From Trusted – to Derided. Where the Sales Profession Went Wrong

We went from this in 1911:

“True salesmanship is the science of service” – Arthur Sheldon

To, in 1927:

“The minute you are approached by a salesman, you tend to pull back in your shell and curl up like an armadillo.” – Hiram Blauvelt

What happened? 

The sales profession as we know it today, where you are…

• Hired as an employee of a company (versus being what is essentially a manufacturers’ rep)
• Provided training
• Given a dedicated territory
• Paid via a variable compensation plan that is part salary, part commission, 
• Managed by a sales manager, 
• Attending a sales kickoff (then called a sales “convention”
• Given a quota,
• Have the opportunity to attend a trip for top performers 

…all came into being in the 1890s, mostly originating from John Patterson, founder and CEO of the NCR Corporation.

The original concept of the sales profession was to stand on the shoulders of service – as a doctor or a member of the clergy would at the time. The focus was to help customers better themselves and their organizations as a guide and educator. 

During the early 1900s through World War 1 in 1918, the sales profession was a trusted, respected, and even admired profession. So much so that sales skills were taught in many of the top universities, and even several public high schools. 

It was also a period of rapid economic expansion. New methods of manufacturing led to new products and possibilities. Distribution methods and global accessibility grew, meaning we could not only produce innovative products at scale, but the addressable market was large, too! 

The theme of the sales profession was “service”. Everyone from the President of the World Sales Congress, Norval Hawkins to even the President of the United States was preaching that sales was a service profession, and needed to stay focused as such.

Salespeople selling the right products at the right prices to the right customers at the right time helped those customers grow and succeed. The idea was that when those customers succeed, they buy more and hire more. As a result, the entire economy grows. It was the core message President Woodrow Wilson delivered at the 1916 World

Sales Congress in Detroit, Michigan to the 3,000 attendees.

As the First World War approached, the economy essentially shut down to focus on the national war effort. It sent many salespeople off to fight, but also pent-up demand. Following the war’s end in November of 1918, 1919 and early 1920 were boom times here in the United States. Selling was easy. The demand for salespeople exceeded the supply, meaning many salespeople changed jobs like they did during The Great Resignation times of 2021. Selling was easy. It was low-pressure.

Just like mid-2022 into 2023, the economy took a turn for the worse in 1921 and 1922. The “Forgotten Depression” had taken hold, and selling had gotten very difficult. Mass layoffs, with sales organizations “practically purging their entire sales forces.”

However, those rough selling times triggered the demise of the reputation of selling.

The Reputation Erosion

Service as a motto for the sales profession thrived in the 1910s, partially because the demand for goods, for the most part, aligned with the supply.  During periods of steady growth, when the right solutions are sold to the right clients at the right time, the salesperson can rightly provide a service. For the companies where their product does not fit a need, they would go out of business – either voluntarily, or economic necessity would force them out. 

However, World War 1 set the United States’ economy on a rollercoaster ride from 1918 through the 1920s. Up years, followed by down years. Wild swings. These swings eventually culminated in The Great Depression which took hold in 1929. The war stopped the economy. Coming out of the war in 1919, pent-up demand coupled with increased production capacity meant a booming economy. However, as 1920 arrived and pent-up demand was met, suddenly manufacturers produced more than the market would conceivably consume. 

1921 and 1922 consisted of what is known as “The Forgotten Depression”. It drove many organizations to purge the bulk of their sales organizations. Salesperson turnover was as high as 77% in 1921 and rose to 85% in 1922. 

Overproduction created desperation. Desperation created “high-pressure selling”. High-pressure selling crushed the reputation of the sales profession.  

High-Pressure Selling

In my research, the term “high pressure selling” doesn’t appear or exist before the 1920s.

 “By high-pressure selling, we mean those types of unscrupulous and predaceous selling which are carried on by methods of coercion or deception which do not allow deliberate choice on the part of the buyers.” – Dynamic Aspects of the Arts of Selling by William Lloyd Davis, 1922

A rollercoaster of a decade like the 1920s meant boom years like 1920, 1923, or 1926 made selling easy, but that pendulum ride down was just as bad – as each of those boom years was followed by rough years in 1921, 1924, or 1927.  As a result, many sales organizations swore by their high-pressure methods. 

