The professional salesman or saleswoman who undertakes the thorough study of both this book and its companion volume, might better read first The Selling Process, the chapters of which apply especially to his or her vocation.

If you are a salesman, therefore, begin your study with the introduction to that book.  When you have read The Selling Process once, start Certain Success and master it.  Then re-read the other book in the light of the new ideas that will have been shed upon its contents by the present text.

The practical value of Certain Success and The Selling Process to you as a salesman will be multiplied a hundredfold if both are kept handy for continual reference.  The marginal index should enable you to find quickly any point regarding which you want to refresh your recollection.  This set of books was not written to collect dust on a library shelf.  No salesman can get the full worth out of the pages unless he uses Certain Success and The Selling Process as working tools.

If you are not engaged in selling as a vocation, and have not realized before that you must be a good salesman or saleswoman in order to achieve your life ambition, commence mastering the secret of certain success with the selling process by reading thoroughly the book now in your hands.  This preliminary study will increase your ability to read intelligently the more technical contents of The Selling Process.  Do not skip or slight any portion of either book.  You cannot afford to miss a single bit of information regarding the sure way to succeed.

This is the first publication of Certain Success, but five large editions of The Selling Process were required in 1919 and 1920 to supply the demand from all over the world.  The two books, each complete in itself, now are issued together under the double title, CERTAIN SUCCESS WITH THE SELLING PROCESS; though either Certain Success or The Selling Process may be ordered alone.

My chief purpose in preparing this set has been to stimulate each readers comprehension of the value of skillful salesmanship to him.  All of us who are ambitious to make the most of the best that is in us need to be first-class salesmen, whether we market goods or our personal capabilities.  As has been emphasized repeatedly in this preface, every one who would succeed in life must know HOW to sell his qualifications to the highest advantage.  Poor salesmanship is responsible for most of the failures of people who really deserve to succeed.  It is almost surely fatal to ambitious hopes in any trade, profession, or business.

CERTAIN SUCCESS WITH THE SELLING PROCESS covers in outline the whole subject of Salesmanship.  But the scope of this set does not afford room to give here a minutely detailed exposition of the special processes of making sales in particular businesses.  I have compiled for you, rather, the general principles of effective selling that may be universally applied.  Certain Success and The Selling Process are handbooks of fundamental ideas which each reader, by his individual thinking, should amplify and fit to his own work or ambition.

The fine art of successful salesmanship cannot be mastered in a few hours of casual reading.  You will not be able, immediately after glancing through these books, to unlock every long-desired golden opportunity with absolute assurance.  CERTAIN SUCCESS WITH THE SELLING PROCESS must be studied out.  You should keep them always at hand like your bank books, and draw on the contents for your salesmanship needs from day to day.

You will get only a smattering of the secret of certain success if you just skim over the chapters, and skip whatever requires you to think hard in order to comprehend it all.  But if you dig into the meaning of each sentence for the full idea, you will enrich yourself with constantly increasing power and skill in selling. So you will surely become a real success.

The principles and methods of successful salesmanship summarized in these companion books, though they will be new to most readers, are not mere personal theories.  They all have been demonstrated and tested in actual practice during my twelve years experience as Commercial and General Sales Manager of the Ford Motor Company.  Under my direction in the course of that period Ford sales were multiplied one hundred thirty-two timesfrom 6,181 to 815,912 cars a year.  The fundamental principles and methods that I have tested and proved to be most successful in selling automobiles and good will should work equally well in any profession, or business, or trade; and for any normal, intelligent man or woman who uses them continually.

Since the first publication of The Selling Process thousands of enthusiastic readers of the book have voluntarily borne witness to its practical, dollars-and-cents value to them in their daily work.  Preachers, doctors, lawyers, bank officials, clerks, book-keepers, mechanics, laborers; as well as business executives and sales managers and salesmenmen and women in scores of widely different vocationsunite in testifying to their increased earning power and fuller satisfaction in living and working.  They credit these results to their study and continued use of The Selling Process.  The value of that book will be at least doubled by the supplemental reading of Certain Success.  Therefore the two are now published as a set of working tools for any ambitious man or woman who is resolved to earn success.

NORVAL A. HAWKINS

Majestic Building,
Detroit, Michigan.