Walk in very serious. You are not applying for a boy’s job. Money is to pass. Be quiet, fine, and serious. Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
Walk in with a big laugh. Don’t look worried. Start off with a couple of your good stories to lighten things up. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it – because personality always wins the day.
I get so lonely – especially when business is bad and there’s nobody to talk to. I get the feeling that I’ll never sell anything anymore, that I won’t make a living for you, or a business, a business for the boys.
My father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man! We’ve got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family, Howard. I thought I’d go out with my older brother and try to locate him and maybe even settle in the North with the old man. And I was almost decided to go – when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman. And he was eighty-four years old, and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers – I’ll never forget – and pick up the phone and call the buyers, without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career that a man could want. Because what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up his phone and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? You know, when – when he died, by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the NewYork, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston – when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains – for months after that. You see, in those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect and comradeship and gratitude in it. Today, it’s all cut and dried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear or personality. You see what I mean? They don’t know me anymore.
I’m talking about your father! There were promises made across this desk! You mustn’t tell me you’ve got people to see. I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!
It’s not what you do, Ben, it’s who you know and the smile on your face! It’s contacts, Ben, contacts! The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and that’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked!
