16. Selling ability not necessarily inherent.—E. St. Elmo Lewis tells a story of a director of salesmen who was saying to bim one day : "No, you can't teach a man salesmanship—it has to be born in him." The speaker had been watching one of his men in the front part of the store demonstrate a mechanical device. When the customer had gone he stepped quickly for ward. "Bill," said be, "I notice that you did all the demonstrating and all the talking. Why didn't you let your prospect handle the machine—operate it? By letting him play with it, you would have held his interest and created in him a desire to own the ma chine. Instead of that, he walked out on you." He had laid down a definite principle of salesmanship. This illustration serves to indicate what little thought the average business man is giving to the subject when he says that salesmen are born and cannot be made.
There is a great deal of discussion as to whether or not there is a science of salesmanship. We do not have to decide that question here. But even if we leave it entirely open, it is quite clear that we can apply scientific methods to the subject—in other words, we can approach the sub ject with an unbiased mind, delve into the experience of numerous men who have sold goods, and draw from that investigation cer tain fundamental principles. An art is defined as the practical application of knowledge or natural ability. In adding to our natural selling ability the knowledge of the principles of salesmanship that we have gath ered by the scientific methods described, and applying those principles to the practice of selling, we are prac tising the art of salesmanship. We are then doing
nothing more or less than adding to our own experi ence in the selling field the experience of other suc cessful salesmen.
17. Knowledge plus practice.—The trained engi neer, fresh from his technical school. is probably not so good a bridge-builder as the foreman who has worked at bridge-building since he was a boy. Give the engineer five years of experience, however, and he will be the better bridge-builder of the two, simply because he has at his disposal both his own experience and the experience of the entire engineering pro fession. The salesman, too, needs constant practice. Tie needs his own experience to tie to the experience of others. I3ut while we emphasize the value of ex perience we must not underemphasize the importance of instruction in principles. The mediocre man can be improved by instruction; the good man can be made better by instruction; and the best of men can be considerably strengthened by instruction. The great salesman who is born and not made is greater at forty than he was at twenty, because Ile is richer by twenty years of experience. A study of the princi ples of salesmanship will in a measure take the place of experience and thus shorten that period between twenty and forty, and bring the ambitious man more quickly to his goal.