“How did you make out?”
“Well, perhaps the best answer to that is the fact that our firm sends out the circular to-day just as I wrote it eight years ago. But I started to speak of the large amount of information you find in circulars and advertising nowadays. Advertising is much more of a science than it was. Pick up a decent trade paper and the ordinary advertisement is full of shrewd points for those handling the goods, that cannot help being of immense value to retailers. And I can call your attention to this: these advertisements, these shrewd ones, are always written by men who have been traveling salesmen. Such men know the points that ought to be brought out.”
“Yes,” said the dry-goods man, “how is this, cut from the advertisement of a list of five-cent counter goods. Don't you believe the man who wrote this knew the soft side of a retailer?” And he read:
HOW TO DO IT.
Bundle up some of the unseasonable goods that are taking up valuable
counter space, and put them away on the shelves. By this economy of
space, and with the possible addition of a temporary counter, you
have gained room enough to admit of the introduction of a “5c, 10c or
25c counter.” The next thing to do is to send to some reliable jobber
for a bill of staple household sellers, with which you can mix
hundreds of articles from your own stock; then send out a little
circular (“dodger”) to the over-anxious inhabitants, telling them of
a few of the articles to be found on your “Cheap Counter,” and they
will respond as readily as though you had sent them free tickets to
the circus. It matters not that they have not seen one of these
counters before, there will be the same rush—the same scramble for
first choice—the same telling of friends about bargains bought; and
instead of sitting around waiting for the advent of spring, you will
have pocketed a nice profit from your cheap counter, besides having
worked off any amount of odds and ends that might have been in your
store five years, and would have remained five years longer had not
this modern wonder made an exit for them.
“That sounds mighty like Ed. Butler,” said the dry-goods man.
CHAPTER XX.
Occasionally a traveling salesman meets at the hotel or on the train the head of some large house, who is making a trip for special reasons of his own. Such a man is always sure to be affable with every one, but he is especially conciliatory to the salesmen he meets on his route. Perhaps this is due to the fact that he is a stranger and these old travelers can help him, if they are so inclined, or it may be for the purpose of leading them to be talkative with him, and in that talk he can gather points that will be of value to him. Whatever the cause may be, there is no question as to the fact. But the talkativeness is not always on one side. I have met wholesale merchants on the road who would talk freely and tell me more about themselves and their business in one evening, while we sat in a country hotel, than they would have done in five years of ordinary intercourse in the city.
The man who sits in the house all the year falls into several errors. One is in thinking that people are anxious to buy of him, and that his traveling men ought to find it very easy to get an order in almost every store. Another error is in believing that the orders come solely because of the firm's popularity, rather than of any merit in the salesman. I suppose there are goods so well advertised that, in a large measure, they sell themselves; but, outside of patent medicines, I can not now recall one such item.