A Master Salesman is a strategist at mind manipulation. He can marshal the thoughts of men as ably as Foch directed the allied armies during the World War.

A Master Salesman is a philosopher who can interpret causes by their effects and effects by their causes.

A Master Salesman is a character analyst. He knows men as Einstein knows higher mathematics.

A Master Salesman is a mind reader. He knows what thoughts are in men’s minds by the expressions on their faces, by the words they utter, by their silence, and by the feeling that he experiences from within while in their presence.

The Master Salesman is a fortune teller. He can predict the future by observing what has happened in the past.

The Master Salesman is master of others BECAUSE HE IS MASTER OF HIMSELF!

The attributes of mastery in selling will be described in this book as well as the means by which these qualities may be acquired. The purpose of the book is to enable the reader to transform mediocrity into mastery in the art of persuasion.

Life is a series of ever-changing and shifting circumstances and experiences. No two experiences are alike. No two people are alike. Day after day we experience life’s kaleidoscopic changes. This makes it necessary for us to adapt ourselves to people who think and act in ways different from our own. Our success depends, very largely, upon how well we negotiate our way through these daily contacts with other people without friction or opposition.

This sort of negotiation calls for an understanding of the art of salesmanship. We are all salesmen regardless of our calling. But not all of us are Master Salesmen!

The politician must sell his way into office. If he remains in office, he must keep himself sold to his constituency.

The salaried person must sell himself into a job. Salesmanship must be used to keep the position after it has been obtained.

If a man seeks a loan at a bank, he must sell the banker on making the loan.

The clergyman must sell his sermons, and himself as well, to his followers. If he is a poor salesman, he soon finds himself looking for another “call.”

The lawyer must sell the merits of his client’s case to the judge and jury even if he knows his case has but little merit.

If a man chooses to marry, he must sell himself to the woman of his choice, although the woman may, and often does, remove many of the obstacles in the path of the sale.

Everybody will agree with this statement.

The day laborer must sell himself to his employer, although the form of salesmanship required is not as difficult as that which must be employed by the man who sells himself into a job at $50,000 a year.

These are examples of salesmanship through which people sell intangibles. Any form of effort through which one person persuades another to cooperate is salesmanship. Most efforts at salesmanship are weak; and for this reason most people are poor salesmen.

If a man attains a high station in life, it is because he has acquired or was blessed with native ability as a salesman. Schooling, college degrees, intellect, brilliancy, are of no avail to the man who lacks the ability to attract the cooperative efforts of others, thus to create opportunities for himself. These qualities help a man to make the most of opportunity once he gets it. But he must first contact or create the opportunity to be worked on. Perhaps, by the law of averages, opportunity is thrust upon one out of every hundred thousand people. The others must create opportunity. Moreover, salesmanship is often as necessary in the development of opportunity as in its creation.

“Salesmanship” in this book applies not merely to marketing commodities and services. You can sell your personality. You must do it! As a matter of fact, the major objective in writing this book was to teach men and women how to sell their way through life successfully using the selling strategy and the psychology used by the Master Salesman in selling goods and services.

Herbert Hoover was handicapped during his youth by the loss of his parents. Millions of other orphans have lived and died without having had the opportunity to make themselves known outside of the local communities in which they existed. What distinguishing features did Mr. Hoover possess to enable him to set his sails in the direction of the White House and ride with the winds of fortune to that high goal? He discovered how to sell his way through life successfully. This book is to teach others to do the same.

Jean Beltrand has given five definitions of salesmanship, as follows:

These definitions are very broad. They might easily cover a great variety of all human activity. The whole of any life is one long, unbroken chain of sales endeavor.

The newly born babe is a salesman! When it wants food, it yells for it and gets it! When it is in pain, it yells for attention and gets that, too.

Women are the greatest salespeople on earth. They are superior to men because they are more subtle, more dramatic, and use greater finesse. Men often believe they are selling themselves to women in proposals of marriage. Generally, however, it is the woman who does the selling. She does it by making herself charming, attractive, and alluring.

While Mr. Beltrand’s definitions are comprehensive, I would add to his list one more, viz:

“Selling is the art of planting in the mind of another a motive which will induce favorable action.”

The importance of this definition will be apparent throughout the book.

The Master Salesman becomes a master because of his or her ability to induce other people to act upon motives without resistance or friction.

There is but little competition with Master Salesmen because there are so few of them!

Master Salesmen know what they want. They know how to plan the acquiring of what they want. Moreover, they have the initiative to put into action such a plan.

There are two forms of sales endeavor. One: when the salesman is negotiating with but one person. Two: when the salesman is negotiating with a group of people. The latter is commonly known as group selling or public speaking.

