We Have With Us To-night

Blue Book, November, 1919

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HAT is this that the boys are telling about Billy Thomas at the Gordon-Johnson banquet?” asked Ben Clark of Tom Dawson as they met in the hotel lobby. “Billy was there, all right,” responded Tom. “Were you there?” asked Ben. “No, Sam Agnew told me about it— he is their sales manager, you know.” “How did Billy come to tackle a stunt like that?” “Well, I guess I had a spoon in that dish,” said Tom. “I met Agnew about six weeks ago, and he was preparing a program for their sales-conference. Once a year they have all their salesmen come in, —about a hundred and fifty salesmen— and they hold a sales-conference that lasts four or five

days. They always end up with a big banquet, and they usually have two or three speeches at the banquet by prominent men: but Sam wanted something different this time, and he asked me what I thought would be a good stunt. “ ‘That depends on what you are after,’ says I. ‘If you simply want to entertain the boys, that is one thing; but if you want to ginger them up and put pep into them for business, why, that of course is something else again.’ “ ‘I would like to give them something they could use,’ says Sam, ‘but of course we hand them all kinds of business dope at the conference, and so what we give them at the banquet ought to be different.’ “Just then an idea popped into my head. ‘I know what would be a big thing for you.’ says I. ‘if only you could work it.’

Blue Book “ ‘What?’ says he. “ ‘Get a first-class salesman that sells some other line, some fellow that has a reputation— and let him cut loose on your men and sell them some big idea.’ “ ‘What idea?’ says Sam. “ ‘Why, his own big idea,’ I says. ‘It’s like this: Every man that does things in a big way has got some big principle or idea that he works on, and whether he knows it or not, that idea has a whole lot to do with his success.’ “ ‘That is a pretty large order for a salesman,’ says Sam. ‘Have you got some man in mind?’ “ ‘Yes.’ I says. ‘I know just the man for the job—Billy Thomas. He travels for the Boyd & Bidwell Coffee and Spice Mills, and believe me, that boy is some salesman.’ “Yes, I met him once,’ says Sam. ‘He is a regular fellow.’ “But I see some difficulties in the way.’ I says. “What?’ says Sam. “Well, in the first place,’ I says, ‘if Billy thinks that you are trying to bunco him into making a speech, you couldn’t get him to do it in a thousand years, and then if you do get him to come in and pull off a selling-stunt, the danger is that he would try to make a regular speech, and then he would sure fall down.’ “ ‘I get you’ says Sam. ‘The problem would be to get Billy to act natural.’ “ ‘That’s it,’ I says. ‘When a man tries to be what he is not, he isn’t himself or anybody else; but if you could get Billy to go in there and just be Billy Thomas, believe me, he would stand that bunch of salesmen on their heads. But then,’ I says, ‘I am not saying that you could get him, or that he could deliver the goods if you did get him.’ “ ‘I understand,’ says Sam; ‘but your scheme is worth considering.’

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ELL, Sam got to thinking the thing over, and the more he thought about it, the more favorable the plan looked; so he got into touch with Billy. Now, Sam is an old salesman himself, and be did a pretty smooth job with Billy. He told Billy that they were pretty well fed up on speeches at their banquets, and they had decided not to have a speech this year. ‘What we want,’ says he, “is something practical. We want a regular traveling salesman that has had a lot of experience to take some big idea or principle that he has always worked on and go right after the fellows hammerand-tongs, and sell it to them just as if it was a bill of goods. “But Billy was foxy. ‘I don’t see much difference between that and making a speech, he says. ‘A man would have to get up in front of those guys and talk, wouldn’t he? How is that different from a speech?’ “ ‘See here!’ says Sam, ‘Supposing that you went down here to sell a man a stock of goods; you would have to get up in front of him and talk, wouldn’t you? But that isn’t a speech.’ “ ‘No, but if there was a hundred and fifty of him, it would sure be a speech,’ says Billy. “ ‘Not unless you made it so,’ says Sam. ‘What we want is to have you talk just as you would if you were selling one man—sell the idea just as you would sell a barrel of coffee to a new customer. We don’t want a speech—we want a selling stunt, and you are the man to pull it off. There will be fifty dollars in it for you! Now, then, haven’t you got some big idea that you have used in the selling game?’ “ ‘Sure I have,’ says Billy. ‘I have a motto that I have used for over ten years, and believe me, it works to beat the band. It has been worth fifty thousand dollars to me—not

