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Selling is a harsh discipline. Of all the activities that combine to make a business, I guess the performances of salesmen are the most readily measured with the juxtaposition of quotas against orders obtained. If the figures cannot be reconciled, the shortcomings of salesmen are cruelly exposed. No other discipline in commerce can be quite as easily personalised in bald statistical terms. Other activities often involve teams of people with group objectives and the impact of individuals tends to be masked in a collective morass.

Undeniably selling occurs in a macho environment where mental toughness and single-mindedness are essential in negotiations. Furthermore, the task is primarily solitary, but hopefully supported by a responsive organisation back at base. One of the saddest sights in commerce is to see a salesman struggling to meet targets. He is a demoralised character that conjures an image of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Optimism is vital in a salesman to the point of self-delusion on occasions as embodied in the heartless exchange: ‘I made some very valuable contacts today’ eliciting the penetrating response ‘I didn’t get any orders either’. Perhaps the two had encountered sales resistance defined as ‘the triumph of mind over patter’.

Some of the most poignant words in the English language were written by Miller as a requiem for a salesman. ‘For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. . . . He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back – that’s an earthquake. . . . A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory’. Small wonder that Miller cheered up by marrying Marilyn Monroe or as Variety magazine exclaimed ‘Egghead weds hourglass’.