How Founder Led Sales Changed the World

Imagine inventing something representing a giant leap forward in humanity:

• The steam engine
• The Telegraph
• The reaper
• The sewing machine
• The cotton gin
• The incandescent light
• The telephone
• The automobile
• The airplane

Your confidence in its potential impact has you shaking with excitement. You can’t imagine anyone not seeing the new world through your eyes! Do you think that each of these advancements just sold themselves? Do you think word spread like wildfire, causing individuals and corporations to line up like a new In & Out Burger or Chick-fil-A drive-thru?

In each case, not only did word not spread, but the initial selling efforts were met with fierce resistance. In each case, powerful selling techniques were required to drive interest and demand. In each case, without those powerful selling techniques, the world we live in today might look much different.

Think about the current state of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Many believe that “The simulation of human intelligence processes by machines” has the potential to change the world in ways never thought possible. AI’s promise is the reduction of errors, the ability for machines to take risks so we don’t have to, save time on low-value activities, and accelerate progress on everything – even solving our most perplexing societal issues.  However, many believe it will make us all lazy – especially the next generation who will grow up never having had to do research, create rampant unemployment, and stymie improvement and creativity, since AI bases everything on that which has already been created.

Even the telephone had detractors. Skeptics felt that it might make us all homebodies. Our social needs would be satisfied without ever stepping foot outside, which would crush restaurants, pubs, transportation, and so many other vital components of the industry. Sound familiar? Even many who used it didn’t want it. In John George Jones’ 1917 book, Salesmanship and Sales Management, he wrote:

“One of the first Chicago firms to install telephones subsequently had them removed because frequent calls from customers disturbed the clerks.” – John George Jones, 1917

For every “game-changing” technology in the past, and for everyone to come, the words of Arthur Sheldon in his 1903 book, The Science of Successful Salesmanship, have rung so true!

“Every advance in every direction means a fresh demand for salesmanship.” – Arthur Sheldon, 1903

Arthur Sheldon – the G.O.A.T. of sales philosophers

Every significant advancement tends to go through the following four stages:

• Stage 1 – Broad Skepticism: “That’s a bad idea” “No way that’s going to work” and “Nobody is going to want that”. 
• Stage 2 – Guarded Optimism: “You know what a good use for that is? X” or “It’s going to help – but it’s not a “game changer” or anything.
• Stage 3 – Broad Optimism: “This new thing is going to help here, here, and here.”
• Stage 4 – What I’d call “put that shit into everything” – or bubble-making optimism. 

Progressing from Stage 1 through Stage 3 requires selling at its core, and as such, has made for some incredible stories of herculean sales efforts. 

In the 1955 revised edition of the book Salesmanship – Principles and Methods, authors Carlton Pederson and Milburn Wright point out a few of these stories, which I then dug into further below.

Unmatched Progress

When the United States won its independence in 1776, the population was a little under 3 million people, and given that everything by which your survival depended, approximately 75% of those individuals were focused on agriculture. New York City’s population today is a little over 8 million people, but in 1776? It was already the second-largest city in the United States behind Philadelphia, with just 21,000 people. Manhattan itself was largely farmland.

The primary means of getting around was by horse. Your family was mostly self-sufficient. Your home’s heating, lighting, sanitary services, etc., were poor. Not too many people had any form of education beyond the learning-by-doing way that happened naturally. You worked from sunrise to sunset every day. Mass production was just an idea, not having begun until it was used in building up the Army around 1800. There wasn’t much variety in anything you owned. 

The difference between now and 250 years ago is truly mind-blowing, created through a combination of a free-enterprise system, education, and imaginative selling.  While there have been recessions, depressions, wars, and hardships, the progress and productivity here in America were unmatched anywhere – and at any time.

None of this unmatched progress could have happened without the salespeople who brought knowledge and understanding of new products and services to potential customers on farms, in the factories and mills, and individual homes. 

Every product that has been developed also had to be sold. 

“The ultimate sale has become the measure of the success of every enterprise from the mine or farm to the travel bureau. The ultimate sale is the incentive for the discovery of oil, the efficient layout of the factory, and the reduction of costs of extraction, conversion, and distribution. It is the all-powerful governor of the levels of profits, investments, production, and employment. If there is no sale, there is no job.” – Alexander Heron, No Sale, No Job 1954

“The ultimate sale is the incentive” and the “all-powerful governor of the levels of profits, investments, production, and employment.” The greatest inventions and advancements needed more than the ingenuity to contrive and configure the solution, but the skill and the will to go out and sell it, too. 

James Watt – the Steam Engine.

In 1790, James Watt was ready to sell his new steam engine idea to the world. While stressing the key features his prospective customers would want, he also theorized the need to associate value with those features. How? Calculating how much work a horse on a farm could do in one hour and then adding a safety factor, which came out to a value of 550 foot-pounds per second. He called this “one horsepower”. Amazingly, it not only helped him sell the steam engine, but it’s still used today as the measure used in selling cars, engines, rockets, and all sorts of other machinery.

Cyrus McCormick – the Reaper.

The reaper sounds ominous, right? But, as you probably know, it’s also a piece of machinery that cuts grain. 

When Cyrus McCormick invented it back in 1831, he’d demonstrated it to farmers. They were highly skeptical – and unimpressed. He took it to an English market and presented his reaper at a public exhibition. The London Times ridiculed it, describing it as a “cross between an Astley Charist, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine.” I don’t know what an Astley Charist is (and I looked it up…no idea), but it wasn’t good.

