he

“Evening, sir.” No [p 27]  response. Louder, “Good evening, Mr. Robb. Mr. Robb, it’s Ben, sir. Ben Tilman. You memo’d me to come—” Still no sign. The eyes, under the great, beetling brows, seemed closed.

[p 

27

]  

come—

Ben grinned and reached out across the wide desk toward the small, plastic box hanging on the Old Man’s chest. The Old Man glanced up as Ben tapped the plastic lightly with his fingernail.

“Oh, Ben. It’s you.” The Old Man raised his hand to adjust the ancient style hearing aid he affected as Ben sank into a chair. “Sorry Ben. I just had old Brannic Z-IX in here. A fine old robot, yes, but like most of that model, long-winded. So—” He gestured at the hearing aid.

So—

Ben smiled. Everyone knew the Old Man used that crude old rig so he could pointedly tune out conversations he didn’t care to hear. Any time you were talking to him and that distant look came into his half closed eyes, you could be sure that you were cut off.

“Sorry, Ben. Well now. I simply wanted to check with you, boy. Everything all set for tonight?”

“Well, yes, sir. Everything is set and programmed. Betty and I will play it all evening for the suspense, let them wonder, build it up—and then, instead of the big pitch they’ll be looking for, we’ll let it go easy.”

“A new twist on the old change-up. Ben, boy, it’s going to go. I feel it. It’s in the air, things are just ripe for a new, super-soft-sell pitch. Selling you’ve got to do by feel, eh Ben? By sales genius and the old seat of the pants. Good. After tonight I’m going all out, a hemisphere-wide, thirty day campaign. I’ll put the top sales artist of every regional office on it. They can train on your test pattern tapes. I believe we can turn over billions before everybody picks up the signal and it senilesces. You give an old man a new faith in sales, Ben! You’re a salesman.”

“Well, sir—” But the Old Man’s knack with the youthful-enthusiasm approach was contagious. 

 Prev. P 3/17 next