[Sidenote:  Hard Study Necessary]

The fact that you have proceeded thus far in reading “Certain Success” proves you have an earnest purpose to make the most of your present opportunity to learn how to succeed with certainty.  We will assume that you have developed your individual ability pretty fully, and that you know where there is a field for such services as you are sure you could render if afforded the chance.  Surely, then, your ambition in life, whatever it may be, is a sufficient incentive to the most thorough study of the principles and methods of successful salesmanship.  Do not merely read this set of books.  MASTER “Certain Success” and “The Selling Process” to make yourself the master of your own destiny.

Again and again, lest at any time while you study you might fall below 100% in absolute assurance, you will read in these chapters the assertion that your success can be made certain.  This statement is not an exaggeration.  It is necessary that you accept it literally throughout your reading of this set of books.  Do not take it “with a grain of salt.”  The taste of the declaration that the selling process makes success sure will become familiar after these many repetitions.  Realize when you come upon the repeated idea as you proceed with your study that your continued reading should frequently be reenforced by a steadily growing conviction that you are mastering the sure way to succeed.  You believe in yourself more than you did when you began to read this book.  This increasing faith should develop to complete confidence when you have dug into the text of both “Certain Success” and “The Selling Process,” and have dug out every idea in the twenty-four chapters.

[Sidenote:  Salesmanship Not a Science But an Art]

At the outset of your present study comprehend that salesmanship is not a science.  Rather, it is an art.  Like every other art, however, it has a related science.  Selling is a process.  Knowledge about the principles and methods that make the process most effective is the related science.  But such knowledge supplies only the best foundation for building success by the actual practice of most effective salesmanship.  The master salesman practices the scientific principles and methods he has learned until the skillful use of his knowledge in every-day selling becomes second nature to him.  Thus, and thus only, is his art perfected.

You will gain knowledge from these books about how to sell with assurance the true idea of your best capabilities—­about how to sell any “goods of sale” unfailingly.  But you can develop the skill necessary to the actual achievement of certain success only if you continually use what you learn about the selling process.  You must perfect your selling art by the intelligent employment of every word and tone and act of your life to attract other men to you, and to impress on them convincingly true ideas of your particular ability.