Origins of the Hungry Sales Wolf

Many people have asked me about the origin of the Hungry Sales Wolf school of telemarketing sales excellence.

Back when the white man first came to North America, the Dutch had a trading colony which they called New Amsterdam (1). It was a prosperous little place, trading European trade goods (weapons and whiskey) for local products, mainly furs.

Many Indian tribes came to New Amsterdam to trade. The French, settled to the north in Montreal and Quebec were not aggressively pursuing the fur trade at that time (2). The local tribe, called Mohicans by the Dutch, profited the most by the fur trade, as the other tribes had to pass through their territory and were expected to hand over some of their profits. The best furs came from the Huron territory, of course (3), and the rest came from the territory of the Iroquois confederation.

The Dutch held a trading fair pretty well every weekend in New Amsterdam. It did not take long for the Iroquois to realize that they were getting the short end of the stick. Things were not too happy for the average Iroquois in those days, they were the butt of ‘backwoods cousin’ remarks from the other tribes, and the Hurons constantly played practical jokes.

One spring, an Iroquois trader was in New Amsterdam. He noticed that the local Mohican chief, Big Dick, always got the best prices for his furs and always got his firewater for free, even though his furs were scruffy and had fleas. At the end of a trading session, the Iroquois, having avoided a bunch of Huron looking to play ‘catch the deer turd’, found himself close to Big Dick’s large and comfortable lodge.

Big Dick was seated by the fire, enjoying a pipe of tobacco, watching his many sons play, and digesting a big meal made by his wives.

The Iroquois asked Big Dick how he did it. How did he sell his furs at top price? How did he get muskets and hatchets and kettles for less than everyone else?

Big Dick sat back and then told the Iroquois about Hungry Sales Wolf.


(1) The English captured the place during the Third Anglo-Dutch War and renamed the village New York. We can thank Oliver Cromwell for taking time away from crushing Irish monarchists to perform this task.

(2) The French were still suffering from the ravages of scurvy in their North American colonies. Up to a third of their over-wintering colonists would die each winter from this disease. Subsequently, it was hard to find colonists, and the survivors tended to seize the next arriving supply ship and sail it back to France. The crew of the supply ship was left behind, stranded. Of course, the local Indians (Abenaki tribe, I believe) thought this very amusing, and would laugh themselves sick watching the antics of the French fighting their way onto a ship, throwing the crew into the river, and fleeing Quebec. This happened year after year.

(3) That wonderful Canadian climate produces the finest furs, rivaled only by the gentle breezes of a Siberian winter. An early French entrepreneur lured several shiploads of colonists to Quebec on the basis that the Canadian winter would cure baldness (just look at the fine furs that come from there, eh?). He would lift his hat to show his own thick head of hair, and had several witnesses who claimed that once he was bald as an egg, until a winter in Quebec made his hair re-grow, thick and lush. Unfortunately, the entrepreneur was cut down in a vulgar street brawl by a colonist who had just returned from Quebec. The vengeful colonist had lost three fingers, an ear, and his nose to frostbite.