The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-10-27
THE BUSINESS DOCTOR

My dear boy, SAID the BUSINESS
Doctor to the young salesman, you
have studied craftsmanship in the
wrong school. There was something
fundamentally wrong with the man
who taught you, or else you were
allowed to teach yourself and, like
all selfmade men, you are mighty
fond of the creator.
''The very fact that you boast that
you unloaded that out-of-style stuff on
your customer is evidence enough
that you don't know your business.
That's the old style of craftsmanship
that is about as near extinct as the
buffalo, the race horse and the great
aux. There is no class of men who
have undergone so great change in
their personnel as statesmen. There
is no class of men who have so
changed their attitude towards their
customers. They no longer kill the
goose that lays the golden eggs.
1T has not been so very long ago
that the theory of Let the buyer be-
ware was in vogue and countenanced
by the entire commercial world, but
today there is no more firmly estab-
lished principle than that the best in
terest of the seller is the best interest
of the buyer in every case
"a few years ago a salesman would
have been laughed at if he had boast
ed that he had made a firm friend of
the customer by giving him a square
deal. He rather took pride in the fact
that he had tricked a customer out of
an order or had put one over by De-
ing a little sharper than the buyer.
But men like that could never hold
their trade. and today the good mer-
chant realizes that it is the repeat
orders which count land that repeat
orders never come to the man who
swindles his trade.
AT that day the purchaser did not
believe a word the salesman had to
say and was suspicious of his every
act, while the buyer avoided the
things salesman suggested, today
the buyer depends fully as much on
the best interest of the salesman to
give him satisfaction or the sale, like
a boomerang, to the dismay of the
seller, will come back.
"Give the buyer his moneys
worth has supplented the old Let
the buyer BEWARE and it is now the
theory that the salesman must lay I'D
for the purchasers best interest to
buy.
This old theory was supported by
the system of lavish entertainment
of customers and petty graft, slipping
to the buyers agents gifts of various
sorts, but today the wine suppers
have disappeared and sales of every
sort are conducted on their merits
and not because the salesman is per-
sonally a good fellow.
IF you hope to succeed as a sales.
man, you have to eliminate all this
notion of loading up customers with
undesirable articles and remember
that the house you are working for
is going to be in business next year
and the year after that, and bear in
mind, no matter how mixed the met
aphor, that lemons, as we'll as Chick
ems, come home to roost, and that
it is only question of time till these
very people of whom you are boast
ing about having unloaded on will
come in to this store and refuse to
allow you to wait on them. The pro-
prietor will notice this long after he
has forgotten that sale of which you
were just Boosting.
Honesty is not only the. best
policy that will win in this or any
other business. Give people an alb
solutely square deal if you expect TO
stay in this your chosen business, for
no other method makes for perman-
ency."-Roe Fulkerson in Atlanta
Georgian