Tales of the Road Part 23

'Well, that suits me,' said Ed, but when we got back to town that night I dropped the rest of the bunch and asked him in to supper with me. Nothing too good for him, you know. And while he was under the spell I took him into my sample room that night. You ought to have seen the order that fellow gave me. It struck the house so hard when I sent it in to them that they wired me congratulations."

"Are you still selling your friend Rubovitz, Johnnie?" asked our friend, who had just told us his story, of one of his compet.i.tors.

"Sure," said Johnnie, "and the boy, too. Yes, why shouldn't I?"

"Well, I guess you should," said Wood.

"Yes! when I was in the old man's store on this last trip, I felt really sorry for a first-tripper who struck him to look at his clothing. That fellow hung on and hung on. I was sitting back at the desk and he must have thought I was one of the partners because I was the first man he braced and I referred him to the old gentleman."

"Well, wasn't that sort of a dangerous thing for you to do?" asked one of the boys.

"Not on your life. You don't know why it is I have the old man so solid. I've got the hooks on him good and hard, you know."

"Well, how's that?"

"Oh, it came about this way," said he. "When I was down in Kansas City a few years ago, when I had finished selling Ruby,--as I always called him, you know--(he came in from out in the country to meet me this time) I asked him how my little sweetheart was getting on. She, you know, was his little daughter Leah. She was just as sweet as she could be,--great big brown eyes and rich russet cheeks, black curls, bright as a new dollar and sharp as a needle.

"'O, she iss a big goil now,' said my friend Ruby. 'Say,' said he, 'who va.s.s dot yong feller in the room here a few minutes ago?' He referred to a young friend of mine who had chanced to drop in. 'De reeson I ask iss I am huntin' for a goot, reliable, hart-workin'

Yehuda (Jewish) boy for her. I vant her to get married pretty soon now. She iss a nice goil, too.'

"'How about a goy (Gentile), Ruby?' said I.

"'No, that vont vork. _Kein yiddishes Madchen fur einen Goy und keine s.h.i.+ckse fur einen yiddishen Jungen.'_ (No Hebrew girl for a Gentile boy; no Gentile girl for a Hebrew boy.)

"'All right, Ruby,' said I. He was such a good, jolly old fellow, and while he was a man in years he was a boy in actions,--and Ruby was the only name by which I ever called him. Nothing else would fit. 'All right, Ruby,' said I, 'I believe I just know the boy for Leah.'

"'Veil, you know vat I will do. I don'd care eef he iss a poor boy; dot is all ride. I haf money and eef I ged the ride boy for my goil, I vill set him op in peezness. Dot's somet'ing for you to vork for-- annodder cost'mer,' said he--the instinct would crop out.

"Well, sir, I've got to make this story short," said Johnny, pulling out his watch. "I found the boy. He was a good, clean-cut young fellow, too, and you know the rest."

"You bet your life I do," said Sam. "Two solid customers that buy every dollar from you."

"And," continued Johnny, "Leah and Abie are as happy as two birds in a nest. I don't know but these marriages arranged by the old folks turn out as well as the others anyhow."

"It's not alone by doing a good turn to your customer that you gain his good will," said the hat man. "Not always through some personal favor, but with all merchants you win by being straight with them.

This is the one thing that will always get good will. Now, in my line, for example, new styles are constantly cropping out and a merchant must depend upon his hat man to start him right on new blocks. A man in my business can load a customer with a lot of worthless plunder so that his stock will not be worth twenty-five cents on the dollar in a season or two. On the other hand, he can, if he will, select the new styles and keep him from buying too many of them, thereby keeping his stock clean.

"Yes, and this same thing can be done in all lines," spoke up two or three of the boys.

"Yes, you bet," continued the hat man, "and when you get a man's good will through the square deal you have him firmer than if you get his confidence in any other way."

"Sure! Sure!" said the boys, as we dropped our napkins and made for our hats.

CHAPTER XV.

SALESMEN'S DON'TS.

Salesmen are told many things they should do; perhaps they ought to hear a few things they should not do. If there is one thing above all others that a salesman should observe, it is this:

_Don't grouch!_

The surly salesman who goes around carrying with him a big chunk of London fog does himself harm. If the sun does not wish to s.h.i.+ne upon him--if he is having a little run of hard luck--he should turn on himself, even with the greatest effort, a little limelight. He should carry a small suns.h.i.+ne generator in his pocket always. The salesman who approaches his customer with a frown or a blank look upon his face, is doomed right at the start to do no business. His countenance should be as bright as a new tin pan.

The feeling of good cheer that the salesman has will make his customer cheerful; and unless a customer is feeling good, he will do little, if any, business with you.

I do not mean by this that the salesman should have on hand a full stock of cheap jokes--and pray, my good friend, never a single s.m.u.tty one; nothing cheapens a man so much as to tell one of these--but he should carry a line of good cheerful wholesome talk. "How are you feeling?" a customer may ask. "Had a bad cold last night, but feel chipper as a robin this morning." "How's business?" a customer may inquire. "The, world is kind to me," should be the reply. The merchant who makes a big success is the cheerful man; the salesman who--whether on the road or behind the counter--succeeds, carries with him a long stock of suns.h.i.+ne.

