Advertising is collective or impersonal salesmanship. Salesmanship deals with personal persuasion, individual persuasion. Advertising deals with impersonal persuasion, collective persuasion. Salesmanship and Advertising are closely related; in fact, Advertising may be called written Salesmanship. So close do these two professions draw together that there are times when one cannot be told from the other. And then there is the sales letter. Sent by email directly to a specific person it is a sales letter. The identical email, printed on a webpage, is advertising. Advertising is collective appeal. It is a method developed by modern industry by which selling arguments may be directed to millions of buyers at one time.

One of America’s foremost advertising experts differentiates between Salesmanship and Advertising with this colorful explanation, “Salesmanship blossoms- Advertising concentrates,” which is to say that as, a general thing, Salesmanship permits of elaboration-of the persuasion of personality – whereas, at so much per click, Advertising can afford no such luxuries. Concentration, conciseness, terse pictures and expressions- these are the requirements of Advertising. The profession of Advertising is possessed of numberless ramifications, and to the average young man or woman its inner workings are a complete mystery. For that reason there are thousands who enter it without the least idea of what it really offers and exacts, and many stay out who are especially fitted to enter because they do not understand its peculiarities-the very peculiarities they are naturally fitted to meet.

The advertising person is not as common to us as the salesperson. We see their work, but we do not see them. We hear that they are paid a tremendous salary for preparing wonderful “copy” and that such and such a company spends a million dollars a year advertising. There are two general classes of Advertising: Publicity and Appeal. Advertising that merely tends to make popular or explain a product is called publicity advertising. Advertising which makes a direct appeal that you purchase the article advertised right away, and includes the price and a coupon for mailing that price to the advertiser is Appeal advertising. Still other divisions of advertising are reader publicity, educational, display, outdoor and circular. The media used may be the newspapers, magazines, billboards, electric signs, placards, circulars, handbills, booklets, novelties, motion pictures, phonograph, PPC, banners, email blasts or even radio. Advertising is not limited to any one medium and the true advertiser must leverage all venues to be successful.

Salesmanship is a personal action or effort on the part of an individual which is intended to bring about the sale of the goods for sale. More broadly speaking, salesmanship is the art of selling something to somebody, and everything which contributes to the consummation of this exchange is necessarily a part of salesmanship. Salesmanship differs from demonstration in that the latter may not include the former, and it is like demonstration because good salesmanship usually includes some form of demonstration. Salesmanship is not unlike the plea of the lawyer before the court or the jury. Both contain arguments; and, in both cases, the presenter, either of arguments or of goods or of both, is attempting to make the party addressed do what he asks him to do.

On the one hand there is something for sale, whether it be a life insurance policy, an automobile, a suit of clothes, or a barrel of potatoes. The owner of what is for sale, or his representative, desires to sell what he has to somebody who wants it or can be made to want it. To do this, he employs every method which will in any way influence the buyer, including printed matter, e-mail, websites, pay-per-click advertising, television commercials, radio ads, handsome office fittings, and, most important of all, a proper presentation of the thing for sale adding personality and voice to the selling argument.

The salesman exists for two reasons: first, custom; secondly, because it is obvious that even the best informed buyer cannot know everything. There is opportunity for a discussion person-to-person, and for the presentation of argument; and this information and these arguments cannot be given with any degree of fullness by the printed page or advertisement. Or, if they could be, they would not even then take the place of personal information-giving and custom-made argument. Salesmanship cannot be analyzed with chemical or other exactness. To define it, to separate it into its component parts, would be as difficult as it would be to analyze ability and to tell what it consists of. Yet we all know what salesmanship is, and we are able to measure the results of its qualities and quantities.