What did high-pressure selling mean? William Lloyd Davis went on with this deeper explanation:

“It is once-over selling. Customers are not expected to buy a second time. No business is being built up. Personal friendship is not an important consideration. One call is made on a man. He must decide at once. Salesmen take the responsibility of all misrepresentation, as the printed literature disclaims all liability for the statements of the salesman. It is only a special favor to the buyer that he has been favored with a call. He must decide now or never. The opportunity will not last. The telephone and telegraph are used…the matter is so urgent. The buyer knows he is taking a chance, but his curiosity and gambling spirit have been aroused, the proposition looks too good to pass by entirely, and he will take a chance. His reason is temporarily asleep. He draws his check or signs a note, he scarcely knows how or why, but he has acted under the spell of the artful high-pressure salesman.”

S.H. Skinner, in a March 1927 article in Hardware World Magazine, wrote, “High-pressure selling methods have developed very rapidly in the past four years, largely caused by an overproduction on the part of the manufacturer.”

He added, “High-pressure salesmen are sent out in the territory. They come uninvited and start the house-to-house campaign. They sell fast and try to get the hardware dealer to become their agent, telling him that certain territory will be assigned and that he will be the local distributor for that particular line.”

Pressure – decide fast, or miss out! Individuals and businesses were sold beyond their needs. While that was bad, one additional dimension made it even worse…

Consumer Debt

The 1920s represented a massive rise in consumer debt. While credit cards wouldn’t arrive until the 1950s, the ability for a customer to secure debt through a banknote was on the rise. Customers were encouraged to buy now beyond their means. 

“The installment plan is the natural recourse of those who wish to sell, and those who wish to buy, desirable articles of reasonable durability, having a unit value so high that cash payment cannot easily be made.” – C.C. Hanch, “The Scope and Effect of Installment Selling”, Advertising & Selling Magazine, July 25th, 1928

“When a conditional sale is properly made, it becomes good bankable paper. The banks will use it as readily as they would a merchant’s or farmer’s note.” – S.H. Skinner, Hardware World, March 1927

Installment selling and raising of consumer debt was celebrated at the time. C.C. Hanch, General Manager of the National Association of Finance Companies, clearly had a bias here when he wrote, “Perhaps the most important effect of installment selling has been the practical obliteration of economic barriers between the rich and those in moderate circumstances. The feeling is that the rich man has not got much on the poor man. The beneficial effect of this in discouraging socialistic tendencies is incalculable.”

Everyone can have everything…until they have to pay for it. Until the banks run out of cash. Until fear takes over. 

Study.com wrote, “While other factors contributed, the rise in household debt was a significant factor in the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.”

Salespeople and high-pressure selling techniques played a “significant” role in the longest depression in our economy’s history. 

As Gifford K. Simonds wrote in The American Way to Prosperity in 1928, one year before the beginning of the Great Depression, “High pressure selling, it seems, raises the peaks of boom and depresses the valleys of depression of the business cycle.” 

If that isn’t enough to erode a reputation, I don’t know what is!

The Debates

Throughout the 1920s, well-known sales leaders took to the periodicals to debate “low pressure” versus “high pressure” selling. 

In an edition of Sales Management Magazine from 1927, Hiram Blauvelt wrote an article titled, “High Pressure Selling Is the Bunk”. He wrote, “Most of us are getting sick of high-pressure selling. We have heard it preached, published and practiced to death. New sales managers and new salesmen start off like a steam boiler under high pressure and either blow off ineffectively or blow up altogether. It seems strange that this type of selling has come into such great vogue, as it is more apt to lose orders.”

