Tales of the Road Part 25

"'Then you mean to tell me that for your store here you are picking from one line of goods and are trying to compete with other merchants in this town who have the chance of buying from scores of lines. Now, your brother is certainly a very poor salesman if he can't sell enough shoes to make a living on aside from those that he sells to his own store. Should he not let his wholesale business and his retail business be separate from one another? You yourself are interested in this concern and ought you not to have something to say? To be sure, when it comes to an even break you should by all means give your brother and his firm the preference; but do you believe that either you or he should have goods come into this house from his firm when you are able to get them better from some other place?'

"'No, I don't believe that is exactly business and we don't aim to.'

"'Well, if such is the case,' said I, 'come up and see what I have.'

"'Well, I'll just go you one,' said the shoeman.

"Do you know, I had him walk with me up to the hotel--he was a good jolly fellow--and when I marched into the office with him, I called the children's shoe man over and introduced him.

"He said, 'Well, this is one on me,' and then explained the bet to Hoover and bought the cigars for three instead of two."

_Don't put prices on another man's goods!_

I once had a merchant pa.s.s me out an article he had bought from another man. "How much is that worth?" he asked. "That I shall not tell you," I answered. "Suppose it is worth $24 a dozen. If I say it is worth $30, then you will say to me: 'There's no use doing business with you, this other man's goods are cheaper, you've confessed it.' If I say that it is worth $24 a dozen, then you will say to me that I'm not offering you any advantage. If I say it is worth $18 a dozen, you will believe that I am telling you a lie. Therefore, I shall say nothing."

_Don't run down your compet.i.tor._

In talking of this point a furnis.h.i.+ng goods man once said to me: "When I first went to travel in Missouri and Illinois I was green. I had a whole lot to learn, but still I had been posted by one of my friends who told me that I should always treat my compet.i.tor with especial courtesy. When I was on my first trip I met one of my compet.i.tors one day at a hotel in Springfield. I was introduced to him by one of the boys. I chatted with him as pleasantly as I could for a few minutes and then went up street to look for a customer.

"After dinner I was standing by the cigar case talking to the hotel clerk. Up came my compet.i.tor very pompously and bought a half dollar's worth of cigars. As he lighted one and stuck all the others into his pocket case he said to me in a 'What-are-you?' fas.h.i.+on, 'Oh, how are you?' and away he walked. Heavens, how he froze me! But from that day to this, while I have outwardly always treated him civilly, his customers have been the ones that I have gone after the hardest--and you bet your life that I've put many of his fish on my string."

_Don't run down the other fellow's goods!_

When a salesman tells merchants that he can sell them goods that are better, for the same price or cheaper than he is buying them, he at once offers an insult to the merchant's judgment. One of my merchant friends once told me of a breezy young chap who came into his store and asked him how much he paid for a certain suit of clothes that was on the table. "This young fellow was pretty smart," said my merchant friend. "He asked me how much I paid for a cheviot. I told him $9. He said, 'Nine dollars! Well, I can sell you one just like that for $7.'

'All right, I'll take fifty suits,' said I.

"About that time I turned away to wait on a customer and in an hour or so the young fellow came in again and said, 'Well, my line is all opened up now, and if you like we can run over to my sample room.'

'Why, there's no use of doing that,' said I. 'You tell me that you can sell me goods just exactly like what I have for $2 a suit cheaper. No use of my going over to look at them. Just send them along. Here, I can buy lots of goods from you.'

"'Oh, they're not exactly like these, but pretty near it,' said he.

"'Well, if they're not exactly like these I don't care for them at all because these suit me exactly.'

"With this the young fellow took a tumble to himself and let me alone."

_Don't carry side lines!_

You might just as well mix powder with sawdust. If you scatter yourself from one force to another you weaken the force which you should put into your one line. If this does not pay you, quit it altogether.

_Don't take a conditional order!_

If your customer cannot make up his mind while you can bring your arguments to bear upon him in his presence, you may depend upon it he will never talk himself into ordering your goods. If you can lead a merchant to the point of saying, "Well, I'll take a memorandum of your stock numbers and maybe I'll send in for some of these things later,"

and not get him to budge any further, and if you lend him your pencil to write down that conditional order, you will be simply wasting a little black lead and a whole lot of good time.

There are many more "Don'ts" for the salesman but I shall leave you to figure out the rest of them for yourself--but just one more:

DON'T _be ashamed that you are a salesman!_

Salesmans.h.i.+p is just as much a profession as law, medicine, or anything else, and salesmans.h.i.+p also has its reward.

Salesmans.h.i.+p requires special study, and the fact that the schools of salesmans.h.i.+p which are now starting are patronized not only by those who wish to become salesmen but also by those who wish to be more successful in their work, shows that there is an interest awakening in this profession.

There is a science of salesmans.h.i.+p, whether the salesman knows it or not. If he will only get the idea that he can study his profession and profit thereby, this idea in his head will turn out to be worth a great deal to him.

CHAPTER XVI.

MERCHANTS THE SALESMAN MEETS.

