First Experiences In Selling

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Title:     First Experiences In Selling
Author: Charles N. Crewdson [More Titles by Crewdson]

I sat with a group of friends around a table one evening not long ago, in one of the dining rooms of the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. The dining room was done in dark stained oak, the waiters whispered to each other in foreign tongues, French and German; on the walls of the room were pictures of foreign scenes painted by foreign hands; but, aside from this, everything about us was strictly American. We had before us blue points with water-cress salad, mountain trout from the Rockies, and a Porterhouse three inches thick. We had just come out of the brush and were going to "Sunday" in Denver. It was Saturday night, A man who has never been on the road does not know what it is to get a square meal after he has been "high-grassing it" for a week or two, and when such can become the pleasure of a drummer, he quickly forgets the tough "chuck" he has been chewing for many days.

We were all old friends, had known each other in a different territory many years before; so, when we came together again, this time in Denver, not having seen each other for many years, we talked of old times and of when we met with our first experiences on the road.

When a man first begins to hustle trunks he has a whole lot to learn. Usually he has been a stock-boy, knowing very little of the world beyond the bare walls in which he has filled orders. To his fellow travelers the young man on the road is just about as green as they make them, but the rapid way in which he catches on and becomes an old-timer, is a caution.

A great many decry the life of the traveling man, even men on the road themselves are discontented, but if you want to get one who is truly happy and satisfied with his lot, find one who, after having enjoyed the free and independent (yes, and delightful!) life of the road, and then settled down for a little while as a merchant on his own hook, insurance agent, or something of that kind, and finally has gone back to his grips, and you will find a man who will say: "Well, somebody else can do other things, but, for my part, give me the road."

After we had finished with the good things before us and had lighted cigars, we could all see in the blue curls of smoke that rose before us visions of our past lives. I asked one of my friends, "How long have you been on the road, Billy?"

"Good Lord!" he yawned, "I haven't thought of that for a long time, but I sure do remember when I first started out. I left St. Louis one Sunday night on the Missouri Pacific. It was nearly twenty years ago. I remember it very well because that night I read in a newspaper that there was such a thing as a phonograph and, as I was traveling through Missouri, I didn't believe it. I had to wait until I could see one. The next day noon I struck Falls City, Nebraska. It had taken me eighteen hours to make the trip. To me it seemed as if I were going into a new world and I was surprised to find, when I reached Nebraska, that men way out there wore about the same sort of clothes that they did in St. Louis. I would not have been surprised a bit if some Indian had come out of the bushes and tried to scalp me. The depot was a mile and a half from the hotel. Here I took my first ride in an omnibus. The inside of that old bus, the red-cushioned seats and the advertisements of a livery stable, a hardware store, and "Little Jake's Tailor Shop" were all new to me. Mud? I never saw mud so deep in my life. It took us an hour to get up town. The little white hotel with the green shutters on it was one of the best I ever struck in my life. Many a time since then I have wished I could have carried it-- the good friend, chicken and all--along with me in all my travels. My best friend and adviser, an old road man himself, had told me this: 'When you get to a town, get up your trunks and open them and then go and see the trade. You might just as well hunt quail with your shells in your pocket as to try to do business without your samples open.'

"I opened up that afternoon. It took me three hours. I put my samples in good shape so that I knew where to lay my hands on anything that a customer might ask for--and you know if you go out to sell anything you'd better know what you have to sell! My samples open, I went down the street and fell into the first store I came to. The proprietor had been an old customer of the house, but I now know that the reason he gave me the ice pitcher was that he had been slow in paying his bills and the house had drawn on him. A wise thing, this, for a house to do --when they want to lose a customer! This was a heart-breaker to me right at the start, but it was lucky, because, if I had sold him, I would have packed up and gone away without working the town. A man on the road, you know, boys, even if he doesn't do business with them, should form the acquaintance of all the men in the town who handle his line. The old customer may drop dead, sell out, or go broke, and it is always well to have somebody else in line. Of course there are justifiable exceptions to this rule, but in general I would say: 'Know as many as you can who handle your line.'

"After the old customer turned me down I went into every store in that town and told my business. I found two out of about six who said they would look at my goods. By this time everybody had closed up and I came back to the hotel and went to bed, having spent the first day without doing any business.

"Five men from my house in this same territory had fallen down in five years and I, a kid almost, was number six--but not to fall down! I said to myself, 'I am going to succeed.' The will to win means a whole lot in this road business, too, boys. You know, if you go at a thing half-heartedly you are sure to lose out, but if you say 'I will,' you cannot fall down.

