15 FEBRUARY 1963, Page 16

Sirt,The dividing line between (a) genuine selling (b) vigorous salesmanship

and (c) downright law- breaking dishonesty, strikes me as being very tenuous. Take the example of a famous firm dealing in certain office machines. Always new representatives are coming round (you never see the same face again) pretending, cross-their-hearts, that they have only come to 'check how the machine works.' This is nonsense. What they have in fact come to do is to try and find a flaw in the present machine and persuade you that the latest model would be better.

*