We Have With Us To-night a cent less.’ “ ‘That’s the idea,’ says Sam. ‘Now, then, you can sell that motto to the boys — just go in and make a sale, no speech, no oratory, just put the sale over—see?’ “So Sam got Billy to skidding, and he closed up the deal. The banquet was to come off in thirty days; so Billy had plenty of time to think the thing over. And then Billy’s trouble began. At first the scheme looked fine to him, and that fifty dollars looked like easy money, but when he began to plan out a sale to a hundred and fifty guys sitting in their seats, why, the more Billy thought about it the more that sale idea looked like a pipe-dream. Sam had simply camouflaged the thing and put one over on him—he was in for a speech. “Well, Billy made up his mind to be a good sport and go through with it anyway; so he went to work on the speech, and about that time he saw in a newspaper that President Wilson usually writes his speeches out and reads them when he makes a speech; and that looked pretty good to Billy, because then a man couldn’t possibly fall down. So Bill starts to write his speech, and when he gets ten or twelve pages written, he mails them to Sam and asks him to look it over, and he tells him about President Wilson, and says that he guesses he will do the same thing if Sam is agreeable.

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F course Sam sees that Billy is gumming the whole thing up; so he writes Billy a letter and hands him some hot stuff. ‘For the love of Mike, Billy, don’t get any such idea as that into your head,’ says he. ‘Because if you try to do like President Wilson does, you will fall down on it and make a devil of a mess out of the thing. We don’t want a speech; we just want Billy Thomas to get into action—see?’ “Well, that set Billy right back where he

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began and two weeks were gone. Then he went to work in dead earnest trying to figure out how he was going to get next to that bunch of men with his proportion. But when the day of the banquet arrived and Billy started for Gordon-Johnson’s he had no definite idea how he was going at it to put over that cussed sale and he felt like a man going to jail. “Sam gave him the glad hand and asked him how he felt. ‘I feel like damnation,’ says Billy. Sam laughed, and said that Billy would feel easier after he got started, but all the same Sam began to feel uneasy himself. Billy got there in time to attend the afternoon session of the sales-conference. They were having a discussion of the four steps in a sale; first, attention; second, interest; third, desire; fourth, action; and all at once Billy got an idea. He asked Sam if he could have a room all by himself for an hour or two, and Sam got him one. Then Billy shut himself up in the room and paced up and down the floor working out that sale along the line of those four steps. He got his talk sort of whipped into shape, and while he was doing it, the plan looked pretty good to him, and he got excited over it; but after he completed it and began to fix the different points in mind, why, the whole thing looked rotten to him, and he could just see that bunch of salesmen guying the life out of him. He would have given a month’s salary to get out of that fix.

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ELL, when the banquet came on, Billy and Sam sat with the nabobs at the main table, and Billy felt like a four-flusher. He didn’t have any appetite, and when Sam asks him why he doesn’t eat, Billy says it’s because he has got cold feet; and Sam told me afterward that his own feet were getting cold too. Well, after they all got through eating and lighted their cigars and sort of squared themselves as

Blue Book much as to say, ‘Now start your fireworks and let us have something classy,’ why, Sam started to introduce Billy. He intended to get off some jokes and be funny, but he was sort of flabbergasted, and instead of being funny he made an ass of himself so that when Billy got up he faced a situation that would have took the nerve out of Chauncey M Depew. Then something happened that the men at the main table weren’t looking for It seems that some of the salesmen that knew Billy had put up a job on him—just out of deviltry—to try and get his goat; and so when Billy got up, why, a bunch of men down in the center began to sing out, ‘Oh say, can you see—’ and another bunch began to yell, ‘Why, look who’s here,’ and half a dozen other guys got up and says: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we have with us to-night—’ “Sam told me it was the worst jazz he ever heard at a banquet, and he glanced up at Billy to see how he was taking it; but Billy was standing there grinning, with his hands stuck in his pockets, and Sam said there was a glitter in Billy’s eye, and all at once Sam saw that this was the very best thing that could happen, because the boys were stirring up Billy’s fighting spirit, and a ballyhoo like this was Billy’s favorite dish. “ ‘All right, go to it, good people!’ shouts Billy with a laugh. ‘I am going to get under your epidermis when it comes my turn, so just enjoy yourselves while the kidding is good.’ “By the time they subsided, Billy was right up on his toes. ‘This isn’t a speech,’ says he. ‘It’s a sale. I am going to sell you men something. Now, this afternoon you were discussing the four steps in a sale. You remember the first step is attention; so I must have your attention first. I am going to get it this way. I am going to stand here with my mouth shut till every man of you comes to attention. Now, then, boys, sit still and keep

