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If you read the prize-winning stories on salesmanship in Collier’s a few years ago, you probably said to yourself : “That’s a good story, and you certainly have to hand it to Richard for sticking six hours to get an order, but I have put over just as good sales myself.”
But there is one point in this experience that Richard mentions that is very significant, yet the full importance of it is not apparent at first reading. You will recall that when the elder Mr. Wise same into the store after Richard had waited six hours for him, he asked Richard to wait until after he had fixed the furnace. Instead Richard handed him a sample pair “to save his clothes” and then went down in the basement to help his customer fix the furnace.
“There is nothing,” relates the winner of one of the Collier prizes for salesmanship, “like sweating together at a common task to melt two spirits into harmony.” And it is true. It touches the same cord of human nature that makes lifelong comrades of men who fought together, or hunted together, or studied together.
People respond most quickly to the advances of those who put themselves on their level. The reason that Billy Sunday is one of the greatest salesmen that this country has ever known is because he gets down to the level of the people he wants to convert. He uses the same slang that they do; he talks in the same metaphors; he includes himself when he speaks of sinners.