Pete Crowther: salesman

Front matter

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Contents

Foreword vii

CHAPTER FAOS

n.— Boyhood 27

Chapter I

IT'S great when a man finds his place — I mean the work he's cut out for," asserted Peter Crowther. "There are too many misfits,"

"Sure," responded Pierce. "But how is a man to find it? I've been reporting on the Times for two years, since I got through college, and I'm not certain that I've found mine yet. How did you happen to get into salesmanship, Pete?"

"I didn't happen at all. I wanted to do it from the time I was a kid. I was brought up in a country village in Iowa, and when I went to the district school I was always trading and swapping with the boys; and when I got older

I wanted to clerk in the village store. It looked like the biggest job on earth. That's one way a fellow finds what he's cut out for* He will naturally take to it. I remember the day I started clerking. I was just seventeen years old. I put on some sleeve-holders and learned to do up a dollar's worth of sugar. The boys were all standing aroimd watching. Say, I never felt so big since but once — that was the day I started on the road. Of course when I went into that store I had to quit school; but I wanted the job, and I took it."

"Would you advise a young fellow to give up a college education if he intends to be a salesman?" asked Pierce.

"I'm not advising anybody. I'm only telling you what I did. But, speaking about a college education, it's good for some and no good for others. If a fellow doesn't care for books but does want to work at some special thing, what's the use of cramming books down him? Then there's a lot of these 'rah-'rah boys in college, spending most of their time at cigarettes and sports — they'd better be put

• • • * .

to work before they get plumb spoiled. Education is teaching a fellow to work or it's no good. There's more than one way to get an education, too. You can get one in business if you go to it. But about that country store. We sold everything there — groceries, dry goods, clothing, boots and shoes, farm implements, and hardware. A country store is a good place for a salesman to start in. You've got to get down to brass tacks in a country village. Everybody is on to everybody else and hot air don't go."

"Did you make good there, Pete?" "That's what! Let me tell you how I did it. I hustled for your life. You take it from me, hard work is over half of the game, no matter what a man goes at. These fellows that are always kicking on their luck are usually loafing on their job. It was a good country store, and we carried a big stock. The old man was a great trader, but he was weak on details. The store wasn't very clean and the stock wasn't well arranged. After I'd been there a while I went in to make it neat and attractive. It took about three months of study and extra work just to get the goods arranged right. In the store business youVe got to arrange goods so they will catch people's eye and sell themselves/'

"That soimds good, Pete, but the next thing is to do it."

"Sure, and that's where ideas come in. There's no end to new schemes if you think them up. After I'd been there about a year I got the old man to tear out the front of the store and put in a couple of big show windows — one at each side of the door. It cost about $400, and come mighty near costing me my job. The old man got grouchy on account of the expense, and when the job was finished it was up to me to make good. Those windows made me a lot of work. Talk about chores on a farm — they ain't in it with show windows! I batted my brains on that thing night and morning. Every time I went into the city I studied show windows to get ideas and I got a good many out of the trade journals, too. In one of the windows I kept a line of bargains

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going — always something selling at cost. I got some stencil plates and printed signs on big cards. In the other window I kept a display of drygoods and notions — the classiest stuflF we had. That was the window that I always laid myself out on. You see, every purchaser has got two sides to him — a tightwad side and a classy side. A good salesman wiU recognize the tightwad side and make a stab at it, but you bet he will make his principal play at the classy side. It's class that wins out. A man that's always pushing bargains and cutting prices is a cheap salesman. Salesmanship is getting people to buy quality goods. I remember one little deal that showed me that. We had a customer — a fanner — named Jenkins, who was pretty tight-fisted and a good talker. He wanted to buy a pair of cheap overalls. We had some light ones at forty-five cents and some bully good heavy ones at ninety cents. I got him to take the better ones. He grumbled when he handed over the money, but those overalls lasted him nearly a year. He would talk about them in the store. * Why, you jest can't wear out a pair of them darned things ! ' he would say. I guess he gave us over ten dollars' worth of advertising on that pair of overalls. It's this way: when a man buys a cheap article, he feels good when he pays for it, and then feels rotten while he's using it; but when he buys a quality article, he feels good every time he uses it, and he thinks about the quality a long time after he forgets the price."

