The amount of your sales under this plan will depend on the number of agents you are able to secure and generally on the persuasive ability of the rhinoceros skinned peripatetic to sell the good housewife something which she truly doesn’t want. But should your invention be one of exceeding merit—and of course it is—then the path of the itinerant salesman is made glad and he sees a rose for every prick of the thorn he gets.
Agents can be had by running small ads in the daily and Sunday papers in the large cities under the classified head of Agents Wanted. There are advertising agents who will run an ad for you in 15 or 20 papers throughout the United States, whose combined circulation runs up into the millions of copies and all for a $10 bill. An ad of this kind can also be run in such magazines as Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and a dozen other like publications.
The Mail Order Business.—The two chief plans for working a mail order business are (1) by selling direct from your shop to the consumer and (2) by selling your product to agents whom you start in the mail order business.
To work the first plan there are two ways by which you can get the names of prospective buyers and these are (a) by running small ads in the papers and magazines and (b) by buying a list of the names of firms who make a business of classifying and selling them.
Regarding the first plan suppose you have invented a new blood testing apparatus in which case you couldn’t possibly hope to sell it to any other class than doctors. Now you can buy a list of all of the doctors in Boston, or of any other city, in Illinois or any other State, or of all of them in the whole United States from Boyd’s City Dispatch, 19 Beekman Street; Rapid Addressing Machine Company, 374 Broadway, and R. L. Polk and Co., Inc., 87 Third Avenue, all of New York City.
Fig. 99. FROM THE MANUFACTURER TO THE ORDER AGENT, THENCE TO THE CONSUMER
When you get this list you can then send out to each doctor a nicely gotten up folder or booklet and a clearly worded letter, which you can have mimeographed, that is duplicates made from the original typewritten letter, and according to business rules and regulations these ought to make a noise like a lot of orders.
Lists of men and women in every line of business, profession and trade; including R. S. Dun and Company’s list which is guaranteed 99 per cent. accurate, can be bought of the above concerns that are classified to fit whatever article or device you intend to market. This is one way of conducting a mail-order selling campaign.