Business Marketing Advertising

The other day one of the large soap companies raised its prices for the fourth time in two years. The raise was fully justified by raw material advances, but the usual howl went up.

One salesman got so excited that he wrote a long letter to the president of the company. He said that the policy of raising prices without notice was going to ruin the business. He wanted time so he could “protect” his customers.

The president was a man of few words. He took the salesman’s letter and wrote across the bottom:
“Are you the representative of this company or the purchasing agent for your customers?”

Claude Hopkins, one of the foremost writers of advertising in the country, advises the people about to prepare an advertisement to always keep in mind that it may cost $10 a word to insert the advertisement.

“Platitudes and generalities,” he says, “roll off the human understanding like water from a duck. They leave no impression whatever. ‘Lowest prices in existence’ is set down by the buyer as loose exaggeration ? causing the reader to discount every other statement you make.

Among the relics found several years ago in King Tut’s tomb was a scarab recording his frequent changes of religious belief.
In that respect he was not unlike some salesmen we all know who change their connections almost as often as Old King Tut used to change his religion and with about as much compunction or reason.
An advertising salesman, who recently died, is reputed to have advocated and sold five different kinds of competitive advertising during a ten-year career. He started out as a newspaper advertising solicitor. He would go from advertiser to advertiser and take business from the magazines on the strength of newspaper advertising being better than magazine advertising.
A few years later he took a position with a company publishing a “small town” magazine. He went back to the same people and solicited their business on the grounds that magazine advertising was much better than billboard advertising, better than newspaper advertising or better than any other kind of advertising.
No sooner had he established himself as a solicitor of magazine advertising, than he changed religion again, and took a position with a street car advertising concern. Here his inconsistency proved a boomerang, for he failed to measure up. He changed again and failed again. He died discredited and penniless – the laughing-stock of the advertising world!
The foundation of all selling is confidence. Unless your have confidence in yourself, and unless your customers have confidence in you, permanent success is not possible. Nobody can possibly have confidence in a man who changes his beliefs to suit his fancy.
Some day you, too, may be tempted to accept a position with a competitor who holds out a promise or greater earnings. Before deciding, carefully consider the effect such a move is going to have on the good will you now enjoy. Changing religions as you would a suit of clothes may have been all right in King Tut’s day, but it won’t go in present-day business.

In his book, “The Man from Maine,” Edward Bok tells how Cyrus Curtis, upon buying the Philadelphia “Ledger,” dismissed its advertising manager, George F. Goldsmith.

Being a good advertising salesman, Goldsmith soon got a job with the Albert Frank Advertising Agency of New York, which places a great deal of financial advertising in the newspapers, including the “Ledger.”

A friend said to Goldsmith: “Now is your chance to get back at the ‘Ledger.”‘

There is ill-concealed dissatisfaction in a certain sales organization over the filling of a newly created position of assistant sales manager.
The man chosen was not a spectacular business-getter. He had not been with the company as long as some of the other men. He was comparatively young. The men felt that one of the older men should have been selected.
But the man chosen was decided upon because he was a “cooperator.” He knew the value of team work. His record as a getter of orders might have been minus, but his record as a giver of cooperation was very much plus. Cooperation counts.
Never lose sight of the fact that your work is watched much closer than you suspect. The great need in business today is for executives ? especially sales executives. Not more than one salesman in twenty has executive ability ? or, if he has it, he never shows it in his contact with the office.
When you neglect your correspondence; when you fail to send in reports; when you show a general indifference to routine matters you brand yourself as lacking executive ability. You mark yourself down its a poor cooperator. You make it just that much harder to win.
Don’t let it be said of you: “He is a good salesman but that is all you can say for him.” Rather have them say: “He is not only a good salesman but he knows how to cooperate.” Then you will be sought after.

People who stood out as selling giants last year are barely getting by this year, while in the same organization people who were considered tail-enders last year are heading the list, and selling circles around the others.
A good illustration of this situation is found in the experience of the Curtis Corporation, importers and packers of table delicacies. Not so far back a salesman by the name of Ely, working out of the Omaha office, made the Curtis sales force look to their laurels.

Yet it was only a few short years ago that this same chap was considered just an ordinary salesman. He had done his work well ? but he was still obscure.

You often hear a salesman, in commenting upon another’s success, say: “If I only had his chance.”
And he honestly thinks that the other sales person succeeded because he had some mysterious opportunity thrust upon him. But let us see:

These two people each had twenty-four hours a day to work in ? twenty-four hours of equal chance.
Each made about the same number of calls a day. Each of these calls was an equal chance for both men to make a sale, or properly sell his proposition and his house.

T. J. Comer, a Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company salesman at Pittsburgh, relates the story of selling a one-hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy to a man who had protested that he had enough insurance.
Comer has a partner. The two salesmen often work together on a buyer, as was the case in this instance. Comer says that if he does not hit upon the argument which appeals properly, then the chances are his partner will. He knows there is some appeal that will get the order.
An interview was arranged and the two salesmen went to make this call. Five personal calls had been made without results. Various plans were presented to the buyer with no response. Finally, one of the salesmen stated that the company had perfected an educational policy which, in the event of the prospect’s death, would guarantee the education of his several children. Comer reports that he never wit?nessed such a quick response. The application for the one-hundred-thousand-dollar policy was signed in thirty minutes and shortly afterward a fifty-thousand-dollar term policy was ordered to replace one that had expired.
These salesmen were both on the verge of giving up on several occasions. They had presented what they thought were their best arguments. In their persistency, they presented other appeals. The one about his children’s education struck home.

Some streets are named after famous patriots; others are named after the presidents; others honor old settlers, and still others commemorate historical events. -
But there is a street in Deshler, Nebraska, named “Round Oak Street” ? not because there happens to be an oak tree in the vicinity, nor in honor of some rotund Indian chief ? but because an enthusiastic Round Oak stove salesman lives on the street. It is, perhaps, only natural that every house on the street has a Round Oak heating plant.
Whatever we may think of the street as such ?and whatever we may think of the idea of having the street we live on named after the product we sell ?it is undeniable that this is the kind of enthusiasm that puts a salesman over big.
The trouble with most of us is that we take our work for granted. There are some salesmen who are so callous that they won’t even get excited about a proposed advertising campaign. In time this callousness turns to cynicism and they see only the flies in the cream jug. They end up by being “can’t-be?doners.”
Let’s fight shy of such a fate. Let’s always continue to feel that we are working for the best company in the world; that we have a product that towers above every other product of its kind; and fairly itch to get started so that we can tell more people about it.

The old superstition that it is more difficult to do business in summer than in the cooler seasons was given a body blow by a New York salesman who closed a $39,000 sale in July.

The reason this salesman had not been able to close this sale before was that he had allowed himself to be stymied by a subordinate, to whom he had been referred by the man who really had the final say, and who alone could sign the order.