinery assets are mental, and if you don’t do your best to keep
them in fine condition you will show about as much sense as a farmer who
would leave all his valuable farm machinery out-doors in all sorts of weather, to
be ruined by wind and dew, rain and snow. Your skill, your expertness, your
facility of expression, your tact, your discretion, your power of discrimination,
your knowledge of human nature, your courage, your initiative, your
resourcefulness, your cheerfulness, your magnetism, in fact, every one of your
mental faculties is a part of your business capital, is an asset, and its condition
depends entirely on the care you take of the engine which furnishes the motor
power for all your mental machinery. That engine is your body.
The physical soil is the soil in which your faculties are nourished. If this soil is
impoverished, if your vitality is low, if you are sapping your energies by vicious,
ignorant, or foolish habits, your faculties will not thrive.
Some time ago an ambitious young fellow came to me and asked me to tell
him how to increase his ability and his power to achieve things. He was pale and
emaciated, with something like signs of dissipation in his face. The young man
seemed very anxious to get along in the world but, evidently, he had taken the
wrong path. A few questions brought out the fact that although not dissipating in
the ordinary sense, the course he was pursuing was almost as disastrous to his
health. He was sitting up till one or two o’clock at night, studying, while
working very hard in the day-time, and to brace up his depleted strength he was
not only drinking coffee and tea to excess, but he was also taking whiskey, and
even drugs. He did not seem to know that this artificial stimulus to his brain was
like a whip to a tired horse, and that it was only a question of time until he would
be a physical and mental wreck.
It is amazing how ignorant many otherwise intelligent people are when it
comes to a question of body and health building. Young people often ask me to
tell them how they can increase their ability, and in nine cases out of ten I find
that, like the young man above, they are doing some fool things that defeat the
very object they have in view.
Now, the surest way to increase your ability, to multiply and strengthen your
faculties, is to lay a good foundation of health, and to guard it as you would your
most precious possession—for that is really what it is. Vigorous, abounding
health will emphasize, reinforce and multiply the forcefulness of all the faculties,
and the sum of these faculties constitutes your ability, the force that achieves,
that creates.
It will make a tremendous difference to you what sort of a man you take to
your prospect. I say “you take,” because you are the master of the salesman.
There is something bigger back of the salesman, than the salesman himself. You
are the salesman’s manager, his trainer, his educator. There is a master in you,
who, to a very large extent, dictates the sort of a man “you take” to your
prospect, because he will be the sort of a man you make him. To be a whole man,
mentally, physically, and spiritually is your business. To be deficient on any of
these planes is to be only two parts a man. To be one hundred per cent. a man—
that is your problem.
The human machine is very complicated, and even a little thing may seriously
impair its harmony and efficiency. A bad fitting shoe may cut down your
effectiveness temporarily, or as long as you wear it, twenty-five per cent. A
speck of dirt in the eye would cripple a Napoleon, as a hair in the works would
seriously injure the best timepiece in the world. A hasty, bolted lunch, of poor,
adulterated food, may impair your digestion, cut down your brain power and
make you ineffective when it is of the utmost importance that you be effective.
Efficiency lies in the symmetry and perfect functioning of all of your organs.
If they are not trying to help you make a sale; if you have treated them badly and
they are protesting, they will beat you. You may think that, no matter how you
feel, you can put a deal over by sheer will power, but remember that your will
power is dependent upon the harmonious action of all your bodily functions. It
will weaken just as soon as any one of these is impaired. If not one, but several
of them—your digestive organs, your liver, your heart, your kidneys, your brain,
are fighting against you, trying to defeat your purpose, you will not win out no
matter how hard a fight you put up. Many a superb salesman has finally lost out
by making an enemy of all the organs which make for health and success.
Do you realize what goes into every sale you make? Did it ever occur to you
that your brains, your education, your training, your experience, your skill, your
ingenuity, your resourcefulness, your originality, your personality—about all
your life capital is flung into every selling transaction?
The result of every canvass you make will depend very largely upon how
much of yourself you fling into it, and how intensely, how enthusiastically,
cheerfully, and tactfully you fling yourself in. You cannot bring the whole of
yourself to the sale unless every function of your body gives its consent. Your
physical organism must be in perfect harmony or your vitality will be lowered,
and you will be robbed of a certain percentage of your possible power.
The great thing when you approach a prospect is to be all there, not to leave
ten, fifteen, twenty or twenty-five per cent. of yourself in the bar-room or in
some other vicious resort the night before. Do not fling a lot of your ability away
in bad food, or in a too rich and complicated diet, viciously taken. Be sure when
you call on a prospect that you take a good digestion along with you; it is the
best friend of your brain. If your digestion is ruined by over-eating, or if your
brain is not well fed, no amount of will power, or cocktail or whiskey braces,
will compensate for the loss you suffer.
Many a promising salesman has failed to make good because he made a habit
of turning night into day and could take only about half of himself to his work.
Many a cracker-jack salesman has lost a sale by partaking too heartily of dinner,
or by a fit of indigestion brought on by some indiscretion in eating.
Multitudes of people go through life working hard, trying desperately to
succeed, but are terribly disappointed by the meagerness of their achievement,
simply because they did not take care of their health. They are all the time
devitalized; they lack blood, or it is of poor quality; it lacks fire and force, and,
of course, the brain and all the faculties deteriorate to correspond with the blood.
The achievement follows the vitality, and this in turn depends on the general
care of the body. The kind of food, its quality and amount, the manner in which
we partake of it, our physical habits, work, rest, recreation, sleep,—these are the
things on which health and vitality depend. These furnish our physical energy
and achievement depends upon energy. It would be impossible even for the brain
of a Webster to focus with power, if fed with poor ill-nourished blood.
Everywhere we see bright, educated young men and women, with good
brains, crippled by poor health, mocked by great ambitions which they can never
realize. A large part of their ability is lost to the world because of some physical
weakness which might be remedied by careful, scientific living.
Just glance over the young men you know and see what a small part of their
ability goes into their life work, because of their impaired assets, through foolish