"Next morning I was up early and, before the clerks had dusted off the counters, I went in to see the old gentleman who had said he would look at my goods.

"'Round pretty early, aren't you, son?' said the old gentleman.

"'Yes, sir; but I'm after the worm,' said I.

"'All right. Go up to your hotel and I'll be there in half an hour.'

"Instead of waiting until he was ready for me, I went to the hotel. After the half hour was up I began to get nervous. It was an hour and a half before he came. I hadn't then learned that the best way to do is to go with your customer from his store to yours, instead of sitting around and waiting for him to come to you. This gives him a chance to get out of the notion.

"I sold the old gentleman a pretty fair bill of hats, but it was sort of a hit and miss proposition. He would jump from this thing to that thing. I hadn't learned that the real way to sell goods is to lay out one line at a time and finish with that before going to another. Pretty soon, though, good merchants educated me how to sell a bill. This is a thing a beginner should be taught something about before he starts out.

"Customer No. 2 was a poke. But I suppose this was the reason I sold him, because most of the boys, I afterwards learned, passed him up and had nicknamed him 'Old Sorgum-in-the-Winter.' It is a pretty good idea to let a slow man have his way, anyhow, if you have plenty of time, because when you are selling goods in dozen lots, no matter how slow a man is, you can get in a pretty good day's work in a few hours.

"When I got through with 'Old Sorgum' I had several hours left before my train went west. Did I pack up and quit? Bet your life not! I didn't have sense enough then, I suppose, to know that I had placed my goods in about as many stores as I ought to. I then did the 'bundle act.'

"I did up a bunch of stuff in a cloth and went down the street with the samples under my arm. I did have sense enough, though, to tuck them under my coat as I passed by the store of the man I had sold. I didn't know, then, of the business jealousy--which is folly, you know --there is between merchants; but I felt a little guilty just the same.

The only thing I sold, however, was a dozen dog-skin gloves to the big clothing merchant on the corner. That night I took the two o'clock train out of town and had my first experience of sleeping in two beds in two towns in one night--but this, in those days, was fun for me.

"Do you know, I had a bully good week? I was out early that season, ahead of the bunch. By Saturday afternoon I had worked as far west as Wymore. I went up to see a man there on Saturday afternoon. He said, 'I'll see you in the morning.' Well, there I was! I had been raised to respect the Sabbath and between the time that he said he would see me in the morning and the time that I said all right--which was about a jiffy--I figured out that it would be better to succeed doing business on Sunday than to fail by being too offensively good. For a stranger in a strange place work is apt to be less mischievous than idling, even on the Sabbath Day.

"Heavens! how I worked those days! After I had made the appointment for Sunday morning I went back to the hotel and threw my stuff into my trunks quickly--by this time I had learned that to handle samples in a hurry is one of the necessary arts of the road--and took a train to a little nearby town which I could double into without losing any time. I even had the nerve to drag a man over to my sample room after he had closed up on Saturday night! I didn't sell him anything that time, but afterwards he became one of my best customers. It pays to keep hustling, you know.

"Whew! how cold it was that night. The train west left at 3 a.m. Heavens! how cold my room was. A hardware man had never even slept in it, to say nothing of its ever having known a stove. The windows had whiskers on them long as a billy goat's; the mattress was one of those thin boys. I hadn't then learned that the cold can come through the mattress under you just about as fast as it can through the quilts on top. I hadn't got onto the lamp chimney trick."

"Why, what's that?" spoke up one of the boys.

"Aren't you onto that?" said Billy. "You can take a lamp chimney, wrap it up in a towel and put it at your feet and it will make your whole bed as warm as toast.

"Well, I went back to Wymore the next morning and sold my man. I cut the stuffing out of prices because I had been told that the firm he bought from was the best going, and I remembered the advice that my old friend had given me: 'It's better, Billy, to be cussed for selling goods cheap than to be fired for not selling them at all.' Of course I don't agree with this now, but I slashed that bill just the same.

"Next morning, when I reached Beatrice, the first thing I saw in the old hotel (I still recall that dead, musty smell) was a church directory hanging on the wall. In the center of the directory were printed these words:

"'A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content
And plenty of health for the morrow;
But a Sabbath profaned, no matter what gained,
Is a certain forerunner of sorrow.'

