The Harvester World: Volume 1, number 9, June 1910

              a talk on selling
SoiEsi® Esssnaftnals ffoir @ail®siinii®iiQ
By C H. Laupman, .\ssistant Manugor Domestic Sales
The question has been often asked:    "What constitutes good salesmanship?"
There have been as many different opinions offered as an answer to this question as there were questions asked, but most all men who have had to do with marketing the out¬ put of large factories and mills agree on one point, and that is—some of the elementary essentials necessary to attain a high degree of salesmanship are:
The salesman should be well posted and know thoroughly the goods he is selling.
He should also have a wide knowledge of the class of commodities offered for sale by his most active competitors. He should be thoroughly reliable and convincing in his arguments, and make no statements or agreements that he cannot back up aud make good.
He should be a judge of human nature, as it goes without saying that a good salesman will study his customer well and modify his line of argument to suit the individual.
All of this, backed up with confidence in the goods he is selling, and with plenty of energy added, will make a salesman capable of attaining the highest degree of salesman¬ ship.
In our line of work I will, for convenience, divide our salesmen into two classes:
First—the blockmen, special men, and others who sell our line of goods to dealers.
Second—the canvassers, or field salesmen, who sell to consumers or the users of our machines. -;
In both of these classes all salesmen should be possessed of the attributes above out¬ lined.
In the January number of The Harvester World, General Agent Holahan, of Atlanta, Georgia, very interestingly related how one of his salesmen went to the mat in a wrestling bout at Albany, Georgia, with a prospective customer before he was able to get his order.
This is one way in which to get an order. In this particular case, perhaps, this prospective customer belonged to what is known as the impossible class. At any rate, it seems that the salesman was possessed of plenty of one of the necessary qualifications —energy.
To sell a machine to a customer who is in the market and wants to buy, in my opinion, does not require much salesmanship, but to sell a machine to a customer who is respon¬ sible, but who does not think he needs one, and who does not want to buy, to my mind, displays good salesmanship.
I once knew a canvasser, a very strong character, who sold a binder to a customer who was quite responsible, but who had very little use for it as he had but three acres of grain to cut.
This canvasser was out to sell binders. It mattered not to him how many acres of grain the customer had to cut. He felt it was his duty to convince every farmer that he needed a machine, and to sell to every one that was responsible. This is one class of salesmanship.
No two salesmen work along exactly the same lines and yet both may be considered good salesmen.
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