Way back during the Great Depression in the 1930's Walgreen Drugstores hired Elmer Wheeler to help them sell eggs.

You might ask yourself, "why the hell would Walgreen's be selling eggs?"

Well, they, like all drugstores back then had soda fountains inside the stores. They sold soft drinks, ice cream and most pertinent to this story, milkshakes and malts.

It used to be that a raw egg was sometimes added to beverages to make them smoother and richer tasting and that, is why they were selling eggs and why they hired Elmer to help them sell more of them.

Walgreen's was buying eggs for ten cents per dozen. They were selling them for a nickel each. That's a huge margin on a dozen eggs.

Here's what Elmer did to help them:

He told them to apply Wheelerpoint #4, "Don't Ask If, Ask Which", which means never offer a choice between something and nothing, always offer a choice between something and something else.

He instructed them that the soda jerk when getting an order for a milkshake or malt should hold up an egg in each hand and say "one egg or two?" A large percentage of those that had been thinking no egg elected to get one egg.

Ultimately this simple gesture of holding up an egg in each hand, another Wheelerpoint, #3 to be precise which says "Say It With Flowers" and a simple 4 word statement, "one egg or two" resulted in the sale of an additional 29,000 CASES of eggs, PER WEEK!

That's $9,048,000.00 extra profit in one year from selling eggs, one at a time. In today's dollars that is equivalent to $129,024,480.00!

This is just one of the many, many reasons he was referred to as the "World's Greatest Salesman".

Elmer Wheeler - America's Greatest Salesman

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