"How long did you clerk in the country store?"

"About four years. Another thing I did: I studied the goods. Talk about an education ! Let a fellow learn about the goods in a country store and he'll have an education. I was visiting a high-school class a while ago and a boy was covering some big blackboards with Greek stuflF that looked all alike to me. They said it was parts of a Greek verb. I asked the professor afterward what was the good of all that monkey-work, and he said that, for one thing, it trained the memory and made the scholar accurate. Now you take just one article in a country store — take codfish. What do you know about codfish? Where do they catch them, and where are the best varieties caught, and which have the best flavour, the large or small fish, and how are they cured and packed, and how are they put on the market, and is it better to handle them whole or in boneless packages, and which is the best food, salt fish or fresh fish, and what is the food value of codfish compared with meat, and what about prices and the best way to buy them? Why, say, you could cover more blackboards with variations on a codfish than on a Greek verb, and if a man learns all about codfish, why isn't that just as good training for his memory as Greek? Isn't that education?"

"There's something in that, Pete; but there are other things to be said for Greek. It's not only a drill study, but a cultural study also."

"Cultural?"

"Yes. It introduces a man to Greek civilization and art and literature, and gives him a broader outlook upon life."

"What has that got to do with selling goods?

If a man is out to sell goods and codfish is part of his line, then I say that a codfish has got it over a Greek verb."

"All right; go ahead with your codfish. I'm interested/'

"So am I. A man likes to talk about himself. I've noticed in selling goods that if you can't interest a fellow any other way just get him to talk about himself, and you'll soon have him coming. Well, I learned all I could about boots and baking-powder and canned fruit and calico and all the rest. I spent lots of spare time comparing and testmg goods. I read about them in an encyclopaedia and studied trade journals and talked with travelling men and watched the markets in the papers, and it wasn't long before I knew more about goods than the old man did, and he used to consult me when he did his buying. The travelKng men found that it was a good thing to stand in with Pete, and I enjoyed that. It's funny how a man Kkes to be * it.' They're all alike — just the same in a coimtry village as in Wall Street. Why does J. Pierp. Morgan keep on making money? He doesn't need any more, but he likes to be *it/ and so did I in that country store. But a fellow has got to keep humping himself. J. Pierp. has always humped himself, and so has John D., and so have I. Do you get that — J. Pierp., John D., and I? Another thing I did — I learned to play a fiddle."

"A fiddle!"

"Sure. Fiddling gives a man a big stand-in out in the country, and you take it from me that standing-in comes pretty near being the other half of the game. Did you read Andy Carnegie's testimony before the Stanley Committee, where he told how he had done Huntington a personal favour once; and afterward, when Huntington was going to buy several million dollars' worth of steel rails, Andy went and told him he wanted the order and Huntington said he could have it? *How could any one else compete with a situation like that?' Andy asked the committee. You see, he had a stand-in. He was the salesman, Andy was. Schwab and the other fellows were the steel men, but when it came to selling the goods

Andy was Johnny-on-the-spot, and a big part of his game was standing-in. See?" But how about that fiddle?"

Well, I used to go around to farmers' houses one or two evenings a week with the fiddle, especially Saturday nights. Talk about a week-end! How is this for a week-end? Here is the sitting-room in a farmer's house on Saturday night. Over in one comer is the old farmer in his stocking feet, and in another comer is his wife with her knitting; and here are half a dozen kids and the hired man and hired girl sitting around listening, and a red-cheeked girl is in front of the organ playing an accompaniment, and right beside her is Pete with his fiddle playing * Money Musk' and *01d Zip Coon' and * Virginia Reel,' and over there on the table is a pitcher of cider and some doughnuts and apples; can you beat that?" "Would you enjoy it as much now, Pete?" "What if I wouldn't? I enjoyed it then all right, and it gave me a stand-in. Would those people buy their groceries and boots and shoes and calico dresses from any one mM

" I enjoyed it then all right, and it gave me a stand-in

Oi else but Pete? Nit! That's what Andy meant when he "

"You seem to be on rather intimate terms with that gentleman/' interrupted Pierce; "you must be acquainted with him."

