Business Marketing Advertising

A $3,850 order was closed a while back by a conveyor salesman covering Texas, nicknamed by fellow salesmen at a recent convention “Sketch” Stephens because of a favorite selling idea to which he attributes much of his success in closing this and many other orders.

His plan is to carry a large sketching pencil which he pulls out as soon as he begins talking with the buyer, making crude pictures and lines as he talks to illustrate his points. For instance, in closing the order mentioned, he drew, on a piece of paper paths showing how four men had to walk around machinery during the day under the old arrangement. When pictured in this manner and the number of yards and miles visualized, crude as it was, the picture drove the point home.

If you read the prize-winning stories on salesmanship in Collier’s a few years ago, you probably said to yourself : “That’s a good story, and you certainly have to hand it to Richard for sticking six hours to get an order, but I have put over just as good sales myself.”
But there is one point in this experience that Richard mentions that is very significant, yet the full importance of it is not apparent at first reading. You will recall that when the elder Mr. Wise same into the store after Richard had waited six hours for him, he asked Richard to wait until after he had fixed the furnace. Instead Richard handed him a sample pair “to save his clothes” and then went down in the basement to help his customer fix the furnace.
“There is nothing,” relates the winner of one of the Collier prizes for salesmanship, “like sweating together at a common task to melt two spirits into harmony.” And it is true. It touches the same cord of human nature that makes lifelong comrades of men who fought together, or hunted together, or studied together.
People respond most quickly to the advances of those who put themselves on their level. The reason that Billy Sunday is one of the greatest salesmen that this country has ever known is because he gets down to the level of the people he wants to convert. He uses the same slang that they do; he talks in the same metaphors; he includes himself when he speaks of sinners.

One of the highest paid advertising men in the country said the other day that successful advertising was simply finding out why present customers bought, and then telling as many prospective customers about it as possible.
It seems ridiculously obvious ? yet it is a fact that nine out of ten of us neglect just such obvious things in sales work. Then someone without nearly as much experience, and not half as able as we are, comes along and does them.

The other day some of the men in the office played a game of golf on a course that was pitted with puddles of water.
After a few holes the puddles began to get on the nerves of one of the players. Every time he drove or pitched he seemed to land in the water. He went to pieces completely. The mental hazard was too much for him.
Now, ordinarily, this man played a fairly good game, but somehow he got it into his head that every time he hit the ball he drove into a puddle, and the first thing he knew he was doing it regularly. The other players drove over the puddles, but he drove into them.
There are mental hazards in business as well as in golf. If we think about them long enough and hard enough we will find ourselves licked, just as those water puddles licked my friend.
This is particularly true of that great mental hazard ? the summer lull. In every selling foursome you will find a player whose game has gone to pieces because he has convinced himself that summer is a poor time to see people. The mental hazard has “got” him.

At a sales managers’ meeting the other day the speaker talked for half an hour about “lazy” salesmen.
He never knew a lazy salesman, because a real salesman is on his toes every minute.
He referred to the salesman who complained that his company tried to make a pack horse of him.
He never knew a real salesman who balked at carrying samples, because a real salesman knows that showing samples increases sales.
He berated the salesman who blamed his inability to get orders on the firm and its management.
He forgot that a real salesman is 100 per cent for the firm, for the management and for the buyers all the time.
He lamented the ease with which salesmen accept defeat.
He should have known that when a real salesman doesn’t get what he goes after, he generally knows where to get another order just as good.
He complained of the unrest among salesmen.
Real salesmen don’t complain ? they know that they write their own pay checks, and if the amount is not large enough, they make it larger.
He spoke of apologetic salesmen. Real salesmen don’t apologize for what they “can’t do” ? they are too busy trying.

Wall Street is telling a story of shrewd salesmanship by Frank Robertson, attorney-general of Mississippi, in disposing of one million dollars in state bonds. A conference was held and to Robertson fell the task of selling the bonds.

The issue, which was for a tuberculosis sanitarium, was offered at par with 5 1/2 per cent interest. Bankers turned him down flat saying that the terms were too low. Robertson could easily have reported that the thing to do was to wait until conditions were such that the bankers would accept the issue. But he found a way. He created a market by developing a plan whereby he could convince life insurance companies that it would be good business for them to invest because the bonds would help them prolong the lives of policyholders. The plan was effective and he sold the entire issue.

