The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1912-06-22
Honesty Is the Best Policy

"My dear boy" said the Business Doctor to the young sales
man, "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 selfmadeI
men, you r mighty fond of your creator.
"TLe 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 a change in
their personal AS salesman. There is no class of men who have so
changed their attitude toward the customers. They no longer kill
the goose that lays the golden eggs
at has not been SO very long ago that the theory Let the buy
er beware was in vogue and countenanced by the entire CONNER
cal world, but to-day there is no more firmly established principle
than that the best. interest 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 boosted that he had made a firm friend of the customer by CIV
ing 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 being a
little sharper than the buyer. But men like that could never hold
their trade; and to-day the good merchant realizes that it is the re-
peat orders which count and that repeat orders never come to the
mar who swindles his trade.
cat that day the purchaser did not believe a word the salesman had
to say, and was suspicious of his every act, while to-day a salesman
who will lie, is as rare rs one who will steal. Where then the buy
er avoided the things a salesman suggested, to-day the buyer de-
ponds fully as much on the judgment of the salesman as he does on
his own, knowing that it ste 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
"eGive the buyer his moneys worth has supplanted the old
Let the buyer beware and it is now the theory that the salesman
must lay up for the future by selling only those things which he
honestly believes it is to the purchaser best interest to buy.
"This old theory was supported by the system Of lavish enter
tainment of customers and petty graft, slipping to the buyers
agents gifts of various sorts, but to-day the wine suppers have dis
appeared and sales of every sort are conducted on their merits and
not because the salesman is personally a good fellow.
If you hope to succeed as a salesman, 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 metaphor, that lemons, rs we'll as chickens,
come home to roost, and that it is only a question of time till these
very people of whom you are boasting al out having unloaded on
will come into this store and refuse to allow you to wait on them.
The proprietor will notice this long after he has forgotten that sale
of which you were just Boosting.
Honesty is not only the best policy, but it is the only policy
that will win in this or any other business. Give the people an
absolutely square deal if you expect to stay in this, your chosen
business, for nc other method makes for permanency."