Why Did the Sales Manager Take Notes on His Pitch?

A salesman’s opening, a sales manager’s notebook, and what it means for the first line of anything you write that has to sell.

Cameron McPherson was selling advertising space in New York when he was sent to “pick up a contract” from E. D. Gibbs, sales manager of the Ketterlinus Lithographing Company. Gibbs had taken the job “after many years experience in training salesmen for the National Cash Register Company.” McPherson had his opening ready:

“I don’t know whether it has ever occurred to you, Mr. Gibbs, before—but your company is losing at least $5,000 a year by not putting ——— on your sales force.”

“Then I lunged into a carefully thought-out canvass.” Gibbs didn’t argue. He pulled a notebook out of his desk and began to write. McPherson slowed down, waiting for his full attention. Then Gibbs spoke:

Here is what he said, as McPherson told it in 1915:

“Keep right on, Mr. McPherson, I just wanted to get that skilful approach of yours down before I forgot it—you know, I am writing a book on ‘Approaches I Have Met.’” Cameron McPherson, “Giving the Letter a Running Start,” Printers’ Ink, June 17, 1915, p. 18

McPherson called it his “last offense.” His first sentence told a man who trained salesmen for a living that he had missed something. It named a loss it couldn’t prove, and it asked him nothing. His cure was a question.

Then → Now: the same move, on your desk this week

None of this needs a printing press. In every issue I set the old move beside the same move made today. Two of the four pairs in Issue #1:

• Then: a Chicago buyer told McPherson he wanted “a description of his goods and his best prices, not advice how to run our business.” Now: ask one question about your customer’s situation, then give the specs and the price. Skip the advice nobody asked for.
• Then: the Little Schoolmaster of Printers’ Ink on circular letters: “As long as he will talk back he is a prospect.” Now: answer every cranky reply to your email with a question. A reader arguing with you is still reading.

Every move I show you has to be honest, and legal where you sell. A question lead is not a trick to put off the point. Ask it, then give the description and the price. If the honest answer to your question doesn’t lead to your offer, it’s the wrong question.

Field Assignment No. 1: Rewrite Your First Line

Every issue ends with one job. This one takes forty minutes this week, and one mailing list. Three of its four steps:

The fourth step tries it on real readers, and tells you what to count. Mail me your old first line, your question and the two counts. With your permission I’ll print the best pairs in a later issue.

Issue #1 tells the whole story of McPherson and the notebook, with three more cases and a 1915 ad marked up in pencil, laid out over 16 printed pages, with the page reference for every quote so you can check it yourself.

What Bellboy Press is

Showmen, salesmen and ad men solved your marketing problem a century ago. I find the story and show you how to use it now. Monthly, on paper.

The stories come from anything printed in 1930 and earlier: the memoirs of showmen and circus press agents, the trade papers travelling salesmen read, the speeches of the old orators, the ad men’s own books, and the history in between. Every quotation is word for word from the original, with its source and page number, so you can check me. Where the accounts disagree, I say so.

What ties them together is one sum. In 1905 John E. Kennedy wrote a series of articles on advertising, and his publishers later issued them as a book. One line in it sums up the whole trade: “True Advertising is just Salesmanship multiplied.” The showman selling tickets, the salesman at a farmhouse door and the copywriter at his desk were doing the same job: giving a buyer a reason. The good ones kept score, in tickets sold, orders written and coupons returned. When something didn’t sell, they could see it.

Each issue takes one of those stories, names the tactic inside it, and translates it into an honest, legal move you can use on whatever you are selling this month. Then it gives you one job to do with it.

What’s in Issue #1: “Approaches I Have Met”

Why it comes on paper

Each issue looks like a file someone pulled out of an old agency’s cabinet. Black ink on 16 letter-size pages, stapled. Reproductions of the original ads and book pages, notes in the margins, and a Swipe Sheet you can copy and pin up. It’s mailed flat in a plain white 9×12 envelope, First-Class.

It comes on paper because you’ll read it properly that way. Nobody skims a printed file at a red light. It sits on the desk until you’ve done the assignment.

Who it’s for

• You sell something, and you write the ads, emails, pages, pitches or shop signs for it yourself.
• You’d rather learn from people who were judged by the tickets sold and the coupons that came back than from this week’s advice.
• You’ll actually do a short assignment once a month.

It is not for you if you want templates to copy word for word, tricks you couldn’t explain to a customer, or if you won’t open an envelope.

What it costs

Issue #1 is $9.95, postage included. If you like it, do nothing. Thirty days after you order, your membership continues at $47 a month, postage included, and a new issue arrives each month. If you don’t want it, cancel any time at bellboypress.com/cancel and I’ll take care of it. You won’t have to give a reason.

For now I can only mail to US addresses.