The Master Salesman’s education is not complete unless he has the ability to persuade groups of people as well as influence individuals. The ability to speak to groups with that force which carries conviction is a priceless asset. It has given more than one man his big opportunity. This ability must be self-acquired. It is an art that can be acquired only through study, effort, and experience.

Here are some specific instances:

William Jennings Bryan lifted himself from obscurity to a position of national prominence through his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, during a Democratic National Convention.

Patrick Henry immortalized himself through his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech in the days of the American Revolution. But for that speech, his name might never have known its heritage.

Robert Ingersoll changed the trend of theology by his eloquent art in forceful group salesmanship.

The Master Salesman has the ability to influence people through the printed page as well as by the spoken word.

Elbert Hubbard accumulated a modest fortune and indelibly impressed his name upon the minds of men through the selling power of his pen.

Perhaps Thomas Paine, through the power of his pen, did more than any other one person to inspire the American Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin immortalized himself and left his imprint for good upon civilization by the forceful simplicity and quaintness of his written salesmanship.

Abraham Lincoln immortalized himself through a single speech, his Gettysburg Address—simple in theme, pure in composition, moving in thought.

The spirit of Jesus Christ goes marching on, influencing hundreds of millions of people 2,000 years after his death because he was a Master Salesman. He built his sales presentation around a motive universally acceptable.

Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, the ex-kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, and hundreds of others of their type were also Master Salesmen. But they built their sales presentations around motives that were destructive of the best impulses in civilization. They sold and delivered wars—wars for which the people paid in blood and tears and suffering.

Enduring success in selling is always predicated upon sound motive ! Remember this, you who aspire to mastery in selling. Sell neither stones nor serpents nor swords!

The world now faces the greatest opportunity for Master Salesmanship in history. The Business Depression left wounds in millions of hearts that must be healed. Only master salesmanship can do it. New leaders and a new brand of leadership are needed throughout the world in almost every line of human endeavor. This is a great reconstruction period. It is rich with opportunity for Master Salesmen who have the imagination to build their sales efforts around motives that are beneficial to the general public, and who release their full energies through their work.

Class privileges are passing! Mass privileges are in the ascendancy. Remember this, too, when selecting a motive as the guiding spirit of your sales efforts: The people must be served.

The whole of America stands at the crossroads of progress waiting for able leadership. Millions of people have been slowed down by fear and indecision. Here is an unparalleled opportunity for men and women who are prepared to adapt themselves to the new brand of leadership, fortified by courage, dedicated to service.

High-pressure salesmanship, of which we heard so much during the last 20 years, is now a thing of the past. The “go-getter” will have to make room for the “go-giver” in every walk of life, selling included.

The successful leader of the future, whether in the field of selling or in other walks of life, must make the Golden Rule the basis of his leadership.

In the future, the question of paramount importance will be: “How much can I give in the way of service to others?” not, “How much can I get away with and keep out of jail?”

A great economic renaissance is sweeping the entire world!

The man who cannot see this is mentally and morally blind. The old order of things in business and industry has already been swept away, and a new order is rapidly taking its place. Wise beyond description is the person who sees this change and adapts himself to it harmoniously—without force!

We are approaching an era during which we shall see the reincarnation of the spirit of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in politics and the reincarnation of the spirit of Marshall Field and John Wanamaker in the fields of industry, business, and finance.

The people have become rebellious against the oppression forced upon them by the avaricious and the greedy. This spirit of resentment is not transient. It will remain until it rights a wrong. It will gain organized momentum. America will not soon again see the sad spectacle of millions of people starving to death in the midst of an overabundance of both the necessities and the luxuries of life.

We are on the grand concourse that leads out of the wilderness of human exploitation, and we are not going to be driven or coerced into giving up our rights to remain on this highway.

These statements of fact and of prophecy may be helpful to those who aspire to leadership in the field of selling or in some other walk of life. Men who have imagination will not wait for time to prove their soundness. They will anticipate the changes that are to take place and will adapt themselves to the new conditions.

The great changes occasioned by the economic upheaval that has thrown millions out of adjustment in all fields of human activity accentuates the need for discovering those fundamental principles by which one may come back into the path of ordered progress. Since all people must use some form of salesmanship to right themselves and to adjust themselves into satisfactory relations, both social and commercial, it behooves one to lend an ear to a presentation of those fundamental principles with suggestions of their practical application. This book attempts to teach such principles.

