Part 2

I notice you sort of “bragged” over the fact that you sold only the best merchants in each town and those who were capable of giving orders worth while. If I had to take my choice between five nice new ten dollar bills and five old ragged ones, why, of course, I'd choose the crinkly kind, but if there wasn't any law against my getting both piles, I don't think I'd be so particular, because it has been my experience that the ragged ones can be changed into just as many dimes and quarters as the new ones, and either one is acceptable to the receiving teller when you pass the little black book under the wicket on Saturday.

Now the matter of choice in selling retailers is just the same. With a line like your company has, in the first place you should attempt to place it in a big way in the best stores in the town, but there isn't any game law against selling it to the little fellow around the corner, is there? Nobody in “the house” ever told you to beware of selling the small merchant, did they? You bet they didn't! In fact, every successful business has been founded on the small customer, who afterward grew into the big one. You know when Marshall Field first started in business his store didn't cover a city block, but I suppose there were some two and three-quarters per cent salesmen in those days who thought Field's business was too small to bother with, but if any of those salesmen are still living you can probably find them now acting as a nurse-girl to a wheezy taxicab.

Notice you say Ryan told you the reason he didn't call on some merchants was because there was no use--they couldn't be sold. I'll never forget, the fellow who broke me in as a salesman told me the same thing my first week as we were getting off a train in a little Missouri town that had only two stores in it. He said that the one customer we sold there was the much better merchant of the two and it was no use to go near the other one.

Well, I believed him, and made my one call in the town regularly and received the one order and thought I was doing pretty well until one day, when I called, my customer informed me that he had just sold out to the other merchant across the street and that henceforth there would be only one store there.

Of course, I went over and tried to sell the other fellow, but he naturally wondered why I'd never called before and I didn't have any very good answer. The result was that I was beaten by my own stupidity and I had to call on that fellow for six months before I ever scratched an order book.

Now that is only one of many instances I could tell you, but I've found that there is one thing that, as a salesman, you must never take another man's word for and that is that So-and-So across the street, or around the corner, will not buy. I've always found it a safe rule to call on every man who had his door unlocked and the worst thing that ever happened to me in applying the rule, was to get an occasional turn-down, while I have had the surprise of my life many times, to see what big orders you could get out of a little store.

The longer you sell goods, the more you'll realize that it's a battle from start to finish, but just take it from the old man that you'll have more luck capturing an increase in salary at the end of the year with a whole army of little dough-boy customers on your list than you will by trying to impress the boss with a giant named Goliath who is a single-footer.

Your loving, “DAD.”

The Boy Writes That He Has Arrived as a “Regular” Salesman

Dear Hal:

Your mother and I have just finished reading your last letter, and while I realize that you may be getting pretty well fed up on my letters, I cannot help commenting on some of the things you have written about.

I imagine it is just about as much fun for you to get one of my letters as holding a horse in a rain. You probably look on them as containing the proverbial “good advice.” I can almost hear you saying more men have starved to death on good advice than were ever killed on the field of battle.

All of that I'll admit, but words from an old traveler of the road you've just started on is a good deal like castor oil--you kick up a lot of fuss if you have to take it when you're young, but as you grow older you realize that it didn't hurt you a bit and in most cases prolonged the life of your “engine.”

I notice that you have gone just far enough in the selling game to discover that your goods are higher priced than every competitor's; the merchants overloaded; business on the bum; the office manager a crab; the credit man hard-boiled and the plant unappreciative of what a salesman is up against.

Well--now, isn't that just too bad! But doesn't it occur to you that with everything so badly messed up, it is strange that the firm continues to worry along and pay dividends on its stock, year after year? Of course, the buyer tells you your prices are too high--otherwise he wouldn't be the buyer, but would more probably be rolling barrels of salt around in the basement for a living--you don't expect him to ask you to add a little to the price, do you? And man alive!--if the goods would sell themselves your company could replace you with a post-card.

Last, but not least, they thought best to hire a 1922 model eight-cylinder salesman, like you (you scamp) instead of trying to get by with a two-cylinder flivver that isn't a self-starter.

Business is bum, eh? I'm sorry you told me because that's the cry of the quitter and I hate to think you would make a phonograph record of yourself. Business is bad for some people all the time and similarly, business is good for others most of the time. Now I'm willing to admit, understand, that there are business lulls in all lines, but if you'll trace back the origin of that expression, I'll wager you'll find the thought was first expressed by one of those hotel lobby lizards who got used to the buyer hunting him up during the recent period of big demand and small supply. To the fellow who really loves the game (and if you don't you shouldn't be in it) the changed conditions, or the lull, if you prefer that name, only means more “turndowns” which can be overcome by “more calls” and at the end of the day, he finds he's been too busy to notice that lull and his order-book may reflect smaller orders, but gee--he's got a lot of 'em!

And the office Manager's a crab; and the credit man hard-boiled;--well now, what do you think of that! Of course, the Office Manager should be a mind-reader and overlook it when you send in claims without the proper information, or reports only half-filled out, but somehow or other he isn't--no, he's just human like all the rest of us--has a lot to do and the company don't pay him for “guessing” at things you do.

The credit man is another good friend and a salesman's safety valve. Both of 'em are the easiest men in the world to get popular with, but you have to do your share and come clean. Sloppy reports and incorrect information may be the easiest way out for the moment, but they never fool these “watch dogs of the exchequer,” and after all, if it were not for them, your pay check wouldn't come out so regularly.

Now you're wrong again, when you think the plant superintendent doesn't appreciate your problems. He gives them really more thought than you do, for you have only one house to work with, while he has to try to answer the demands of six hundred salesmen.

Now, Old Top, I expect you think I have stepped on you pretty hard in this letter, but I haven't intended to. If you weren't my own boy, I imagine I'd expect less of you, but it's pretty hard for the old man, knowing that a great big red-headed human dynamo, with hair on his upper lip, would bear even the earmarks of a whiner, not to appeal to your better judgment by making fun of the petty trials that every red-blooded salesman has gone through and graduated from, just like you got over the nursing bottle, measles and mumps.

But, anyway--read this letter twice, then remember, I'm laying a little bet on you and am anxious to get your next letter.

Your loving, “DAD.”

The Boy Thinks the House Should Accept Cancellations

Dear Hal:

For the past few months I have allowed your mother to do all the letter-writing from this end; in fact, Mother has become a pretty important factor around here since she has been given the vote. She insists that the home be in her name and my insurance in her name, so I've consented, and further allowed her to carry my religion in her name.

My chief reason for not writing sooner is that I wanted to wait until you had graduated into a “jobbing” salesman, because I knew you would eventually do so, and that with the new job would come new problems to talk about.

Yes, the jobbing game is quite a little different from selling the retailer, and I am glad to note that you have already found that the average jobber buyer is generally a pretty thorough business man, quite cold and calculating, and is more susceptible to quality and price than he is to a salesman's personality, funny stories or the odor of “moonshine.”