Letters From an Old Time Salesman to His Son

by Roy Lester James

Dear Hal:

Mother and I arrived home without mishap and she said I should write you at once and let you know that we arrived safely and to tell you again how much we appreciated the good time that you showed us on our visit.

Am mighty glad I went to the office with you Saturday and attended your meeting with your salesmen. You were so busy just about the time I had to run away to make my train that I didn’t get to tell you several little points that I picked up, but I guess I can tell you just as well in this letter.

You probably noticed that I made it my business to sort of “mill” around with your various men and engage them in conversation. I want to congratulate you on the class of men you have gotten together. They’re a credit to you, Boy, and with that bunch of enthusiastic live-wires, I don’t think you need to worry a bit about your results just as long as you direct them properly.

There was one thing that struck me very forcibly as I talked to your various salesmen. Every one of them had a great big territory and they freely admitted that they weren’t calling on all their prospects; said they didn’t have time and they admitted that they picked out the best and biggest prospects where they were pretty sure to land an order and then rushed on to another town and went through the same performance.

Now, Red, I don’t blame your men for that condition—I think they are sincere in thinking they are doing just right, particularly because you have so routed them. Neither do I blame you, so all-fired much, because you just haven’t given it enough thought so far, but listen—

Years ago, where I was raised, it was a great country for raspberries. As you know, the berry season is a pretty short one and the farmers raising them had to depend to no small extent on hiring a gang of boys just out of school to pick them. All us fellows were pretty anxious about that time of the year to earn a little pocket money and we descended on those berry patches like a swarm of bees. Usually, the days were pretty hot and when night came, we were a pretty tired bunch of Indians and although we worked pretty hard we hadn’t earned a great deal for we were paid so much per quart.

One of the boys used to turn in about twice as many berries every day as the rest of us and the farmer used to tell us every night the reason he did so was because he put more berries in the pail than he did in his mouth. Of course, that line of talk was pretty good berry patch repartee, but it set me thinking because I knew I was just as quick as the other fellow; that I worked as hard and I didn’t like raspberries anyway, so I knew I wasn’t wasting any on the consumer’s pack method, so, one night I caught up with the star picker on his way home and asked him for the secret. He looked at me and chuckled and said, “Come on home with me and get my Dad to tell you.” This aroused my thirteen year old curiosity, so I went along with him. When we got home we found his father on the back porch and he said, “Dad, tell my pal here what you told me about picking berries.”

It happened that this boy’s Dad was one of those fellows who knew all about boys, so he didn’t answer the question right off, but first began by talking regular boy’s lore—all about swimmin’ holes, how the fish were bitin’, where we’d be liable to find an eagle’s nest and a lot of the kind of things boys like us were interested in—you know Red, the kind of a Dad who just had you hanging on to every little thing he said and just making you wish you could go tramping with a Dad like that and the first thing I knew—before I realized it—he had me telling him what success I was having at berry picking.

After I’d described my methods and told him how hard I worked, he said, “Son, now listen to me, for this applies to berry picking as well as lots of other things—when you go into a berry patch, you’ll find lots of boys running here and there looking for bushes where the berries grow the thickest. After picking a few minutes they get the idea that a bush a little farther down offers greater possibilities and they run over to it and keep on repeating the performance all day long. When night comes, they are tired out from their exertions and strange to say, they haven’t many berries in their pails either. Now the way to do—when you go into a berry patch, stop at the first bush you come to and don’t leave it until you’ve picked every berry—don’t run aimlessly from one bush to another, but do as I say and when night comes you’ll find you not only will have a full pail many times over, but you will not be so tired, because you haven’t expended that energy of yours running around so much. In other words, “stick to your bush, son, stick to your bush.”