He quotes at length from the book, and also from Dr. Seuss:
Defending sales is, well, a tough sell. Mr. Delves Broughton might have quoted from “Dr.
Seuss’s Sleep Book,” a best seller that since 1962 has indoctrinated children to regard selling with suspicion: “Five foot-weary salesmen have laid down their load. / All day they’ve raced round in the heat, at top speeds, / Unsuccessfully trying to sell Zizzer-Zoof Seeds / Which nobody wants because nobody needs.”
But concludes:
Theodor Geisel (the real name of Dr. Seuss) may have ridiculed salesmen as flogging something that “nobody needs,” but he was a good salesman himself. He crisscrossed the country pushing his product, sometimes arriving for book signings in a helicopter. To date, the Seuss brand has moved about 200 million units. Mr. Delves Broughton, promoting the idea that sales is a virtuous calling, may have a harder time attracting customers, but he makes an appealing, contrarian pitch.
