Successful Sales man ship
Edward Berman
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.
PRENTICE-HALL, INC., 1957
Preface o moment of time is wasted; no pros-pective customer ever displeased; no hope for an eventual repeated sale of goods and services ever lost when friend-liness, courtesy, consideration, and cooperation go to work for the successful low pressure salesman. N
Leo Durocher, formerly the stormy petrel of major league baseball, once said, "Nice guys finish last." Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jack Benny, Perry Como, and many thou-sands of others have proven beyond a doubt that "Nice guys are more apt to finish first!" So it is with all success-ful low pressure salesmen, whether they are selling states-manship, humor, music, or goods and services.
Will Rogers, the epitome of low pressure salesmanship, said, "When I die, I want engraved on my gravestone, the following epitaph: 'I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.'" This, I be-lieve, sums up the entire secret of low pressure selling, for you cannot be liked by those you wish to sell, unless you apply a sincere self-desire to like, understand, and serve people.
Every book has a premise, a reason for being written. The chief premise of Successful Low Pressure Salesman-ship is, "It pays to be nice to people." When a premise proves itself out, as it does in this book, with factual, field-tested examples, we can only say, "Here is an opportunity
PREFACE
for you to examine its logic, prove to yourself that this book will help you become a successful, admired, and respected low pressure salesman.
Successful Low Pressure Salesmanship attempts to put selling and salesmanship in a completely realistic light. It does not hold with the push, shove, and club tactics of high pressure. It does not profess to contribute a golden or magic key to overnight success. Selling, like any other profession requiring skill, study, practice and more practice, also requires constant effort, lots of hard work, planning, and a well rehearsed, dynamically presented sales story or demonstration. In this way, you can sell anything from a lollipop to a locomotive.
Low pressure selling is a career with a great purpose . . . being nice to people, getting them to like you, getting them to like buying from you, getting them to keep on buying from you. With it, you never have to judge a customer by his silence. You let him judge you by yours! With it, you are able to apply the science of listening, the art of word economy. You are able to understand what people look for in a product, a service, and a salesman. But most important of all, to make low pressure selling work for yourself, you must first be dedicated to selling, regard it as an important profession, and be ever proud that you are one of the people who help keep the economy of the entire world in balance.
Using the low pressure pluses in this book will help you to improve your low pressure salesmanship techniques. These low pressure patterns will help you earn more money and make more customer friends whether you sell a product or service; whether you sell sugar pills to hypochondriacs or dogmas to students.