Certain Success. Norval A. Hawkins
outset of your present study comprehend that salesmanship is not a science. Rather, it is an art. Like every other art, however, it has a related science. Selling is a process. Knowledge about the principles and methods that make the process most effective is the related science. But such knowledge supplies only the best foundation for building success by the actual practice of most effective salesmanship. The master salesman practices the scientific principles and methods he has learned until the skillful use of his knowledge in every-day selling becomes second nature to him. Thus, and thus only, is his art perfected.
You will gain knowledge from these books about how to sell with assurance the true idea of your best capabilities—about how to sell any "goods of sale" unfailingly. But you can develop the skill necessary to the actual achievement of certain success only if you continually use what you learn about the selling process. You must perfect your selling art by the intelligent employment of every word and tone and act of your life to attract other men to you, and to impress on them convincingly true ideas of your particular ability.
Be a Salesman Every Minute
The master professional salesman is "always on the job" with his three means of self-expression, to get across to prospects true ideas of the desirability and value of his goods. He is a salesman every minute, and in everything he does or says. You can become as efficient as he, in selling ideas about your "goods of sale," if your proficiency becomes as easy and natural as his. Such ease is the sure result of sufficient right practice.
You have countless opportunities daily to make use of the selling process. In each expression of yourself—in your every word, tone, and act—you convey some idea of your particular character and ability. You should know how to make true, attractive impressions of your best self; and how to avoid making untrue and unfavorable impressions by what you do and say. Then, when you have learned the most effective way to sell ideas about yourself that you want other people to have, it is necessary that you use the selling process consciously all the time until you grow into the habit of using it unconsciously, as your second nature. Once you are accustomed to acting the salesman continually, it will be no more difficult for you to be "always on the job" selling right ideas of your qualifications for success, than it is for the professional user of the selling process to be a salesman "every minute."
Your "Goods of Sale"
As already has been emphasized, "the goods of sale" in your case are your best capabilities. You need first of all to know your true self, before you can sell true ideas about your qualifications for success. Your true self is your best self. You are untrue to yourself, you balk your own ambition to succeed, unless you develop to the utmost of your capacity your particular salable qualities.
You do not need qualities you now wholly lack. You should not attempt to "salt" the gold mine in yourself with the characteristics of other men who have succeeded by the development and use of capabilities that were natural to them, but that would be unnatural to you. It is worse than futile—it is foolish for you to imitate anybody else. Just be your best self. Make the most of what you have that is salable. You require no more to assure your success.
Selling the Truth About Your Best Self
Every individual has distinct characteristics, and is capable of doing particular things, of which he may be genuinely proud if he fully develops and uses his personal qualifications. When all the truth about his best possible self is skillfully made known to others, chances for success are certain to be opened to the ambitious man. If he lacks the salesmanship key, the doors of opportunity may always remain closed, however well he deserves to be welcomed.
You possess "goods of sale" that have real quality, that are durable, that will render service and afford pleasurable satisfaction to others. Your goods can be sold as surely as quality phonographs, durable automobile tires, serviceable clothes, or pleasing books.
Maybe you can "deliver the goods" with smiles, or hearty tones, or ready acts of kindness. Any one can easily be friendly. But have you developed all your ability to smile genuinely? Have you cultivated the hearty tone of real kindness so that now it is unnatural for you ever to speak in any other way? Do you perform friendly acts of consideration for others on every occasion, as second nature?
If your honest answers to such questions must be negative, you are not a good salesman of your best self all the time.
Your Salable Qualities
Your most salable quality may be dependability, rather than quick thinking. If this is the case, concentrate your salesmanship on making impressions of the true idea of your reliability. Your greatest success will be achieved in some field of service where dependableness is a primary essential. You may be naturally unfitted to make a star reporter, but peculiarly qualified to develop into the cashier of a bank.
Should you happen to be unattractive in features, your job is to transform your homeliness into a likable quality—not to try to make yourself appear handsome. If you are wholly inexperienced, that need not be a detriment to your success in the field you want to enter. When you have mastered the selling process, your very greenness can be presented before the mind of a prospective employer as the best of reasons for engaging you. You will be able to make yourself appear desirable because you are green in that field, and therefore have no wrong ideas to "unlearn."
Know All of Yourself
You can greatly improve your chances to get the job for which you are best adapted, if you use the reciprocal selling process employed by the professional salesman when he sells his services to a house. He meets the head of the concern as his man-equal, and does not just offer himself "for hire." Such a consciousness of your man-equality when you are face to face with a prospective employer can result only from certain, analytical knowledge of your best self, complemented by knowing how to sell the true idea of your particular desirability and worth.
Very likely you think you are seriously handicapped in many ways. Having made no detailed analysis of yourself from a salesman's view-point, you do not appreciate fully the number and the market value of the advantages you might have. Probably some of your best, most salable qualities are latent or but partly developed.
Chart Necessary
List your particular "goods of sale." Put down on a chart, not only the qualities you have now, but all the additional ones you feel capable of developing. Then you will realize vividly that you possess many abilities, some undeveloped yet, which are always needed in the world. You know that such qualities should be readily salable, to the mutual benefit of yourself and of buyers. You are learning the selling process in order to make certain that you can sell the best that is in you, as other men are selling themselves successfully.
Complete your chart by listing your various defects. Then study out ways to use even your particular faults differently than you have been handling them; so that they will help you, instead of being hindrances to your success. Think of some people you know, and of how they have turned their physical "liabilities" into "assets" of popularity.
The very first sales knowledge you need is of exactly what you have to sell. You cannot see all of yourself, your good and bad points—yourself as you are, and as you might be—unless you make a detailed chart of your "goods of sale." One of the most important immediate effects of such a self-analysis will be increased self-respect. Your handicaps will shrink, and the peculiar advantages you have will grow before your eyes. You should feel new confidence in your own ability.
Man-Equality
With this confidence will come a feeling that you are not the inferior of another man who has achieved a larger measure of success than you have gained. When you start the sale of true ideas of your best self to an employer-buyer of such services as you are capable of rendering,