An old-time clothing man who traveled in Colorado once told me this incident:

"I used to have a customer, several years ago, over in Leadville,"

said he, "that I had to warm up every time I called around. His family cost him a great deal of money. The old man gave it to them cheerfully, but he himself would take only a roll and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and, when he got down to the store he felt so poor that he would take a chew of tobacco and make it last him for the rest of the day. Actually, that man didn't eat enough. And his clothes--well, he would dress his daughters in silks but he would wear a hand-me-down until the warp on the under side of his sleeves would wear clear down to the woof. He would wear the bottoms off his trousers until the tailor tucked them under clear to his shoe tops. Smile? I never saw the old man smile in my life when I first met him on my trips. It would always take me nearly a whole day to get him thawed out, and the least thing would make him freeze up again.

"I remember one time I went to see him--you recall him, old man Samuels--and, after a great deal of coaxing, got him to come into my sample room in the afternoon. This was a hard thing to do because if he was busy in the store he would not leave and if he wasn't busy, he would say to me, 'Vat's de use of buying, Maircus? You see, I doan sell nodding.'

"But this time I got the old man over to luncheon with me--we were old friends, you know--and I jollied him up until he was in a good humor.

Then I took him into the sample room, and little by little, he laid out a line of goods. Just about the time he had finished it, it grew a little cloudy.

"Now, you know how the sun s.h.i.+nes in Colorado? From one side of the state to the other it seldom gets behind a cloud. In short, it s.h.i.+nes there 360 days in the year. It had been bright and clear all morning and all the time, in fact, until the old man had laid out his line of goods. Then he happened to look out of the window, and what do you suppose he said to me?

"'Vell, Maircus, I like you and I like your goots, but, ach Himmel!

der clooty vetter!' And, do you know, I couldn't get the old man to do any business with me because he thought the sun was never going to s.h.i.+ne again? I cannot understand just how he argued it with himself, but he was deaf to all of my coaxing. Finally I said to him:

"'Sam, you are kicking about the cloudy weather but I will make you a present of a box of cigars if the sun does not s.h.i.+ne before we write down this order.'

"The old man was something of a gambler,--in fact the one pleasure of his life was to play penochle for two bits a corner after he closed up. So he said to me, 'Vell, Maircus, you can wride down der orter, and eef dot sun s.h.i.+nes before we get t'rough, you can sheep der goots.'

"This was the first time that I ever played a game against the Powers That Be. I started in and the sky grew darker and darker. I monkeyed along for an hour and a half, and, just to kill time, tried to switch the old man from patterns he had selected to others that I 'thought would be a little better.' But the Powers were against me, and when I finished writing down the order it was cloudier than ever--and nearly night, too.

"Then an idea struck me. 'Now, Sam,' said I, 'I've had a cinch on you all the time. You told me you were going to take this bill if the sun was s.h.i.+ning when we got through writing down this order. Don't you know, Sam,' said I, laughing at him, 'the sun does s.h.i.+ne and must s.h.i.+ne every day. Sometimes a little cloud comes between it and the earth but that, you know, will soon pa.s.s away, and, cloud or no cloud, the sun s.h.i.+nes just the same.'

"'Vell, Maircus,' said the old man, 'I cannod see any suns.h.i.+ne out der vindow, but dere's so much off id in your face dot you can sheep dot bill.' 'Well, Sam,' said I, 'if that's the case, I guess I will buy you that box of cigars.'"

Another thing: _Don't beef!_

There is a slight difference between the "grouch" and the "beef." The man may be grouchy without a.s.suming to give a reason therefor, but when he "beefs" he usually thinks there is cause for it. I knew a man who once lost a good customer just because he beefed when a man to whom he had sold a bill of goods countermanded the order. The merchant was stretching his capital in his business to the limit. Things grew a little dull with him and he figured it out, after he had placed all of his orders, that he had bought too many goods. He used the hatchet a little all the way around. I had some of my own order cut off, but instead of kicking about it, I wrote him that he could even cut off more if he felt it was to his advantage; that I did not wish to load him up with more than he could use; that when the time came that I knew his business better than he did it would then be time for me to buy him out. But a friend of mine did not take this same turn.

Instead, he wrote to the man--and the merchant thought a good deal of him, personally, too--that he had bought the goods in good faith, that expense had been made in selling the bill and that he ought to keep them.

"Well, now, that was the very worst thing he could have done because it went against the customer's grain. He let his countermand stand and since that time he has never bought any more goods from his old friend. He simply marked him off his list because it was very plain to him that the friends.h.i.+p of the past had been for what there was in it."

_Don't fail to make a friend of your fellow salesman!_

This can never do you any harm and you will find that it will often do you good. The heart of the man on the road should be as broad as the prairie and as free from narrowness as the Egyptian sky is free of clouds. One of my friends once told a group of us, as we traveled together, how an acquaintance he made helped him.

"I got into Dayton, Was.h.i.+ngton, one summer morning about 4:30," said he. "Another one of the boys--a big, strong, good-natured comrade-- until then a stranger to me--and myself were the only ones left at the little depot when the jerk-water train pulled away. It was the first trip to this town for both of us. There was no 'bus at the depot and we did not know just how to get up to the hotel. The morning was fine --such a one as makes a fellow feel good clear down to the ground. The air was sweet with the smell of the dewy gra.s.s. The clouds in the east--kind of smeared across the sky--began to redden; they were the color of coral as we picked our way along the narrow plank walk. As we left behind us the bridge, which crossed a beautiful little stream lined with cotton woods and willows, they had turned a bright vermillion. There was not a mortal to be seen besides ourselves. The only sound that interrupted our conversation was the crowing of the roosters. The leaves were still. It was just the right time for the beginning of a friends.h.i.+p between two strangers.