SALESMEN

Related Subjects: Advertising, Commerce, Competition

1. You may be proud of your big plants. But unless you can twist this into a potent sales argument, you had better keep your pride to yourself. You want somebody to give you money, and not praise.—JAMES R. ADAMS, More Power to Advertising
   

2. The concerns that are most successful are those that know the most about their prospective customers.—ROGER BABSON, Business Fundamentals
   

3. Wholesaler or retailer, when your sales efforts are based on a statistical knowledge of your Customer's business, when all wasted effort is eliminated by directing your energies straight to the concern or individual with the buying power, then you are selling scientifically.—ROGER BABSON,
   Business Fundamentals
   

4. To be sure it is possible to insist continually and obstinately that a person buy a particular thing and thus to produce the desired response. But such a technique is more likely to succeed if applied with finesse rather than by brute force. Most persons resent a blunt command. We like to feel that we are the captains of our souls and that we are doing what we please although, as a matter of fact, we probably are not doing so ten per cent of the time.—HAROLD E. BURTT,
   Psychology of Advertising
   

5. It is desirable, on occasion, to scare a person into purchasing something. Everyone can be frightened by a wild animal or a revolver under appropriate circumstances, and if the advertisement is properly devised it is possible to arouse this same fear instinct: "Scare copy" is particularly appropriate in selling safety devices, things which are conducive to health, and some kinds of insurance.—HAROLD E. BURTT, Psychology of Advertising
   

6. If a person can be induced to do something in connection with a product he is more likely to remember it. . . The personal salesman has an advantage in that he can actually hand the prospect the egg beater to turn or induce him to step into the car and drive it.—HAROLD E. BURTT, Psychology of Advertising
   

7. Salesmanship and advertising are twin sisters. It is hard to tell 'em
   apart.—ELBERT HUBBARD
   

8. With so many legitimate methods of selling, why resort to the "take-a-chance" method, which is a species of gambling and against public policy?—I. E. LAMBERT, Marquis of Queensbury Rules of Modern Business
   

9. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was "go-getter", and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Selling—not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.—SINCLAIR LEWIS, Babbitt
   

10. When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.—CHARLES MINER, Who'll Turn Grindstones
    

11. Pleasing ware is half sold.—Proverb
    

12. To things of sale a seller's praise belongs.—SHAKESPEARE, Love's Labour's Lost
    

13. For completely honorable methods of selling goods will necessitate honorable practices throughout the production process, because shoddy materials and bad workmanship must be misrepresented if they are to hold their own in the competitive field.—SHARP & Fox, Business Ethics
    

14. Everyone lives by selling something.—STEVENSON, Beggars