There were various other “hawkers and walkers” in early America whose work prefigured modern salesmanship. The selling, promoting, and preaching of ideas had an important place in a country with no established religious institutions and in which competition between political parties was intense. Traveling preachers, in particular, promoted the theme of self-transformation that would also be taken up by patent-medicine salesmen and peddlers of self-improvement guides.
Pamphlets and books, especially the Bible, were popular items for peddlers and preachers to carry. Evangelical preachers pioneered many techniques that salespeople would later adopt.