We have assumed that you now are successfully in possession of an opportunity.  You have sold yourself into the very job you want, or into a better position that you believe will afford you fine chances to advance. Do not slump or relax in salesmanship.  Do not think back, or spend much time contemplating your present success.  Look ahead to your next sale of true ideas of your best capabilities. The successful salesman is a quick repeater. He counts his accomplishments in totals, not by units.  He has successful “years,” each made up of about three hundred successful working days.  He plans in campaigns; so he is not inclined to over-celebrate the winning of a battle.

[Sidenote:  Make Each Goal a New Starting Point]

Samuel McRoberts, vice-president of the great National City Bank of New York, started working for Armour & Company at a small salary in the early nineties.  He was a young man who was always healthily ambitious to keep moving ahead.  He “ate up” the minor work assigned to him, and celebrated the completion of each task by asking at once, “What next?”

In a few years he had risen by successive promotions to the position of treasurer of Armour & Company.  But that wasn’t a goal to McRoberts.  It seemed to him only a good starting point to bigger successes in the financial world.  He became a director of several banks, an officer in important railroad and other corporations. He continually enlarged his service value until he was called to New York’s greatest bank, and took his place among the masters of American finance.

He did not loll back in his chair then and start taking it easy. He packed more and more accomplishments into every day. When the war began, he went to Washington to take executive charge of the job of procuring ordnance for the fighters.  He held a post analogous to that of Lloyd-George when he was Minister of Munitions for Great Britain.  McRoberts made good as a brigadier general, and after the war resumed his success in business.  Whatever he did, wherever he worked, Samuel McRoberts smiled welcomes to more opportunities for service, and reached out his ready hands to grasp them.

[Sidenote:  Celebrate by Tackling the Job Ahead]

That is the way to celebrate—­by tackling the job ahead.  There is no end to the selling process.  One sale should lead directly to another.  The good salesman celebrates only the opportunity to get the next order in prospect.  He may chuckle to himself over the sale just closed, but he does his rejoicing on his way to a new selling chance.

[Sidenote:  Dynamic Confidence Static Complacency]

You haven’t “arrived” yet.  You are just well started. Keep moving, and you will never “see your finish." Your successes thus far should have developed a considerable degree of self-confidence. Be careful not to let that dynamic quality change into the static element of self-complacency. Never be satisfied with what you have done. Always have the zest of appetite for more to do.  Add every day to your success chances.