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your eyes on Billy.’ “Then Billy stuck his hands into his pockets and kept perfectly still, and of course it was only a minute when every one of the fellows was still too.

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LL Right, I have got your attention,’ says Billy; ‘and now the next step is to get your interest, and that is going to be easy, because this thing I am about to hand out to you is something that a man can cash in on, and there isn’t anything quite so interesting as good old, spondulix. This proposition of mine is worth an investment of twenty thousand dollars to each one of you if you will take it and use it. You can actually cash in on it every year—more than five per cent on twenty thousand dollars. I have done it in my selling, and you can do it in yours’ “ ‘What is it, Billy? Oil stock for a sideline?’ says one of the men. “ ‘No sir, oil-stock is a gamble,’ says Billy with a laugh. ‘There’s no gamble about this proposition. It’s a sure thing, and twenty thousand dollars is a low estimate—it has been worth more than fifty thousand to me. Now, before I tell you what it is and what it will do, I want to tell you a few things that it won’t do.’ “ ‘In the first place, it won’t take the place of hard work—see? I have been selling goods on the road for sixteen years, and each year I have learned to have more confidence in plugging. I believe that things are so constituted that you can safely bank on the ultimate results of an honest day’s work, and if any of you fellows are kicking and grouching about your luck, the chances are you are loafing on your job.’ “Well, this was pretty warm stuff, and Sam said that some of the fellows began to wriggle around in their chairs. “ ‘Then again,’ says Billy, ‘this twenty-

We Have With Us To-night thousand-dollar proposition won’t take the place of a square deal. In the long run of things a business man has got to be square or go broke.’ “ ‘Hold on, Bill—let me ask a question,’ says one of the fellows. “ ‘Shoot,’ says Billy. “ ‘Commodore Vanderbilt didn’t go broke, but didn’t he say the public be damned?’ “ ‘Maybe he did say that,’ admits Billy, ‘but wait a minute. Who gave the American people their first high-class railway? Who gave them the best transportation service for the money they ever had? Wasn’t it the old Commodore?’ ‘Say, Billy,’ calls another, ‘didn’t P. T. Barnum, say the American people liked to be humbugged?’ “ ‘Yes, but, who gave the people the best circus, for the money? Didn’t Barnum have the largest show and the biggest elephants and the funniest clowns? Sure, Commodore Vanderbilt and Phineas T. Barnum gave the people a pretty square deal for their money.’ “ ‘All right, Billy,’ says one of the salesmen named Farnworth, ‘but what about that twenty-thousand dollar beauty? What is it?’ “ ‘That’s what,’ calls out some other fellow. ‘Trot it out, Billy! Lead us to it!’ and then they all began to stamp and whistle the way the gallery does when they want the show to begin. But they didn’t get Billy’s goat. “That’s the stuff,’ he says. ‘That is the kind of a rise I want out of this bunch. ‘Cause why? Because it indicates that you are interested—you want to be shown. So now we have taken the second step— interest. This sale is half made. Now, then, the third step is desire. I must make you want it. You will want it, all right, when you really see it; so it is up to me now to uncork it.’

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“The men really were interested, and it took Billy only a minute to quiet them. “ ‘This proposition is in the form of a motto,’ says Billy. ‘I saw it in a book years ago, and I took it and began to use it. A motto, you know, is a boiled-down idea in handy form so you can pull it out like a foot measure and slap it right onto a situation. So here is the twenty-thousand-dollar proposition—listen: It is always best to affirm the best. Now I am going to repeat it and let it soak in.’ “ ‘Oh, for the love of Mike,’ says Farnsworth, ‘are you handing us some of that Oh-be-joyful-Pollyanna stuff?’ “ ‘Not on your life!’ says Billy. ‘There is no hot air about this proposition. It is as solid as real estate or a national bank, and I will show you how a man cashes in on it. But first let us understand just what this motto means. When I say affirm, I don’t mean talk. I mean the affirmative mental slant at a thing—a sort of positive mental habit—see? And when I say best I mean the best there is in the thing or the man—there’s always a best in everything, so this motto means where a man’s mental slant is always toward the best that is actually there.’

