The Founders of The Sales Profession – 7 You Should Know

At every company I worked for in my career, one of the foundational lessons I was taught was about the founding of the company. Who were the founders? What was their story? 

While that may or may not have been valuable, I feel as though knowing the story of those who founded the profession I’ve made my career in is at least as useful, right? Below are the ones IMO you should know, and you’ll find links to learn more on each if you’re interested.

The Seven Sales “Founders” You Should Know

Jay Cooke

Jay Cooke (National Sales Go To Market Planning)

Cooke devised and executed the first true nationwide sales go-to-market plan in 1864, selling bonds to help fund the Union side of the Civil War.

Mark Twain (Massive product launch/sales enablement execution)

Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)

Twain coordinated and orchestrated the first massive product launch/sales enablement plan, launching Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir as Grant was dying, ensuring this war hero’s family could sustain itself following his passing.

John Patterson

John Patterson (Well, pretty much everything we experience now in sales execution)

Patterson, after founding the NCR Corporation in 1884, laying the foundations for many of the core sales policies we still use today, including dedicated territories, variable compensation plans, quotas, sales kickoffs, the sales playbook, and more.

Arthur Sheldon (Public-facing sales training, along with the foundational cores of sales methodology) 

Arthur Sheldon

Sheldon (the GOAT of sales philosophers, IMO) was the first to create and sell public-facing sales training in 1902, the individual who (I believe…not Elias St. Elmo Lewis) the concept of AIDA (the process buyers go through when considering a purchase), and who believed that “True salesmanship is the science of service”.

Lucinda W. Prince

Lucinda W. Prince (Pioneer for #womeninsales)

Prince was the first to truly advocate for women in sales, creating sales training programs dedicated to women in 1905, becoming so popular that it was being taught in high schools.

Norval Hawkins

Norval Hawkins (The greatest salesperson of the first quarter of the 20th century)

The person Henry Ford referred to as the greatest salesperson in the history of Ford Motor company, Hawkins helped create the first sales “communities” (Salesmanship Clubs), the first sales convention (the World Sales Congress in 1916), and wrote two amazing sales books.

Worthington C. Holman (The first true sales “writer”)

Worthington C. Holman

A Massachusetts school teacher whom John Patterson hired in the early 1890s to teach his salespeople how to write. He became one of the most prolific sales writers of the early 1900s, was the editor of Salesmanship Magazine (1904-1908), and wrote one of my favorite books for sales leaders in 1905.

I’m Todd Caponi, CSP®. (<– links to LinkedIn)

I’ve written three books so far, The Transparency Sale, The Transparent Sales Leader, and my soon to be released Four Levers Negotiating.

I’m a sales keynote speaker and sales trainer, focused on teaching 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), sales negotiations, sales presentations, and revenue leadership.

Reach out (email to info@toddcaponi.com) – for inquiries about speaking at your event or sales kickoff, for programs to upskill your customer-facing teams and leaders, or just to nerd out on sales or sales history.

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