Part 4

Up to now, you have been working entirely for someone else and while you are still subject to considerable supervision, in addition thereto, you will now have others under your supervision--working under you.

Of course, you've been through the different stages of your company selling and around branch houses long enough to have a good working idea of the general routine of the work and I don't doubt at all, but what you will handle that end of your work in good shape, but right now, at the start, Boy, let's look at the bigger, broader things that are expected of you.

One of the first things that will impress you is just how poor a salesman Smith is, over in the East territory and what great weaknesses that new man over South is already demonstrating. Your hands will just fairly itch to grab hold and do it all yourself, in your own way, which, of course, you think is the only way, but WHOA--throw on the emergency, Old Top, you're skidding! You're a hustler all right and a good man, which you admit yourself, but, Boy, you just cannot spread yourself out over the whole territory and run the branch too, and again, if your company had wanted you to do all the selling they'd have told you so.

No, your job is to teach and lead others to do most of the selling, reserving only the hard-boiled and nursing-bottle customers that the other boys cannot land, or for some reason seem to avoid.

I want to bear down a little on that remark “teach and lead.” You know, back in the old days before Bryan ever ran for President, which is longer than you can remember, the popular belief was that the best way to get the best results out of a man on any job was for the Boss to be sort of a mixture of Simon Legree, pyrotechnic cuss-words, bar-room sarcasm and “Drill ye Terriers, Drill” policy, but thanks to a revolutionary era which was directed by common hog-sense, instead of the kind that the butcher buys in five pound pails, that kind of man-management has been tabooed.

Yes, I know--I know there are a lot of things you're not going to stand for and you're all right in it too. There are a lot of things you shouldn't stand for, as a Manager, but what I'm talking about, Red, is the best way to go about to correct them.

Before you sit down and dictate that red hot, phosphorous, steaming, sizzling letter to Hulbert on account of the way he emphasized his unfortunate displacement of bone, where gray matter should be, stop a minute, Red, close your eyes a minute and let this picture come back. Remember when you were new, when you were beating the brush?--you got in that town that's always a Jonah; was raining and had been all week; the farmers weren't paying their bills; it was inventory time and it just seemed like every merchant you called on was just a little more grouchy than the last; no one wanted your goods, and after working hard all day in the rain and snow, you ended up at a so-called hotel that made you think of the Biltmore--it was so different!

You were hungry, but after a glance at the greasy fried potatoes, a pork chop burned to a cinder and the inevitable bread pudding, you just swallowed the lump in your throat and called it a meal? After sitting around the lobby making out a few reports and listening to the senseless patter of a dumb-bell in a checked suit and a pink tie, you took your little pitcher with the broken handle, filled it at the faucet and went up to a sea-going bed that humped up in the middle like William S. Hart's pet broncho?

Remember, Red, how you worried yourself to sleep--sick of the whole bloomin' mess, but determined that if others could succeed, you could? You got up in the morning, shaved in ice water, but stuck out your chin and strode to the dining room? Remember the gum-chewing waitress whom someone had told she looked like Theda Bara, who brought in a murky glass of water and exclaimed in a breath, “Steakhamliver'nbacon an' how'd you want yer aigs?” You wouldn't have known the coffee if it hadn't been in a cup, but you picked around like an old hen and sauntered out into the lobby still unbeaten when the fresh squirt behind the register handed you three letters.

Ah, Red--how you smiled! The first one was written in a round girlish hand and told of the good time she was planning with you when you got back to “headquarters.” The next one was written in an old-fashioned hand, now a little scrawly and nervous from age, but it carried the “mother message” of hope and pride in the success she knew was bound to come to “her boy.” Things weren't so black after all--you'd show those hard-shell merchants you would. You were almost normal when you opened the last letter, which from the envelope you knew was from “the Boss.” It read--“Why don't you send us some orders--we didn't send you out to write up weather reports; we don't pay your salary to allow you to loll in good hotels. Unless you do better next week, we'll have to make a change.”

Bam! How'd you feel, Red? Now, honest--hasn't it happened to you? Did it fill you full of pep and enthusiasm and cause you to go out and just knock the cover off the ball? You bet it didn't and such things never will. That kind of letter was written by a graduate hack-driver, not a real man manager.

