Real buyers ain't interested in much besides your goods and your prices. Never run down your competitor's brand to them, and never let them run down yours. Don't get on your knees for business, but don't hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it. You'll meet a good many people on the road that you won't like, but the house needs their business.
Some fellows will tell you that we play the hose on our dry salt meat before we ship it, and that it shrinks in transit like a Baxter Street Jew's all-wool suits in a rainstorm; that they wonder how we manage to pack solid gristle in two-pound cans without leaving a little meat hanging to it; and that the last car of lard was so strong that it came back of its own accord from every retailer they shipped it to. The first fellow will be lying, and the second will be exaggerating, and the third may be telling the truth. With him you must settle on the spot; but always remember that a man who's making a claim never underestimates his case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the first figure. With the second you must sympathize, and say that the matter will be reported to headquarters and the boss of the canning-room called up on the carpet and made to promise that it will never happen again. With the first you needn't bother. There's no use feeding expensive "hen food" to an old Dominick that sucks eggs. The chances are that the car weighed out more than it was billed, and that the fellow played the hose on it himself and added a thousand pounds of cheap salt before he jobbed it out to his trade.
Where you're going to slip up at first is in knowing which is which, but if you don't learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far for the house. For your own satisfaction I will say right here that you may know you are in a fair way of becoming a good drummer by three things:
If you do this you won't have a great deal of time to write long letters, and we won't have a great deal of time to read them, for we will be very, very busy here making and shipping the goods. We aren't specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing how it happened after it has happened. If you like life on the road you simply won't let it happen. So just send us your address every day and your orders. They will tell us all that we want to know about "the situation."