At a recent conference of jobbers’ salesmen, the sales manager drew a big pie-shaped chart on the blackboard. “That circle,” he said to the audience, “represents the money we get when you make a sale.
Then he took his chalk and divided the “pie” into a hundred degrees. He counted out ten of them, and cut a slice out of the pie equal to that much of the whole. Next, he erased everything but the slice, which, he said, “represents what the company keeps out of the money it gets when you sell a bill of goods.”
The sales manager took his eraser and started lopping off slices from the slice. Depreciation of inventories, taxes, interest on investment, cost of running the credit and collection department, executive expense, depreciation on buildings, insurance, office expense and numerous other items, each in turn called for cutting down the already slim slice. Finally, there was left only a little slice equal to one and three-quarters degrees, or less than 2 per cent of the original circle. “That,” he said, “is our net profit.”
Of course, every sales person present knew only too well that the margin of net profit on what he sold was small, but few of them realized just how small it really was. One chap jumped up and wanted to know how the business could pay 8 per cent dividends if it only made 1 3/4 per cent profit. When the sales manager asked him if he understood what turnover was, the salesman was terribly insulted.
It is true that 1 3/4 per cent is smaller than the average net profit on sales. In the packing business it runs between 2 and 3 per cent. There are lines where it is even 5 per cent. But just how much or how little it is does not matter. The point is that when the average sales person makes a mistake he thinks of the cost of that mistake in relation to the gross profit, when he should think of it in relation to the net profit.
We are all careful, of course, not to spend the company’s money unnecessarily, for we know that a dollar saved in our expense account is equal to ten dollars in our order book. But do we all fully appreciate the costliness of mistakes such as a carelessly made out order, extravagance in granting a concession, or failure to inform the house of a change in our route?

Two hundred red-blooded sales people of a large specialty organization were recently furnished with “ability analysis” blanks. Dozens of factors such as “industry,” “decision,” “dependability,” “determination,” were listed on the form. These sales people are all big men ? they think big, do big and earn big. But they were not too big to recognize the value of honest self-analysis. They graded themselves on the form and put it away for their own confidential use, resolving to improve on items where their grades were not high. Six months later the company sent them another blank. This was filled out and compared with the first.
The bigger the salesman, the more he appreciates the value of “taking an inventory” of himself. Gerald Ward, candy salesman, relates an experience which illustrates his belief in the self-analysis plan.
Ward had an exclusive agent in an important Iowa center, from whom orders totaled about six hundred dollars annually. He had tried various ways to increase this account, but he felt that he would lose it if he pushed his ideas too strongly. Finally he resolved to take the situation in hand at the expense of ruffling the feelings of the buyer and possibly getting “in wrong.” He went out and sold four other dealers in town and succeeded in forcing the buyer to see the value of the agency. The matter was smoothed over later and this buyer got behind the product locally. A single order of one thousand dollars resulted and sales in that city have now jumped to seven thousand dollars annually.
This salesman’s weakness was that he felt satisfied with the business he obtained from certain good customers and he was always afraid of offending the buyer. But he was big enough to see through the situation. The result is, he turned more big buyers into bigger buyers and greatly increased his showing.

Do you keep a scrapbook? Jason Rogers, one time publisher of the New York “Globe” and one of the forward-thinking minds in the advertising business, contends that any sales people who keeps a scrapbook will close many orders that would otherwise go to his competitors.

The managing director of one of the largest paint manufacturers in the British Empire, with the reputation of being one of the greatest salesmen, was interviewed regarding his selling methods.
He replied that there wasn’t anything he did that was worth writing up. He simply laid out his plans and then followed them through!
What a story could be written around that simple thought. How many of us dream mighty dreams, conceive brilliant ideas, and then promptly forget them? How many of us read of methods which we know absolutely will increase our business, but never put them into practice?
Two salesmen that I have in mind will read this hook. Both of them will read in its pages some plan or idea which they can actually use to increase their year’s business. Both of them will be quick to appreciate the value of the suggestion.
But in the case of one of these men, his enthusiasm will begin and end with the reading of the book. In the case of the other he will not only read it, but he will follow it through. He will make it pay dividends.
Thinking about how we can get more business; how we can make more money and how we can attain greater success, is not enough. The most brilliant ideas in the world won’t put an extra penny in our pockets unless we put them to work.