It has been said that salesmen are big problems to their bosses, their customers, and their wives, to conservative managers, to hotels and sometimes to each other. Individually and collectively they are cursed and discussed in sales meetings, conventions, behind closed doors, in barrooms and under one’s breath from as many angles and with about the same fervor as the daily headlines.
They make more noise and mistakes, create more cheer, correct more errors, adjust more differences, spread more gossip, hear more grievances, pacify more belligerents and waste more time under high pressure without losing their tempers than any class we know including ministers. They live in hotels, cabs, in tents, on trains, buses and park benches, eat all kinds of food, drink all kinds of liquids, good and bad, sleep before, during and after business with no more schedule than the weather.
And yet salesmen are a power in society and in the public economy. They spend more money with less effort than any other group in business. They come at the most inopportune time under the slightest pretext, stay longer under more opposition, ask more personal questions, make more comments put up with more inconveniences, take more for granted under greater resistance, than any group including the U.S. Army.
They introduce more goods, dispose of more old goods, load more freight cars, unload more ships, build more factories, start more new business, and write more debits and credits than all other people in America.
Yes, brother, you said it. With all their faults, they keep the wheels of commerce turning and the currents of human emotions running. More cannot be said of anyone. So be careful whom you call SALESMAN, lest you flatter him or her.
kongoboken 