skillful salesmanship used by an applicant for a position can be depended on to make the best possible impression of his desirability; just as the practiced art of the professional salesman enables him to present the qualities and values of his goods in the most favorable light.  The masterly selling process is not very difficult to learn.  Proficiency in its use can be gained gradually by any one who practices consciously every day the actual sale of ideas in the artistic way.

[Sidenote:  Knowledge of Salesmanship Develops Confidence]

As was stated in the Introduction to this book, it has been proved conclusively in business that particular principles and methods of selling are certain to produce the highest average of closed orders.  In other words, success for the professional salesman is assured if he develops certain qualifications, and if he does certain things; all within the capacity of any normal, intelligent man.  Scientific sales executives know positively, as the result of comparative tests, that the salesman who develops these personal qualifications, and who does these things, should get his quota of business and hold it.  Hence, as has been said, specific training is given in the sales schools of the most successful businesses, along the lines of best selling practice.

[Sidenote:  Practical Principles]

When the individual salesman who has been so trained commences work in his territory, he learns in his experiences with buyers that the principles and methods he has been taught are actually most effective.  Assuming that he has developed his best capabilities pretty fully, and that he has become fairly skillful in using what he knows about how to sell his line, he works with continually growing confidence that he will succeed.  Why should he doubt his complete selling power?  He knows there is a field for his goods in this territory.  He knows clearly and vividly what ideas he wants to get across to the minds of prospective buyers.  He knows—­most important of all—­just how to make convincing and attractive impressions of the desirability and true value of what he presents for purchase.  He comprehends the most effective ways to show prospects both their need for his goods and that he has come, with a real purpose of service, to satisfy that need.

You, the non-professional salesman of yourself, will sell your “goods of sale” with similar complete confidence in your power to gain and to control your opportunities for success—­if you, too, use the right selling process.

This set of books explains and demonstrates in detail the principles and methods of the successful salesman of ideas.  The Introduction and twelve Chapters of the present series apply the selling process especially to the sale of ideas about one’s self, with particular relation to self-advancement in the world.  “The Selling Process,” companion book to “Certain Success,” shows the master professional salesman at work, getting orders with assurance.