FIRST EXPERIENCES IN SELLING.
I sat with a group of friends around a table one evening not long ago,
in one of the dining rooms of the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. The
dining room was done in dark stained oak, the waiters whispered to
each other in foreign tongues, French and German; on the walls of the
room were pictures of foreign scenes painted by foreign hands; but,
aside from this, everything about us was strictly American. We had
before us blue points with water-cress salad, mountain trout from the
Rockies, and a Porterhouse three inches thick. We had just come out of
the brush and were going to "Sunday" in Denver. It was Saturday night,
A man who has never been on the road does not know what it is to get a
square meal after he has been "high-grassing it" for a week or two,
and when such can become the pleasure of a drummer, he quickly forgets
the tough "chuck" he has been chewing for many days.
We were all old friends, had known each other in a different territory
many years before; so, when we came together again, this time in
Denver, not having seen each other for many years, we talked of old
times and of when we met with our first experiences on the road.
When a man first begins to hustle trunks he has a whole lot to learn.
Usually he has been a stock-boy, knowing very little of the world
beyond the bare walls in which he has filled orders. To his fellow
travelers the young man on the road is just about as green as they
make them, but the rapid way in which he catches on and becomes an
old-timer, is a caution.
A great many decry the life of the traveling man, even men on the road
themselves are discontented, but if you want to get one who is truly
happy and satisfied with his lot, find one who, after having enjoyed
the free and independent (yes, and delightful!) life of the road, and
then settled down for a little while as a merchant on his own hook,
insurance agent, or something of that kind, and finally has gone back
to his grips, and you will find a man who will say: "Well, somebody
else can do other things, but, for my part, give me the road."
After we had finished with the good things before us and had lighted
cigars, we could all see in the blue curls of smoke that rose before
us visions of our past lives. I asked one of my friends, "How long
have you been on the road, Billy?"
"Good Lord!" he yawned, "I haven't thought of that for a long time,
but I sure do remember when I first started out. I left St. Louis one
Sunday night on the Missouri Pacific. It was nearly twenty years ago.
I remember it very well because that night I read in a newspaper that
there was such a thing as a phonograph and, as I was traveling through
Missouri, I didn't believe it. I had to wait until I could see one.
The next day noon I struck Falls City, Nebraska. It had taken me
eighteen hours to make the trip. To me it seemed as if I were going
into a new world and I was surprised to find, when I reached Nebraska,
that men way out there wore about the same sort of clothes that they
did in St. Louis. I would not have been surprised a bit if some Indian
had come out of the bushes and tried to scalp me. The depot was a mile
and a half from the hotel. Here I took my first ride in an omnibus.
The inside of that old bus, the red-cushioned seats and the
advertisements of a livery stable, a hardware store, and "Little
Jake's Tailor Shop" were all new to me. Mud? I never saw mud so deep
in my life. It took us an hour to get up town. The little white hotel
with the green shutters on it was one of the best I ever struck in my
life. Many a time since then I have wished I could have carried it--
the good friend, chicken and all--along with me in all my travels. My
best friend and adviser, an old road man himself, had told me this:
'When you get to a town, get up your trunks and open them and then go
and see the trade. You might just as well hunt quail with your shells
in your pocket as to try to do business without your samples open.'
"I opened up that afternoon. It took me three hours. I put my samples
in good shape so that I knew where to lay my hands on anything that a
customer might ask for--and you know if you go out to sell anything
you'd better know what you have to sell! My samples open, I went down
the street and fell into the first store I came to. The proprietor had
been an old customer of the house, but I now know that the reason he
gave me the ice pitcher was that he had been slow in paying his bills
and the house had drawn on him. A wise thing, this, for a house to do
--when they want to lose a customer! This was a heart-breaker to me
right at the start, but it was lucky, because, if I had sold him, I
would have packed up and gone away without working the town. A man on
the road, you know, boys, even if he doesn't do business with them,
should form the acquaintance of all the men in the town who handle his
line. The old customer may drop dead, sell out, or go broke, and it is
always well to have somebody else in line. Of course there are
justifiable exceptions to this rule, but in general I would say: 'Know
as many as you can who handle your line.'
"After the old customer turned me down I went into every store in that
town and told my business. I found two out of about six who said they
would look at my goods. By this time everybody had closed up and I
came back to the hotel and went to bed, having spent the first day
without doing any business.
"Five men from my house in this same territory had fallen down in five
years and I, a kid almost, was number six--but not to fall down! I
said to myself, '_I am going to succeed.'_ The will to win means
a whole lot in this road business, too, boys. You know, if you go at a
thing half-heartedly you are sure to lose out, but if you say 'I
will,' you cannot fall down.
