Tales of the Road

by Charles N. Crewdson

But, with all this, don't depend upon your old friends!

A salesman's friends feel that when he approaches them he does so because they are his friends, and not because he has goods to sell that have value. They will not take the same interest in his merchandise that they will in that of a stranger. They will give him, it is true, complimentary orders, charity-bird bills, but these are not the kind that count. Every old man on the road will tell you that he has lost many customers by making personal friends of them. No man, no matter how warm a friend his customer may be, should fail, when he does business with him, to give him to understand that the goods he is getting are worth the money that he pays for them. This will make a business friendship built upon confidence, and the business friend may afterward become the personal friend. A personal friendship will often follow a business friendship but business friendship will not always follow personal regard. Every man on the road has on his order book the names of a few who are exceptions to this rule. He values these friends, because the general rule of the road is: "Make a personal friend—lose a customer!" Don't switch lines!

The man who has a good house should never leave it unless he goes with one that he knows to be much better and with one that will assure him of a good salary for a long time.

Even then, a man often makes a mistake to his sorrow. He will find that many whom he has thought his personal friends are merely his business friends; that they have bought goods from him because they have liked the goods he sold. It is better for a man to try to improve the line he carries—even though it may not suit him perfectly—than to try his luck with another one. Merchants are conservative. They never put in a line of goods unless it strikes them as being better than the one that they are carrying, and when they have once established a line of goods that suits them, and when they have built a credit with a certain wholesale house, they do not like to fly around because the minute that they switch from one brand of goods that they are carrying to another, the old goods have become to them mere job lots, while if they continued to fill in upon a certain brand, the old stock would remain just as valuable as the new.

One of my old friends had a strong personality but was a noted changer. He is one of the best salesmen on the road but he has always changed himself out. He was a shoe man. I met him one day as he was leaving Lincoln, Nebraska. "Well, Andy," said I, "I guess you got a good bill from your old friend here."

"Ah, friend?" said he. "I thought that fellow was my friend, but he quit me cold this time. Didn't give me a sou. And do you know that this time I have a line just as good as any I ever carried in my life. I got him to go over to look, but what did he say? That he'd bought. And the worst of it is that he bought from the house I have just left and from the man that I hate from the ground up. Now, he's not any friend of mine any more. The man's your friend who buys goods from you." I didn't have very much to say, for this man had been loyal to me, but when I went to Lincoln again I chanced to be talking to the merchant, and he said to me:

"Do you know, I like Andy mighty well. I tried to be a friend to him. When I first started with him I bought from him the "Solid Comfort." He talked to me and said that Solid Comforts were the thing, that they had a big reputation and that I would profit by the advertising that they had. Well, I took him at his word. I used to know him when I was a clerk, you know, and bought from him on his say-so, the Solid Comfort. I handled these a couple of years and got a good trade built up on them, and then he came around and said, 'Well, I've had to drop the old line. I think I'm going to do lots better with the house I'm with now. The "Easy Fitter" is their brand. Now, you see there isn't very much difference between the Easy Fitters and the Solid Comforts, and you won't have any trouble in changing your people over.'

"Well, I changed, and do you know I was in trouble just as soon as I began to run out of sizes of Solid Comforts. People had worn them and they had given satisfaction and they wanted more of them. Still, I didn't buy any at all and talked my lungs out selling the Easy Fitters.

"Well, it wasn't but a couple of years later when Andy came around with another line. This time he had about the same old story to tell. I said to him, 'Now, look here, Andy, I've had a good deal of trouble selling this second line you sold me instead of the first. People still come in and ask for them. I have got them, however, changed over fairly well to the Easy Fitters, and I don't want to go through with this old trouble again.'

"'Aw, come on,' said he, 'a shoe's a shoe. What's the difference?' And, out of pure friendship, I went with him again and bought the "Correct Shape." I had the same old trouble over again, only it was worse. The shoes were all right but I had lots of difficulty making people think so. So when Andy made this trip and had another line, I had to come right out and say, 'Andy, I can't do business with you. I have followed you three times from the Solid Comfort to the Easy Fitter, and from the Easy Fitter to the Correct Shape, but now I have already bought those and I can't give you a thing. I am going to be frank with you and say that I would rather buy goods from you, Andy, than from any other man I know of, but still Number One must come first. If you were with your old people, I would be only too glad to buy from you, but you've mixed me up so on my shoe stock that it wouldn't be worth fifty cents on the dollar if I were to change lines again. I will give you money out of my pocket, Andy,' said I, 'but I'm not going to put another new line on my shelves."