HE thrust a catalogue page between my face and the brief I was reading, and began without preliminaries:

"You have an old-model Bildad machine, Mr. Mann, and we are making a special offer to replace all old machines with our latest model. We'll take your old machine, make you a handsome allowance on it, and put the new one in here on ten days' trial, absolutely without cost to you. This new machine, as you see, has many features which your old machine does not possess. example, you will notice-"

For

"I am not interested," said I. "Surely, Mr. Mann, you are interested in the efficiency of your office and the appearance of the work you turn out. Now, with your old machine you cannot-"

"I am not interested" (in italics this time).

"Now, Mr. Mann," persuasively, "you must admit that-"

"I am not interested" (boldface).

"But this is the opportunity of a lifetime. I—"

"I am not interested" (large Gothic caps). "Furthermore, I am very busy, and do not wish to discuss the matter."

"Mr. Mann!" dramatically, "may I ask if there is anything more important to you than-"

"Can you understand the English language?" I asked, rather testily.

-" he began, depre

"Of coursecatingly.

I

"Then in plain terms," I rejoined, "I am not interested. am busy. I do not want to buy a new typewriter. I do not want to talk about it. I want only to be allowed to go on with my work. Good day.'

"Suppose I should tell you," he returned to the charge without the least hesitation, "that with this

new machine of mine you can"Will you get out?" I demanded, quite at the end of my patience.

"No harm done, I hope," he murmured apologetically. "I only desire to do you a service." But he went at last, leaving me to gather my scattered thoughts as well as I might.

An hour later, as I was returning to my office through the corridor, he dodged out of an unoccupied room near my own, his catalogue still clutched firmly in his hand. "Mr. Mann," he was walking beside me and talking over my shoulder, "I, personally, want very much to take that old typewriter of yours and put in the new model on trial. I am confident that you will find the exchange so greatly to your benefit that you will thank me for bringing the matter to your attention. There are no less than umptysteen improvements in this machine over the one which you now possess. The self-selective trackerbar alone will enable your stenographer to save forty-nine unproductive motions in the course of an average business letter. The automatic accelerator will positively avoid all danger of excessive cylinder pressure. Our patent reversible chuck will obviate any necessity for reduplicating the impulses in manifold work. You really must see the machine in order to appreciate all of its features, and all that it will mean to you in your daily work.

ASSAILING PER MANUAL

"Your reputation as a lawyer, Mr. Mann, depends upon-" By this time we were inside my office again, he having followed me as closely as a hungry dog follows a bone.

"Have you quite exhausted all the appeals' in your manual?" I demanded somewhat savagely, for

he had broken in upon a train of thought which had occupied me for days and which seemed at last to be on the point of arriving somewhere. "You have tried most of them that I am familiar with, except the 'poor college student.' You were just beginning, I believe, with the insulting appeal based upon my professional repu tation. But if you are quite through, and will sit down, I have something to say to you."

I indicated a chair, which he seemed not to notice. "Sit down, please," I directed. "I understand that your sales manual recommends a standing posture as being more likely to overawe the prospect and give you the advantage of him. But please forget that for the time being-in deference to my 'professional reputation' if you need an excuse.'

With none too good a grace he did as I requested.

"Speaking of reputations," I began, "hasn't your company any regard whatever for the good will of those who use its machinesits business reputation, in other words?"

"If you doubt the responsibility of my company, Mr. Mann," he was beginning, but I cut him short.

WHERE THE BLAME LIES

"I am not talking about responsibility. I am talking about good will. Your company, through you, comes into my office uninvited, interrupts some important work upon which I am engaged and which demands my best attention, refuses to credit my statement that I am not interested, is rude enough to insinuate rather broadly that I do not know how to run my own business, and persists in that course until I am fairly obliged to kick it out of the door. Then it lies in wait for me in the corridor, forces me to listen to matters which do not in the least concern me, follows me up like a street beggar seeking a handout, and finally offers me an insult. I ask you, in view of all this, whether your company has any regard for its own reputation in the eyes of those who are actual users of its goods?