"Next morning I was up early and, before the clerks had dusted off the
counters, I went in to see the old gentleman who had said he would
look at my goods.
"'Round pretty early, aren't you, son?' said the old gentleman.
"'Yes, sir; but I'm after the worm,' said I.
"'All right. Go up to your hotel and I'll be there in half an hour.'
"Instead of waiting until he was ready for me, I went to the hotel.
After the half hour was up I began to get nervous. It was an hour and
a half before he came. I hadn't then learned that the best way to do
is to go with your customer from his store to yours, instead of
sitting around and waiting for him to come to you. This gives him a
chance to get out of the notion.
"I sold the old gentleman a pretty fair bill of hats, but it was sort
of a hit and miss proposition. He would jump from this thing to that
thing. I hadn't learned that the real way to sell goods is to lay out
one line at a time and finish with that before going to another.
Pretty soon, though, good merchants educated me how to sell a bill.
This is a thing a beginner should be taught something about before he
starts out.
"Customer No. 2 was a poke. But I suppose this was the reason I sold
him, because most of the boys, I afterwards learned, passed him up and
had nicknamed him 'Old Sorgum-in-the-Winter.' It is a pretty good idea
to let a slow man have his way, anyhow, if you have plenty of time,
because when you are selling goods in dozen lots, no matter how slow a
man is, you can get in a pretty good day's work in a few hours.
"When I got through with 'Old Sorgum' I had several hours left before
my train went west. Did I pack up and quit? Bet your life not! I
didn't have sense enough then, I suppose, to know that I had placed my
goods in about as many stores as I ought to. I then did the 'bundle
act.'
"I did up a bunch of stuff in a cloth and went down the street with
the samples under my arm. I did have sense enough, though, to tuck
them under my coat as I passed by the store of the man I had sold. I
didn't know, then, of the business jealousy--which is folly, you know
--there is between merchants; but I felt a little guilty just the
same.
The only thing I sold, however, was a dozen dog-skin gloves to the big
clothing merchant on the corner. That night I took the two o'clock
train out of town and had my first experience of sleeping in two beds
in two towns in one night--but this, in those days, was fun for me.
"Do you know, I had a bully good week? I was out early that season,
ahead of the bunch. By Saturday afternoon I had worked as far west as
Wymore. I went up to see a man there on Saturday afternoon. He said,
'I'll see you in the morning.' Well, there I was! I had been raised to
respect the Sabbath and between the time that he said he would see me
in the morning and the time that I said all right--which was about a
jiffy--I figured out that it would be better to succeed doing business
on Sunday than to fail by being too offensively good. For a stranger
in a strange place work is apt to be less mischievous than idling,
even on the Sabbath Day.
"Heavens! how I worked those days! After I had made the appointment
for Sunday morning I went back to the hotel and threw my stuff into my
trunks quickly--by this time I had learned that to handle samples in a
hurry is one of the necessary arts of the road--and took a train to a
little nearby town which I could double into without losing any time.
I even had the nerve to drag a man over to my sample room _after he
had closed up on Saturday night!_ I didn't sell him anything that
time, but afterwards he became one of my best customers. It pays to
keep hustling, you know.
"Whew! how cold it was that night. The train west left at 3 a.m.
Heavens! how cold my room was. A hardware man had never even slept in
it, to say nothing of its ever having known a stove. The windows had
whiskers on them long as a billy goat's; the mattress was one of those
thin boys. I hadn't then learned that the cold can come through the
mattress under you just about as fast as it can through the quilts on
top. I hadn't got onto the lamp chimney trick."
"Why, what's that?" spoke up one of the boys.
"Aren't you onto that?" said Billy. "You can take a lamp chimney, wrap
it up in a towel and put it at your feet and it will make your whole
bed as warm as toast.
"Well, I went back to Wymore the next morning and sold my man. I cut
the stuffing out of prices because I had been told that the firm he
bought from was the best going, and I remembered the advice that my
old friend had given me: 'It's better, Billy, to be cussed for selling
goods cheap than to be fired for not selling them at all.' Of course I
don't agree with this now, but I slashed that bill just the same.
"Next morning, when I reached Beatrice, the first thing I saw in the
old hotel (I still recall that dead, musty smell) was a church
directory hanging on the wall. In the center of the directory were
printed these words:
"'A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content
And plenty of health for the morrow;
But a Sabbath profaned, no matter what gained,
Is a certain forerunner of sorrow.'
