Читать книгу Letters From an Old Time Salesman to His Son - Roy Lester James - Страница 8

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Dear Hal:

Yes, I will admit that it begins to look like I never write you any more except when you get a promotion, but I wouldn’t advise you to figure on that too closely, because sometimes I’m liable to fool you.

As a matter of fact I’m not much for writing letters except when I have something to say, and when you were a little fellow I found that while you were susceptible to suggestions and advice, you were very quick to resent overdoses, so I’ve come to look on my letters a good deal like beef extract—a little of it in a whole cup of hot water is a nice thing, but no one relishes the idea of consuming a sixteen-ounce jar at one sitting.

I was interested in your announcement that you had been appointed a “special representative” and will travel out of Chicago doing missionary work. I wonder if you used that word “missionary” advisedly, or if it merely dropped out as a careless expression. Regardless of that, I’m sure you used the right word, for as I understand it, that’s just exactly what a “special representative” should be, but I am wondering if you are sure you really understand the full meaning of the word.

The usual adaptation of the word “missionary” as used in business circles is, “one who is sent out to generate, extend and foster business and all things pertaining thereto, on a certain product.”

Now, the same relative difference exists between a salesman and a “special representative” as does between a common or garden variety of preacher and a missionary, but the big trouble is a great many people fail to analyze that difference, which accounts for so many failures in the ranks of special representatives and church missionaries.

Now, if you’ll go to the trouble to drop around theoretically, to a “Home for Indigent (sounds like ‘indiligent,’ don’t it?) Business and Religious Missionary Failures,” you’d find after talking with Exhibit A and B their ideas of a missionary are a sort of a combination hand-shaking, chicken-eating, solicitous, dignified, well-dressed hombre, who sort of exhaled good will and felicitations, who didn’t have any duties in particular, but just traveled around “for the good of the cause.” And, of course, it goes without saying that that’s the reason why they’re inmates of the Home.

It’s true that a missionary is a sort of supersalesman, but it means “salesman plus” rather than “graduate salesman.”

A real missionary goes into the highways and byways; as the old fisherman says, “he ketches ’em where they ain’t.” He generates enthusiasm in the salesmen he comes in contact with; his sales work is educational; he sets an example for industry, sales ability, loyalty; he teaches the salesman to use superior judgment in not selling too little or too much to a customer; he irons out petty difficulties; he’s an exponent of the sales theory that contemplates holding your head up, but not so high as to let a lot of little orders go by under your nose without seeing them. Yet withal, he is humility personified, which is the true mark of a great man.

Now, son, don’t tell me that I’m only telling you stuff that you already know—of course, you know it—but what I want to know, do you capitalize that knowledge one hundred per cent?

Just remember, Red, when you go out on these new jobs, there’s a Wrong Way and a Right Way. You’ve traveled the road far enough to be able to distinguish the sign posts. While the Boss and Dad cannot see everything you do, it’s reflected in the results, boy; it’s reflected in the results!

Your loving,

“DAD.”