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: