Similarly you who have not yet succeeded are potentially rich.  If you possess the generally recognized fundamentals of success; such as characteristic honesty, intelligence, energy, etc., you are not handicapped for want of a market.  Even though you now may seem to lack some of the essential qualifications, you are capable of succeeding.  Every necessary characteristic of the successful man is latent in your nature and can be brought out by development.  You have not yet done your utmost with the best that is in you.

[Sidenote:  Your Market Not Lacking]

First you should resolve to make yourself completely worthy to succeed.  Meanwhile you should be learning how to sell your “goods.”  On every hand there are markets in which qualities like yours are being sold successfully by other men.  Undoubtedly there will be a purchaser for the best that is in you when you bring it out; provided you present your “goods of sale” in the most skillful way.  All about you are highly prosperous people with no more innate merits than you have.  Certainly the market for your particular abilities is within reach.  Golden opportunities of which you have not taken the fullest advantage surround you and touch your daily activities.  If you have not grasped your chance, it was because you did not know how to reach out with all your capabilities.  In other words, possessing the fundamental qualifications for success, you have stood in the midst of the world’s need for such capabilities as yours, but you have not gone through the selling process.

You have failed thus far to achieve your ambition, simply because you have been an unsuccessful salesman of yourself to the world.

Perhaps you never have thought of yourself as a salesman.  You may not have realized the importance to you of knowing and practicing the principles of skillful selling.  Only one per cent of the people in the United States call themselves salesmen or saleswomen.  Yet in order to succeed, each of us must sell his or her particular qualifications.  Your knowledge and use of the selling process are essential to assure your success in life.

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[Sidenote:  Master Salesmen Made, Not Born]

The best commercial executives agree that the most effective selling representative of a house is not the “natural born” salesman, but the salesman who is made highly efficient by training.  So every big, successful business conducts a course in salesmanship.  Thorough tests have proved that particular principles and methods of selling are sure to produce the highest average of orders.  Therefore these principles and methods are followed as standard practice in the sales department.

That is, in order to assure the success of an individual salesman, he is required and aided to develop particular qualifications and to do certain things that master executives have learned will get the orders and hold the trade of buyers.  The qualified professional salesman is drilled thoroughly in tested principles and methods of selling.  He is trained to use this standard sales knowledge skillfully.  As a result he works in the field with complete confidence.