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HEN Billy goes on to apply the proposition to a man’s own self, and he shows that when a man affirms the best about himself, why, that is what he sizes himself up to be, and then he begins to act as if it was so; and Billy claimed that that helped to make it so, and then he went on to show that fifty per cent of sales are put over by the personality of the salesman. Then Farnsworth, he butts in and asks Billy what he means by personality, and Billy comes back with the statement that personality is what a man sizes himself up to be. ‘Billy Thomas is what I affirm about Billy Thomas; and don’t you forget it!’ says Billy. And then

Blue Book he points out how men usually take us at our own valuation, and by golly, I guess Billy was right.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Clark. “Take one of these conceited cusses, now, and—” “I’m not talking now about conceited cusses,” retorted Tom “Conceit is where a man affirms something about himself that isn’t there—see?” “All right; go ahead with the banquet.” “Then Billy takes the same proposition and applies it to a line of goods, and he goes on to show that when a salesman affirms the best there is in his line of goods, then his line is the best. Well, of course, that started something. The fellows began to call Billy down. “ ‘Just suppose, now,’ says one of them, ‘that his competitor has a better piece of goods than he has, can a salesman make his goods superior by just turning on the hot air?’ “ ‘I am not talking about the other man’s goods,’ says Billy. ‘Let him look after his own line. I’m talking about you and me and our line. When I affirm the best there is in my line, that’s the kind of a line it is to me, and that will help to make it look that way to a customer too.’

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ELL, old Farnsworth, he backed up. He said that such talk as that was all tommyrot. ‘A thing is what it is,’ says Farnsworth, ‘and you can affirm till you are black in the face and not make a dang bit of difference with it.’ “And then he calls on Billy to show how you can change anything by just thinking something about it “ ‘All right,’ says Billy. ‘I ran across a statement the other day by one of these psychology experts, and I saw it was a scientific explanation of my motto. So I cut it out and saved it, and here it is.’ And Billy

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pulls it out of his pocket and reads it: ‘Every affirmative thought that relates to action generates in the human organism a motorimpulse that tends to corresponding action.’ “ ‘There you have the whole thing in a nutshell,’ says Billy. ‘An affirmative mental slant starts something inside of a man that gets him going in that direction. It makes a man act as if the thing was so, and that helps to make it so.’ “ ‘But supposing it ain’t so,’ says Farnsworth. ‘Can you make it so if it’s something else, by just affirming that it is so?’ “See here’ Farnsworth,’ says Billy: ‘The best there is in a thing is so, isn’t it? And when I affirm it, why, then it is so to me, isn’t it? And that helps me to make the other fellow affirm it, and then it’s so to him, isn’t it? The big point is that when I affirm it, why, it makes me dig my toe-corks in—see?’ “Then Billy goes on to show that the opposite of this is where a man takes the negative mental slant at a thing— Billy said that some one had called it negativitis—and of course that works just the opposite and paralyzes action, and Billy shows that the groucher and the kicker and the guy that’s always putting up an alibi for not selling more goods is simply suffering from a case of negativitis. Then Billy goes on to describe the symptoms of negativitis—where a salesman sits around the hotel and cusses the town, or where a customer kicks on some goods and the salesman takes it for granted without looking into it, that the house had put something over on him, or where a competitor has worked the town ahead of him and the salesman concludes that there’s nothing doing, and dozens of other ways that a salesman shows that, he has got the negative slant at things. “Now, of course we have all got more or less of that negative stuff in us, and Billy had

We Have With Us To-night something on those boys right, and he kept rubbing it into them about that negativitis until some of the fellows threw up their hands and yelled, ‘Kamerad!’ and then they all began to applaud and gave Billy a great hand. “ ‘Now, then,’ says Billy, ‘I am going to tell you about two salesmen that I know. One of them has got an affirmative slant at things, and the other has got negativitis. If I should tell you their names (which I am not going to do), why, some of you fellows would know them. They both work for the same company, and they are about the same age, and have about the same natural ability—both of them are good fellows, too.’

