Business Marketing Advertising

The purchasing agent for one of our big factories dropped a remark the other day that I think is worth passing on to you ? it is something that hits many of us.

He was speaking of the tendency of sales people in competitive lines to sing the praises of what they were selling to the same tune. He said that during the last week three belting salesmen told him that their belting was “the best on the market.”

Two years ago the star salesman for a Twin City flour mills got married. There was a long article in the house magazine about the wedding, and everyone felt sure that a home and a wife were the two things needed to bring out the best in him.

A few weeks back this same salesman handed in his resignation. For five consecutive months he had fallen below the “dead” line in his billing. He knew that another off month would finish him, and he wanted to save the stain of being “fired.”

When you take an order it does not necessarily follow that you have made a sale. There is a great difference between making sales and taking orders. For example, some buyer calls up on the phone. One of the salesmen in the office answers it. The buyer asks the salesman to send him certain things. The salesman puts it down. He thinks he has made a sale. But he hasn’t. He has merely rendered a service.
The same buyer calls you on the phone. He tells you that he wants so and so, and such and such. But the things he wants are not what you think he ought to have. They may be special, or they may be something on which there is little or no profit. They may be most anything.
You persuade the buyer that he was mistaken; that your suggestions are better than his; that in the long run it will pay to buy more in the beginning. You have made money for him. You have made money for your company. You have made money for yourself. You have made a sale.
Many a business has floundered because it had too many salesmen who thought that selling goods was taking orders. The more orders these salesmen took, the less profit the business made. George Westing?house, for example, was a wonderful salesman, but he went broke taking unprofitable orders.
All the big rewards go to the real salesman. He is the man who builds a good will with every sale; who delights in selling the man what he knows he ought to have rather than what the man thinks he wants. You cannot stop that kind of salesman, because in developing his business and his ability to sell, he develops himself.