One of my favorite books and one that I highly recommend reading is “How I Raised Myself from Failure To Success in Selling” by Frank Betcher!
Here is a short review I found on Amazon…
When his baseball career came to an abrupt end, Frank Betcher made desperate attempts at earning a living first as a bicycle riding bill collector and then as a failing insurance salesman.
During the time of his struggles he was a part-time baseball coach at Swarthmore College. While coaching, he was invited to make a public speech. He knew that like most people he was not prepared for this task. To get help in preparing for the upcoming speech Frank went to the Philadelphia YMCA where Dale Carnegie was teaching an early version of his now famous public speaking class.
Bettger in that public speaking class was reminded of an old lesson he learned in baseball – the value of enthusiasm. He went on to make about 40,000 sales calls and earn enough in about thirteen years to have retired at age 42 if he had chosen to. In fact, he purchased a $70,000 estate, which based on inflation since that time would be a $1,000,000 estate in today’s money.
A number of years after Frank had taken Dale Carnegie’s course he happened to be on the same train as Carnegie. Dale said to him “Frank, I have been giving a series of one week schools sponsored by the United States Junior Chamber Of Commerce (JayCees). Why don’t you come along with me and give some talks on selling. Bettger agreed and they went on to teach courses called “Leadership Training, Human Relations and Salesmanship”.
Later Dale Carnegie convinced Bettger to write the book, “How I Raised Myself from Failure To Success in Selling” because as Carnegie said, many of the books on salesmanship are written by people who never did any selling at all.
Carnegie’s idea was for Bettger to write a new kind of book on selling, one that would tell precisely what he did to achieve the success he had experienced.
Frank wrote the book that tells the story of his own life. He told how as a poor boy in Philadelphia, who after dropping out of school in the sixth grade, sold papers on the street. His recounting of his eight year baseball career includes the early struggles as well as his successes.
Bettger who played under the name, Frank Bettcher, started in the minors and ended his career with the St. Louis Cardinals. The book recounts how he used one idea learned in his baseball playing days to multiply his income many times as a salesman and the importance of planning and organization were to productivity.
“How I Raised Myself from Failure To Success in Selling” As well as being a great book on selling, it is also a very entertaining one since the illustrations are from Frank’s real life in baseball as well as the world of selling.
Frank’s stumbles and failures are easily understood by any readers who have not achieved the success in selling they seek. But the information about selling he gives can lead to triumphs because it is based on what he did and not on half baked theory. The reader can clearly see a path to success by applying Frank’s methods for winning people’s confidence thru reason and honesty.
