Business Marketing Advertising

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.