or vicious living habits. They are selling their integrity, squandering their life
capital in all sorts of dissipation, bringing perhaps not more than twenty-five per
cent. of their actual ability to their life work.
How often we hear the remark: “Poor fellow! he was always a victim of bad
health, but for that he would have accomplished great things.” “Mentally able
but physically weak” would make a good epitaph for thousands of failures.
A weakness anywhere in you will mar your career. It will rise up as a ghost all
through your life work, at unexpected moments, mortifying, condemning,
convicting you. Every indiscretion or vicious indulgence simply opens a leak
which drains off your success and happiness possibilities. There is no
compensation for waste of health capital. Health raises the power of every
faculty and every possibility of the man, and there is no excuse for losing it
through carelessness, dissipation or ignorance.
Nor can one plead mere weakness or lack of energy as a handicap, an excuse
for failure. Nature is no sentimentalist. If you violate her law you must pay the
penalty though you sit on a throne. She demands that you be at the top of your
condition, always at your best, and will accept no excuse or apology.
Whatever your work in life, the secret of your success and happiness is locked
up in your health, in your brain, your nerves, your muscles, your ambition, your
ideal, your resolution. It is up to you to be a whole man. You cannot afford to be
less. You cannot afford to dwarf your career or botch it by going to your task
with stale brains. You cannot do first-class work with second-class brain power,
with a brain that is fed by poison,—blood vitiated by abnormal living or
dissipation. You cannot afford to go to your work used up, played out. Trying to
sell merchandise with stale brains keeps many a salesman capable of real
mastership in a mediocre position. You cannot do a master’s work with a muddy
brain which was not renewed, refreshed, by plenty of sound sleep, healthful
recreation, and vigorous exercise in the open air.
In other words, if you expect to make the most of yourself you must be good
to yourself. Strangled health means strangled ability. If you murder your health
you murder all your chances in life.
No man ever does a great thing in this world who does not protect the
faculties he is using with jealous care. Watch your generating power. Remember
that you see the world largely through your stomach. Its condition will determine
the condition of your brain. Poor digestion gives you poor blood, and poor blood
a poor brain. Few people realize what a tremendous factor health plays in their
success. Men give the brain credit for a large amount of their success which is
due to the stomach, which has everything to do with physical health and robust
vitality.
Not long ago I was talking to a salesman who said he guessed he was losing
his grip; didn’t know how it was, but he was not making sales as he used to. He
didn’t have the same grit and enthusiasm; guessed he was sliding down hill,
going backward instead of forward. Formerly, he said, he always approached a
customer with the expectation of getting an order, but latterly he was in great
doubt; he could not get on full steam, a resolute determination to win. Now,
when a man gets into this condition he is not fit to solicit business. Nature is
calling to him: “Stop, Look, Listen.” It is time for him to call a halt, and see
what is the trouble with his engine.
If you would be a master in your specialty heed Nature’s danger signals,
which she puts up all through your body. That “tired feeling” is one of them;
brain fag, headache, is one of them; indigestion is one of them; apathy, “don’t
feel like it,” poor appetite,—all these things are signals to slow down. But
instead of slowing down and repairing, most of us try to speed up with all sorts
of stimulants and run past these danger signals, with the result that we either
wreck our life train or very seriously injure it.
No man can afford to ignore Nature’s warnings, but least of all can the
salesman, on whose physical condition everything depends. Other men can
depute their work, at least for a time, to those under them; but the salesman
cannot do this, for he is strictly a one-man concern, and everything depends on
his health. He must always be at the top of his condition; and every quality
needed in his work is sharpened and braced by vigorous health.
How comparatively easy it is, for instance, for a healthy man to be hopeful,
optimistic, enthusiastic. How difficult for a chronic dyspeptic to be any of these
—to be kind, gentle, generous, cheerful, obliging. His natural disposition may
not be at fault, for the tendency of ill health is to make a man cross, crabbed,
fault-finding, fretful, hard, pessimistic.
“Touchiness,” a defect which makes so many men and women unbearable,
usually comes from some weakness or physical ailment. A great many so-called
“sins” are due to a depleted physical condition. It is so much easier for a man to
control himself when he is well, to say “No” with emphasis, when, if he were
suffering from some physical disability, he might say “Yes,”—anything to get rid
of annoyance and to get into a more comfortable condition.
How much health has to do with one’s manners! How easy to be courteous
and accommodating when one feels the thrill of health surging through his whole
being; but how hard to be polite, gentle, amiable, when one feels ill, weak, and
nervous, and wants to be let alone! How hard to carry on an interesting
conversation when all of one’s physical standards are down!
Then again, how the health affects the judgment! The judgment is really a
combination of a great many other faculties, and the condition of each seriously
affects the quality of the combination.
One’s courage is largely a matter of physical health. How quickly the ailing
man, to whom everything looks blue, becomes discouraged! Everything looks
black to people whose physical standards are demoralized.
Horse trainers know that a horse’s courage during the contest depends a great
deal upon its being in a superb physical condition. It is the same with the horse’s
master—man. Courage, poise, masterfulness, resourcefulness, physical vigor go
together. Nervousness, timidity, uncertainty, doubt, hesitation, usually
accompany depleted vitality.
The bull-dog tenacity which plays such a part in every life worth while has a
physical basis. The will power, which is a leader in the mental kingdom, depends
very largely upon the health. How different, for example, obstacles look to the
man who is ailing all the time, suffering pain, compared with the way they look
to a man who is full of vigor and energy. The man who is well plans great things
to-day, because he feels strong and vigorous. Obstacles are nothing to him; he
feels within himself the power to annihilate them. But to-morrow he is ill, and
the obstacles which were only molehills yesterday, loom up like mountains, and
he does not see how he can possibly conquer them.
We look at things through our moods, and moods are largely a question of
physical health. The man who is strong and full of the courage of abounding
vitality wants something hard to wrestle with; he feels the need of vigorous
exercise. But the man whose vitality is low has no surplus to spare. Slight
difficulties look formidable to him; trifles are exaggerated into serious obstacles,
which seem insurmountable. There is confusion all through his mental kingdom,
and his faculties will not work harmoniously. There is a tremendous wear and
tear on the physical economy of the man in poor health.