But pages later in the same edition, Tom Hanlon wrote his own article, ripping Blauvelt’s take. Titled, “Low Pressure Selling Is Nothing But Order-Taking”, Hanlon starts in with this rant:

“If Mr. Blauvelt has any children, he probably has to engage in high pressure selling, no matter how much he dislikes it. For those children of his will some day have to be high pressured into going to school. There will come times when they would much prefer to go fishing, swimming, or riding – when they would much prefer to stay out at the summer home or at the beach, than to come in and go to school. But because he is a good father, he will use all manner of so-called ‘high pressure’ methods to induce them to go.” 

He continued,

“It would be a wonderful thing if every prospect appreciated at first glance the value of the various articles offered him by salesmen,… but human beings are not built that way. All of us have to be convinced, and often the better a thing is for us, the more strenuous convincing is necessary.”

While Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Sheldon, Norval Hawkins, and all of the greatest sales philosophers from the first twenty years of the 1900s proclaimed that “service” to the customer raises all ships – high pressure sales philosophers felt that it was high pressure selling that raised all ships. 

Paul Fassnacht, a VP for Rudolf Mosse, Inc., wrote in the July 25th, 1928 edition of Advertising & Selling Magazine, “When a manufacturer is producing something people need and want and is still unable to secure outlet for his efficient production volume, he should not blame his predicament on limited national income. Clever selling ideas, well planned advertising, good merchandising, and easy purchasing terms not only stimulate buying but also increase the ability of consumers to buy. By forcing more merchandise to be sold, by high pressure selling and advertising, more people are kept working; the salesman, the advertising man, the manufacturer, the financier, the workers in the factory; each in turn earns a profit or wage, and so increases ability to consume. The growth of their buying power makes them purchasers in other industries, and thus an entire chain for the benefit of every industry operates.”

He added, “Henry Ford long ago realized that the high wages and prosperity of his employees which were made possible by huge volume and sale of that volume stimulated all industry generally and made it possible for more and more people to afford automobiles. Statisticians fifteen years ago stated confidently that the saturation point for automobiles in the United States would be reached at the five million mark. Today there are more than twenty million automobiles in the United States, and the end is not yet in sight.”

While the sales profession was being taught in many universities and high schools into the 1920s, that was all gone by the late 1920s The sales profession wasn’t one individuals grew up pursuing any longer. Irreparably damaged…and we’re still suffering the consequences.

The Low-Pressure Comeback

High pressure presided through the Great Depression years of 1929-1939. Salespeople couldn’t help but be desperate when the sale meant keeping a roof over their heads and their families fed. Departing the Great Depression, we soon after entered World War 2, which took us all the way out to 1946. 

Imagine that – a period from 1921 to 1946, 25 years, where the foundations of our profession build on a bed of service had been completely generationed out. How would we rebuild that reputation, when nobody who practiced the old way was still around?

Beginning in 1947, articles began to pop up like a series in Sales Management Magazine (May 1st, 1947) titled, “Low Pressure Selling: Is It a Forgotten Art?”, with a subtitle, “Are we placing too much emphasis on selling, and not enough on techniques which exploit the average prospect’s natural desire to buy?”

In this article, the author shared a study that was done on approaches, where a group of approximately 30 retail stores were called on – half employing high pressure techniques, the other half low pressure. 

For the high pressure 15, those were approached where orders were solicited from the very start. 5 stores were sold on the first call, several failed to repeat. Only four of the 15 became regular customers.

With the other 15, no attempt was made to sell the first time. The first call was only a pleasant introductory call, explaining why the company was expanding, what it had to offer, and that the salesman would call again the next week. The call was then followed by a letter from the home office thanking them for his courtesy to the salesperson and included a couple of sentences about the company and its approach. Then, the second time the salesperson called, he asked for the order. 10 of the 15 placed an order, and all 10 became regular customers.

Into the 1950s, there were books and magazine articles focused on the subject. One such article was written by Edward C. Bursk in 1959, who was the Managing Editor of Harvard Business Review from 1946 to 1972. In it, Bursk focused on the challenges and requirements of bringing back low pressure selling.

“All low-pressure selling runs the danger of being ineffectual unless the absence of high pressure is compensated for by positive effort. More is required of salesmen using this technique than merely being pleasant.”

In other words, so much of the low pressure approach is staked on not arousing resistance.

