A man of affairs does not want to be bothered in the evening. A great many salesmen make the mistake of thinking that pestering a man is the same as selling him, and they get their prospects into such a state of exasperation that they would not buy a gold dollar from them at 50 percent off. Just getting to a man is not enough--it is when and how you get to him. There are more wrong times to sell a man than there are right times, and if I ever should write a book on salesmanship I should give about one third of the book to the topic "Common Sense." I have been buttonholed thousands of times by salesmen who, if they had just exercised a grain of common sense, would have known that, while the moment might be a very good one in which to make my acquaintance, it was no time at all to persuade me to buy anything. A good salesman will never intrude. In the first place, he will know that intruders do not make sales, and in the second place he will have brains enough to arrange for the right kind of a meeting with his prospect--no man likes to be panhandled, and some selling comes close to panhandling....................
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