"Why, sure, I know him. Everybody does."

"But does he know you?"

"Oh, well, as Abe Potash would say, that's something else again. I'd certainly like to meet the old geezer. When it comes to salesmanship, you've got to tie the blue ribbon on to Andy. Look at that sale he made to the Steel Trust ! That was a bill of goods for your life, and he didn't cut prices either. He knew the value of a stand-in, too."

"But that fiddle, Pete?"

"Don't underestimate the fiddle. Didn't Senator Taylor get a stand-in all over the State of Tennessee by fiddling, and didn't he fiddle his way into the United States Senate?"

"Then you would advise a salesman to begin by taking vioUn lessons?"

" I'm not advising anything. I'm only telling you that I fiddled and got a stand-in, but I had lots of other schemes too. I used to do things for people that I didn't have to do. It isn't hard to find ways to stand in if a fellow will go to it. They can say * business is business/ but, all the same, you get about half of it on a stand-in. But, coming back to that country store, after I had been there about four years I began to want something bigger, so I tried for a job in a wholesale house. I got the travelling men to rooting for me. When a fellow has made good, why, people are always ready to boost him. The way to get a better job is to earn it in the job that you're at. I was offered a position with Dodd, Garrells & Co., a wholesale grocery company, and I took it. They paid me $75 a month. I got $45 in the country store. My new position was stock clerk. My work was to keep account of stock and figure profits and mark up seUing prices for the travelling men. It gave me a great chance to get on to the line. The first thing I did after I got familiar with my work was to study the company. Business houses, you understand, are like individuals — no two are alike, and each one has got some main idea back of it. The old man, Mr. Dodd, had once been a travelling salesman — a corking good one, too — and there were two things that he was buggy about: classy goods and classy salesmanship. I was lucky to get in with that company, because I wanted to go on the road some day and sell goods.

Here's one way for a man to find his place: You take the thing that he wants to do most and believes he can do and wants to do it bad enough to make everything else knuckle down to it, why, it's dollars to doughnuts that that's his job. But he's got to pay the price. Well, I did the same in that wholesale house as I did in the country store. I hustled and I studied the business. A man makes good in a big job the same way as he does in a small one, only he gets bigger results. I went in to know as much about goods as the old man did. He was a regular cyclopaedia on goods. There was a bully chance in that place to learn goods. They had experts in every department testing them out, and I spent lots of my spare time out in the sample-room leami ing all the wrinkles. A salesman wants to be dead on to his line or he can't show why his goods are the class. He doesn't need to talk about it very often either, but customers soon find out whether it's facts he gives them or hot air. It's a good thing to know a whole lot about your line and not talk much about the details unless you have to. People soon find out what a man knows. After a while I got well enough posted to make suggestions to the old man about buying. He resented it when I first began to butt in, but when he found that I was on to the facts he paid more attention. I remember one season I was studying the peach crop, and it struck me that the crop was going on the bum. I got all the facts about crop conditions in Michigan and Georgia and California and compared stocks and markets with a few years previous, and it looked like a cinch that peaches would go up. I told the old man that I thought we'd better stock up heavy. He tried to cork me, but I had the jump on him. I had more facts than he had. He looked into it, and concluded that I was right, and we loaded up heavy. Peaches did go up — about twenty cents a dozen — and we made a big profit, and that helped to get Pete solid with the company. I'm making two points here, Pierce; one is that it pays to dig into things and get at the facts, and the other is that I was a mighty bright boy/'

"You must have been a real comfort to the firm,'* grinned Pierce.