"Down in the corner, where the glass was broken, one of the boys who
had without doubt profaned the Sabbath, had written these words:
"'A man who's thrifty on Sunday's worth fifty
Of a half-sanctimonious duck;
He will get along well if he does go to dwell
Where he'll chew on Old Satan's hot chuck.'
"My business the week before had been simply out of sight. The old man
in the house wrote me the only congratulatory letter I ever got from
him in my life. He was so well pleased with what I had done that he
didn't kick very hard even on the bill that I had slashed. But that
next week--oh, my! I didn't sell enough to buy honeysuckles for a
humming bird. I began to think that maybe that Sunday bill had
'queered' me."
"But how about Sunday now, Bill?" spoke up one of the boys. "Do you
think you'd like to take a good fat order to-morrow?"
"Yes, I've grown not to mind it out in this country," said Billy. "You
know we've a saying out here that the Lord has never come west of
Cheyenne."
"I shall never forget my first experience," said my old friend Jim, as
we all lighted fresh cigars--having forgotten the Dutch pictures and
the black oak furnishings.
"I had made a little flyer for the house to pick up a bill of opening
stock out in Iowa. They all thought in the office that the bill wasn't
worth going after, so they sent me; but I landed a twenty-five hundred
dollar order without slashing an item, a thing no other salesman up to
that time had ever done, so the old man called me in the office and
gave me a job just as soon as I came back.
"I started out with two hundred dollars expense money. The roll of
greenbacks the cashier handed me looked as big as a bale of hay. I
made a couple of towns the first two days and did business in both of
them, keeping up the old lick of not cutting a price.
"The next town I was booked for was Broken Bow, which was then off the
main line of the 'Q,' and way up on a branch. To get there I had to go
to Grand Island. Now, you boys remember the mob that used to hang out
around the hotel at Grand Island. That was the time when there were a
lot of poker sharks on the road. When I was a bill clerk in Chicago I
used to meet with some of the other boys from the store on Saturday
nights, play penny ante, five-cent limit, and settle for twenty-five
cents on the dollar when we got through--I was with a clothing firm,
you know. I had always been rather lucky and I had it in my head that
I could buck up against anybody in a poker game. I had no trouble
finding company to sit in with. In fact, they looked me up. In those
days there were plenty of glass bowls full of water setting 'round for
suckers. My train didn't leave until Monday morning and I had to
Sunday at Grand Island.
"We started in on Saturday night and played all night long. By the
time we had breakfast--and this we had sent up to the room--I was out
about forty dollars. I wanted to quit them and call it off. I thought
this was about as much as I could stand to lose and 'cover' in my
expense account, but all of the old sharks said, 'By jove, you have
got nerve, Jim. You have the hardest run of luck in drawing cards that
I ever saw.' They doped me up with the usual words of praise and,
after I had put a cup of coffee or two under my belt, I went at it
again, making up my mind that I could stand to lose another ten. I
figured out that I could make a team trip and 'break a wheel' to even
up on expenses.
"Well, you know what that means. The time for you to quit a poker game
(when you have money in your pocket) is like to-morrow--it never
comes. By nightfall I was dead broke. Then I began to think. I felt
like butting my brains out against a lamp-post; but that wouldn't do.
I ate supper all alone and went to thinking what I'd do.
"I wasn't a kitten, by any means, so I went up to my shark friends and
struck one of them for enough to carry me up to Broken Bow and back.
He was a big winner and came right up with the twenty. They wanted to
let me in the game again on 'tick,' but then I had sense enough to
know that I'd had plenty. I went to my room and wrote the house. I
simply made a clean breast of the whole business. I told them the
truth about the matter--that I'd acted the fool--and I promised them
I'd never do it any more; and I haven't played a game of poker since.
The old man of the house had wired me money to Grand Island by the
time I returned there and in the first mail he wrote me to keep right
on.
"Business was bum with me for the next three days. I didn't sell a
cent. One of the boys tipped me on an Irishman down in Schuyler who
had had a squabble with his clothing house. I saw a chance right there
and jumped right into that town. I got the man to look at my goods. He
looked them all through from A to Z, but I couldn't start that
Hibernian to save my life.
"He said, 'Well, your line looks pretty good; but, heavens alive! your
prices are away too high.' Then he said, picking up a coat: 'Look
here, young man, you're new on the road and I want to figure out and
show you that you're getting too much for your goods. Now, you put
down there, here is a suit that you ask me $12 for. Just figure the
cloth and the linings, and the buttons, and the work. All told they
don't cost you people over seven dollars. You ought to be able to--and
you can--make me this suit for $10. That's profit enough. You can't
expect to do business with us people out here in Nebraska and hold us
up. We're not in the backwoods. People are civilized out here. Your
house has figured that we're Indians, or something of that kind. You
know very well that they sell this same suit in Illinois, where
competition is greater, for ten dollars. Now I won't stand for any
high prices like you're asking me. I'm going to quit the old firm that
I've been buying goods from. I've got onto them. Now I'm going to give
my business to somebody and you're here on the spot. Your goods suit
me as far as pattern and make and general appearance go, and I'll do
business with you, and do it right now, if you'll do it on the right
sort of basis.'