New, Red, listen--you were made Branch Manager because of your experience, not alone in the product--not alone in selling, but experience in Life. Your company thinks you have seen so much of conditions that you know how to “help” the weaker brother over the rough places. Teach 'em, Red, lead 'em! The only place for a driver is on the south end of a pair of mules. A kind word here, a helpful suggestion there, will make your men want to take off their coats to help you, Boy, and it is the cheapest way in the world to buy loyalty.

And Red, don't spend all your time telling the other fellow how to do it. All men are not “from Missouri,” but the “show me” method carries a healthier kick than volumes of sales talks.

You're going to be a busy man in the new job, Boy, but Mother and I have decided now that we're glad we didn't insist on your finishing your musical education, for some day we know you'll be a Sales Manager and I tell Mother that if she had her way, you would now be playing the snare drum in a jazz orchestra.

Let's go, Boy, let's go!

Your loving, “DAD.”

The Boy Is Having His Troubles as a Branch Manager

Dear Hal:

Mother and I received your letter several days ago and I have given quite some thought to the problems you mention, because I wanted to advise you right, if at all.

Note you say you are not meeting with the success you expected to, in your present campaign and you attribute it to several causes, among them a consumers' hunger strike, conservative buying and lack of effort on the part of the salesmen.

Well--now, of course, the Old Man may not know as much about it as you do, but from several other statements you made in your letter, I'm wondering if you have really struck the real reason.

I don't want to misjudge you, Boy, but those reasons you give are becoming so much of a chestnut to me--I've heard 'em so often that I'm pretty sure I know their origin. I know that during the holidays--just before Christmas--you could hear those records being played on almost any talking machine that you cared to listen to, but I thought surely, with the coming of the New Year you'd forget the “Stove League Chatter” and chase “Old Man Gloom” out into the sunshine.

You know, I'm reminded of a fellow I used to know when I wore knee breeches. Tom Foreman was a boy who was raised in our town and who never knew what it was to run off to go swimming, rob a melon patch or play hookey. His folks always dressed him nice and he was a fair student in school, but he never batted over about a hundred and twenty-six in the back alley league, so, of course, there was no farewell reception tendered him by “the gang” when his folks decided to send him away to college.

Tom would come back to town for vacations for a brief visit, but somehow or other his schooling didn't seem to humanize him any and each time he came he seemed to be just a little more “uppish” than the time before, but he was very fond of airing his superior wisdom--sort of casting his pearls before swine, as it were, even though we didn't give him any encores.

In this particular vicinity the only game that was available was a few cotton-tails and an occasional Jack Rabbit in the winter time, so that hunting had become a lost art and the sportively inclined always looked to some other sort of amusement.

We never knew exactly how it happened, but it seemed like the boys of the Eata Bita Pie Fraternity or whatever it was, got to talking about hunting big game over their pipes one night and Tom suddenly developed one of his bright ideas which had been heretofore extinct and he took to bragging to his fellow pie-biters about the exceptionally good hunting that was available in the vicinity of his old home town. Although this was in the days before prohibition, Tom had never seriously gone in for tonsil irrigation, yet it must have been something that made him wax eloquent, for the first thing we knew he had brought four embryo captains of industry down to our town, all dressed up like a Roosevelt African party and they announced their intention of going out on a big hunt. Tom, of course, was too learned to ask any of the home-guard any questions, so they started out one spring morning in full regalia.

The boys caused quite a little excitement among the fellows whose full dress uniform consisted of a canvas cap with a coffee advertisement printed on it, a pair of overalls and a fifty-cent shirt, but we held that excitement in bounds until they came home in the evening. Of course, we never knew the grewsome details, but along about seven o'clock that night, the hunting party returned. The total bag of the day consisted of three ground squirrels, a hawk, one rabbit and Lafe Benson's tom-cat--and say, you should have heard the profane vocabulary that those city chaps spilled every time Tom came near them. Of course, Tom was their host and all that and they had to end their remarks with an apology, but to sit around and listen you couldn't help but gather the idea that Tom graded a good deal lower than water goods in fruits, when they classified him as a huntsman.

Now, I just mention this story in passing, because it brings out the fact that Tom and his party hadn't analyzed the situation. Their intentions were good and they had plenty of equipment, but the dumb-bell that was leading the party, Tom, hadn't given the matter any thought and had no definite plan. He was just hoping that through some miracle all the game for miles around would just come up and plead to be shot.