"Down in the corner, where the glass was broken, one of the boys who had without doubt profaned the Sabbath, had written these words:

"'A man who's thrifty on Sunday's worth fifty
Of a half-sanctimonious duck;
He will get along well if he does go to dwell
Where he'll chew on Old Satan's hot chuck.'

"My business the week before had been simply out of sight. The old man in the house wrote me the only congratulatory letter I ever got from him in my life. He was so well pleased with what I had done that he didn't kick very hard even on the bill that I had slashed. But that next week--oh, my! I didn't sell enough to buy honeysuckles for a humming bird. I began to think that maybe that Sunday bill had 'queered' me."

"But how about Sunday now, Bill?" spoke up one of the boys. "Do you think you'd like to take a good fat order to-morrow?"

"Yes, I've grown not to mind it out in this country," said Billy. "You know we've a saying out here that the Lord has never come west of Cheyenne."

"I shall never forget my first experience," said my old friend Jim, as we all lighted fresh cigars--having forgotten the Dutch pictures and the black oak furnishings.

"I had made a little flyer for the house to pick up a bill of opening stock out in Iowa. They all thought in the office that the bill wasn't worth going after, so they sent me; but I landed a twenty-five hundred dollar order without slashing an item, a thing no other salesman up to that time had ever done, so the old man called me in the office and gave me a job just as soon as I came back.

"I started out with two hundred dollars expense money. The roll of greenbacks the cashier handed me looked as big as a bale of hay. I made a couple of towns the first two days and did business in both of them, keeping up the old lick of not cutting a price.

"The next town I was booked for was Broken Bow, which was then off the main line of the 'Q,' and way up on a branch. To get there I had to go to Grand Island. Now, you boys remember the mob that used to hang out around the hotel at Grand Island. That was the time when there were a lot of poker sharks on the road. When I was a bill clerk in Chicago I used to meet with some of the other boys from the store on Saturday nights, play penny ante, five-cent limit, and settle for twenty-five cents on the dollar when we got through--I was with a clothing firm, you know. I had always been rather lucky and I had it in my head that I could buck up against anybody in a poker game. I had no trouble finding company to sit in with. In fact, they looked me up. In those days there were plenty of glass bowls full of water setting 'round for suckers. My train didn't leave until Monday morning and I had to Sunday at Grand Island.

"We started in on Saturday night and played all night long. By the time we had breakfast--and this we had sent up to the room--I was out about forty dollars. I wanted to quit them and call it off. I thought this was about as much as I could stand to lose and 'cover' in my expense account, but all of the old sharks said, 'By jove, you have got nerve, Jim. You have the hardest run of luck in drawing cards that I ever saw.' They doped me up with the usual words of praise and, after I had put a cup of coffee or two under my belt, I went at it again, making up my mind that I could stand to lose another ten. I figured out that I could make a team trip and 'break a wheel' to even up on expenses.

"Well, you know what that means. The time for you to quit a poker game (when you have money in your pocket) is like to-morrow--it never comes. By nightfall I was dead broke. Then I began to think. I felt like butting my brains out against a lamp-post; but that wouldn't do. I ate supper all alone and went to thinking what I'd do.

"I wasn't a kitten, by any means, so I went up to my shark friends and struck one of them for enough to carry me up to Broken Bow and back. He was a big winner and came right up with the twenty. They wanted to let me in the game again on 'tick,' but then I had sense enough to know that I'd had plenty. I went to my room and wrote the house. I simply made a clean breast of the whole business. I told them the truth about the matter--that I'd acted the fool--and I promised them I'd never do it any more; and I haven't played a game of poker since. The old man of the house had wired me money to Grand Island by the time I returned there and in the first mail he wrote me to keep right on.

"Business was bum with me for the next three days. I didn't sell a cent. One of the boys tipped me on an Irishman down in Schuyler who had had a squabble with his clothing house. I saw a chance right there and jumped right into that town. I got the man to look at my goods. He looked them all through from A to Z, but I couldn't start that Hibernian to save my life.

"He said, 'Well, your line looks pretty good; but, heavens alive! your prices are away too high.' Then he said, picking up a coat: 'Look here, young man, you're new on the road and I want to figure out and show you that you're getting too much for your goods. Now, you put down there, here is a suit that you ask me $12 for. Just figure the cloth and the linings, and the buttons, and the work. All told they don't cost you people over seven dollars. You ought to be able to--and you can--make me this suit for $10. That's profit enough. You can't expect to do business with us people out here in Nebraska and hold us up. We're not in the backwoods. People are civilized out here. Your house has figured that we're Indians, or something of that kind. You know very well that they sell this same suit in Illinois, where competition is greater, for ten dollars. Now I won't stand for any high prices like you're asking me. I'm going to quit the old firm that I've been buying goods from. I've got onto them. Now I'm going to give my business to somebody and you're here on the spot. Your goods suit me as far as pattern and make and general appearance go, and I'll do business with you, and do it right now, if you'll do it on the right sort of basis.'

