Wonder workers who start out with a burst of speed and smash records in the matter of selling will still be salesmen at fifty years of age, for you can't go fast far.
Those wonder workers change frequently. They flit from house to house. They work because they need the money to have a good time with, and as soon as they get the money they proceed to have a good time until their little pile runs out, and then they get another job. Business men know this wonder worker well. Go into any wholesale house and you will find them. They are living in the past and relating their conquests. They never speak of the present but always of the past. They have done things they can't do again. The good salesman is doing things now better than he has done in the past.
The permanently successful salesman does not cut much of a figure in the matter of dress. He is not as handsome as the wonder worker. In fact, he may be physically uncouth, but he has a heart under his rough exterior. The customers he mingles with have confidence in him. They know he will do what he promises, and finally this man is the one who builds up a good trade and at fifty years of age he has a place of his own, sends salesmen on the road, and his house does a good business because his policy permeates the institution, and the customers have confidence in the house because he is at the head of it, and they are familiar with his methods and practice.
Some buyers seem to think that it is necessary for them to give the impression to the seller that they are buying at lower prices than the seller quotes. The wonder worker tries to make each customer believe that he is buying at the lowest price. The common sense salesman does not resort to such tactics.
The average buyer does not concern himself so much about being able to buy cheaper as he does to feel sure that his competitor does not get better treatment than he does.
In the matter of selling there is no one thing that ultimately proves so successful as the one price plan. By that we mean the same price to all who purchase the same quantity or the same amount in a given time.
The more elastic and variable your prices, the more ingenuity required to keep these cut prices from getting into the hands of your customers. This matter of cutting prices causes no end of worry. In proportion as you indulge in cutting prices, so in proportion you will receive an increased number of cut price offers.
Let it be known that your prices are subject to reduction at the hands of a smooth buyer, and the news will travel fast.
Let it be known that you don't cut prices, and that news will gain currency in the trade, and you will not have cut prices offered you.
There is something in the matter of selling beyond dollars and cents, and that is dollars and sense.