Page 17 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

can be successfully sold in your community. By this plan you can soon
accumulate a thousand dollars or more for business capital.

The Story of the Cash Register

O

NE of the outstanding examples of American business successes is the
National Cash Register of Dayton, Ohio. It is a monument to the genius of its
founder, John H. Patterson. It is a demonstration of what a man with an idea
and a lot of determination can accomplish, because probably no product ever
made had such poor prospects for success as the cash register when it was
introduced in 1884 by Patterson. That it was a useful invention no one
denied, but because its value depended, so it seemed, upon the assumption
that a business man’s employees were dishonest, it encountered terrific
opposition from retail clerks.

Mr. Patterson’s success was due in a large measure to taking what seemed to
be an insurmountable objection, and turning it into a reason for buying. Cash
register salesmen were taught to turn the opposition to their advantage by
pointing out to employers that when they put temptation in the way of their
clerks, they shared the guilt of any clerk who pilfered the cash drawer. They
brought the issue to the proprietor of the business by pointing the accusing
finger at him rather than at his clerks. And as so often happens, once the right
approach to the selling problem was found, the business began to grow. Even
to this day, the leadership which this great company enjoys in the field of
selling all over the world, can be traced to its policy of turning objections into
reasons for buying. In the words of a famous cash register salesman: “Sell
your man with the weapons he hands you.”

John H. Patterson did not invent the cash register. His early experience had
been in the coal business. When he was 40 years old, he came to Dayton and
paid $6,500 for the controlling interest in the National Manufacturing
Company, which held basic patents on a cash register. It was a crude device
that functioned by punching holes in appropriate columns on a strip of paper.
There seemed to be no demand for the machine at all and Patterson’s