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HEN Billy went on to tell about one of the fellows that he called Jim. Now, Jim is one of these guys that sort of automatically raise a presumption against everything that comes up. When Jim goes into a town, the place looks kind of bum to him, and every customer in that town has got something about him that makes it hard to sell him, and every bit of tough luck that Jim ever had in that place sort of stares him in the face, and his selling-job looks kind of punk to him anyway, and he will be mighty glad when he can quit the road and go into business for himself or something. “ ‘Now, then,’ says Billy, ‘this boy is a good hustler and good talker, and he has been with his company for eight years, but he is only about four hundred dollars a year ahead of where he started. He is plugging along on about two thousand when he ought to be pulling down twice that much. Jim thinks that it’s circumstances that keep him back, but it isn’t— it’s negativitis, and everybody can see it except Jim. One of these days the company will can him, and then Jim will bawl them out for playing dirt on him, and I guess he never will see that the

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thing that queered him was that negative slant at things that prevented him from going at the game like a winner, because when a man sees himself up against it in advance, why, he’s going to make a poor showing as sure as guns—and that is what ails Jim. “ ‘Now, the other salesman we will call Al,’ says Billy. ‘He is just the opposite. Al always takes an affirmative slant at everything. When he goes into a town, it looks to him as if the chances to sell goods in that town are thicker than huckleberries. If one merchant turns him down, why, there’s another one up at the next corner that is sure to buy, and Al has a friendly regard for every merchant in the town; and as for himself, why, Al has no doubt at all of his ability to put the sales across, and when it comes to a bully job why, selling goods has got them all faded especially a traveling salesman’s job. “Al wouldn’t trade jobs with the president of the company; and talk about a line of goods—oh, boy, that line of Al’s! Just let Al get to talking about their brands, and his eyes will shine like a couple of shootingstars. Al was talkin’ to me one day about their brand of baking-powder,’ says Billy, ‘and I says to him: “See here, Al, just between you and me confidentially, why we both know that anyone could go and get some cream of tartar and cornstarch and soda and mix ‘em up according to any good formula and make just as good as a bakingsoda as yours.” “ ‘And say, you have seen Al go up in the air. “Why, great Scott, Billy!” says he. “Are you aware that the cream of tartar in our baking power is made from the finest selected grapes out of the best vineyard in California? And that the soda we use is not common powdered soda but genuine granular soda, the best in the world; and we pack that baking powder in lithographed tin containers with a friction top cover that

Blue Book keeps it as fresh as if it was hermetically sealed?” And so Al went on about that baking powder until he made it look as if a man who didn’t have some of it in his house was missing the chance of a lifetime.

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OW, that is Al. And how does he cash in on that affirmative slant at things? Well, I happen to know that be pulls down a salary and commission over five thousand a year, and that is going some for a traveling salesman. Now, then, when Mr. Agnew introduced me, he was good enough to say that I am the star salesman in our company. I won’t say whether he is correct in that statement or not, but when I started sixteen years ago selling goods, I didn’t have a dollar. To-day I own a two-hundred-acre farm all paid for, worth a hundred and fifty dollars an acre, and I own fifty shares of stock in our company. I won’t tell you what my salary is, but it is some salary, and I have done it all selling goods: and this motto has been the biggest selling

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asset I have ever had. So here it is: It is always best to affirm the best. Now, what are you men going to do about it?’ “Then Farnsworth jumps up and says ‘I move that we buy this proposition!’ And a lot of other fellows second the motion, and Agnew says: ‘All in favor of the motion stand up.’ And they all got up and then jumped up into their chairs and Agnew said they gave Billy the greatest hand he ever heard at a banquet or anywhere else. They wouldn’t stop until Billy got up again. “Good!’ says Billy. ‘This is what I call action, so this closes the sale. The proposition is yours, boys. Go to it, and good luck to you.’ “Sam said that the next day he sent Billy a check for one hundred dollars instead of fifty, and that it was cheap at that.” Ben nibbed his nose reflectively. “Well, say, Billy did make a speech after all!” “Speech—sure he made a speech; but he didn’t know it.”