Selling Things - The Man Who Can Sell Things

CHAPTER I THE MAN WHO CAN SELL THINGS Cultivate all the arts and all the helps to mastership. The world always listens to a man with a will in him. Soon after Henry Ward Beecher went to Plymouth Church he received a letter from a Western parish, asking him to send them a new pastor. After describing the sort of man they wanted, the letter closed with the following injunction: “Be sure to send us a man who can swim. Our last pastor was drowned while fording the river, on a visit to his parishioners.” Now, this is the sort of a man that is wanted everywhere, in every line of human activity, the man who can swim, the salesman who can swim, who can sell things, who can go out and get business, the man who can take a message[2] to Garcia, who can bring back the order, the man who can “deliver the goods.” The whole business world to-day is hunting for the man who can sell things; there is a sign up at every manufacturing establishment, every producing establishment for the man who can market products. There is nobody in greater demand than the efficient salesman, and he is rarely if ever out of a job.