have a thorough knowledge of your goods, the ability to read human nature and know your customer's wants, a pleasing personality and an intense, engaging and always ready manner of speech, you never ought to lose a sale. All these qualifications can be cultivated. Your personality, voice, speech, manner, action, and personal appearance can be so cultivated as to assure your making pleasing impressions upon your customer. It goes without question that to make a pleasing impression you must be careful of your appearance. Your store coat must be neat and clean, your clothes businesslike. "The apparel oft proclaims the man" is as true of store clothes as of street clothes. A customer won't have a very good opinion of you or your goods if your appearance or that of your clerks is untidy. It is almost as bad to have them too gaudy. While you want to look well, remember it is the goods you want to interest your customer in, not yourself. Fancy language is just as much out of place as fancy dress.

Select your words carefully from your own vocabulary. Use words that are sanctioned by good use. "Words are the names by which good use has agreed that we shall describe ideas. In our choice of words we may never stray beyond the limits of good use. In judging whether a given one be admissible we may better ask ourselves whether it is a barbarism-a word not in the language-or an impropriety,-a word used in a sense not sanctioned by good use-if neither we may accept it.1

Haven't you often gone into a clothing store and had some clerk wait on you who tried to use every fancy word he could get hold of, and the mess he made of it only showed you that he was trying to "put on," to "show off," to be so "extra nice?" He didn't make a good impression on you, and you won't make a good impression on your customer if you try to act in a like manner.

Be natural, use words that you are sure about, then you

1

1 English Composition, by Barrett Wendell. Chas. Scribner's Sons, N. Y.

won't get all mixed up in your selling talks. Build up your vocabulary, write down and look up every new word you come across in your daily duties or in your reading, then in a few months you will be surprised at the addition to your vocabulary.

Several pocket editions treating of the more common mistakes in English, can be procured at small expense. What time you devote to them will be profitable. A good speaking voice is an asset. If your voice hasn't a pleasant sound it can be greatly improved with a little practice. Cultivate a mellow, sympathetic, persuasive tone of voice. Always speak in positive terms by inflecting your voice downward. Have a purpose for every pause. Dead pauses are dangerous. Don't break off short in your talk. Talk to the point. Don't digress.

Keep the subject of thought to the front as much as you can. Don't wander off into some line of argument, entirely foreign to your subject. State your thoughts clearly. Always have a thought clear in your mind before you try to express it. Clearness in thought aids clearness in expression. When describing an article use particular terms, as description applies to particulars. Use general terms when speaking of a general class of articles.

Let your face and eyes speak the enthusiasm and confidence you feel for your goods. Facial expression gives meaning to your spoken words. It emphasizes them. A cold, lifeless-looking face doesn't possess magnetism, neither does it typify enthusiasm for your goods. The eyes are the windows of the soul, they are alive, they give meaning to your talk. The first thing a woman notices in a man is the color and expression of his eyes. After you have waited on a woman customer it is pretty safe to say that when she goes out she knows the color of your eyes and their expression. If you smile naturally, do so, don't put on a sickly grin or a forced insincere smile. Be yourself, don't try to seem like somebody that you cannot impersonate.

You can make a good salesman out of yourself by

plugging hard, digging down to the vitals, knowing how to tell the truth about your goods in the most natural, easy, pleasing, convincing way. The sum of your knowledge of your goods and your knowledge of human nature, both of which you have diligently studied, will furnish you with the proper means of victory in making sales.

Most pharmacists lay so much stress on the buying of their goods that they have relegated to the rear the importance of selling them. They energize more in the buying than in the selling, even though no profit can be made until the goods are sold. If you buy goods ever so cheaply you do not realize your profit unless you can sell them. Right buying is essential to success, but all your strength and time shouldn't be devoted to the buying end at the expense of the selling end. A brain-fagged man cannot sell goods.

Selling is the important thing. Buying is a necessary detail. Goods on your shelf are not worth what you pay for them, but what you can sell them for. Just try to turn some of your slow sellers into cash on short notice and find out for yourself. Sometimes it requires as much ability to sell a woman a dozen souvenir post cards of your town as it does to be superintendent of a street railway company.

To sum up, to be a good salesman, you must know yourself, your goods, your customer. You must cultivate selfcontrol, sympathy, politeness, cheerfulness, tact, and develop your character. Have enthusiasm for the goods you sell, know their parts and uses, assemble convincing selling point stories of them by making a thorough analysis. Treat your customers as if they were guests at your home and don't forget kindness and attention to children.

Be ever alert with suggestions to customers, and work for the big sale. Show high priced or medium priced goods first. Stay right with the customer until he leaves the store. Keep in mind the value of auto-suggestion, and the method of influencing your customers' minds to purchase what you want to sell them. Remember also, the law of mutual benefit. See that value is given for value.

The mental law of sale, consisting of the four stagesattention, interest, desire, and resolve to buy, is the keynote of all salesmanship, and the writer suggests that you pursue still further the study of this important law as so ably presented by Mr. Sheldon in his course of The Science of Successful Salesmanship.

Prepare your selling talks with great care and familiarize yourself with them, so that you will talk naturally and not as though you were delivering a set speech. You must be natural to be convincing. Learn when to talk and when to stop talking.

The two divisions, buying and selling, form the central idea upon which this whole treatise is written. Everything treated in the chapters before and the chapters coming after, bears some relation to buying and selling. All commercial pharmacy depends upon these two important subjects. Read and study these two divisions again and again. There is more in them than you can grasp in one reading. The time you devote to them will bring you good returns in dollars and cents.

PART III

PHARMACY DEVELOPMENT.

DIVISION VIII

ADVERTISING

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE PURPOSES OF ADVERTISING.

ADVERTISING is a form of salesmanship. It is salesmanship by the written method. In salesmanship you talk to your customer personally, you employ the personal conversation to acquaint him with the merits of your goods, and to sell him your different articles. Now, the purpose of advertising is just the same as the purpose of salesmanship, to sell goods. The difference is that you employ the written method, the printed words, in advertising, in place of the personal conversation, the spoken words, as in salesmanship.

Pin it firmly in your mind that the purpose of advertising is to sell something. This simple truth is very often lost sight of by the average pharmacist, and for that matter, is quite often overlooked by the experienced advertiser. To advertise is-"To make known publicly," it is "to make public by advertisement." An advertisement, then, is—“A notice to the public, as in a daily newspaper." In treating of an adver"In tisement it is usually designated by the abbreviated form ad., so hereafter in this book, all reference to the word advertisement will appear in the shorter form ad.

CUMULATIVE EFFECT.-All your advertising, if good, should not be limited to a single ad. in exploiting a single article, but should have a future or cumulative effect. Cumulative means "heaped up," cumulation is "The act of heap