In fact,
if a poor man, succeeding a good one, falls down, his house can very
easily lose many thousands of dollars by not holding the old trade of
the man whose place he took. If all the wholesale houses in Chicago,
say, which have a good line of salesmen were, at the beginning of the
year, to lose all of those salesmen and replace them with dummies,
three-fourths of these firms would go broke in from six months to
three years. This is how important the salesman is to his firm.
I put hiring and handling of salesmen before having a strong line of
goods, because if the proper salesmen are hired and are handled right,
they will soon compel the house to put out the right line of goods.
Just as a retail merchant should consult with his clerks about what he
should buy, so, likewise, should the head of the wholesale house find
out from his men on the road what they think will sell best. The
salesman rubs up against the consumer and knows at first hand what the
customer actually wants.
When the head of a house has a man to hire, the first man he looks for
is one who has an established trade in the territory to be covered--a
trade in his line of business.
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