Business Marketing Advertising

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.