Business Marketing Advertising

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.

A Direct Mail Marketing campaign is perfect for attracting new customers, and for keeping existing clients coming back for more. When you address each individual client directly, you will be able to capture their attention, and pitch your ideas and offerings more effectively.

Where To Begin

Direct mail marketing starts with a mailing list. The more information that is availabe, the more personalized you can make your campaign. If you know the last product a specific client purchased, you can offer them a similar item, at a discounted cost, similar to the way Amazon.com recommends purchases. All information from the mailing list is processed and then automatically inputted onto a design template for each and every name and address on the list.

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?

One of the biggest accounts now on the books of the Faultless Caster Company was closed as a result of a salesman going back to correct an error he had made. At that time, J. F. Weintz, now vice president of Sales Management, Inc., was selling casters to manufacturers of furniture for that company. The first call made on this buyer was on Saturday. The buyer was not very receptive. There was much mail and Saturday was a short day.
Anyhow, Weintz placed his sample caster on the buyer’s desk. The buyer fumbled with a letter, showing no inclination to stop his work. The salesman ex?plained that he would be glad to hurry through his story because he wanted to get away quickly to catch the two o’clock train. The buyer looked out of the corner of his eye with a frown. “As far as I am con?cerned, you can go and catch your train right now,” he snapped. “The interview is terminated right this minute!”

Suppose that you were a sales manager in charge of ten men.

Suppose, further, that it was necessary for you to reduce your force by one man. You have carefully gone over the records of each man and decided that the man to get the pink slip must be either Bill Smith or Jim Jones.
But you are in a quandary as to which of the two men to lay off. Smith’s record shows that his sales volume is $400 a week more than Jones’. On the other hand, Jones operates himself for $50 a week less than Smith.

G. D. Carter, a sales manager of the F. E. Compton Company, at one time had an experience that shows why some sales people who are not particularly clever, or brilliant, or unusual, succeed where “born” salesmen fail.

On leaving his home one morning, Mr. Carter noticed an Armenian, with a bright-colored oriental rug thrown across his arm, ringing a doorbell. A woman came to the door and the Armenian said, “Pretty. Want to buy?” The woman slammed the door.

Direct mail marketing can do a lot to expand the customer base and increase the profits of your Miami FL business. Direct mail advertising is very popular among businesses today because it has been proven to be very effective in putting a message across to a target audience and getting results. It is both versatile and measurable, with a higher return on investment (ROI) as compared to other advertising methods.

An investigation during the past month discloses that the most disheartening buyer being encountered these days is the man who fully agrees that he should have the product offered. He claims he has a need for it, wants it, and even yearns for it, but he further insists that he cannot take it on now either for cash or on time. How can he be handled?
Recently a Royal Typewriter salesman called upon a certain large Detroit company and let it be known that he had come to trade in their present machines and replace them with forty new Royals. The purchasing agent almost laughed at him and reported that they just received instructions from the board of directors to buy nothing except what they had to have. They were retrenching.
The salesman congratulated them. He said his company was doing the same. He asked if they had any orders to stop saving. Anticipating an answer in the negative, the salesman pulled out of his pocket previously prepared figures showing interest on investment which could be earned on the difference between the tradein value now and later. The interest looked too good for the buyer to pass up and an order was placed.
Of course, there is nothing startling about this plan, except that he had prepared himself in advance for the objection he felt sure would arise. Every sales man approached on this subject of the “buyer who cannot afford to spend the money” points out that his success in handling this type began when he discovered that such a plea is superficial. The man who says he is not buying at present is simply putting forth an objection which he has found baffles most salesmen.