The faculty of humor was given man to ease him over the jolts, to oil the
bearings of life’s machinery; but ill health often crushes out the sense of humor,
and makes life, which was intended to be bright and cheerful, sad and gloomy.
Loss of good red blood corpuscles has much to do with one’s sense of humor as
well as one’s manners and disposition. The man in poor health is in no condition
to appreciate the joys of life. Everything loses its flavor in proportion to his
lowered vitality.
Ill health very materially weakens the power of decision. A man who, when in
vigorous health, decides quickly, finally and firmly, when in poor health,
wobbles, wavers, reconsiders. His purpose, which was once a mighty force in his
life, lacks virility, has lost much of its strength. In fact, all of his life standards
drop in proportion to the decline in physical vigor.
Again, the quality of health has a great deal to do with the quality of thought.
You cannot get healthy thinking from diseased brain cells or nerve cells. If the
vitality is below par the thought will drop to its level.
What magic a trip to Europe or a vacation in the country often produces in the
quality of one’s thought and work. The writer, the clergyman, the orator, the
statesman, who was disgusted with what his brain produced comes back to his
work after a vacation and finds himself a new man. He can not only do infinitely
more work with greater ease, but his work has a finer quality. The writer is often
surprised at his grip upon his subject and his power to see things which he could
not get hold of before. There is a freshness about his style which he could not
before squeeze from his jaded brain. The singer who broke down comes back
from a vacation with a power of voice which she did not even know she
possessed. The business man returns with a firmer grip upon his business, a new
faculty for improving methods, and a brighter outlook on the world. The brain
ash has been blown off the brain cells which were clogged before; the blood is
pure; the pulse bounding, and, of course, the brain cells throw off a finer quality
of thought, keener, sharper, more penetrating, more gripping.
 Many a salesman could add twenty-five or fifty per cent. to his power by
easing the strain of life now and then, especially when Nature hangs out any of
her warning signals.
Supposing an Edison or some other great inventor should discover a secret for
doubling one’s ability, what would we not all do or give to get this secret? Yet
every one knows a process for doubling ability which never fails. It is health-
building, vitality-building, by simply exercising common sense in the matter of
living. There is nothing complicated in this; it means eating just enough, not too
much or too little, of the foods that give force and power, scientific eating of
these foods; scientific care of ourselves, exercise, recreation, play; getting out of
doors whenever possible and absorbing power from the sun and air; getting
plenty of sleep in a well-ventilated bedroom; regular systematic habits; right
thinking, triumphant thinking, holding the victorious attitude toward life, toward
our work, toward our health, toward everything. Now here is the secret of
doubling ability. We all have it; all that is necessary is to put it in practice.
There is no other thing that will pay a salesman better than putting it in
practice every day. Keeping himself in superb physical condition will not only
give a wonderful flavor to life, but it will add great interest and charm to his
personality. Good health is the foundation of personal magnetism; it is the secret
of the sparkle in the eye, the buoyant spirit, the keen whip to the intellect which
sharpens all the wits. Many a sale has been clinched by the pleasing appearance
of a salesman, the charm of a bright, flashing eye, a clear skin, a firm step, and a
straight pair of shoulders.
How quickly we can tell by the appearance of horses on the street what sort of
care they get. How fine a carefully groomed horse looks and how well he feels.
He seems to have a sense of pride in his personal appearance, whereas the horse
which is seldom if ever groomed, shows his neglect by the sharp contrast.
The same thing is true of individuals. I have a friend who takes infinite pains
to keep himself in prime condition. He says his human machine is his most
precious asset and that he cannot afford to neglect his exercise; he cannot afford
to be irregular in his eating habits, or to eat foods which are not body builders,
health and force producers; he cannot afford to lose sleep, or to do anything
which will lower his vitality. He is equally careful about his grooming, and
always looks fit, in the pink of condition. Another friend of mine is just the
opposite. He will take a hot bath in about ten minutes; he dresses in a hurry;
never bothers about his exercise or his food, and the result is the two men
present as great a contrast as the well-groomed, well-cared for horse and the ill-
groomed, ill-cared for one.
It is of little use to have all the qualities which make a good salesman if these
qualities are not kept in prime condition. Yet there are a great many salesmen
who do not take time enough to care for themselves properly, to keep their
wonderful machine in fine trim, in superb physical and mental condition.
It was said that Ole Bull could never be induced to go on playing unless his
violin was in perfect tune. If a string stretched the least bit, no matter how many
thousands were waiting for him, he would stop until he had put his violin in
perfect tune again. Ole Bull would not allow himself even for a moment to be
anything but a master.
You cannot go to your prospect with the brain of a master salesman, victory-
organized, if your instrument is out of tune. If you do not keep yourself tuned to
concert pitch; if you do not take the trouble to make a fine adjustment of your
wonderful human instrument each day; if you do not put yourself in tune each
morning for the day’s work; if there is the least inharmony in any of the
marvelous mechanism of your body, you will go on all day producing discord
instead of harmony. In other words, you will be a failure instead of a success.
When you approach a prospect be sure you are “in tune with the Infinite,”
(with the highest law of your being) that you are all there, that you are not sixty,
seventy-five, eighty, ninety or ninety-nine per cent. present, but that you are all
there, that you are a hundred per cent. present, and that this hundred per cent. is
ready to strike the blow. More will depend upon your body and mind being in
complete harmony, in perfect tune than on all of your special training in
salesmanship.
In this age of fierce competition physical vigor plays a tremendous part. It is
an age of efficiency force, an age which requires masterfulness. The victors in
the great life game to-day, as a rule, are men with powerful vitality, tremendous
staying power. Whether you win out or lose in the game will depend largely on
your reserve power, your plus vitality.
Keep yourself always fit so that you can do your best, the highest thing
possible to you, with ease and dignity, without struggle or strain, and you will be
a master salesman. Always be at the top of your condition, and you can approach
your prospect with the assurance of victory, the air of a conqueror, with the
superb confidence that wins. Keep your human machine in perfect tune, and you
will radiate power, masterfulness; you will exhale force and magnetism from
every pore; you will be the sort of salesman that every customer is glad to see
—A MASTER SALESMAN.
 APPENDIX
SALES POINTERS

