Customer Reviews

Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America

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This is the first serious historical study of salesmanship that I know of, and it's terrific. Whether you're an academic, a college student, or someone who just likes history, this is the book for you. It intelligently and entertainingly charts the development of selling from 19th century bible and lightning rod hucksters to the 20th century professional, and discusses why this way of making a living continues to have a bad reputation (the author talks about how there was a post-WWII survey of mothers asking what they hoped their "sons" would grow up to be, and salesman always placed last!). The book is full of entertaining anectdotes and great illustrations-- it isn't often that a serious work of history is also humorous. This one is, and will also inform you about the changes in American society over the past 200 years.

I have been involved in every aspect of the selling profession for the last 20 years, coporate sales, consulting, new business development, sales relationship management and sales training. I worked for three years for one of the greatest sales trainer in the market, and as I was finishing this book, I kept telling myself how little the general public knows about the PROFESSION of selling. For all sales person, who on the daily basis, tries to make a living, this book will be a great supporting tool. You will be able to finally be really proud of the historical aspects of the selling profession, knowing that our profession is one of the hardest to pick up as a career.
Walter Friedman captures the real picture behind the daily struggles that sales people go through on a daily basis.
Great read and very entertaining.

This is a terrific book, entertaining, informative, and well written. Highly recommended!

A must-read for anyone interested in the veiled history behind what is the modern salesman and marketing force of today. Witty and intelligent writing with straight-shooting facts about the brave, enigmatic, sometimes scandalous but consistently innovative world of sales and marketing. A well researched book serving as a treasure trove of interesting facts that accumulatively sketch out the industrious nature of our human soul and the engine of the business culture powering our society. Highly recommended.

Profession sales people will enjoy the history of how sales developed from the 1800's on. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Birth Of A Salesman" by Walter Friedman is an excellent title for the person who wants to learn more about the history of sales in the USA. Instead of individual salespeople, the book focuses much more on people who have brought about changes in the area of sales.

Specific people mentioned include:

1. Mark Twain - Convinced US Grant to write his memoirs for Webster and Company. The chapter included techniques salespeople used to promote and sell the memoirs.
2. Henry Heinz - Sold vegetables and eventually led to the Heinz Company.
3. John Patterson - Founder of the National Cash Register Company.
4. Walter Scott - Developed studies on sales psychology and research.
5. Alfred Fuller - Founder of the Fuller Brush Company.

The book covers many more figures in addition to those listed above. Birth Of A Salesman also describes various topices such as:

1. Popular sales publications.
2. Various sales trends and how the sales field has changed over the years.
3. Importance and influence of sales today.
4. The general public's overall negative perception of sales that salespeople have had to overcome.

A good read for anyone who may be in sales and wants to learn more about sales history, famous sales leaders in USA history, and many other topics pertaining to sales.

Read and enjoy. Recommended.

The salesman is "out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine," explained Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's classic drama Death of a Salesman. From its earliest days, America has been a nation of exuberant sales reps, optimists like Loman, who explains, "A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." In the novel, A Bad Man, author Stanley Elkin deconstructs the word salesman: "sales is man." This resonates in the U.S., where the ability to sell represents the acme of commercial achievement. America's tradition of evangelical salesmanship has indelibly colored the country's soul and helped create its rosy self-perception. getAbstract suggests that if you really want to understand America's commercial nature, you should read this enlightening book about the history of sales in the U.S. (For much of its length, the book covers the history of salesmen; women did not really enter the field until the second half of the 20th century.) Backed with comprehensive research, Walter A. Friedman paints a well-crafted portrait of a remarkable field carved out by these iconic, irascible, irrepressible individuals, one deal at a time.

If you are in Sales this is very good learning why you are doing it...

I am particularly interested in the evolution of door-to-door selling in the nineteenth century. This is the most complete history I have found thus far and contains details I have not found anywhere else. A good resource for anyone curious about how we got to where we are today - nothing new under thhe sun.

Jack B[[ASIN:0750622350 Direct Selling: From Door to Door to Network Marketing