“Every salesman on the staff has tried to sell this asinine Boutell family and failed. We’ve got the lots—give’em anything from a fifteen-thousand-dollar-restriction, water-front, high-class development to an odd lot behind an Italian truck-farm. They’ve been considering a lot at Villa Estates for a month, now, and they aren’t—”
“Let me try them.”
“Let you try them?”
“Try to sell them.”
“Of course, if you want to—in your own time outside. This is a matter that the selling department ought to have disposed of. But if you want to try—”
“I will. I’ll try them on a Saturday afternoon—next Saturday.”
“But what do you know about Villa Estates?”
“I walked all over it, just last Sunday. Talked to the resident salesman for an hour.”
“That’s good. I wish all our salesmen would do something like that.”
All week Una planned to attack the redoubtable Boutells. She telephoned (sounding as well-bred and clever as she could) and made an appointment for Saturday afternoon. The Boutells were going to a matinée, Mrs. Boutell’s grating voice informed her, but they would be pleased t’ see Mrs. Schwirtz after the show. All week Una asked advice of “Chas.,” the sales-manager, who, between extensive exhortations to keep away from selling—“because it’s the hardest part of the game, and, believe me, it gets the least gratitude”—gave her instructions in the tactics of “presenting a proposition to a client,” “convincing a prospect of the salesman’s expert knowledge of values,” “clinching the deal,” “talking points,” and “desirability of location.”