“There are two chief classes of men that you will approach.
“One class is ruled chiefly by reason, the other by impulses—emotion—
prejudices—enthusiasm—likes and dislikes.
“The first class can be convinced only by hard matter-of-fact, mathematical
arguments—the kind of evidence that will pass a judge in court. The minds of
these men are clear, cold, logic engines. They are impressed only by facts and
figures, and will do no business with salesmen who offer them anything else.
“The other class—of impulsive or emotional men—is amenable to heart sway
persuasion.
“You will not find it so necessary to convince their reasons. Give them the
best evidence you have, but mix it with something more.
“Be careful of their prejudices, watch out for the revelation of their likes and
dislikes, discover their enthusiasm, suit yourself to their moods.
“Sooner or later, if you know your business, you will uncover the vulnerable
spot in an emotional man and he is yours. Strike him with the right kind of
persuasion and you can walk out with his order.
“Study your prospects. Learn to read the book of human nature. The formulas
for success in selling are written on its pages.”
 Don’t be a slave of precedent. It is an enemy of progress. Know the technique
of salesmanship, but don’t be its slave. Study men at the top and then ask
yourself, “Why can’t I do what they have done?” RESOLVE NOT TO BE A LITTLE
FELLOW.

No matter how much you know about salesmanship your personality, your
character, will be the chief factors in your success.
While the technique of salesmanship is important, yet it is the man behind the
salesman that does the business. It is the human power back of the mere
technique that makes the sale.