A bunch of us sat in the Silver Grill of the Hotel Spokane where we could see the gold fish and the baby turtles swimming in the pool of the ferned grotto in the center of the room. This is one place toward which the heart of every traveling man who wanders in the far Northwest turns when he has a few days of rest between trips. Perhaps more good tales of the road are told in this room than in any other in the West. There is an air about the place that puts one at ease--the brick floor, the hewn logs that support the ceiling and frame in the pictures of English country life around the walls, the big, comfortable, black-oak chairs, and the open fireplace, before which spins a roasting goose or turkey.

"Yes, you bet we strike some queer merchants on the road, boys," said the children's clothing man. "I ran into one man out west of here and it did me a whole lot of good to get even with him. He was one of those suspicious fellows that trusted to his own judgment about buying goods rather than place faith in getting square treatment from the traveling man. You all know how much pleasure it gives us to trump the sure trick of one of this kind. I don't believe that merchants, anyway, know quite how independent the traveling man feels who represents a first cla.s.s house and has a well established trade. Not many of the boys, though, wear the stiff neck even though their lines are strong and they have a good cinch on their business. There isn't much chance, as a general thing, for any of us to grow a big b.u.mp of conceit. A man who is stuck on himself doesn't last long, it matters not how good the stuff is that he sells. Yet, once in a while he lifts up his bristles.

"Well, sir, a few seasons ago I sold a man--you all know who I mean-- about half of his spring bill, amounting to $600. He gave the other half to one of the rottenest lines that comes out of this country.

When I learned where my good friend had bought the other half of his bill, I felt sure that the following season I would land him for his whole order; but when I struck him that next season, he said, 'No, I've bought. You can't expect to do business with me on the sort of stuff that you are selling,' and he said it in such a mean way that it made me mad as blazes. Yet I threw a blanket around myself and cooled off. It always harms a man, anyway, to fly off the handle. I wasn't sure of another bill in the town as it was getting a little late in the season.

"After he had told me what he did, he started to wait on a customer and I went to the hotel to open up. Just as I was coming through the office I met another merchant in the town who handled as many goods as my old customer, and I boned him right there to give me a look. 'All right,' said he, 'I will, after luncheon.' Come down about half past one when all the boys are back to the store and I'll run over with you.' You know it sometimes comes easy like this.

"I sold him his entire line, and he was pleased with what he bought because the old line he had been handling, he told me frankly, had not been giving satisfaction.

"Just for curiosity's sake I dropped in on my old man. I wanted to find out exactly what he was kicking about, anyway.

"'Now, what's the matter with this stuff I've sold you?' said I to him.

"'Well, come and see for yourself,' said he. 'Here, look at this stuff,' and he threw out three or four numbers of boys' goods. 'That's the punkest plunder,' said he, 'that I ever had in my house.'

"I at once saw that the goods he showed me were the other fellow's, but I kept quiet for a while. 'Look at your bill,' said I. 'There must be some mistake about this.' He turned to the bill from my house and he couldn't find the stock numbers. 'Well, that's funny,' said he.

'Not at all,' I replied. 'Look at the other man's bill and see if you don't find them.' "Well, sir, when he saw that the goods he was kicking about had come from my compet.i.tor's house, he swore like a trooper and said to me, 'Well, I will simply countermand this order I have given and I'll go right up with you and buy yours.'

"'No, I guess not,' said I. 'When I came in this morning you condemned me without giving me a full hearing and you weren't very nice about it, either, so I've just placed my line with your neighbor. I will show you the order I have just taken from him,' said I, handing over my order book."

"Well, that must have made you feel good," spoke up the shoeman. "I had pretty much the same sort of an experience this very season down south here. I had been calling on a fair-sized merchant in the town for a couple of years. The first time I went to his town I sold him a handful. The next time I sold him another handful. The third time I called on him he didn't give me any more business. I had just about marked him down for a piker. You know how we all love those pikers, anyway. These fellows who buy a little from you and a little from the other fellow--in fact, a little from every good line that comes around--just to keep the other merchants in the town from getting the line and not giving enough to any one man to justify him in taking care of the account or caring anything about it. He was one of those fellows who would cut off his nose and his ears and burn his eyes out just to spite his face.

"This trip, as usual, I sold him his little jag. I didn't say anything to him, but thought it was high time I was going out and looking up another customer. I finally found another man who gave me a decent bill--between seven and eight hundred dollars--and he promised me that he would handle my line right along if the stuff turned out all O.K.

He said he wasn't the biggest man in the town at that time but that his business was growing steadily and that he had just sold a farm and was going to put more money into the business and enlarge the store.

He struck me as being the man in the town for me.

"My piker friend had seen me walking over to the sample room with this other man. When I dropped around, after packing up, to say good-bye, he said to me, 'I saw you going over to your sample room with this man down street here. I suppose, of course, you didn't sell him anything?'

"'To be sure I did,' said I. 'Why, why shouldn't I? You haven't been giving me enough to pay my expenses in coming to the town, much less to leave any profit for me.' "'Well, if you can't sell me exclusively, you can't sell me at all,' said he, rearing back.

"'All right,' said I. 'I won't sell you at all if that's the case.

Here's your order. Do with it what you please. In fact, I won't even grant you that privilege. I myself shall call it off. Here goes.' And with this I tore up his order."

"Served him right," said the men's clothing man. "Did you ever know Grain out on the Great Northern?"