The person who masters these fundamental principles of persuasion can sell his way through life successfully, surmounting obstacles, overcoming opposition, harnessing and redirecting adverse forces. No matter who you are or how much you know, you will not succeed unless you are a salesman! You must sell your services. You must sell your knowledge. You must sell yourself. You must sell your personality.

As you approach the study of fundamentals, keep ever before you the fact that your only limitations are creatures of your own mind. Remember, too, you can remove any limitation that you can create.

This book was written for men and women who will not permit themselves to be bound down by blind circumstance nor hedged in by psychological limitations.

Jack Dempsey was an unknown prize fighter, and a good one at that perhaps, but he stepped up front and won the World Championship with its million dollar income only after Jack Kearns had promoted him into that highly desirable position. Jack Dempsey’s fists and arms did the punching, but Jack Kearns’ brains did the guiding of the blows so they found their way into big bank balances. The promoting job that Kearns did for Dempsey was so effective that even now, long after the championship was lost, Dempsey is able to collect big dividends for the mere use of his name.

Thomas A. Edison, with less than three months of schooling, became the world’s greatest inventor because he possessed that rare quality of being able to promote himself. Where he succeeded, no fewer than 10,000 other inventors, many of them as capable as he, never have been heard of and never will be.

Arthur Brisbane was a run-of-the-mill newspaperman, no better and no worse than a thousand others in his profession, until William Randolph Hearst spread his name on the front page of all his newspapers; then he became America’s leading columnist. I can name a hundred men who can write better stuff than anything Brisbane ever wrote, but you would not recognize one of them because they have not been properly promoted.

During the World War my attention was called to a man by the name of Arthur Nash, a Cincinnati merchant tailor, who had taken his employees into business with him and had given them a part of the profits because his business was on the rocks and he saw no other way of saving it from bankruptcy. I went to Cincinnati, interviewed Nash, and wrote the first story about him. In my story I called him “Golden Rule” Nash. The story was taken up by the newspapers and magazines of the country and he received free publicity for more than five years. When he died a dozen years later, he was a wealthy man and his business was among the more successful of its type.

Kate Smith, as all who know her will testify, is “a dear sweet girl” who sings on the radio. Kate does not have anything but a fine character and a pleasing voice, but she does have Ted Collins, therefore she draws a weekly salary of a staggering figure, to say nothing of side incomes from moving pictures and other endeavors.

Edgar Bergen and Charley McCarthy trooped up and down Broadway, eating now and then when the now famous pair could get an engagement, until one night when they appeared on the Rudy Vallee Program. The promotion they received on that occasion gave them a start toward radio stardom that has made the pair among the best features of the air. Bergen was as good five years ago as he is today, but he was not then properly promoted, so he often found himself “temporarily at leisure.”

Ely Culbertson was a competent bridge player, but nothing to brag about until his wife took him in hand and began to promote him, and now he receives free publicity in newspapers throughout the nation. Moreover, he has made himself wealthy as a bridge expert. He is probably no more an expert now than he was when his better seven-eighths began to promote him, but he is better paid!

Ziegfeld picked up Will Rogers when he was an unknown gum-chewing, rope-throwing vaudeville specialist (when he could get an engagement). By proper promotion, Ziegfeld catapulted Rogers into stardom almost overnight, to say nothing of paving the way for moving picture and other money-making opportunities from which Rogers made millions of dollars. Before Ziegfeld’s promotions caught up with him, Rogers was glad to do his stunts before clubs and on other occasions for his lunch, in cities where he was playing on the vaudeville stage. This same “promoter” took over the banjo-eyed Eddie Cantor and started him on a career that is said to now pay him $10,000 a week for merely reading lines that someone else writes! Not bad, eh? Ziegfeld also promoted the tall, slender Fanny Brice into the big money. Not one of these favorites would have piled up the huge fortunes the public has paid them to do their parlor tricks if it had not been for clever promotion.

When I was organizing The Law of Success philosophy, Andrew Carnegie sent me to call on Henry Ford. “You want to watch this man Ford,” said Carnegie, “for one day he is going to dominate the motor industry of America.” I went to Detroit and met Ford for the first time. That was in 1908. When I first looked him over, I wondered how as shrewd a judge of men as Andrew Carnegie could have been so definitely mistaken in his estimation of Ford, but that was 30 years ago. Year by year I have watched Ford climb to the top in his field, and back of his stupendous achievement I have observed highly organized, systematic, and effective promotion. Perhaps no man who was ever connected with the Ford promotion was of greater service to him than the late Senator Couzens, unless it is W. J. Cameron, the present chief Ford promoter, who sees to it that the Ford interests are never neglected in the eyes of the public. Since Ford began business, I have seen no less than a hundred other makers of automobiles rise and fall like mushrooms because they had not the foresight to surround themselves with promotion experts.