THREE KINDS OF SALESMEN

The Heavyweight,
The Featherweight, and
Just plain WAIT.—Selected.
“Some salesmen are not always successful salesmen—BUT, successful
salesmen are always SOME salesmen.”
“A master salesman is a self-made salesman—BUT a self-made salesman isn’t
always a master salesman.”
Always keep in mind the man at the other end of the bargain. If he does not
make a good bargain you will lose in the end, no matter how much you may sell
him.
Follow your prospect’s mind. Let him do much of the talking. If he sees you
are trying to push him and expecting to change his mind he will brace up against
you.

THE SALESMAN’S CREED

To be a man whose word carries weight at my home office, to be a booster,

not a knocker, a pusher, not a kicker; a motor, not a clog.
To believe in my proposition heart and soul; to carry an air of optimism into
the presence of possible customers; to dispel ill temper with cheerfulness, kill
doubts with strong convictions and reduce active friction with an agreeable
personality.
 To make a study of my business or line; to know my profession in every detail
from the ground up; to mix brains with my effort and use method and system in
my work. To find time to do everything needful by never letting time find me
doing nothing. To hoard days as a miser hoards dollars; to make every hour bring
me dividends in commissions, increased knowledge or healthful recreation.
To keep my future unmortgaged with debt; to save money as well as earn it; to
cut out expensive amusements until I can afford them; to steer clear of
dissipation and guard my health of body and peace of mind as my most precious
stock in trade.
Finally, to take a good grip on the joy of life; to play the game like a
gentleman; to fight against nothing so hard as my own weakness and to endeavor
to grow as a salesman and as a man with the passage of every day of time. THIS
IS MY CREED.—W. C. HOLMAN.

Salesmanship is the ability to sell the largest possible quantity of goods, to sell
an increasing quantity of goods, to get the greatest possible results from the
advertising done by his house, to make a regular customer of a new buyer, and to
hold the friendship of a regular customer.—H. E. BOWMAN.
Never sit down or stand, if you can possibly avoid it, below where your
prospect is seated. The man who is the highest always has the advantage, the
superior position. Many salesmen can do better standing while the prospect is
sitting.
Approach your prospect as a professional, not as an amateur, not as a little
fellow, or almost a salesman, but approach him with the air of a professional.
Give him to understand that you are no third-rate salesman. Your manner will
have everything to do with the impression you make.
Establish confidence as quickly as possible. Business men are constantly
dealing with mean, tricky men, unscrupulous men, hypnotizers, bull-dozers, but
when they strike the real article, the genuine man, they will give him their
confidence.
Remember your whole success will often turn on the first two or three minutes
of your interview. Just here your knowledge of human nature is a tremendous
factor. You must size up your man quickly and find the line of least resistance,
the best approach to his mind. Not only his temperament but his health, the
frame of mind he happens to be in, all must be taken in at a glance.
Be a tactful salesman. You will often be told that tact cannot be cultivated, that
it is a quality that is born in one, but remember that every man is tactful when he
is courting the girl he is dead in love with. If you are dead in love with your
work and bound to win you will be tactful.
Make it an invariable rule never to use any influence or to say anything in the
presence of a prospect which will lessen your self-respect. If you do, you lose
power. You are not paid for being less than a man.
A real salesman sells goods. Fakers sell customers. Don’t be a mere order-
taker; be a salesman.

