Page 27 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

the salesman who has built up the confidence and friendship of a group of
customers. A merchant may suffer fire losses that will wreck his business or
he may make mistakes in buying that will shatter his profits for an entire
season; a surgeon may lose the delicate skill of his hands as he grows older,
and the loss of one important case may send a lawyer straight down the path
to obscurity. A farmer may lose an entire season’s work in one heavy
downpour of rain, or an overflow of the creek or river. But no fire can burn,
no flood destroy, no thief can steal a salesman’s stock in trade which is, as
you know, the confidence and friendship of his customers.

Of course, there can be no doubt that most men take up selling to earn
money. But there are other satisfactions and compensations in addition to the
money earned. In 1928, a salesman almost jammed a life insurance policy
down the throat of a certain New York newspaper man. The policy had an
accident and sickness clause which paid $100 a month in the event of illness
and disability. When he signed the application and paid the premium he was
in the best of health. Less than two years later he was in a hospital, drawing
$100 a month compensation. Was he grateful to that insurance salesman?
You know he was. Had it not been for the salesman’s insistence, he would
have suffered the loss of ten months’ earnings, and there would have been no
funds to pay the heavy hospital expenses. Yet it seemed to the buyer when he
took that insurance that he was doing the salesman a favor. As it turned out,
the salesman did the newspaper man a favor for which he has been grateful
ever since.

A salesman who sold a radio receiver sometime ago to an old lady who is
crippled and confined to her home said that he wondered if he had done the
right thing. It was an expensive set and she was dependent on a very small
income. “I thought perhaps I ought not to have sold her, because it was
obvious that her home needed repairs and painting. But as she made the
payments I realized that the radio set had brought the world right to her
armchair. She has since told me that her radio receiver, next to her husband
and children, has been the greatest joy in her life.”

There are literally millions of people who owe much of their happiness to
salesmen. Think of the people who might never have owned a home if some