THE PRICE OF MASTERSHIP
“Three things are necessary, first, backbone; second, backbone;
third, backbone.”—CHARLES SUMNER.
“When other people are ready to give up we are just getting our
second wind,” is the motto of a New York business house. A good
one for the success aspirant.
“Ships sail west and ships sail east,
By the very same winds that blow;
It is the set of the sails, and not the gales,
That determines where they go.”
“Wrecks of the world are of two kinds,” said Elbert Hubbard. “Those who
have nothing that society wants, and those who do not know how to get
their goods into the front window.”
The way to succeed in salesmanship is to get your goods into the front
window and hustle for all you are worth. Hard work and grit open the door
to the Success firm.
Two college students started out to sell copies of the same book. After
some weeks in the field one wrote to headquarters as an excuse for his
poor business that “everything had been trying to keep him down of late.”
The weather had been so bad he could not get out a great deal of the
time; then everybody was talking “hard times,” and no money, and making
all sorts of excuses for not buying. He said he was so disgusted and
discouraged that he saw nothing for it but to give up canvassing as a bad
job.
The other young man, canvassing in similar territory, sent in his report
about the same time. This is what he wrote: “In spite of bad weather
and the fact that everybody is trying to hedge on account of the war
scare and the general business depression I have had a banner week, and
my commissions were over eighty dollars. I get used to this ‘hard times
and no money,’ and ‘can’t afford it’ talk, and I just sail right in and
overwhelm all these objections with my arguments. I make the people I
talk to feel that it would be almost wicked to let the opportunity pass
for securing a book, the reading of which has doubled and trebled the
efficiency of a multitude of men and women and has been the turning point
in hundreds of careers. I have made them feel that it will be cheap at
almost any price, and that I am doing them a great favor in making it
possible for them to secure this ambition-arousing book.”
This young man sold, on the average, to eight people out of ten he called
upon during the week.
A traveling salesman for a big concern got it into his head that his
territory out through the West was played out. His orders were shrinking,
and he told his employers that the territory had simply been worked to
a finish, that there was no use in staying in it any longer. His sales
manager, however, knew the section well, and doubted the man’s glib
statement. He put a young fellow in his place who had had very little
experience, but who was a born hustler, full of energy, ambition and
enthusiasm. On his first trip he more than doubled his predecessor’s
record. He said he saw nothing to indicate a played-out route, and was
confident that business would increase as he became better acquainted
with the territory.
The fact was that, not the territory, but the man was played out. The
older salesman was not willing to forego his comforts, his pleasures,
to hustle for business. He was not willing to travel across the country
in bad weather on the chance of getting an order in a small town. He
preferred to remain in the Pullman cars, to go to the larger towns and
sit around in hotel lobbys, to take things easy, to go to the theaters
instead of hunting up new customers and making friends for the house.
He wanted his “dead” territory changed, because he had no taste for
hustling. His successor did not see any lack of life in that “played-out”
route because he was “a live wire.” The trouble was not in the territory;
it was in the man.
At an agricultural convention while discussing the slope of land which
was best suited to a certain kind of fruit tree, an old farmer was called
upon to express his opinion. He got up and said, “_the slope of the land
don’t make so much difference as the slope of the man_.” It isn’t the
slope of the territory that counts so much in selling as the slope of the
salesman; that is everything. In every business it is always a question
of the sort of a man behind the proposition. It is the slope of the man,
his grit, his stick-to-it-iveness, that count most.
No matter how letter perfect you may be in the technique of salesmanship,
or how well posted on all the rules of effective procedure, if you lack
certain qualities you never will make a first-class salesman.
If you lack grit, industry, application, perseverance; if you lack
determination and that bull-dog grip which never lets go or knows when it
is beaten; if you lack sand, you will peter out. Having these qualities
you will overcome many handicaps.
I have known a little sawed-off dwarf of a salesman to wade into a
prospect and, through sheer grit, get an order where the ordinary
salesman, with good physical appearance, would have failed.
This fellow said that grit had been his only capital in life; that when
he found he was so handicapped by his size and his ugly features that he
would probably be a failure and a nobody in the world, he just made up
his mind he would not only overcome every one of his handicaps, but that
he would be a big success in his line. He did everything he had resolved
to do, and through sheer force of grit “made good.” He had paid the price
of success, and won out, as will every one who is willing to pay the
price.
Only the weakling prates about “luck,” a “pull,” or “favoritism,” or any
other backstairs to success. Your success and your luck are determined
by yourself and by no other. We are the masters of our destiny. We get
just what _we want_. To be sure, all of us _wish_ for a lot of things;
we would like very much to have them, but we don’t really want them, or
we would straightway set to work and try very hard by every means in our
power to get them. Many of us wish for a position worth anywhere from ten
thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars a year, but we want to
get it without much effort, and to hold it with still less effort. What
we really want is success without effort, an easy job at the highest
market price, like the cook pictured in a recent cartoon, applying for a
place. Her first question is: “And what’s the wages, mum?” “Oh, I always
pay whatever a person’s worth,” answers the employer. “No, thank ye, mum.
I never works for as little as that,” replies the disgusted would-be
employee.
Let us remember that there is no easiest way to success in any business
or profession. We are here to develop ourselves to the highest point
of our ability; to be the broadest, ablest, most helpful men and women
we can be, and this is only possible through the assiduous cultivation
of our highest faculties. We can only grow and progress through
self-development. No patent method has yet been discovered by which a man
or woman can be developed from the outside.