ANOTHER “SALESMAN’S CREED”

“I believe in the goods I am handling, in the company I am working for, and in
my ability to get results.
“I believe that honest stuff can be passed out to honest men, by honest
methods.
“I believe in working, not weeping; in boosting, not knocking, and in the
pleasure of my job.
“I believe that a man gets what he goes after; that one deed done to-day is
worth two deeds to-morrow, and that no man is down and out until he has lost
faith in himself.
“I believe in to-day and the work I am doing; in to-morrow and the work I
hope to do, and in the sure reward which the future holds.
“I believe in courtesy, in kindness, in generosity, in good cheer, in friendship,
and in honest competition.
“I believe there is something doing somewhere for every man ready to do it.
“I believe I am ready right now.”
Do you ever go to see a prospect expecting to be turned down—to meet
unanswerable arguments or deep-rooted prejudices that you can’t overcome? If
you do, it’s pretty likely that that’s what happens.
Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.—MACAULAY.
This is one business man’s motto: “Nothing pays like quality.” There is a
whole sermon in this motto, for what is there that pays like quality? There is no
advertisement like it. Quality needs no advertisement, for it has been tried. Talk
quality. A high-class salesman tries to convert his prospect from a lower to a
higher grade, for there is not only greater satisfaction but also larger profit both
for seller and buyer in the high grade article.
Did you ever realize that when you are working for another you are really
selling yourself to him, that your ability, your education, your personality, your
influence, your atmosphere—everything about you is sold for a price? Every
time you sell goods you are selling part of yourself, your character, your
reputation, what you stand for—it is all included in the sale.
Progress depends upon what we are, rather than upon what we may encounter.
One man is stopped by a sapling lying across the road; another, passing that way
picks up the hindrance and converts it into a help in crossing the brook just
ahead.—TRUMBULL.
Fate does not fling her great prizes to the idle, the indifferent, but to the
determined, the enthusiastic, the man who is bound to win.
How true it is, as some one says, that true salesmanship consists in selling
goods that don’t come back to people who do. This is the whole story. Selling
goods that give perfect satisfaction in such a pleasing, attractive way that the
customer comes back; leaving a pleasant taste in the customer’s mouth, pleasant
pictures in his memory of the way you treated him, so that he will put himself
out to look you up the next time, this is the salesmanship which every one can
cultivate. One doesn’t need to be a born salesman to do this. Every one can treat
a customer kindly, pleasantly, with a cheerful, helpful manner, in an
accommodating spirit. The best part of salesmanship can be acquired.
Winning back a customer who had quit buying of your house because you
have offended him, or because he thinks the house did not treat him right, is a
tough proposition. It is not every salesman who can successfully tackle such a
job as this. It takes great tact and a lot of diplomacy, and yet a diplomacy that
does not show itself. The art of arts is to conceal art. A great diplomat leaves no
visible trace of his diplomacy. It will pay to acquire the art of the diplomats. It
will pay better to avoid offending customers.
“We broke all output records to-day.” This was the message Andrew
Carnegie’s superintendent sent him one day. “Why not do it every day?” wired
back the ironmaster. Why not beat your sales record every day? You don’t know
what you can do until you try.
“The salesman that tries to sell, without using his upper story, has a lot of
good loft space unoccupied.”
 To be a conqueror in appearance, in one’s bearing, is the first step toward
success.
Walk, talk and act as though you were a somebody. Let victory speak from
your face and express itself in your manner.
Every dishonest trick, every deception, every unfair transaction, is a
boomerang which comes back to hit the thrower.
You should make your prospect feel that you are a real friend, that you are
something more than an ordinary seller of merchandise, that you are trying to be
of real service to him, and that you would not take the slightest advantage of him
in any way. A man’s friendship should be worth a great deal to you, whether you
get the particular order you are after or not.
The “selling sense” is to the salesman what the “nose for news” is to the
journalist. No knowledge, however profound, of mere technical salesmanship
will make a salesman of you if you lack selling sense, into which many factors
enter,—such as tact, spirit of kindliness, good fellowship, good judgment, level-
headedness, horse sense, initiative, courage.
Like the good things you eat, a superb quality leaves a good taste in the
mouth. The article that is a little better than others of the same kind, the article
that is best, even though the price is higher, “carries in its first sale the
possibilities of many sales, because it makes a satisfied customer, and only a
satisfied customer will come again.”
Staying power is the final test of ability. The real caliber of a man is measured
by the amount of opposition that it would take to down him. The world measures
a man largely by his breaking down point. Where does he give up? How much
punishment can he stand? How long can he take his medicine without running
up the white flag? How much resisting power is there in him? What does the
man do after he has been knocked down? This is the test.
Where is your giving up point, your breaking point, your turning back point?
This will determine everything in your career.
If you represent a large house, make a careful study of the top-notchers and
cracker-jack salesmen in your firm. Study their history, their methods; get at the
secret of their great success and their big salaries. The study of men above you
will whet your ambition, will sharpen your perceptions and will make you more
ambitious, more determined to win out, and this will enable you to make an
impression of progressiveness upon your firm. They will see that you are
growing, that you are reaching out, that you have no idea of getting into a rut or
becoming petrified in your methods.
Thomas Brackett Reed, the famous Speaker of the House of Representatives
for many years, used to say that one-half of the battle in Congress is to get the
speaker’s eye. Get your prospect’s eye first of all, and then you will not only get
his attention, but you will interest and hold him. No other feature has such power
to command and hold as the eye.
It is said that the moment a wild beast tamer shows the slightest signs of fear
when he enters a cage of wild animals his game is up. They will leap upon him
and kill him. The animals watch the trainer’s eye and they can very quickly tell
when he has lost his courage or shows the slightest sign of fear.
Remember that suggestion is the soul of salesmanship. The first thing you
should do when you go into a prospect’s office is to suggest harmony, good will.
Antidote all possible antagonism, kill prejudice. A pleasing personality is all
suggestion. Suggestion is the soul of advertising, and to sell you must advertise.
A salesman must be his own advertisement.

