The Sales History Podcast

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Two Underappreciated Eras That MASSIVELY Changed Sales

2026-11-0523:50

Send us Fan Mail We so often think about the telephone, or email, or the internet, or even AI as being periods of significant change for the sales profession. In today's episode, I want to take you through two underappreciated eras that literally flipped the sales profession completely upside down...and we don't even think about them. In the early 1900s, it was the automobile that flipped the sales profession. In the 1950s, the rise of automation and technologies suddenly started mechanizing ...

Selling - During the Great Depression

2026-10-2222:56

Send us Fan Mail What would it have been like to sell during a depression, and specifically, the Great Depression? In this episode of The Sales History Podcast, I take you through it, starting with the boom and prosperity of 1926, then tracing the collapse into the darkest years of 1932–1933 and the uneven recovery that followed. During the episode, I'll take you through what life actually was like, we'll go into some of the details around why (and how) salespeople were largely excluded from ...

Worthington C. Holman - The Ginger Man

2026-10-0818:05

Send us Fan Mail In the category of foundation builders in the sales profession that you've got to know, there's Worthington C. Holman. He'd be my fourth on the Mount Rushmore of sales goats. Why? Holman taught an emerging sales profession how to write, and an emerging sales leadership profession how to inspire, through writing, many miles from their teams. He worked under John Patterson at NCR, was a prolific writer on sales and sales leadership, and created the "Ginger Talk". But this isn't...

The 1926 Sales Dictionary: The Sales Terminology of 100 Years Ago

2026-09-2422:56

Send us Fan Mail In 1926, W.L. Barnhart began publishing something called the Salesman’s Dictionary in How to Sell magazine into 1927. Some of the terms are still familiar today. Others, like “swindle sheet,” “ginger letter,” “information clerk,” and “knights of the grip”, have disappeared completely. And a few, like “character analysis” and “phrenology”, are probably best gone away. In this episode, I take you through some of the language used 100 years ago in the sales profession. What the...

Tin Men: The Scams of the 1960s Aluminum Siding Salespeople

2026-09-1021:25

Send us Fan Mail In the 1950s and 1960s, aluminum siding salespeople, known as “Tin Men”, became infamous for some of the most creative and dishonest sales tactics in American history. Bait-and-switch advertising. Fake “model home” discounts. Theatrical calls to nonexistent managers. Broken yardsticks. Phony guarantees, misleading financing, fake deadlines and “free” gifts that were neither free nor delivered. Some salespeople even refused to leave a homeowner’s kitchen until a contract was s...

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