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Tactics In Selling
by
“My samples were all opened up and I had to wait several hours for a train anyway, so an idea struck me. ‘I believe I’ll fake a telegram and see if I can’t work my old German friend with it.’ I wrote out a message to myself, ‘All garments on the second floor are steam heated. They are really uninjured but we will collect insurance on them. Sell cheap.’
“Armed with this telegram I walked into the old German’s store again. ‘Enny noos?’ said he.
“‘Yes; here’s a telegram I’ve just received,’ said I, handing over the fake message.
“‘Sdeam heatet,’ said the old man, ‘Vell dey gan be bresst oud, nicht? Veil, I look ad your goots.’
“He dropped in right after dinner. I had laid out on one side of the sample room a line of second floor goods.
“Among them were a lot of old frocks that the house was very anxious to get rid of. When I got back to the old man’s store, he was pacing the floor waiting for me to come. He had on his overcoat ready to go with me.
“‘Vell,’ said he, before giving me a chance to speak, ‘I go right down mit you.’
“He was the craziest buyer I ever saw. It didn’t take me more than twenty minutes to sell the $3,400.”
“But how did you get on afterwards?” asked one of the boys.
“Don’t speak of it,” said Leonard. “The joke was so good that I gave it away to one of the boys after the bill had been shipped, and do you know, the old man got onto me and returned a big part of the bill. Of course, you know I’ve never gone near him since. Retribution, I suppose! That cured me of sharp tricks.”
“A sharp game doesn’t work out very well when you play it on your customer,” spoke up one of the boys who sold bonds, “but it’s all right to mislead your competitor once in a while, especially if he tries to find out things from you that he really hasn’t any business to know. I was once over in Indiana. I had on me a pretty good line of six per cents. They were issued by a well-to-do little town out West. You know, western bonds are really A-1 property, but the people in the East haven’t yet got their eyes open to the value of property west of the Rockies.
“Well; when I reached this town, one of my friends tipped me onto one of my competitors who, he said, was going to be in that same town that afternoon. There were three prospective customers for us and we were both in the habit of going after the same people. Two of them were bankers,–one of them was pretty long winded; the other was a retired grain dealer who lived about a mile out of town. He was the man I really wished to go after. His name was Reidy and he was quite an old gentleman, always looking for a little inside on everything. I didn’t wish to waste much time on the bankers before I’d taken a crack at the old man. I knew he’d just cashed in on some other bonds that he had bought from my firm and that he was probably open for another deal. I merely went over and shook hands with the bankers. One of them–the long winded one–asked me if I had a certain bond. I told him I didn’t think I had,–that I’d ‘phone in and find out. I got on the line with my old grain dealer friend and he said he’d be in town right after dinner. I would have gone out to see him but he preferred doing his business in town. By this time I knew my competitor would reach town so I ate dinner early and took chances on his still being in the dining room when Reidy would drive in. I knew that my competitor, if he got into town, would go right after the old gentleman just as quickly as he could.