"Well, there I was. I hadn't sold a bill for three days and I felt that this one was slipping right away from me, too. I had come especially to see the man and he had told me that he would buy goods from me if I would make the price right. So I lit in to cut. I sold him the twelve dollar suit for ten dollars. He took a dozen of them. It was a staple. I didn't know anything about what the goods were worth, but he had made his bluff good. I sold him the bill right through at cut prices on everything. The house actually lost money on the bill. I have long since learned that the only way to meet a bluffer is with a bluff. This man had laid out a line of goods which he fully intended, I know now, to buy from me at the prices which I had first asked him for them, but he thought he would buy them cheaper from me if he could.

"Many a time after that, when I had got onto things better, has this old Irishman laughed at me about how he worked me into giving him a bill of goods, and enjoyed the joke of it--Irishmanlike--more, I believe, than he did getting the bill at low prices.

"Well, my nerve was gone and I thought the only way I could do business then was by cutting the stuffing out of prices. I kept it up for a few days--until I received my next mail at Omaha. Whew! how the old man did pour it into me. He wrote me the meanest letter that a white man ever got. He said: 'Jim, you can go out and play all the poker that you want to, but don't cut the life out of goods. You can lose a hundred and fifty dollars once in a while, if you want to, playing cards, that will be a whole lot better than losing a hundred and fifty every day by not getting as much as goods are worth. Now we're going to forget about the hundred and fifty dollars you lost gambling, instead of charging it to your salary account, as you told us to do. We had made up our minds because you were starting out so well and were keeping up prices, to charge this hundred and fifty dollars to your expense account. We were going to forget all about that, Jim; but if you can't get better prices than you have been for the last week, just take the train and come right on in to the house. We can't afford to keep you out on the road and lose money on you;' and so on.

"I was scared to death. I didn't know that the Old Man in the house was running a bigger bluff on me than the Irishman to whom I made cut prices on the bill.

"But that letter gave me my nerve back and I ended up with a pretty fair trip. At that time I hadn't learned that this road business is done on confidence more than on knowledge. A salesman must feel first within himself that his goods and prices are right, and then he can sell them at those prices. If you feel a thing yourself you can make the other man feel it, especially when he doesn't know anything about the values of the goods he buys.

"When I reached the house one of the boys in stock patted me on the back and said; 'Jim, the old man is tickled to death about what you've done. He says you're making better profits for him than any man in the house.'"

"Well, I guess you held your job, all right, then, didn't you, Jim?"

"Oh my, yes. I stayed with them--that was my old firm, you know--for fifteen years, and I was a fool for ever leaving them. I would have been a partner in the house to-day if I hadn't switched off."

"How long have you been out, Arthur?" said my friend Jim, after ending his story.

"Well, so long that I've almost forgotten it, boys, but I shall never forget my start, either. The firm that I worked for had a wholesale business, and they were also interested in a retail store. I was stock man in the retail house but I wasn't satisfied with it. I was crazy to go out and try my luck on the road. I braced the old man several times before he would let me start; but he finally said to me: 'Well, Arthur, you're mighty anxious to go out on the road, and I guess we'll let you go. It won't do much harm because I think that, after a little bit, you will want to get back to your old job. Then you'll be satisfied with it. I kind o' feel, though, that in sending you out we'll be spoiling a good retail clerk to make a poor traveling man. You've done pretty well selling gloves a pair at a time to people who come in and ask for them, but you're going to have a good deal harder time when you go to selling a dozen at a clip to a man who hasn't been in the habit of buying them from you. But, as you're bent on going, we'll start you out this season. You can get yourself ready to go right away.'

"My territory was Iowa. In the first town I struck was the meanest merchant I've ever met in my life. But I didn't know it then. He was one of the kind who'd tell you with a grunt that he would not go to your sample room but if you had a few good sellers to bring them over and he'd look at them. The old hog! Then about the time you'd get your stuff over to his store something would have turned up to make him hot and he'd take out his spite on you.

