Business Marketing Advertising

A great sales manager, now at the head of one of the largest businesses of its kind in the world, divides sales people into two classes ? “daily providers” and “once-in-a-whilers.”

The “once-in-a-whiler” often has a reputation for being a wonderful sales person. Business comes easily for him. His orders are spectacular. Glory is showered upon him. Yet, if the business were dependent upon his efforts it would probably fail.

All well-managed business enterprises are operated on a budget basis. Fixed sums are set aside for various activities and purposes. To meet this budget an even flow of orders is required. Every thousand dollars that will be spent next month must be matched by an equal volume of business from the sales force.

One of the best things about being a salesman is that you do not have to wait for someone to die or retire in order to step up the ladder. More than any other one class of workers, the salesman holds his destiny in his own hands. You write your own pay check.
A good illustration is found in the case of a brush salesman who built up one of the biggest brush businesses in the world, and the story of an envelope salesman who used to be an actor.
But the biggest factor in the success of these two men was left out of the story. It was taken for granted, just as we take for granted the biggest thing in our own success. The one thing above all others that has put you where you are today is your ability to execute your ideas.
There are thousands of salesmen who are filled with wonderful ideas for selling goods. They lie awake in the night thinking them up. To hear them talk you would think that they were hundred pointers. But take a look at their scores. Where do they stand? In most cases, strange to say, these brilliant men with their fine, creative minds are bunched together down at the tail end of the list!
These salesmen who think these big thoughts and never execute them are like inventors we all know who are geniuses as inventors but are always broke.
They don’t know when to stop inventing and begin manufacturing. They are like the golf player who
devises a wonderful new way to play the sixteenth hole but never plays it that way. It is always a case of the next time.
Both Fuller and Graw, the salesmen referred to, are successful because they “put over” ideas. Graw,
while on the stage, had noticed that the best way to win applause was to single out a likely looking group down in front and play to them. Pretty soon they would start applauding, and the applause quickly spread. When Graw started selling, he decided to follow the same tactics. But he didn’t decide to do it and let it go at that. He actually did it. And that is why he succeeded.

Among the business failures last month was a company which ten years ago employed 9,000 sales agents. Its advertisements, showing a cut of the president with the caption, “I will make you prosperous,” appeared in every magazine.

Eight years ago the man who founded the business, and around whose personality the business had been built up, died. Today the enterprise lies out on the scrap heap, a ghastly warning to those who aspire to be the “whole thing” in business.

Okay, so it’s time to sit down and design a mailing piece for a direct marketing project. You sit down at your desk with a sharp pencil and a blank sheet of paper, or at your computer, with an empty word processing document. Minutes later, you find yourself twirling your pencil or tapping your fingers, still staring at that vast nothingness, looking for that elusive spark of creativity. Well, in this article we are going to a look at one technique that could help you harness that spark.

At the Chrysler Corporation’s offices in Detroit, everyone, even the president, has to punch the time clock every night and morning.
The other day a business reporter noticed the time?card rack in the general office and walked over to it. He picked out the cards of Walter P. Chrysler, president, and J. E. Fields, vice president in charge of sales.
The average time of arrival on these cards was 8:15 a.m., although the office does not open until 8:30, and on Mr. Fields’ card overtime was punched for every evening of the week.
People like Chrysler and Fields know well how important it is to get a running start on the day. You don’t see them hanging around the office in the morning waiting for “time to start” or “calling it a day” along toward four.
An hour in the early morning is worth more to a sales person than two hours during the busiest part of the day, because it is in the early morning that your mind is fresh and your enthusiasm at its peak. Be an early starter as well as a self-starter.

It is estimated that the turnover of salesmen since the first of the year averages more than 1,500 a day. In other words, that many sales people either lose their jobs or quit every day. This is more than three times the normal mortality rate!

A Dodge dealer in New York, operating twenty sales people, states that only four of his men have been with him over six months. In the wholesale hardware field alone, it has been ascertained that 60 per cent of the sales people now employed did not have their present positions at the close of the war. And so it goes. Your line is no exception.

Ten salesmen, in ten different lines of business and in ten different territories, were asked if they were satisfied with their territory.
A salesman working an Illinois car route for one of the packers was the only one of the whole ten who didn’t want a bigger territory. The only reason he didn’t want a bigger territory was because it would mean staying on the road over the week end. For the others the map was entirely too small.
As a matter of fact, every salesman questioned would make more money with a smaller territory. Any of those salesmen could have figured that out for themselves, but they jumped to the conclusion that the bigger the territory the more they would sell, when just the reverse is true.
The sales manager for one of the big grocery specialty store tells about one of his salesmen who said that the particular section of Brooklyn which was his territory was “saturated” with his vanilla extract, and he wanted additional territory. He couldn’t make a living out of his present territory, etc.
The sales manager refused because figures in his possession convinced him the territory was a long way from being saturated. But the salesman “knew” the sales manager was wrong, and either out of stubborn?ness or the effect of so thinking, he let his business slump. Perhaps he figured that by doing this he would show his manager how little the manager knew about his territory. But it didn’t work. The salesman lost his job.
A few weeks previous, this sales manager had put on a hotel clerk who had been bothering him for a chance to sell. This chap had never sold goods. But he was very ambitious. So he was put to work with an experienced salesman, and when the Brooklyn tragedy occurred the ex-hotel clerk got the territory.
To the young man, this tail end of Brooklyn was the most wonderful territory in the world. It was his oyster, his long-looked-for opportunity. He didn’t know it was “saturated” and that there was no more business to be had from it. So he just started out as if nothing were the matter with it.
What happened? Inside of three months this salesman ? George H. Rice of the Joseph Burnett Co. ?had found over two hundred stores where his goods were not sold. Inside of another three months he had put the best part of them on the books, and by helping the old customers to sell more flavoring extracts, he is steadily increasing his volume and his salary.

Are you building a mailing list? Mailing list is a vital tool to promote your company and bring your customers back to your business over and over. It is an asset of your company. If you are hesitate to create a list for your company, here is an article that show you how to avoid top five myth of list building and show you how to avoid them:

William H. Edwards, secretary of Roundy, Peck and Dexter Company, Milwaukee wholesale grocers, has a story that he is fond of telling to his men.
“A young man went to college,” he relates, “and the first thing this young man did was to cut a big letter ‘V’ out of a piece of red cardboard and nail it over his dormitory door.
“His fellow students were puzzled to know why he did this, and chided him about it. But he kept a stiff upper lip. He let them think anything they wanted to think. He just kept right on studying.
“The weeks passed into months and the months into years. But never a word from the student about that big letter ‘V’ over his door. Finally graduation came and he was chosen valedictorian of his class.
“Then he revealed his secret. Before entering college he had determined to be valedictorian. He put the letter ‘V’ over his door to keep his objective constantly before him.”
I won’t spoil the story by explaining the moral. But I know some people in this organization who could do or be anything they wanted to do or to be, if they would just set their minds to the task.
Some of us never arrive because we have forgotten our destination. We all need a tag and a ticket with a destination on it.

A Racine Rubber Company salesman, a topnotcher in this organization, also using the study plan, says :
“I have studied the Racine tire proposition like a lawyer would study a million-dollar case. I never call on a prospective buyer without having something definite to present that fits his particular problem.” It takes a lot of study to be able to do this, but that is what makes this salesman a topnotcher.

Many salesmen who pride themselves on being successful and are satisfied with that attainment, could easily add another 25 per cent to their earning power by a little extra, acquired knowledge. Frequently a hobby will accomplish the desired result.