"Well, there I was. I hadn't sold a bill for three days and I felt
that this one was slipping right away from me, too. I had come
especially to see the man and he had told me that he would buy goods
from me if I would make the price right. So I lit in to cut. I sold
him the twelve dollar suit for ten dollars. He took a dozen of them.
It was a staple. I didn't know anything about what the goods were
worth, but he had made his bluff good. I sold him the bill right
through at cut prices on everything. The house actually lost money on
the bill. I have long since learned that the only way to meet a
bluffer is with a bluff. This man had laid out a line of goods which
he fully intended, I know now, to buy from me at the prices which I
had first asked him for them, but he thought he would buy them cheaper
from me if he could.
"Many a time after that, when I had got onto things better, has this
old Irishman laughed at me about how he worked me into giving him a
bill of goods, and enjoyed the joke of it--Irishmanlike--more, I
believe, than he did getting the bill at low prices.
"Well, my nerve was gone and I thought the only way I could do
business then was by cutting the stuffing out of prices. I kept it up
for a few days--until I received my next mail at Omaha. Whew! how the
old man did pour it into me. He wrote me the meanest letter that a
white man ever got. He said: 'Jim, you can go out and play all the
poker that you want to, but don't cut the life out of goods. You can
lose a hundred and fifty dollars once in a while, if you want to,
playing cards, that will be a whole lot better than losing a hundred
and fifty every day by not getting as much as goods are worth. Now
we're going to forget about the hundred and fifty dollars you lost
gambling, instead of charging it to your salary account, as you told
us to do. We had made up our minds because you were starting out so
well and were keeping up prices, to charge this hundred and fifty
dollars to your expense account. We were going to forget all about
that, Jim; but if you can't get better prices than you have been for
the last week, just take the train and come right on in to the house.
We can't afford to keep you out on the road and lose money on you;'
and so on.
"I was scared to death. I didn't know that the Old Man in the house
was running a bigger bluff on me than the Irishman to whom I made cut
prices on the bill.
"But that letter gave me my nerve back and I ended up with a pretty
fair trip. At that time I hadn't learned that this road business is
done on confidence more than on knowledge. A salesman must feel first
within himself that his goods and prices are right, and then he can
sell them at those prices. If you feel a thing yourself you can make
the other man feel it, especially when he doesn't know anything about
the values of the goods he buys.
"When I reached the house one of the boys in stock patted me on the
back and said; 'Jim, the old man is tickled to death about what you've
done. He says you're making better profits for him than any man in the
house.'"
"Well, I guess you held your job, all right, then, didn't you, Jim?"
"Oh my, yes. I stayed with them--that was my old firm, you know--for
fifteen years, and I was a fool for ever leaving them. I would have
been a partner in the house to-day if I hadn't switched off."
"How long have you been out, Arthur?" said my friend Jim, after ending
his story.
"Well, so long that I've almost forgotten it, boys, but I shall never
forget my start, either. The firm that I worked for had a wholesale
business, and they were also interested in a retail store. I was stock
man in the retail house but I wasn't satisfied with it. I was crazy to
go out and try my luck on the road. I braced the old man several times
before he would let me start; but he finally said to me: 'Well,
Arthur, you're mighty anxious to go out on the road, and I guess we'll
let you go. It won't do much harm because I think that, after a little
bit, you will want to get back to your old job. Then you'll be
satisfied with it. I kind o' feel, though, that in sending you out
we'll be spoiling a good retail clerk to make a poor traveling man.
You've done pretty well selling gloves a pair at a time to people who
come in and ask for them, but you're going to have a good deal harder
time when you go to selling a dozen at a clip to a man who hasn't been
in the habit of buying them from you. But, as you're bent on going,
we'll start you out this season. You can get yourself ready to go
right away.'
"My territory was Iowa. In the first town I struck was the meanest
merchant I've ever met in my life. But I didn't know it then. He was
one of the kind who'd tell you with a grunt that he would not go to
your sample room but if you had a few good sellers to bring them over
and he'd look at them. The old hog! Then about the time you'd get your
stuff over to his store something would have turned up to make him hot
and he'd take out his spite on you.