“JUST KEEP ON, KEEPIN’ ON.”

If the day looks kinder gloomy
And your chances kinder slim;
If the situation’s puzzlin’,
And the prospects awful grim;
And the prospects keep pressin’
Till all hope is nearly gone,
Just bristle up and grit your teeth,
And keep on, keepin’ on.

Fumin’ never wins a fight,

And frettin’ never pays;
There ain’t no use in broodin’
In these pessimistic ways.
Smile just kinder cheerfully,
When hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth,
And keep on, keepin’ on.

There ain’t no use of growlin’,

And grumblin’ all the time,
When music’s ringing everywhere,
And everything’s a rhyme.
Just keep on smiling cheerfully,
If hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth,
 And keep on, keepin’ on.—SELECTED.

All salesmen may take to themselves the following advice on promises,

printed by Gimbel Brothers, for the benefit of all employees of their New York
store.—
“MAKE no promises which you cannot fulfill.”
“Every individual connected with this establishment is hereby instructed not
to make promises which cannot be absolutely satisfied.
“You must fulfill at all costs those promises you do make; in behalf of this
business.”
“He who is content to rest upon his laurels, will soon have laurels resting upon
him.”
“A sour clerk will turn the sweetest customer.”
“A real salesman is one part talk and nine parts judgment; and he uses the nine
parts of judgment to tell when to use the one part of talk.”
Whenever you say “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening,”
let your words be not only cheerful, but sincere. The only was to be genuinely
sincere is through cultivating a genuinely friendly disposition. It is hard to fake
sincerity. Many salesmen think they can, but they only fool themselves. Learn to
love mankind as a whole, and you will then be able to be genuinely sincere with
each unit in humanity.
“Never explain the nature of your business on the door-step—that is, before
you are advantageously placed in the presence of your prospect.—Expect to get
in, and you will.” These are the words of an expert in salesmanship. Every
expert realizes how full of truth they are.
A salesman must be self-possessed, which means that he should have no fears.
Keep before your mind constantly these facts: You are all right; your goods are
all right, and your house is all right; therefore you have no cause for fear; you
have every reason to be serene.
Keep your samples out of sight as much as possible, even for your regular
trade. Many salesmen leave their samples at the hotel, and call first on
prospective customers, making an appointment for a certain hour. This is very
effective, where possible. The display of goods is, unquestionably, very helpful
in selling, but it is a decided advantage to have part of the stock out of sight. The
element of curiosity comes in, and, as we have explained, this helps to get the
right kind of attention.
Carrying a cigar or a cigarette, even though freshly lighted, usually detracts
from a man’s appearance. A tooth-pick in evidence is always very bad taste, and
often it has been fatal to sales. Newspapers stuck into pockets, or carried in one’s
hand, suggest that a man is not all there, that he is thinking more of the topics of
the day than of his business. They are evidence of lack of concentration, and
more often than the salesman may think he handicaps himself by having these in
sight.
Jake Daubert, the well known authority in baseball, has concluded an article
on his specialty with these strong words of advice: “Always know ahead of time
what you must do with the ball after you get it.” To a salesman I would say—
think out all possible difficulties that may arise during the progress of a
prospective sale. Be prepared for every emergency. Cultivate patience, calmness,
and celerity, for they give a powerful advantage to their possessor.
Seizing the psychological moment is of great importance. Admiral Dewey
seized it very effectively when he gave the command, “You may fire when you
are ready, Gridley.” A salesman can win by “firing” at the right moment. He can,
likewise, and should, stop “firing” and close the deal at the right moment. It is all
psychological—a matter of mind meeting mind.
Avoid as much as possible technical terms, unless you are talking to customers
who, you are sure, understand them. For instance, a Life Insurance salesman
makes a great mistake ordinarily, to talk about “legal reserve,” “accrued
dividends,” “extended insurance,” “paid-up values,” “accelerative endowments,”
“expense ratios,” “percentages of increase,” etc. As a matter of fact, it is quite
probable that a large number of those to whom he talks will not understand even
the words “liabilities” and “assets.”
Many a salesman has been ruined or seriously injured by carrying a side line.
All of the great things of the world have been accomplished by concentration
upon a specialty.
A good tip to both young and old salesmen is, to study the business producers
both in your firm and out of your firm. Examine their methods; learn to do what
they have found effective; benefit by their strong points; but beware of their
weaknesses, for even the most successful salesman will be found to have certain
weak points, at times. You can quickly and conclusively recognize these. Guard
against them. While you can learn much from older and more experienced
salesmen, never be a slavish copy of any one. Whatever you do be yourself.
 Every time a man who is trying to hold an audience turns his eye from it he
cuts the magnetic current which is flowing between them and if he does this
often the people will get uneasy; they will begin to move in their seats and he
will lose his power over them.—His magnetic connection with those he
addresses is made through the eye. The trained speaker knows this, and unlike
the amateur who, from sheer nervousness, often looks down to the floor, or
refers to his notes when it is not absolutely necessary to do so, he avoids
everything that would tend to break the magnetic current between himself and
his audience.
Just here is a hint for the salesman. It is imperative that you should keep this
current between yourself and your prospect flowing freely. An attractive
personality added to the constant flow of magnetism through your eye will rivet
his attention and add immensely to your selling power.

