There is an amazing number of people in the world who imagine that the law of selling (and business in general) is that one must make a profit by getting an advantage over other people. As a matter of fact, the very opposite is the case. It is an established truth that those companies that are operating most successfully are the ones that are benefiting their customers most; in short, the ones that recognize the fundamental proposition that a fair deal must benefit both sides.

Let me explain what I mean: suppose you are in need of a pen. Your business cannot be transacted without something to write with, and you decide to manufacture a pen. You must go to a mine and dig for iron. You must build a furnace in which to heat the iron and unite it with carbon to make steel. You must then, through a hundred processes, reduce your steel to the proper shape and size to use as a pen, and, in this process, use much expensive machinery. Your pen would cost you tens of thousands of dollars, if you made it yourself.

Yet a manufacturer who makes millions of pens at a time, buys his steel in large quantities, and spends a fortune on expensive machinery and skilled workers, finds that his pens cost him less than a cent apiece. When he sells you these pens at dollar a dozen, both you and he have been benefited.

It is true of every honest transaction that both parties must be benefited and the salesperson must ever remember this. As a rule, do not try to persuade the customer that you are losing money by trading with him. The famous advertisement, “If you don’t buy my hats we both lose money,” expresses this same idea in a different way.

The salesperson who sells products which his customer expects to sell again at a profit, must be honest in his desire for his customer to make money. Nothing else will win in the long run. A company’s profit usually depends upon the continued patronage of customers. This depends upon the customer’s ability to make money with your products.

If your customer is not making money on your product line, and finds it out, he will stop buying from you. If he does not find it out, he will fail. In either case, you are a loser as well as he is.

Remember that your task as a salesperson is to show to the customer that his profits (or advantages) will be worth many times the entire cost of the product, before he will buy it at all from you.