Stone Tablets, Trade Shows, and Telephones: 4,000 Years of Sales History

What It Covers

This episode explores 4,000 years of sales history, from the oldest customer complaint carved on a clay tablet in 1750 BCE Mesopotamia to modern $380 billion acquisitions. Jeb Blount and Ashley trace the evolution of professional selling through snake oil salesmen, the first sales quotas, and the traveling salesman problem.

Key Questions Answered

• •Ancient B2B Complaints: The oldest recorded customer complaint dates to 1750 BCE in Mesopotamia, where merchant Nani carved his dissatisfaction with subpar copper ingots into a stone tablet. This demonstrates that difficult clients and service failures have existed for 4,000 years, predating modern customer service by millennia. The effort required to chisel complaints into stone suggests only truly significant issues warranted documentation in ancient commerce.
• •Sales Standardization Origins: John H. Patterson founded NCR (National Cash Register Company) in the 1880s and created the first mandatory sales script, sales quotas, and sales conventions. He forced every representative to memorize the NCR Primer word-for-word, transforming sales from an unregulated Wild West into a standardized profession. This standardization became the foundation for modern sales training, accountability systems, and corporate sales kickoff events still used today.
• •Snake Oil Reality: Chinese railroad laborers in the 1800s used genuine water snake oil containing omega-3 acids for muscle relief. American entrepreneur Clark Stanley corrupted this at the 1893 World's Fair by selling fake snake oil made of mineral oil and beef fat with no actual snake content. Government testing in 1917 exposed the fraud, creating the lasting term for dishonest salespeople that persists today.
• •Territory Optimization Math: The traveling salesman problem from the 1800s asks: what is the shortest route visiting multiple cities once and returning to origin? This NP-hard mathematical challenge has no easy formula as variables increase. Modern companies like Amazon and UPS use this foundational problem to optimize global logistics networks worth billions. Field sales representatives can apply this by dividing territories into quadrants and working one section per day.
• •Inside Sales Emergence: Dial America formed the first inside sales team in 1957, shifting sales from door-to-door to telephone-based selling 106 years after the first major trade show. This marked the beginning of virtual selling environments where face-to-face meetings became optional rather than mandatory. The telephone became the fastest connection between two points, dramatically reducing travel time and increasing daily prospect contact volume for sales professionals.