THE SALESMAN’S IDEAL

I want my Selling Talk to be a Service Talk—one that will be worth others’

time whether they buy my goods or not.
I want it to tell only the truth, and that as fully as may be.
To be a perfectly human statement easily understood by others.
To show simply and plainly how both I and my goods can serve.
To contain Wit only as that conforms to Wisdom.
To be presented in full view of the fact that every man’s time is his property—
only to be secured by honest methods.
To result from personal self-persuasion, as I would wish to persuade others.
To prove of such real value to patrons that my goods shall be always to the
fore rather than myself.
To so demonstrate the Merits of my goods and service, that others will crave
them when in need of either.
This is my ideal.—SELECTED.

WHY THIS SALESMAN DID NOT SUCCEED

He was too anxious.

 He could not read human nature.
He did not know how to approach his prospect.
There was not a real man back of the solicitor.
He scattered too much; could not concentrate his talk.
He knew enough, but could not tell it in an interesting way.
He tired the prospect out before he got down to business, and could not see
when he was boring him.
He went to his prospective customer in the spirit of “I will try” instead of “I
will.”
He could not take a rebuff good-naturedly.
He ran down his competitor and disgusted his prospect.
He did not believe he could get an order when he went for it.
He tried to make circulars and letters do the work of a personal canvass.
He unloaded cheap lines and off-style goods on one customer and then
bragged about it to the next.
He did not thoroughly believe in the thing he was trying to sell, and of course
could not convince others.
He was too easily discouraged; if he did not secure orders from the first man
he solicited, he lost heart and gave up.
He did not concentrate on one line. He carried side lines. He thought if he
could not sell one thing, he could another.
He did not have enough reserve argument to overcome objections. He lacked
resourcefulness.
He had to spend most of his time trying to overcome a bad first impression.
He gave the impression that he was a beggar instead of the representative of a
reliable house.
He did not look out for the man at the other end of the bargain.
He overcanvassed. He said so many good things about the article he was
selling that the prospect did not believe they were true.
He was polite only while he thought he was going to get an order, but when
turned down, got mad and said disagreeable, cutting things.
He lacked tact or the power of adaptability; he always used the same line of
argument, no matter what the man’s position, degree of intelligence,
temperament or mood might be.
He did not have a proper appreciation of the dignity of his work. He thought
people would look upon him as a peddler.
He did not like the business; his heart was not in it; and he intended working
at it only until he could get a better job.
He never liked to mix with people, and therefore was not popular.
He did not organize himself, could not work to a plan, had no program.
He introduced politics and his fads in business.
He didn’t realize that every sale is an advertisement for or against the house.
He was always gloomy and despondent. He carried his samples in a hearse.
He did not believe it paid to be accommodating.

WHY THIS SALESMAN SUCCEEDED

He thoroughly believed in the things he was trying to sell.

He was tactful and knew how to approach people.
He did not waste a customer’s time but was quick to the point.
He concentrated on what he was selling.
He was reliable and gave one the impression that he stood for good
merchandise.
He approached a customer with the conviction that he would win his order
and he usually did.
He worked hard.
He was always looking out for the man at the other end of the bargain.
He stopped when he had convinced his prospect and did not raise doubts by
boring him.
 THE END

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