TRAINING THE SALESMAN
The consciousness of being superbly equipped for your work
brings untold satisfaction.
Efficiency is the watchword of to-day. The half-prepared man,
the man who is ignorant, the man who doesn’t know his lines, is
placed at a tremendous disadvantage.
A student seeking admission to Oberlin College asked its famous president
if there was not some way of taking a sort of homeopathic college course,
some short-cut by which he could get all the essentials in a few months.
This was the president’s reply: “_When the Creator wanted a squash, he
created it in six months, but when he wanted an oak, he took a hundred
years._”
One of the highest-paid women workers in the world, the foreign buyer for
a big department store, owes her position more to thorough training for
her work than to any other thing. Between salary and commissions, her
income amounts to thirty thousand dollars a year. Speaking of her place
in the firm, one of its highest members said to a writer: “We regard
Miss Blank as more of a friend than an employee; and she came to us just
twenty years ago with her hair in pig-tails, tied with a shoe string; and
she was so ill fed and ill clothed we had to pass her over to our house
nurse to get her currycombed and scrubbed before we could put her on as a
cash girl. Without training, she would probably have dropped back in the
gutter as an unfit and a failure. With training, she has become one of
the ablest business women in the country.”
There are a thousand pigmy salesmen to one Napoleon salesman; but if you
have natural ability for the marketing of any of the great products of
the world, all you need to make you a Napoleon salesman is sound training
and willingness to work faithfully. With such a foundation for success
you will not long be out of a job, or remain in obscurity, for wherever
you go, no matter how hard the times, you will see an advertisement for
just such a man.
The term “salesmanship” is a very broad one; it covers many fields. The
drummer for a boot and shoe house, the insurance agent and manager, the
banker and broker, whose business is to dispose of millions of dollars’
worth of stocks and bonds—all these are “salesmen,” trafficking in one
kind of goods or another—all form a part of the world’s great system of
organized barter.
There are three essentials which must be considered in deciding on
salesmanship or any other vocation, namely: taste, talent, and training.
The first is, by far, the most important of these essentials, for
whatever we have a taste for, we will be interested in; what we really
become interested in, we are bound to love, sooner or later, and success
comes from loving our work.
To find out whether or not you are cut out for a salesman, you must first
analyze the question of your taste and your talent. In this matter,
however, it should be borne in mind that human nature, especially in
youth, is plastic, and that we can be molded by others, or we can mold
ourselves. Even though one has not a strong taste, naturally, or a
decided talent for salesmanship, he can acquire both, for even talent,
like taste, may be either natural or acquired. By proper training in
salesmanship, which means the right kind of reading, observing and
listening, and right practicing, we can develop our taste and ability so
as to become good salesmen or good saleswomen.
The basic requirements for successful salesmanship are good health,
a cheerful disposition, courtesy, tact, resourcefulness, facility of
expression, honesty, a firm and unshakable confidence in one’s self, a
thorough knowledge of, and confidence in, the goods which one is selling,
and ability to close. True cordiality of manner must be reënforced by
intelligence and by a ready command of information in regard to the
matters in hand. It will be seen that all these things make the _man_ as
well as the salesman—when coupled with sincerity and highmindedness, they
can’t but bring success in any career.
The foundation for salesmanship can hardly be laid too early. The youth
who uses his spare time when at school, in vacation season, and out of
business hours, in acquiring the art of salesmanship will gain power to
climb up in the world that cannot be obtained so readily by any other
means.
Fortunate is the young man who has received the right kind of business
training. No matter what his occupation or profession, such training
will make him a more efficient worker. Many youths have had fathers
whose experience and advice have been valuable to them. Others have been
favored by getting into firms of high caliber. As a result they have been
in a splendid environment during their most formative years, and in so
far have had an inestimable advantage in success training.
Many people have the impression that almost anybody can be a salesman,
and that salesmanship doesn’t require much, if any, special training. The
young man who starts out to sell things on this supposition will soon
find out his mistake. If salesmanship is to be your vocation you cannot
afford to take any such superficial view of its requirements. You cannot
afford to botch your life. You cannot afford a little, picayune career
as a salesman, with a little salary and no outlook. If salesmanship is
worth giving your life to, it is worth very serious and very profound and
scientific preparation and training.
I know a physician, a splendid fellow, who studied medicine in a small,
country medical school, where there was very little material, and
practically no opportunity for hospital work. In fact, during his years
of preparation his experience outside of medical books was very meager.
Since getting his M. D. diploma this man has been a very hard worker
and has managed to get a fair living, but he is much handicapped in his
chance to make a name in his profession. He has a fine mind, however, and
if he had gone to the Harvard Medical School in Boston, or to one of the
other great medical schools where there is an abundance of material for
observation and facilities for practice in the hospitals and clinics, he
would have learned more in six months, outside of what he gathered from
books and lectures, than he learned in all of his course in the country
medical schools. His poor training has condemned him to a mediocre
success, when his natural ability, with a thorough preparation, would
have made him a noted physician.
You cannot afford to carry on your life work as an amateur, with improper
preparation. You want to be known as an expert, as a man of standing, a
man who would be looked up to as an authority, a specialist in his line.
To enter on your life work indifferently prepared, half trained, would be
like a man going into business without even a common school education,
knowing nothing about figures. No matter how naturally able such a man
might be, people would take advantage of his ignorance. He would be at
the mercy of his bookkeeper and other employees, and of unscrupulous
business men. And if he should try to make up for his lack of early
training or education, he must do it at a great cost in time and energy.
Successful salesmanship of the highest order requires not only a fine
special training, but also a good education and a keen insight into human
nature; it also requires resourcefulness, inventiveness and originality.
In fact, a salesman who would become a giant in his line, must combine
with the art of salesmanship a number of the highest intellectual
qualities.
Yet in salesmanship, as in every other vocation, there is not one
qualification needed that can not be cultivated by any youth of average
ability and intelligence. Success in it, as in every other business and
profession, is merely the triumph of the common virtues and ordinary
ability.
In salesmanship, as in war, there is offensive and defensive. The trained
salesman knows how to attack, and he knows how to defend himself when he
is attacked. Everything contained within the covers of this book has for
its object the most effective offensive and defensive methods in selling.