He added that high pressure, by definition, is more focused on emotional appeals and exaggerated claims.

“It is relatively easy to teach high pressure selling. Because the essence of that technique is that the prospect submits to something imposed on him from without, it is possible to standardize the sales presentation – to formulate it in the home office and show the salesmen how to do it. The opposite is the case with any approach involving low-pressure selling.”

Bursk believed this. “Above all, a more intelligent type is needed. A normal man will not find it unnatural or difficult to assume the habit of thinking in terms of his customers’ problems, but he will have to do a greater amount of more subtle thinking – adapting to individual cases and swinging sales on finer points. Centrainly he cannot operate by rote and ritual. 

I secured a copy of Edward Berman’s 1957 book, Successful Low Pressure Salesmanship. “The gentle art of making yourself easy to buy from”.

One of the reviews, which came from the Indianapolis News, struck me as almost comical…

“His gentle words warm the cockles of a mild man’s heart. It is to be hoped that his urgings of honesty, quiet talk, courteous and informative pitches do more to thin the ranks of the remaining high pressurers.”

As defined by Berman, “Low pressure selling is the quiet, courteous, and friendly science of using convincing reasons why a customer should buy a product or service from you instead of someone else.”

“I believe we’ll all agree that low pressure selling is making a comeback.”

Berman tells this story. “The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about the boss who fired his top saleswoman. When sales sagged sharply last fall, the owner came up with an unusual countermeasure. He fired his top selling clerk, ‘She was my only high pressure saleswoman, and I don’t believe in high pressure.’ he said. ‘Sales have increased every month since she left.’”

Our Way Back

“Did you ever think of the strain to which people with small incomes are subjected by our continual pursuit of them to spend their money? Every human impulse, good and bad, is played upon. We set about deliberately to make a person feel that life will be a failure unless he or she uses this soap or shaving cream, drives this automobile, owns this radio, sees this movie or play, eats this food, wears this collar, takes this trip, or reads this newspaper. This continuous pressure relentlessly applied subjects our working class population to a strain which they cannot withstand, nor could we in their places.”  – Jacob Billiopf, Survey Graphic, April 1925. 

Periods of steady growth are what seems to bring back the value of the lower pressure approaches, where honesty, integrity, and long term plays win the longevity of a business, while also winning the day at hand. However, we’ve seen a continued devolution into high pressure tactics every time pressure on short-term survival increases. 

The impact of our shut-off economy in the Spring of 2020 due to COVID-19 set the pendulum back swinging in a positive direction in late 2020 through early 2022, then back negative throughout the rest of 2022 through 2023. Talk of high pressure sprung forth once again, as desperate times called for desperate measures. 

Are we heading back into a period where lower pressure wins the day? I sure hope so. As you know, I believe transparency sells better, retains better, grows better, leads better, and creates advocates better than any other approach regardless of the economy.

The long game wins the long game…but due to the proliferation of reviews, feedback, and accessibility to the truth with everything we do, buy, and experience, we have to embrace transparency either way.

---

Sales history is my hobby. If you want more, check out The Sales History Podcast wherever you get yours…or visit @saleshistorian on both X and Instagram for week-daily nuggets from sales history’s past…the big ideas, foundations, and sometimes strange approaches from the beginning of time until now.

My day job? I’m a sales keynote speaker (CSP®) who also teaches revenue organizations how to leverage transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity. It’s what I do…teach sellers, their leaders, well…entire revenue organizations how we as human beings make decisions, then how to use that knowledge for good (not evil) in their messaging (informal and formal), negotiations, and revenue leadership. I wrote a book Book Authority listed as the 6th best sales book of all time (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦), and a second award-winning book (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳).

Reach out if you want to discuss The Transparency Sale sales methodology, or really…anything else (sales kickoffs, workshops, keynotes, the economy, history, etc.)! Email info@toddcaponi.com or call 847-999-0420.

Sign up for the newsletter for more of my nonsense in your inbox every other week, with some sales history sprinkled on top…Sign Up – The Transparent Newsletter