By “promotion experts,” I do not mean advertising men. Promotion is one thing, advertising is something entirely different. Promotion, the sort to which I have reference, is the art of keeping an individual favorably sold to the public all the time.

The late Ivy Lee was one of the greatest promotion men of his time. It was he who removed the odium from the name of the elder Rockefeller and kept that name before the public in a favorable light almost continuously. Ivy Lee seldom worked through paid publicity. He preferred free space and other forms of more efficient promotion for keeping his clients properly sold to the public. While I was publishing the Golden Rule Magazine, I wrote a brief editorial praising the work of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in connection with his fine humanitarian work in going to Colorado to settle the famous coal strike in 1919. Almost before the print had dried on my article, I received a wire from Ivy Lee, inviting me to visit him in New York. When I met him, he got down to business without ceremonies, offering me $10,000 a year to join his staff and write similar editorials about other clients of his. Promotion experts earn and receive big money because they have the ability to recognize and the good sense to appropriate the forces needed to further the interests of their clients. I declined the Ivy Lee offer, but I have often regretted the mistake, for I now know that a few years of schooling under that genius would have been worth many times the sum he offered me.

During my negotiations with Ivy Lee, I was astounded to learn that the world-famous Billy Sunday revivals were a well organized, Ivy Lee-guided promotion! Sunday fought the Devil up one side of the country and down the other, to the tune of millions of dollars. The Devil has Ivy Lee to thank for whatever damage Billy did him, which probably was not very much. My personal opinion is that Billy Sunday set Christianity back a thousand years. One thing is certain, religious revivals of the Sunday type—emotional orgies as they are called by many who think—have gone forever. They died about the time Ivy Lee passed on.

Rudolph Valentino (the late silent movie star, in case you have forgotten him) danced up and down Broadway, at a few dollars per dance, until a moving picture director discovered him and placed back of him a clever promoter. Then Valentino became the screen’s great lover. The women of America, in the slang of the street, “ate it up!” When the talkies came, all the stars of the silents had to be replaced overnight because most of them had no real ability in talking parts. The great lovers of the silents were great only because they had been cleverly promoted as such. The talkies proved that!

When the late Theodore Roosevelt came back from Africa, just after he left the White House in 1909, he made his first public appearance at Madison Square Garden. Before he would agree to make the appearance, he carefully arranged for nearly one thousand paid applauders to be scattered throughout the audience to applaud his entrance on the platform. For more than 15 minutes, these paid hand-clappers made the place ring with their enthusiasm. The other sheep took up the suggestion and joined in for another quarter hour. The newspaper men present were literally swept off their feet by the tremendous ovation given the American hero, and his name was emblazoned across the headlines of the newspapers in letters two inches high. Splendid! Teddy understood and made intelligent use of personal promotion. That was the major reason why he was a great statesman!

One does not have to be an expert on propaganda or personal promotion tactics to observe how effectively these forces are used by Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, to maintain their standing in the eyes of the world. They keep themselves constantly promoted in all sorts of favorable lights because they know the necessity of appeasing home folks and impressing foreigners.

For a great number of years, I served as my own business and promotion manager, yet I saw other men in my field going by me in an ever-increasing line of procession. I now know that the habit of serving as one’s own promotion manager is something like the equally foolish habit of cutting one’s own hair. A man can cut his own hair, but it does not improve his appearance. A man can also serve as his own lawyer, but he who does so usually follows his own counsel into difficulty. There is no wisdom in following such a course.

Even a street can be made to take on a different reputation and yield greater rents under the right sort of promotion direction. Fifth Avenue in New York is known the world over as the bonton street of Manhattan. The reputation enables the owners of the ground to ask for and receive fabulous rentals for their property. Fifth Avenue’s reputation is a promotion, maintained by the Fifth Avenue Association, through a carefully managed promotion plan that keeps out the riff-raff that has reduced Broadway and Forty-Second Street to nothing short of a hunting ground for mendicants and street peddlers. Stores on Broadway bring but a fraction of the rentals received on Fifth Avenue.

Alvin York was merely another illiterate Tennessee mountaineer who objected to conscription during the World War. He put up such a howl about his “conscientious objection” that he attracted much attention and plenty of newspaper space. After his return from war he was still illiterate, but a clever little promoter took him over and now he dominates a large school for mountain folks that was promoted in his name; the State of Tennessee has dedicated one of its main highways to him; and he has received financial and other forms of aid from influential people from all over the country. Verily, it pays to be properly promoted.