Practical Salesmanship

B.J. Williams At the present time Mr. Williams is director of sales for the Paraffine Companies, Inc., of san Francisco. When he first assumed that position in 1911 he had a sales force of a dozen men. Today there are more than a hundred men who work with him, as he likes to say, in marketing $20,000,000 annually of the Paraffine Company’s paints, roofings and floor coverings. His unique methods of training men, and bringing out the best in them, has won for him national recognition. He has contributed articles on this subject to more than forty business magazines; he has addressed hundreds of business men’s meetings, and has lectures on salesmanship and sales management at the Harvard school of Business administration, the Colleges of Commerce of Ohio State as well as Northwestern university and numerous other schools. The series of lectures, around which this book is built, were delivered at the University of California. He has also done considerable broadcasting over Station KGO, operated by the general Electric Company at Oakland. Mr. Williams was born in Wales in 1864. He came to America with his parents when a year old, and settled in a little village outside of Pittsburgh. While still a little chap of ten years, he went to work in the mines to help support a widowed mother and her four younger children. Ten years later he left the mines to study bookkeeping. Unable to get a position after finishing his course, he went to work for $ 6.00 a week as a collector. He was successful. He worked and saved and finally got enough money together to take the big adventure. In 1892 he went into the real estate business for himself. Then came the panic of 1893, and he lost everything. A few years later he joined Armour. Later, however, Mr. Williams had on opportunity to prove his ability to manage a business. In 1911, after leaving Armour, he took over the management of a small soap business in Berkeley, California, and in two years trebled the sales, reduced the cost of selling one-third, and oversold the capacity of the plant. Mr. Williams is a man of engaging personality. He is a large man. But if there is any one thing about him that singles him out from the crowd it is knowing how to treat people. That is the touchstone of his success both as a salesman and as a manager of salesmen. His formula is simple: “Treat them as you would like to be treated. It is the golden rule. When applied it gets better results in every worth while way than all the substitutes that man in his ignorance has devised. “