Selling Things

Marden, Orison Swett, 1848-1924Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 289K words
Chapters: 29

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Selling Things by Joseph Francis MacGrail and Orison Swett MardenAuthor: Marden, Orison Swett, 1848-1924,Language: English, Class: HF: Social sciences: Commerce, Release Date: Mar 31, 2019

Editor's review

This book is a sales-themed work co-authored by Orison Swett Marden and Joseph Francis MacGrail, digitized by Project Gutenberg as a free ebook. Marden was a leading figure in American inspirational and success literature at the turn of the twentieth century, and his writing emphasizes the role of character, will, and a positive attitude in business. The book treats selling as a craft of dealing with people rather than a mere accumulation of techniques, discussing how to build trust, understand customer needs, and close deals with sincerity. For readers used to today's data-driven sales scripts, it offers a plainer and more fundamental perspective: the core of sales is the relationship between people. The cases and language bear a distinct mark of their era, and some ideas need to be weighed against the current business environment. Suitable as supplementary reading for sales professionals, and for readers interested in success literature and early business writing. It is best read with an eye to history and intellectual history, taking its principles without being bound to specific scripts.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Frontline salespeople who want to understand the essence of selling through interpersonal trust
Readers interested in early twentieth-century American business and inspirational writing
Practitioners who need to adjust their sales mindset and reduce transactional scripts
History and literature enthusiasts studying the origins of success literature

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking modern sales scripts and tools they can apply directly
Practitioners who need the latest marketing data, platform rules, and cases
Readers who prefer rigorous academic argument and empirical research

Reading tips

Read the table of contents first to grasp the overall framework, then closely read chapters closest to your own sales scenarios.
After each chapter, compare its principles with your current customer interactions and note practices you can transfer.
Annotate ideas that reflect the limitations of their era, distinguishing universal principles from outdated scripts.
Read alongside other modern sales classics to form your own judgment.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for someone with no sales experience at all?

It can be read, but should be combined with practice. The book focuses on mindset and principles and lacks specific operational guidance on modern sales processes and tools. Readers with no experience would do best to learn basic customer development and closing processes at the same time, then apply the book's principles of trust-building and sincere communication to real situations; the effect will be more pronounced.

Will the content be outdated given its age?

Some specific scripts and cases carry the imprint of the early twentieth-century business environment and should indeed not be copied directly. But the core propositions about understanding customers, building trust, and standing on character have value across eras. Read it by taking the principles and discarding the forms, adapting them to current channels and customer habits.

What should I note when reading the ebook edition?

This is an English public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, formatted mainly as plain text and possibly lacking modern annotations and introductions. When reading, keep a dictionary at hand for older expressions, and take your own chapter notes to make up for the lack of supplementary material in the ebook.

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About the author

Marden, Orison Swett, 1848-1924 Author

Orison Swett Marden (1848–1924) was an American inspirational writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though details of his life are limited in publicly available sources. Nine of his works are included here, among them Pushing to the Front, The Victorious Attitude, An Iron Will, Ambition and Success, and How to Succeed. These books generally center on willpower, ambition, the path to success, and a positive attitude, using examples from people's lives and aphoristic encouragement to offer ordinary readers guidance in self-improvement. Marden's writing stresses the role of character and perseverance in personal growth; his motivational works circulated widely in the English-speaking world and have influenced later success literature and self-cultivation reading.