PAGE 14
Tactics In Selling
by
“Well, you had pretty good luck in that town,” spoke up one of the boys, “to get a good bill and also win five hundred dollars.”
“Didn’t win it, though,” said the dry goods man.
“Well, how’s that? Didn’t McKinley win the election? You were betting on him.”
“Yes, but I got back to Chicago about the time that Bryan struck there. I went down to the old shack on the lake front where the Post Office now is, and heard Bryan speak to the business men. It looked to me like the whole house was with him. I heard a dozen men around where I sat say, after the speech was over, that they had intended to vote against him, but that they were sure going to vote for Bryan. That same day I hedged on my five hundred.”
“Well, you got a good customer out of the deal anyhow.”
“Yes, I did; but I thought I’d lost him. After the election he sent me the thousand and I went down to see him. You know I voted for Bryan.”
“Changed your mind, did you?”
” Change? Did you ever hear Bryan speak? When I met the old man I made a clean breast of it, and said, ‘I’m mighty sorry to tell you, but I voted for Bryan.’
“‘Well, that’s all right,’ he said. ‘So did I.'”
TACTICS IN SELLING–III.
GETTING A MERCHANT’S ATTENTION.
“Seven and nine,” said the porter, poking his head into the Pullman smoker, “are all made down.”
With this, a couple of the boys bade us goodnight and turned in, but soon two more drifted in and took their places.
“Getting a merchant’s attention,” said the furnishing goods man, “is the main thing. You may get a man to answer your questions in a sort of a way but you really do not have his attention always when he talks to you. You would better not call on a man at all than go at him in a listless sort of a way. This is where the old timer has the bulge over the new man. I once knew a man who had been a successful clerk for many years who started on the road with a line of pants. He had worked for one of my old customers. I chanced to meet him, when I was starting on my trip, at the very time when he was making his maiden effort at selling a bill to the man for whom he had been working. Of course this was a push-over for him because his old employer gave him an order as a compliment.
“Well, sir, when that fellow learned that I was going West–this was on the Northern Pacific–he hung right on to me and said he would like to go along. Of course, I told him I should be very glad to have him do so, and that I would do for him whatever I could. But here he made a mistake. When a man starts out on the road he must paddle his own canoe. It is about as much as his friend can do to sell his own line of goods, much less to put in a boost for somebody else. And, furthermore, a man who takes a young chick under his wing will often cut off some of his own feed. Still, this fellow had always been very friendly with me and I told him, ‘Why, to be sure, Henry; come right along with me.’
“In the second and third towns that we made, he picked up a couple of small bills that just about paid his expenses. He was just beginning to find that the road was not such an easy path to travel as, in his own mind, he had cracked it up to be.
“The next town we struck was Bismarck, North Dakota. We got in there about three o’clock in the morning. It was Thanksgiving Day. To be sure, I went to bed and had a good sleep. A man must always feel fresh, you know, if he expects to do any work.