"Well, this old duck said he'd look at my samples of unlined goods. I rather thought that if I could get him started on unlined goods I could sell him on lined stuff and mittens. So I lugged over my whole line myself. I didn't have sense enough to give the porter a quarter to carry my grip over to his store and save my energy, but, instead, I picked up the old grip myself. It was all right for the first block, but then I had to sit down and rest. The store was four blocks away. On the home stretch I couldn't go twenty steps before I had to sit down and rest. It was so heavy that it almost pulled the cords in my wrist in two. When I finally landed the grip at the front of the old man's store, my tongue was hanging out. He had then gone to dinner.

"I thought I wouldn't eat anything but that I would get my line ready for him by the time he came back, get through with him and take luncheon later. I carried the grip to the back end of the store and spread out my line on the counter. About one o'clock he came in and I said to him, 'I'm ready for you.' He walked away and didn't say a word but took out a newspaper and read for half an hour. He did it for pure meanness, for not a single customer came into the store while he sat there.

"I was beginning to get a little hungry but I didn't mind that then. When the young lady on the dry goods side came back from dinner I sidled up to her and talked about the weather for another half hour. My stomach was beginning to gnaw but I didn't dare go out. The old man by this time had gone to his desk and was writing some letters. I waited until I saw him address an envelope and put a stamp on it, and then I braced him a second time.

"'No, I guess I don't want any gloves.'

"'Well, I've my goods all here and it'll be no trouble to show them to you,' I said.

"'Nope,' said he, and then started to write another letter.

"When he finished that one, I said: 'Now, I don't like to insist but as my goods are all here it won't do any harm to look at them.'

"With this the old man turned on me and said:

"'Looker here, young man, I've told you twict that I don't want to buy any of your goods. Now, you just get them in your grip and get them out of here right quick; if you don't I'll throw them out and you with them.'

"Well, the old duffer was a little bigger than I was, and I didn't want to get into any trouble with him; not that I cared anything about having a scrap with him, but I thought that the firm wouldn't like it, and if they got onto me they'd fire me. So, without saying a word, I began to pack my goods together.

"About that time a customer came in who wanted to buy a pair of shoes. Some of my samples were still on the counter near the shoe shelves. The old man, with a sweep of his hand, just cleaned the counter of my samples and there I was, picking them up off the floor and putting them into my grip. I felt like hitting him over the head with a nail puller but I buckled up the straps and started sliding the grip along,--it was so infernally heavy--to the front door.

"Before I got to the front door, he came up and took the grip out of my hand and piled it out on the sidewalk and gave me a shove. Then he went back to show the customer the pair of shoes.

"I was just a boy then--was just nineteen--and this was the first man I'd called on.

"'If they're all like this,' thought I to myself, 'I believe I'll go back home and sell them a pair at a time to the boys I know who "come in" for them.'

"I lugged that grip back to the hotel, hungry as I was. There was ice on the sidewalk but I was sweating like a mule pulling a bob-tailed street car full of fat folks. I was almost famished but I went to my room and cried like a child. My heart was broken.

"But after awhile my nerve came back to me, and I thought, surely all the merchants I call on won't be like that man,--and I washed up and went down to supper. After eating something I felt better. At the supper table I told an old traveling man, who was sitting at the table with me, about the way I'd been treated.

"'Well, come on, my boy, and I'll sell you a bill tonight. That old fellow is the meanest dog in Iowa. No decent traveling man will go near him. As a rule, you'll find that merchants will treat you like a gentleman. The best thing you can do is to scratch that old whelp off the list. Of course you know,' said he, giving me advice which I needed very much, 'you'll often run up against a man who is a little sour, but if you sprinkle sugar on him in the right kind of way, you can sweeten him up.'

"You know how it is, boys, even now, all of us like to give a helping hand to the young fellow who's just starting out. I would almost hand over one of my customers to a young man to give him encouragement, and so would you. We've all been up against the game ourselves and know how many things the young fellow runs up against to dishearten him.

"As I think of my early experiences, I recall with a great deal of gratitude in my heart the kind deeds that were done for me when I was the green first-tripper, by the old timers on the road. My new friend took me down the street to one of his customers and made him give me an order. That night I went to bed the happiest boy in Iowa."

With this one of the boys called a waiter. As we lit our cigars my friend Moore, who was next to tell his story, said, "Well, boys, here's to Our First Experiences."

[The end]
Charles N. Crewdson's short story: First Experiences In Selling

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