McCormick never lost his persistence. His invention eventually raised the status of farmers from peasant to prosperous business person. It was the forerunner of the millions of laborsaving machines that have been produced and sold to farmers all over the world. If it wasn’t for the selling job Cyrus McCormick did to an uninformed and highly suspicious public, who knows where we’d be today?

Gustavus Swift – Refrigerated Train Cars 

Gustavus Swift (along with engineer Andrew Chase) realized that the meat-packing industry could be revolutionized by perfecting refrigerated train cars – so beef and other meat could be cut up and shipped…instead of having to ship the cattle! He, along with the help of engineer Andrew Chase, invented the ice-cooled railcar in 1878.

The problem? Everyone had made significant investments in cattle cars. Now you’re asking them to dump that, and buy these refrigerated train cars? That took some serious selling. In the 1955 book I’ve read this story in, it mentions that “Swift & Company” had 78,000 employees and $2.5B in sales at the time of its writing…1953. 

George Westinghouse – The Air Brake

Back in the 1700s and 1800s, if you wanted to stop a train, power would have to be cut to the entire train, then the conductor would manually set brakes, running car-to-car to do it. George Westinghouse was trying to figure out a better way. He was reading a magazine called Living Age, which had a picture of the construction of a tunnel between France and Switzerland. They were using compressed air to tunnel under the Alps. He figured he could take that idea and apply it to the axles of the train cars. He figured it out!

Significant problem, with a somewhat simple solution. You might think that would be an easy sell. The opposite was true. Westinghouse hit resistance in every conversation. 

Westinghouse realized he needed a better way to demonstrate the solution. He spoke of the concept, but while interesting to many, without proof, nobody was willing to be the pilot. 

He focused his selling efforts on raising investment, almost like a seed-stage startup today, so he could install the equipment in a four-car train. His first live demonstration was to the officials in charge of motive power for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The demonstration and selling techniques were so effective that several individuals became directors in his new company – the Westinghouse Air-Brake Company. 

Westinghouse spent most of his years from 1869 to the 1880s selling throughout America and Europe. While a great inventor, he had to be an even better salesperson. Over 140 years later, Westinghouse (most recently called WABCO Holdings) sold for $7 billion in 2020. 

Harvey Firestone – The Development of Highways

Harvey Firestone had an unusual ability to sell an idea – and was the core individual responsible for selling a skeptical public on the value of highways, especially for long-distance truck shipments. Highways, the things you drive on today without a second thought, faced considerable resistance. 

Starting out of Akron, Ohio, Firestone sent a fleet of loaded trucks on a tour of the South. As the fleet arrived in a town, he made sure local journalists were there to help spread the news. And each stop “provided an opportunity for an open-air lecture on the operating cost of a three-and-a-half-ton truck.” It was pure promotion selling.  In the end, his efforts created thousands of jobs in trucking and transportation, sped up the building of better public highways, and sold a lot of tires, too. And today, Firestone Holdings is generating over $7 billion in revenue each year. 

J.C. Penney’s Retail Success

James Cash Penney wanted to open his first store. The local banker from Kemmerer, Wyoming advised him strongly not to. He ignored the banker, and in 1902 rented a vacant building. To make ends meet, he lived in its attic with his wife and one-year-old baby, built his own shelves, and selected what to sell based on the local community. 

April 14th, 1902, Penney opened for business. On that first day sales of $466.59 proved that his concept would work. In today’s dollars that would be almost $17,000. Penney sold behind the counter himself, and “considered it a sin if anyone came into the store without being waited on.” He also “considered it a greater sin if anyone went out without making a purchase. 

JC Penney was one of the most prominent retailers for many years – the largest retailer in the world in the 1950s…and still had over 1,000 stores and over $14B in revenue just 22 years ago.

Henry Ford – The Automobile

Just imagine if Henry Ford had listened to his boss. Ford, while pioneering what he called a “workable horseless carriage powered by gasoline” was working for a guy named Alex Dow. Dow derided Ford, referring to his work as a foolish obsession. 

Ford had the opportunity to discuss his new product with Thomas Edison. Edison is said to have told Ford, “Young man, that’s the thing! You have it – the self-contained unit carrying its own fuel with it. Keep at it!” That was the inspiration Ford needed to keep selling. He made his first sale to Charles Ainsley of Detroit for $200.

Ford was quoted as saying, “This was my first sale. I had built the car not to sell but to experiment with. I wanted to start another car. Ainsley wanted to buy. I could use the money and we had no trouble agreeing on a price.”

Henry Ford’s sales philosophy was simple.

“It is not good business unless both buyer and seller gain by it {the sale}.” – Henry Ford

The original foundation of the sales profession was a design based on providing a service. The positive sales philosophies like Ford’s, Penney’s, Firestone’s, Westinghouse’s, Swifts, McCormick’s, Watt’s, and countless others that went along with it prove that fact, having created millions of jobs, and providing the lifeblood of the way we live today.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower said on March 9th, 1954:

“The Salesman has long played an important role in achieving and maintaining the prosperity of this nation. Through his skill he has stimulated ever greater production of commodities and through this production millions of new jobs have been created.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

If you invent it, you had better be prepared to sell it, too.

“No sale, no job” – Alexander Heron

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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.

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