Business Marketing Advertising

Two years ago the star salesman for a Twin City flour mills got married. There was a long article in the house magazine about the wedding, and everyone felt sure that a home and a wife were the two things needed to bring out the best in him.

A few weeks back this same salesman handed in his resignation. For five consecutive months he had fallen below the “dead” line in his billing. He knew that another off month would finish him, and he wanted to save the stain of being “fired.”

To the casual observer it was just a case of another salesman who had lost his grip. But to the few who knew something of this salesman’s home life, it was the failure of a man who let his tongue run wild at the dinner table.

To impress his wife he magnified his successes, and minimized his failures. To hear him tell it he was the very lifeblood of the business ? the central pivot on which the whole sales department revolved.

He soon convinced his wife that he was a super?salesman, and when he complained about lack of appreciation at the office, she was quick to sympathize with him, and quick to urge him not to “stand for it.” She did not know that he had been holding out on her.

In time this atmosphere of dissatisfaction which the salesman had unconsciously built up in his home began to affect his own attitude toward his work. Petty grievances which in former years would have passed unnoticed, became mountains in his eyes. He became grumpy, pessimistic and sour. In eighteen months he was out on the scrap pile.

Take a page from this salesman’s book of experience ? when you are painting pictures at home, put in a lot of rosy hues.