Abraham Lincoln tells us, “The way for a young man to rise, is to improve
himself every way he can, never suspecting that any one wishes to hinder
him.”
Hudson Maxim, the famous inventor, has formulated ten success rules, the
essence of which are, study and work. He makes two vital assertions:
1. “Never look for something for nothing; make up your mind to earn
everything, and remember that opportunity is the only thing that any one
can donate you without demoralizing you and doing you an injury.” 2.
“Man must eliminate from his mind any belief that the world owes him a
living.”
Now, some people differ with Mr. Maxim on this last point. They believe
the world does owe each one of us a living. If they are right, it is
pleasant to think that the world is very ready to pay this debt, when we
come around to collect it in the right way. If we can do any one thing
superbly, no matter how humble it may be, we shall find ourselves in
demand. The world will most willingly pay its indebtedness to us.
Men and women who have won distinction in every business and profession
are unanimous in their agreement as to two cardinal points in the
achievement of success—Work and Grit.
The Honorable Thomas Pryor Gore, the blind Senator of Oklahoma, who
raised himself from a poor, blind boy to be an influential member of
the United States Senate, has this to say on the secret of pushing
to the front: “A fixed and unalterable purpose, pursued under all
circumstances, in season and out of season, with no shadow of turning,
is the best motive power a man can have. I have sat in physical darkness
for twenty-seven years, and if I have learned anything it is that _the
dynamics of the human will can overcome any difficulty_.”
Here, indeed, is encouragement for every youth in this land of
opportunity. Think of a poor, blind boy, unaided, achieving such
distinction as Mr. Gore has won! Think of a blind Milton writing the
greatest epic in the world’s literature! Think of a Beethoven, stone
deaf, overcoming the greatest handicap a composer could have, and raising
himself to the distinction of being one of the greatest composers the
world has known! One of this wonderful man’s sayings is well worth
keeping in mind by every young man struggling with difficulties: “I will
grapple with fate; it shall never drag me down.”
It is well also to remember this truth: “Usually the work that is
required to develop talent is ten times that necessary for ordinary
commonplace success.” Men naturally brainy, or with some great gift,
have to work most assiduously to achieve big results. Without untiring
perseverance, industry, grit, the courage to get up and press on after
repeated failures, the historic achievers of the world would never have
won out in their undertakings.
Columbus said that it was holding on three days more that discovered the
New World; that is, it was holding on three days after even the stoutest
hearts would have turned back that brought him in sight of land.
Tenacity of purpose is characteristic of all men who have accomplished
great things. They may lack other desirable traits, may have all sorts of
peculiarities, weaknesses, but the quality of persistence, clear grit, is
never absent from the man who does things. Drudgery cannot disgust him,
labor cannot weary him, hardships cannot discourage him. He will persist
no matter what comes or goes, because persistence is part of his nature.
More young men have achieved success in life with grit as capital, than
with money capital to start with. The whole history of achievement shows
that grit has overcome the direst poverty; it has been more than a match
for lifelong invalidism.
After all, what do all the other accomplishments and personal decorations
amount to if a man lacks the driving wheel, grit, which moves the human
machine. A man has got to have this projectile force or he will never get
very far in the world. Grit is a quality which stays by a man when every
other quality retreats and gives up.
For the gritless every defeat is a Waterloo, but there is no Waterloo for
the man who has clear grit, for the man who persists, who never knows
when he is beaten. Those who are bound to win never think of defeat
as final. They get up after each failure with new resolution, more
determination than ever to go on until they win.
Have you ever seen a man who had no give-up in him, who could never let
go his grip whatever happened, who, every time he failed, would come
up with greater determination than ever to push ahead? Have you ever
seen a man who did not know the meaning of the word failure, who, like
Grant, never knew when he was beaten, who cut the words “can’t,” and
“impossible,” from his vocabulary, the man whom no obstacles could down,
no difficulty phase, who was not disheartened by any misfortune, any
calamity? If you have, you have seen a real man, a conqueror, a king
among men.
As we look around at other men, enjoying the good things of life,
basking in the sunshine of success, let us remember that they didn’t get
their place in the sun by wishing and longing for it. They didn’t get to
Easy Street by the road of Inertia. When you are tempted to envy those
people, and long to have a “pull” or some one to give you a “boost,” just
call to mind this jingle:
“You must jump in, and fight and work, nor care for one defeat;
For if you take things easy, you won’t reach Easy Street.
Don’t waste time in envy, and never say you’re ‘beat,’
For if you take things easy, you won’t reach Easy Street.”
There is no royal road to anything that is worth having. Only work and
grit will do the trick. As J. Pierpont Morgan says, “Hard, honest,
intelligent work will land any young man at the top.”
The great business world is always on the hunt for the man who can do
things a little better than they have been done before, the man who can
deliver the goods, the man who can manage a little better, the man who is
a little shrewder, a little more scientific, a little more accurate, a
little more thorough; it is always after the man who can bring a little
better brain, a little better training to his job.
With our constantly widening national interests, our enormously expanding
trade, the demand for A1 salesmen is ever on the increase. The young
man who is not satisfied with the ordinary required equipments for
salesmanship, but who will add to this a thorough knowledge of modern
languages, especially those most used in commercial intercourse—German,
French and Spanish—will not have very great difficulty in finding his
place in the sun.
The making—or the marring—of your life is in your own hands. “The gods
sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.” Success is on sale in
the world market place. All who are willing to pay the price can buy it.
In the final analysis, success in salesmanship, as in everything else, is
simply a matter of “paying the price.”