Page 77 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

and his evident desire to please, as well as with the excellent line of greeting
cards he carried. Having reached the doctor or the dentist and succeeding in
making a sale, the next step in his campaign was to sell the wives of these
men. Generally, he would get permission to telephone from the doctor’s
office making an appointment to show the line of greeting cards.

His success with this “endless chain” method of selling was due to making
the prospect feel that he was an important customer and impressing him with
his need, as a professional man, of the right type of greeting card. After
making a few sales, he found it fairly easy to size up his prospect and decide
whether he would like something conservative, something radically different
or something showy. Most professional men do not like to be rushed and
when they are not busy they like to talk. This talkativeness gives Ettinger a
chance to get the names of other prospects, and he never fails to ask whether
the doctor’s brother, or uncle, or sister, or aunt, or any other member of the
family he may mention would be interested in selecting Christmas cards.

It wasn’t long before Ettinger found that most of the doctors’ offices are
pretty busy in the afternoons. Furthermore, they close early. So he decided to
cover the service stations in the afternoons, evenings, Saturdays and Sundays.
This was a field that also needed what Ettinger was selling and a field that
few salesmen approached. Nearly every service station in a residential section
depends upon the business received from the immediate area surrounding it.
This steady day-after-day trade is the backbone of the business and, naturally,
the operator wants to keep in touch with his customers. Ettinger found that
these men were glad to buy greeting card remembrances from him.

The first efforts Ettinger made to sell greeting cards at the holiday season
netted him $295 in five weeks! He doesn’t believe he could have made this
much money selling house to house, although others have done well with the
house-to-house plan. Ettinger prefers the highly specialized field and the
quick sales results. This year he expects to make considerably more money
because he not only knows how to go about getting prospects, but he has a
number of customers’ names on his calling list. He will also start earlier and
get in another week’s work.