Practical salesmanship;
a treatise on the art of selling goods
The art, or science, or practice of salesmanship can- not be taught academically or automatically, or by the book, lesson, or teacher. The concrete vocations, — bookkeeping, stenography, typewriting, and the clerical or mechanical side of the business, — may be wholly or partially imparted by book or lesson; but the practice of a vocational art, which does not depend upon definite rules, cannot be driven into anybody by rote or regulation.
While salesmanship is not independent of basic principles, and while it is dependent upon unwritten, if not written, law, its action is so closely allied to personality that it cannot be presented either by chart or table of rules.
Therefore, the author attempts to present the great principles and ethics of salesmanship, a study and analysis of them, in a way which he hopes will be helpful, practical, and profitable; and all that he says is interwoven and supplemented with the experience of active authorities, who have given the larger part of their lives to selling, on the road, or behind the counter, or to the management of salesmen and saleswomen
WHAT IS SALESMANSHIP?
The salesman was born at the birth of trade. Business-doing of every kind appears to be impossible without the intervention of salesmen or of some personal action which stands for salesmanship. The customer, whether he be the jobber, the distributor, the retailer, the peddler, or the consumer, may know what he wants, and he may be aware also that he cannot live or do business without buying something from somebody. But for some reason, or, rather, from what would ethically and scientifically appear to be a lack of reason, he may not order the goods or supplies, or he may buy less of them, unless somebody solicits his trade and tells him what to do, or forces him to do, what necessity and common sense make necessary for living or for doing business.
Theoretically, it would appear to be an unnatural condition of a business, which makes it necessary for the buyer to be told what he should buy, rather than to do it of his own volition. But whether this be so or not, this condition has always existed, still maintains, and will continue to be, until civilization passes further up the road to perfection, when the selling will be done by waiters and not by coaxers of trade. When this time arrives, a large part of the machinery of business will be unnecessary, and the strain of trade reduced to the minimum. But today, with or without reason, the selling of practically everything, from goods on the counter to steamships and locomotives, is a direct or indirect result of solicitation, either by personal application or by the silent salesman known as advertising, and generally by the use of both. For the present, the solicitor, drummer, or salesman is one of the foundation stones of commercialism, without which it appears impossible to build^ and maintain the business structure. There are many definitions of salesmanship.
Here is one: Salesmanship is a personal face-to-face action or effort on the part of an individual which is intended to bring about the sale of the goods for sale. And here is another: More broadly speaking, salesmanship is the art of selling something to somebody, and everything which contributes to the consummation of this exchange is necessarily a part of salesmanship. Salesmanship differs from a demonstration in that the latter may not include the former, and it is like a demonstration because good salesmanship usually includes some form of demonstration. Considered wholly from a commercial point of view, salesmanship consists of personal solicitation, the salesman and the customer meeting face to face. In this book, I am so considering it, and am not attempting to bring into the argument any kind of selling action beyond face-to-face solicitation and those things directly pertaining to it.
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