After a long drive I reached my hotel in Rochester one night at about nine. I had previously made a date with myself to devote an hour before retirement to thinking up how to persuade my prospect the next day. During the evening I piled up and jotted down ideas. My next morning’s interview succeeded, largely because of the creative thinking I had done the night before. That victory happened to be a turning point in my career.
A vice-president in charge of purchases told me about a salesman who had long called him without landing a single order. “He never got discouraged. Each time I turned him down, he’d just smile and say he’d try it again. Eventually I found myself giving him over $100,000 worth of business a year. What won me over? It was his habit of giving me an idea each time he called”
If a man on the road keeps his imagination awake, he can capture ideas that can help his home office. For example, G. Cullen Thomas, General Mills Vice-President and Director of Product Control, reported this case:
“One of our salesmen sent us some partially-baked dinner rolls that he had picked up at a small bakeshop in Florida. They were blond, almost white in colour, anything but appetizing. But when we reheated them to complete their bake, we had delicious, hot rolls with a delightful home made flavour. We immediately secured the rights to this simple process and turned it over to our research and technical personnel for further experimental study. About eight weeks later, we were able to present to the baking industry the revolutionary ‘Brown ‘n’ Serve’ bakery products that have since won their way into millions of American homes.”
Thus an imaginatively alert salesman can be a long arm of his company’s creative research.
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