Business Marketing Advertising

In analyzing its office overhead for last year, one of the big Chicago wholesale companies was amazed to find that the overhead in the bookkeeping department had increased 50 per cent, in the face of a 30 per cent decrease in sales.

The general manager hit the ceiling. He pressed button No. 999. “See here,” he said to the flustered office manager, “why don’t you cut down this overhead? It is higher than it was when we were doing, almost twice the business.”

“I’ll admit it is high,” said the office manager, “but do you realize that during 1929 we handled three times as many charges as we did during 1928? Where a salesman used to turn in two orders amounting to $500, he now turns in six amounting to $350.”

Business depends more than ever on small orders. This means that unless you plan your work so as to get the small with the big, your record is going to get bumped this year.

The New York “Times,” some time back, printed a story about a young salesman who started as a greenhorn after the war, and who led one of the great sales organizations of the country for years. The article didn’t say so, but this salesman was able to out?distance his teammates because he was caught by the tide of changing buying habits, and carried along with it.

“I used to be greatly discouraged,” says this salesman, “when I made a lot of calls to secure so little business, whereas other salesmen made a few calls ?sometimes only by telephone ? and got so much business. At times I was on the verge of giving up, but I felt sure if I kept on making calls, and planting good?will seeds, that sooner or later things would break for me. So I just kept on keeping on.

“And sure enough the turn did come. When the slump struck the other salesmen who had been getting all their business from a few customers, and who had neglected the rest, found themselves out of luck. On the other hand, the many points of contact I had built up stood me in good stead. I was astonished at the number of small orders I was able to pick up.”

This salesman unwittingly placed his finger on one of the great success-building principles that underlie our work. We can “get by” for a while by confining our efforts to a small group of friendly customers. But if we expect to build for the future we must continually plant “good will” seeds even though no immediate return is evident.