"Sure I was. I can prove it. They raised my salary to one hundred dollars the second year. Another thing I did — I studied the salesmen. You know, when a fellow is ambitious to do a certain thing, the star men in that line look pretty big. The company had a good force of salesmen, and some of those fellows were the class. Every time a salesman came in oflF the road I used to watch him and talk with him every chance I had. Of course a man has got to learn to sell goods by selling them, and he's got to do it in his own way. It's a big mistake to imitate any one else. When a man is himself, he is genuine; but when he tries to be like some one else, he's a counterfeit.

i and in the long run you can't counterfeit anything and get away with it. But you can learn a whole lot by watching men that know how to do the thing you want to do — especially if you get well acquainted. Take the two best salesmen we had. One of them, his name was Parsons, was the classiest talker I ever heard. Say, he could come across with the language! He could talk the arm off an Indian cigar sign. Every time he came in there would be a gabfest on until he went out. The other man. Fordham, was just the opposite. He was the quietest kind of a man. His specialty was keeping his mouth shut. He looked like General Grant, and always had a cigar in his mouth, and let the other fellow do all the talking. Parsons's way was to talk a customer into it, and Fordham's way was to let the customer talk himself into it, but they both got there. At first it used to puzzle me; but after I got well acquainted I saw how it was. They were both bully good fellows and they liked people. They were both on the square, too — men you could bank on; and they took good care of their customers, and hustled, and were posted on every angle of the business. But there was something else about them both that you can't describe. They had a way with them that made you want to do what they wanted you to do. I remember one day I was going through the salesroom, and Parsons was in there holding up a bottle of Amigon olives and talking them up to a customer. I stopped and listened. I never liked olives; but all at once, while I was listening — I don't know — I wanted to eat an olive, and that noon I ate one, and have liked them ever since. Now, that's salesmanship—something inside of a man that gets the other fellow's goat and makes him want something that he thought he didn't want."

Personal magnetism," suggested Pierce.

You can call it that, but nobody knows what it is. Well, after I'd been in that wholesale house two years I thought it was time to strike for that job on the road. The old man asked me up to dinner one Sunday, and after dinner, when he lit a cigar and asked me how

I liked the business, I braced up and told him I wanted to go on the road. He asked what made me think I could sell goods; and I told him one reason was because I wanted to do it, and another was that I had sold lots of goods in the country store, and I beUeved I could do it on the road. *But how about territory?' he said. *We hayen't anything open now but the river route, and of course you wouldn't want that.' That river route, you understand, was a bum proposition. It was a territory where there was competition from a dozen small jobbing towns as well as the large cities, and the merchants were hammered to death. Nobody had ever made a success of it for our house. But I had studied up about it and had a scheme. I pulled a map of the territory out of my pocket and showed the old man a number of country towns that were twelve to fifteen miles off the railway — places that our men had never worked much — and I had Bradstreet's ratings that showed some corking good country stores. I told the old man that I bet some good trade could be worked up among those country merchants, and, as for the towns along the railway, it struck me that a fellow could make some money working our specialties till he got a foothold, and then go in for the general line. The old man leaned back and laughed, and I thought it was a good sign. He said he would speak to Mr. Garrells about it. A few days later he sent for me to come to his room, and Mr. Garrells was there. They asked me if I still wanted to go out on the river route, and I said I did.

Mr. Garrells asked if I didn't think it rather hazardous for a young fellow to begin on such a hard territory, but I told him I'd rather tackle that than a territory where we had a big trade, because there was everything to win and nothing to lose, and I'd get some good experience, anyway. So they agreed to send me out at $100 a month and expenses paid. Mr. Dodd asked when I could start, and I said any time, so he said I might start on the following Monday. When I got on the train the next Monday with my grip and sample case — say, I wouldn't have traded jobs with any man on earth. When I reached my first town, I hiked right up to a grocery store run by a man named Smith, but when I stepped into the store all at once I lost my nerve and my mouth got dry and I had hard work telling Smith my name, but he was a good fellow and we got to chatting, and pretty soon my mouth got wet again. He said he didn't need any goods, but I got to telling him about our Amigon brand of plug tobacco. Amigon, you know, is our special brand. We put out all kinds of fancy groceries under that brand, and, you take it from me, when you see the word Amigon on an article don't you go any farther for quality. Amigon goods are the class. At that time, in order to introduce Amigon plug, we were oflFering a special deal — we gave a set of copper vinegar measures free with every five-butt order. Smith and I got to discussing different kinds of plug, and I found that I knew more about it than he did. I don't chew, you understand, but, if a man will chew, then I can give him some good reasons why he'd better chew Amigon plug, see? It was just my luck that Smith needed some new measures, and he finally ordered five butts of

