Now, I'm not trying to belittle the honest sales effort of yourself or your friend Ryan in the least, but I just want to be sure that you appreciate the fact that your success last week wasn't due 100 per cent to the siren voice of your salesmanship, but that a great big piece of credit was due to the solid foundation on which you were building your sales.
I notice you sort of “bragged” over the fact that you sold only the _best merchants_ in each town and those who were capable of giving orders worth while. If I had to take my choice between five nice new ten dollar bills and five old ragged ones, why, of course, I'd choose the crinkly kind, but if there wasn't any law against my getting both piles, I don't think I'd be so particular, because it has been my experience that the ragged ones can be changed into just as many dimes and quarters as the new ones, and either one is acceptable to the receiving teller when you pass the little black book under the wicket on Saturday.
Now the matter of choice in selling retailers is just the same. With a line like your company has, in the first place you should attempt to place it in a big way in the best stores in the town, but there isn't any game law against selling it to the little fellow around the corner, is there? Nobody in “the house” ever told you to beware of selling the small merchant, did they? You bet they didn't! In fact, every successful business has been founded on the small customer, who afterward grew into the big one. You know when Marshall Field first started in business his store didn't cover a city block, but I suppose there were some two and three-quarters per cent salesmen in those days who thought Field's business was too small to bother with, but if any of those salesmen are still living you can probably find them now acting as a nurse-girl to a wheezy taxicab.
Notice you say Ryan told you the reason he didn't call on some merchants was because there was no use--they couldn't be sold. I'll never forget, the fellow who broke me in as a salesman told me the same thing my first week as we were getting off a train in a little Missouri town that had only two stores in it. He said that the one customer we sold there was the much better merchant of the two and it was no use to go near the other one.