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Salesmen’s Don’ts
by
“About that time I turned away to wait on a customer and in an hour or so the young fellow came in again and said, ‘Well, my line is all opened up now, and if you like we can run over to my sample room.’ ‘Why, there’s no use of doing that,’ said I. ‘You tell me that you can sell me goods just exactly like what I have for $2 a suit cheaper. No use of my going over to look at them. Just send them along. Here, I can buy lots of goods from you.’
“‘Oh, they’re not exactly like these, but pretty near it,’ said he.
“‘Well, if they’re not exactly like these I don’t care for them at all because these suit me exactly.’
“With this the young fellow took a tumble to himself and let me alone.”
Don’t carry side lines!
You might just as well mix powder with sawdust. If you scatter yourself from one force to another you weaken the force which you should put into your one line. If this does not pay you, quit it altogether.
Don’t take a conditional order!
If your customer cannot make up his mind while you can bring your arguments to bear upon him in his presence, you may depend upon it he will never talk himself into ordering your goods. If you can lead a merchant to the point of saying, “Well, I’ll take a memorandum of your stock numbers and maybe I’ll send in for some of these things later,” and not get him to budge any further, and if you lend him your pencil to write down that conditional order, you will be simply wasting a little black lead and a whole lot of good time.
There are many more “Don’ts” for the salesman but I shall leave you to figure out the rest of them for yourself–but just one more:
DON’T be ashamed that you are a salesman!
Salesmanship is just as much a profession as law, medicine, or anything else, and salesmanship also has its reward.
Salesmanship requires special study, and the fact that the schools of salesmanship which are now starting are patronized not only by those who wish to become salesmen but also by those who wish to be more successful in their work, shows that there is an interest awakening in this profession.
There is a science of salesmanship, whether the salesman knows it or not. If he will only get the idea that he can study his profession and profit thereby, this idea in his head will turn out to be worth a great deal to him.