The professional salesman or saleswoman who undertakes the thorough study of both this book and its companion volume, might better read first “The Selling Process,” the chapters of which apply especially to his or her vocation.

If you are a “salesman,” therefore, begin your study with the introduction to that book.  When you have read “The Selling Process” once, start “Certain Success” and master it.  Then re-read the other book in the light of the new ideas that will have been shed upon its contents by the present text.

The practical value of “Certain Success” and “The Selling Process” to you as a salesman will be multiplied a hundredfold if both are kept handy for continual reference.  The marginal index should enable you to find quickly any point regarding which you want to refresh your recollection.  This set of books was not written to collect dust on a library shelf.  No salesman can get the full worth out of the pages unless he uses “Certain Success” and “The Selling Process” as working tools.

[Sidenote:  If Your Vocation Is Not Selling]

If you are not engaged in selling as a vocation, and have not realized before that you must be a good salesman or saleswoman in order to achieve your life ambition, commence mastering the secret of certain success with the selling process by reading thoroughly the book now in your hands.  This preliminary study will increase your ability to read intelligently the more technical contents of “The Selling Process.”  Do not skip or slight any portion of either book.  You cannot afford to miss a single bit of information regarding the sure way to succeed.

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  Purpose and Scope of the Two Books]

This is the first publication of “Certain Success,” but five large editions of “The Selling Process” were required in 1919 and 1920 to supply the demand from all over the world.  The two books, each complete in itself, now are issued together under the double title, CERTAIN SUCCESS WITH THE SELLING PROCESS; though either “Certain Success” or “The Selling Process” may be ordered alone.

My chief purpose in preparing this set has been to stimulate each reader’s comprehension of the value of skillful salesmanship to him.  All of us who are ambitious to make the most of the best that is in us need to be first-class salesmen, whether we market “goods” or our personal capabilities.  As has been emphasized repeatedly in this preface, every one who would succeed in life must know HOW to sell his qualifications to the highest advantage.  Poor salesmanship is responsible for most of the failures of people who really deserve to succeed.  It is almost surely fatal to ambitious hopes in any trade, profession, or business.

CERTAIN SUCCESS WITH THE SELLING PROCESS covers in outline the whole subject of Salesmanship.  But the scope of this set does not afford room to give here a minutely detailed exposition of the special processes of making sales in particular businesses.  I have compiled for you, rather, the general principles of effective selling that may be universally applied.  “Certain Success” and “The Selling Process” are handbooks of fundamental ideas which each reader, by his individual thinking, should amplify and fit to his own work or ambition.