"Don't think for one moment that I am blaming you personally. I understand your position much better than you think I do. You are merely a part of a large organization, and you must perform your function or stand aside. The crack of the whip-lash is always sounding in your ears. You are given a quota-a stint-which is based wholly upon the desires of the company, and you know you will be held up to the scorn of your fellows if you fail to make it. You are nagged and pestered and prodded and bedeviled by the bright young man who writes the 'ginger-up' bulletins. You are taught to forget to be a gentleman, to disregard every desire of your customer which does not jump with the desires of the company, to practice the utmost refinement of discourtesy. In short, young man, your company is engaged in the pleasant occupation of sacrificing the future for the sake of the immediate present by forcing sales, and you are caught in the machinery."

There is no need to reproduce more of the conversation. I am sure that I failed to convince the young man that I was anything but an old fogy with certain antiquated notions which had long ago been exploded; notions such as the right of privacy, for example, and the right to an opinion. I certainly did convince him that in listening to me he was losing valuable time which might have been devoted to his business, and he was a true disciple of his master, for he ended by trying to make me buy his machine as an offset to his loss of a possible commission which he might have made elsewhere!

Now you may all shout in chorus, if you like, that the salesman whose portrait is roughly sketched above is "exceptional." He is not. He is merely the ordinary and normal product of the school in which he has been trained. The "exceptional" salesman is the other kind; the salesman in whom the instincts of a gentleman are so strong that they counteract the effects of his training. Such men it is a pleasure to

meet, and the house which is fortunate enough to possess them is the gainer thereby, but they are exceedingly rare. The modern high-pressure school of salesmanship is devoted to the production of the opposite qualities.

Our offices and our homes are rapidly assuming the characteristics of beleaguered citadels, with an army of subordinates chiefly employed in keeping unwelcome visitors out. Every variety of trickery and subterfuge is resorted to in order to gain our attention. We are continually importuned to buy some product whose representative begins by swindling us in his effort to get a hearing. Our mail is cluttered up with vast quantities of printed matter, much of which is meant to deceive us, and some of which does so for the time being. When we go home at night we are surrounded on every hand by advertisements-in the street-cars, on posters, in the newspapers and the magazines. We do not object to that, for we need not read unless we choose -but too often an advertisement only serves to remind us of the salesman who robbed us of half an hour's time and spoiled our temper for the balance of the day.

Most of that unfortunate state of affairs is due, I believe, to the selling policy which has been blindly adopted by a great many concerns-the policy of forcing sales down the throats of unwilling or hesitating prospects. That policy has been adopted as the line of least resistance—the most obvious solution of the selling problem. But it is a little too obvious a solution. In fact, it is not a solution of the selling problem at all, for it does not go to the root of the problem.

It is a matter of sober fact that in many concerns the sales and advertising departments are working at cross purposes. What the advertising department is intelligently striving to build up, the sales department is blindly endeavoring to tear down. The sales sheets may show an increase in business over last year and the year before and the year before that-but the sales sheets do not

show what is going on in the minds of those who buy. More important still, the sales sheets bear no record of those who do not buy.

The advertising department sets to work to promote the good will of its concern. In simple language the advertising department tries to make its concern liked. It attempts to convince the public that its company is a good concern to deal with. It sees the selling problem in its true light; not merely as a problem of "making sales," but as a problem of building a business. It understands that circumstances may arise under which the good will of the concern may be the one determining factor between success and bankruptcy. The mere fact that Bill and Tom and Lucy like to deal with a particular house may some time turn the scale of destiny in its favor.

But the sales department finds the selling problem delightfully simple. It is merely a question of increasing the volume of sales over a corresponding period in the past.

"Get the business" is its creed. Bill and Tom and Lucy may despise the house from the bottom of their hearts for all it cares, so long as the volume of sales increases. The sales manager's job, and the job of every salesman under him, depends upon the volume of business turned in. The future can take care of itself; the immediate present is everything. Every man jack of the crew is out for a record, by force and compulsion applied from above. The carefully reared structure of the advertising department is being torn down bit by bit, sometimes faster than it can be built up again.

TEARING DOWN ADVERTISING
EFFECTIVENESS

One of my good friends was called in, some months ago, by the management of a certain large concern and was asked to make an impartial investigation. "Something was wrong," they told him. The volume of business was increasing steadily, but selling expense and overhead were increas