FullReads

The main thing for a salesman to know when you hire him is not how the trains run, not what your stuff is–he will soon learn this– but how to approach men! and gain their confidence! And it is needless for me to say that the one way to do this is to BE SQUARE!

A house does not wish a man like a young fellow I once knew of. He had been clerking in a store and had made application to a Louisville house for a position on the road. When he talked the matter over with the head of the house–it was a small one and always will be–they would not offer him any salary except on a commission basis, but they agreed to allow him five dollars a day for traveling expenses. He was to travel down in Kentucky. Five dollars a day looked mighty big to the young man who had been working for thirty dollars a month. He figured that he could hire a team and travel with that, and by stopping with his kin folks or farmers and feeding his own horses, that he could save from his expense money at least three dollars a day.

His territory was down in the Coon Range country where he was kin to nearly everybody. He lasted just one short trip.

A young fellow who once went to St. Louis is the sort of a man that the head of a house is looking for. When this young fellow went to call he put up a strong talk, but the ‘old man’ said to him:

“Come in and see us again. We haven’t anything for you now.”

That same afternoon this fellow walked straight into the old man’s office again, with a bundle under him arm.

“Well, I am here,” said he, “and I’ve brought my old clothes along. While I wish to be a salesman for you, put me to piling nail kegs or anything you please, and don’t pay me a cent until you see whether or not I can work.”

The old man touched a button calling a department manager and said to him:

“Here, put this young man to work. He says he can pile nail kegs.”

In a couple of days the department manager went into the office again and said to the head of the house, “That boy is piling nail kegs so well that he can do something else.”

That same young fellow went from floor to floor. In less than two years he was on the road and made a brilliant record for the house. To-day he is general salesman for the state of Texas for a very large wholesale hardware house and is making several thousand dollars each year.

If a wholesaler cannot find a man who is experienced in his line in the territory that he wishes to cover, and cannot get a good experienced road man at all, the next best ones he turns to are his own stock boys. In fact, the stock is the training school for men on the road.

A bright young man, wherever he may be, if he wishes to get on the road, should form the acquaintance of traveling men, because lightning may sometime strike him and he will have a place before he knows it. A gentleman who is now manager of a large New York engraving house once told me how he hired one of his best salesmen.

“When I was on the road my business used to carry me into the colleges. Our house gets up class invitations and things of that kind. Now I got this man in this way,” said he: “I especially disliked going to the Phillips-Exeter Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire, owing to the poor train service and worse hotel accommodation.

“The graduating class at this academy had a nice order to place, and I called with original designs and prices. The committee refused to decide until they had received designs and prices from our competitors, so there was nothing else to do but bide-a-wee. When I called I made it a point to make friends with the chairman, who hailed from South Dakota and was all to the good. He was bright and distinctly wise to his job. By a little scouting I found out when the last competing representative was to call and speak his little piece.