Page 71 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

sold a lot of this merchandise. That got me thinking. I couldn’t force a store
man to keep my card where I wanted it. But if I knew enough about displays,
I could teach him to leave it where I put it. I studied store displays. A good
place to put the card is close to the cash register. Another good place is on the
top of the glass display case in which the low-priced cigars are kept. I told
this to my customers and figured out for them in dollars and cents exactly
what the value of this space was to them when they displayed my
merchandise. The results were surprising to me. In less than a week most of
my customers ordered additional cards and told me to place them where I
thought they would do the most good.”

O’Neil did so well that soon he gave up selling cigars and concentrated on
the sale of carded merchandise. Loading his car with fifty cards each
morning, he drove through the country, established regular routes, and placed
cards with every kind of store. He makes ninety calls a day, and sells an
average of one card for each two calls. His profit is never less than twelve
dollars daily. During one stretch of nine weeks, he worked intensively on a
plan to get merchants to display three cards where they had been displaying
one and his commissions for the period were $1,019.20.

Inexperienced salesmen who do not relish house-to-house selling, may find
calling on stores with carded merchandise unusually profitable. Cigar stands,
drug stores, grocery stores, bus stations, railway stations, magazine stands,
hotels, and restaurants offer a ready outlet for carded merchandise.

“Taking a Chance” on Soap WinsforFitze

C

ARL FITZE , a house-to-house soap salesman calling on housewives in
Dayton, Ohio, uses what he calls a “gambling system” for getting business
which has enabled him to earn handsome profits. The effectiveness of his
selling method may be appreciated when it is considered that he started out
with practically no capital, investing only one dollar and fifty cents for a
supply of soap to start his business. When this was sold, Fitze took the entire
proceeds and reinvested them in more soap, and pyramided his purchases