"Well, this old duck said he'd look at my samples of unlined goods. I
rather thought that if I could get him started on unlined goods I
could sell him on lined stuff and mittens. So I lugged over my whole
line myself. I didn't have sense enough to give the porter a quarter
to carry my grip over to his store and save my energy, but, instead, I
picked up the old grip myself. It was all right for the first block,
but then I had to sit down and rest. The store was four blocks away.
On the home stretch I couldn't go twenty steps before I had to sit
down and rest. It was so heavy that it almost pulled the cords in my
wrist in two. When I finally landed the grip at the front of the old
man's store, my tongue was hanging out. He had then gone to dinner.
"I thought I wouldn't eat anything but that I would get my line ready
for him by the time he came back, get through with him and take
luncheon later. I carried the grip to the back end of the store and
spread out my line on the counter. About one o'clock he came in and I
said to him, 'I'm ready for you.' He walked away and didn't say a word
but took out a newspaper and read for half an hour. He did it for pure
meanness, for not a single customer came into the store while he sat
there.
"I was beginning to get a little hungry but I didn't mind that then.
When the young lady on the dry goods side came back from dinner I
sidled up to her and talked about the weather for another half hour.
My stomach was beginning to gnaw but I didn't dare go out. The old man
by this time had gone to his desk and was writing some letters. I
waited until I saw him address an envelope and put a stamp on it, and
then I braced him a second time.
"'No, I guess I don't want any gloves.'
"'Well, I've my goods all here and it'll be no trouble to show them to
you,' I said.
"'Nope,' said he, and then started to write another letter.
"When he finished that one, I said: 'Now, I don't like to insist but
as my goods are all here it won't do any harm to look at them.'
"With this the old man turned on me and said:
"'Looker here, young man, I've told you twict that I don't want to buy
any of your goods. Now, you just get them in your grip and get them
out of here right quick; if you don't I'll throw them out and you with
them.'
"Well, the old duffer was a little bigger than I was, and I didn't
want to get into any trouble with him; not that I cared anything about
having a scrap with him, but I thought that the firm wouldn't like it,
and if they got onto me they'd fire me. So, without saying a word, I
began to pack my goods together.
"About that time a customer came in who wanted to buy a pair of shoes.
Some of my samples were still on the counter near the shoe shelves.
The old man, with a sweep of his hand, just cleaned the counter of my
samples and there I was, picking them up off the floor and putting
them into my grip. I felt like hitting him over the head with a nail
puller but I buckled up the straps and started sliding the grip
along,--it was so infernally heavy--to the front door.
"Before I got to the front door, he came up and took the grip out of
my hand and piled it out on the sidewalk and gave me a shove. Then he
went back to show the customer the pair of shoes.
"I was just a boy then--was just nineteen--and this was the first man
I'd called on.
"'If they're all like this,' thought I to myself, 'I believe I'll go
back home and sell them a pair at a time to the boys I know who "come
in" for them.'
"I lugged that grip back to the hotel, hungry as I was. There was ice
on the sidewalk but I was sweating like a mule pulling a bob-tailed
street car full of fat folks. I was almost famished but I went to my
room and cried like a child. My heart was broken.
[Illustration: "My stomach was beginning to gnaw, but i didn't dare go
out"]
"But after awhile my nerve came back to me, and I thought, surely all
the merchants I call on won't be like that man,--and I washed up and
went down to supper. After eating something I felt better. At the
supper table I told an old traveling man, who was sitting at the table
with me, about the way I'd been treated.
"'Well, come on, my boy, and I'll sell you a bill tonight. That old
fellow is the meanest dog in Iowa. No decent traveling man will go
near him. As a rule, you'll find that merchants will treat you like a
gentleman. The best thing you can do is to scratch that old whelp off
the list. Of course you know,' said he, giving me advice which I
needed very much, 'you'll often run up against a man who is a little
sour, but if you sprinkle sugar on him in the right kind of way, you
can sweeten him up.'
"You know how it is, boys, even now, all of us like to give a helping
hand to the young fellow who's just starting out. I would almost hand
over one of my customers to a young man to give him encouragement, and
so would you. We've all been up against the game ourselves and know
how many things the young fellow runs up against to dishearten him.
"As I think of my early experiences, I recall with a great deal of
gratitude in my heart the kind deeds that were done for me when I was
the green first-tripper, by the old timers on the road. My new friend
took me down the street to one of his customers and made him give me
an order. That night I went to bed the happiest boy in Iowa."
With this one of the boys called a waiter. As we lit our cigars my
friend Moore, who was next to tell his story, said, "Well, boys,
here's to Our First Experiences."