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the tobacco, and then I asked him if he didn't need a few other things to come along with it. When you get a man started, it's always easy to inch him along. He looked arowid and scraped me up quite an order. I remember just what it was : five butts of tobacco, two barrels of sugar, one sack of rice, and three cases of canned peaches. When I left that store, I was walking up in the air. That evening I sold five more butts of tobacco, and when I went to bed that night I was feeling pretty chesty. The next day I didn't sell a thing, and I soon discovered something about myself that made me feel mighty punk. You know I used to be kind of diffident, and "

"Did you say diffident?" interrupted Pierce.

"That's what I said — diffident." All right, go ahead."

I found that every time I approached a store I hated to go in and brace the proprietor, and occasionally I would cut it out just on that account — those merchants were pounded so hard, you know — and the worst of it was that whenever I got turned down, which was good it t ■ and plenty, the feeling kept growing on me, I saw that, if I was going to be a salesman, I'd have to get that kink out of me. I thought it all over, and saw that it was only a state of mind, just a wrong mental slant, you understand, so I began to talk to myself something like this: *See here, Pete, you've the best line of goods in the coimtry, and these merchants ^ need your stuff. Competition is a good thing for them, because it keeps quality up and prices J down. K there was a grocery trust, you'd soon see these merchants falling all over themselves to get the travelling men back. ' I kept pumping my think-tank full of ideas like that, and kept plugging away selling goods, until after a while I got all over that diffident business."

"Yes, you got by all right."

"Then I soon learned another thing, and a mighty important thing for a salesman, too: You know there are two sides to every man you meet — some things about him that disgust you and some things that you can admire. It's a big help, in selling goods, to feel friendly toward people, to admire them and actually like to meet them. It makes salesmanship twice as easy. Men always respond to it if it's the real goods. People are a bully good lot if you keep thinking about their good points and ''

"That's all true enough, Pete, but you'll have to admit that some men are mighty yellow."

"Oh, sure! Some men are like buttermilk. I never could go buttermilk. It always made me gag. But a while ago I decided that buttermilk was a healthy drink, and so I forced myself to drink it. Every time just before I took a glass I'd stop and think what a rich, nutritious drink it is, and one of the most wholesome acids, and then I'd down it. After a while I got so I could bear it, and then I got to liking it, and now I'd rather drink buttermilk than anything else. You can do the same with a man as you can with buttermilk if you go to it, and it pays if a man is out to sell goods. Well, I stayed on that river route two years and made some money for the company, and then they gave me a better territory and have raised my salary four times since. IVe been in this territory eight years now, and, believe me, selling goods is a great business."

"Right you are, Pete. Let's go and shake for a buttermilk.*'

"I'U go you, but, say. Pierce, speaking about education "

"Oh, rU admit it," laughed Pierce; "there's much to be said for codfish."

CHAPTER n

LITTLE PETER CROWTHER was making pigeon tracks in the dust. He was doing this because he could think of nothing else to do. He was wishing that he might be somewhere else, but he did not know just where.

Thomas Carlyle, in one of his vociferous moods, was one day berating the common tendency of men to seek their highest good in some other place than the present. "Right here," he cried, "in this poor, miserable, despicable actual — here or nowhere is thine ideal."

Doubtless the "ideal" was here in the peace and quiet of this village and this summer day, and possibly the subconscious nature of Peter Crowther was in harmony with it, but the only sensation of which he was conscious was an indefinite desire to be somewhere else, and so he was aimlessly making pigeon tracks in the dust.

Presently he caught sight of two men driving up to the tavern in a buckboard. They unloaded a tub and several large rolls of coarselooking paper. A few moments later a series of flammg circus posters began to appear upon the side of the tavern barn.

Pete was on the alert. " Come on, Tommy ! '' he shouted to his younger brother. "Some men are puttmg up circus pictures on Devoe's bam!"