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.

An experienced driver knows that if a car does not start after turning it over a few times there must be something wrong, and he gets busy at once and begins to check up. He doesn’t run his battery down.
Neither will an experienced salesman burn up his energy and ruin his morale in a frantic effort to get business after a series of discouragements.

When you have gone several days without an order, check up on yourself to see what is the matter with your methods. You will probably find any one of these things to be wrong:

Word comes from New York that the “Sell Now” movement is making great strides. The newspapers are giving liberal space to the work, and even the great metropolitan dailies and the magazines of millions of circulation are urging their readers to “Sell Now.”

What are you doing to tie up to this movement? To bring home to you the possibilities in the idea we learned the other day of an enterprising salesman for the Sealy Mattress Company, who was bitten by the “Sell Now” bug and wanted to see if the idea was any good.

A salesman for Lee Puncture Proof Tires was balked by a customer who insisted that because his tires cost more than Sears, Roebuck tires, the farmers around wouldn’t pay the price.
To prove that they would the salesman got the dealer to go with him and make some calls. They tried all morning without success.
At noon they returned to town. After lunch, when the salesman went out to get his car it wouldn’t start. While he was tinkering with it a farmer drove up and parked alongside.
“What’s the matter? Won’t it start?” asked the farmer. “Maybe you ain’t got no gas.” The salesman, who by this time had the parts of the ignition system well spread out over the curb, merely grunted. He was in no mood to be friendly ? especially to a farmer. The farmer, however, was not so easily discouraged. His observing eye noticed that the salesman’s car was equipped with puncture proof tires. “How much do them tires cost?” he asked.
“A whole lot more than you would pay,” was the salesman’s none – too – courteous reply. This got Hiram’s dander up. “Is that so?” “Yes,” said the salesman, “they will cost you just four times as much as you are paying for tires from Sears, Roebuck and Company.”
This was too much. After telling the salesman what he thought of him, and city chaps generally, he walked into the dealer’s store and paid cash for a set of puncture proof tires, had the dealer put them on, and drove right alongside the salesman to show him, by heck, that he didn’t buy his tires from Sears, Roebuck, and that $130 for a set of tires did not faze him.
Of course, no salesman would talk to a prospect that way under ordinary conditions, but this experience does illustrate one of the eccentricities of human nature which makes selling the most fascinating of all occupations ? in this case an appeal to reason.
Ethel Mays Woofter, who sells insurance in and around Atlanta, Georgia, was arrested with her husband for speeding. Writing to a friend, she thus describes what followed:
“The judge fined Jack $25, but we came out all right. While Jack was handing over the money, I got the cop off in a corner, pointed out the dangers of his job, and sold him a policy. The commission more than covered the fine.”

This is a good time to sit down and have a long heart-to-heart talk with a buyer about his business.
He has now closed his books for last year. His thoughts are retrospective. He is thinking about what he hoped to do and didn’t. He is thinking about the money he ought to have made, but didn’t.
He has put last year away and he is starting anew with a clean slate. He has in mind a profit quota that he hopes to make this year. But he knows he can’t make it unless he does many things differently than last year. Therefore, he is open to suggestion.
You will find, I think, that one of the principal reasons many of your prospects and customers did not make more money was not that they spent so much, but that they spent too much unwisely. They will probably admit that to you.
So impress upon buyers the need this year of giving more thought to how they spend ? their buying policies. They should make every dollar spent produce not merely a one-time profit, but a re-occurring profit. And that means buying quality.
Those who made the big profits last year were those who had built their business on the rock of quality. Those who are going to make the big profits this year are likewise those who build on quality. Drive home this viewpoint this month. It is easier to swim with the tide than against it.

Probably few people have had more experience in selling to captains of industry than Isaac Marcosson, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post and the American Magazine. Marcosson’s job is to sell men who refuse to be interviewed on the idea of giving him the story of how they have accomplished the impossible.

One of his largest sales was getting James J. Hill to tell him how he had built the Great Northern Rail?way. Hill had for years resisted all efforts of newspaper men to interview him. He not only did not like publicity, but was violently opposed to it. Marcoson sold him.

For some years back the holiday drive on coffee has been a feature of Reid-Murdoch’s business. This year all records were completely shattered. Over 2,500,000 pounds of coffee were shipped out of their warehouses during December.
The piling up of such a record called for salesmanship of a high order, and many interesting experiences were recited by the people at a big banquet given by the company in their honor.
One particularly interesting sale was made by R. E. Perry, of the Milwaukee branch. When the drive opened, Perry called on a dealer out in the residential district by the name of Frank Stancl. When Perry broached the subject of coffee to Stancl he made it quite plain that he wasn’t going to buy any more coffee, as he already had part of a case on hand.
Instead of accepting the customer’s decision, Salesman Perry asked him if he knew how much coffee was consumed in the United States every day. No, he didn’t. So Perry told him. It was more coffee than Stancl thought there was in the whole world. Then Perry told him what the per capita consumption of coffee was, just how many pounds the people in Milwaukee bought every day.
These big figures staggered Stancl. They made his “part of a case” look small indeed. The doubt began to seep into his mind whether, after all, he had enough coffee. And by the time the Reid-Murdoch man had brought the figures right down to the ward in which the Stancl store was located, and figured out for him just how much coffee was being consumed every day in the vicinity of his store, he was in full retreat.
Stancl soon came to the conclusion that as a coffee merchant he was a minus quantity. If the salesman’s figures were right they indicated he was getting less than one-twentieth of the coffee business he ought to have. The thought of what was getting away roused his fighting spirit. He gave Perry an order for three more cases and decided then and there to get busy.
Before the drive closed, Stancl not only sold the case he had on hand, as well as the three cases he had ordered, but had placed a repeat order which brought his total sales up to nine cases! Nine cases are pretty good for a man who doubted whether he could dispose of one.

In looking over the manual used by the salesmen of the National Cash Register Company I came upon a thought which is worth passing along here.
“Learn the value of patience,” counseled the manual, “remember you are asking your prospect to understand in half an hour what it has taken you months to learn.”
Even though our problems are different from those of a salesman selling cash registers, there is a world of wisdom in this advice. It is all too true that as we grow in experience we become increasingly impatient of the viewpoint of the man we must sell.
When he offers objections which we have heard for the ten thousandth time, we forget that in his mind the objection is very real, and very important. We impatiently brush it aside. We lack patience to try to see the situation through his eyes.
When we explain points that to us are as clear as day, and the prospect fails repeatedly to grasp them, we lose patience, and let our voice reflect irritation. The buyer, not wishing to be thought dull, says he understands when he doesn’t understand.
Let us remember that patience is the basis of all teaching, and stripped of its mysteries and theories, selling is nothing more or less than teaching. Don’t you agree with me?