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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
ments. It seems to me that the arguments which you have ad-
vanced are entirely new, and I am frank to say that I have never
viewed this situation in just that light which you present it, but
I believe with you that there will be a lot. of cheap instruments
which will be coming back on the dealer two or three years after
they have been put out, simply because, as you state, the purchaser
can go to some other dealer or department store and get a new
cheap piano much better than the one which he will be paying in-
stalments on for three or four years more.
"It seems to me that The Review has struck a line of thought
here that is of much interest to the trade, and I hope you will keep
it up in your columns until every dealer is impressed with the im-
portance of selling instruments in their proper class."
W
E may say here that we have also received a number of com-
munications written in a somewhat similar vein to the one
quoted above. The interest aroused by The Review utterances
shows that, first of all, the men who are charging too high a price
for a cheap piano have simply been deluding themselves with the
idea that in overcharging the public they were benefiting them-
selves. But, according to our line of argument, they are not. They
are fooling themselves, and purchasers who have bought a $185
piano for $350 will be very liable to cease their payments when
after about three years a clever salesman can show that they will
make money by stopping payments and getting a new r piano for
less than half what they agreed to pay for the old one. If the piano
had been sold right the purchaser would draw close to the end of
his payments in three years from date of purchase. The cheap
piano is all right hi its place, but it must be sold in its class, and
in that way only can it pay the dealer in the end that which he
should receive as profit on his investment and his selling expenses
in connection with the disposition of the instrument.
A
ND, speaking of expenses, there are a number of dealers who
have not as yet figured upon anything near the actual selling
cost of a piano when they make their sales.
According to some of the best estimates in the country, the
average cost of piano selling is from $75 to $80 per instrument.
Now, at five dollars a month, it will be fifteen or sixteen months
when instruments are sold on the five-dollar deferred payment plan
before the selling cost, which must have been paid in cash, is re-
turned to the dealer. Therefore, it can be readily seen that if it
takes a year and a quarter before the selling expense comes back that
a dealer must necessarily have either ample banking facilities, or a
long bank account to put out many pianos on the small monthly
payment plan. The expense item is a very important one, and it
costs a good bit of money to sell pianos. There are some concerns,
of course, who can cut selling expenses down to a low point, but,
taking all the stores throughout the country, the selling expenses
would not average less than $75 a piano, and in some cases would
reach a hundred.
T
H E R E are less advertisements which contain cut prices or dis-
honest advertisements now published than ever before. This
one fact shows that the piano trade has traveled a long ways in the
direction of good, clean business methods.
No permanent success can be built up on dishonesty and knav-
ery, any more than a permanent financial success can be won from
gambling. The gambler may win to-day—but there is always a to-
morrow. No man can point to a gambler who ever quit winner in
the long run. And it is the same way with business dishonesty.
Chicanery, sharp dealing, misrepresentation exhaust the possibilities
of trade with a customer at the time of the first deal with him.
He never comes back for a reorder. And he goes forth trumpet-
tongued, after his own first painful experience, to proclaim in every
quarter of the business world that he has been held up and robbed.
No amount of costly advertising can overcome a negative influ-
ence like this. No amount of push and enterprise can force a suc-
cess in the face of a steadily growing adverse public opinion. And
adverse public opinion is spread abroad by dishonest or sharp deal-
ing as surely as the ripples spread outward in circles from the spot
where a stone is flung into the water.
P
IANO dealers understand more and more the advantage of
good methods. We can hardly agree with the declaration
of a piano man recently who 3aid that salesmen's salaries must
go down because it costs too much to sell pianos, that a cut must be
made somewhere.
Piano selling is not physical work, and while some of the de-
partment stores may have low salaried men and girls, yet their trade
is in the main a cheap trade, and in the high-grade establishments
there is a demand for brainv men. We know of one salesman who
sold sixty high-grade pianos during the month of October. The
total value of his total sales ran up into princely figures. Now that
man is entitled, by right of possession of gray matter, to a fine in-
come, and he is getting it. Some men have the faculty of easily
winning their customers. They are well supplied with arguments
and logical reasons why their instruments are the best, and such
men will always win good salaries.
There is no question but the power of attraction which gives
one man ascendancy over others can be cultivated by any one who
is sufficiently persistent and painstaking in the effort. Psycholo-
gists have not given us any formula for developing this quality.
Any one who is interested, however, can suggest ways and means
for himself which will help toward the desired end. The first step
toward accomplishment in this direction is a careful study of the
successful men who are described as "born" salesmen, and who get
their results by exercising this practical, if rather indefinitely known,
mental force.
I
T will be found that all men of this type, referred to above, are
very much in earnest. The intensity of their earnestness is a
magnetic attraction. Their minds are filled with one great, superla-
tive idea—success in whatever undertaking they have in hand. Their
earnestness cannot fail to have its effect on every prospective cus-
tomer with whom they come in contact. Besides its direct effect
upon the man addressed, the quality of earnestness in the salesman
has also an immediate effect upon himself in increasing his powers
of reasoning and self-expression. By stimulating these powers, and
through their agency, it has also an indirect effect upon the cus-
tomer. Among people who live much alone, whose labor exercises
their muscles and not their brains, a common phenomenon is ob-
served which is significant in this connection. We are all familiar
with cases where an ignorant, stolid fellow, ordinarily incapable of
expressing himself in speech very well, has suddenly found himself
gifted with eloquence at some emotional crisis in life—eloquence not
the less splendid and powerful for all grammatical inaccuracies.
When this happens the mind of the speaker has swept aside,
by the very force of earnestness, the limitations which hampered
it in ordinary intercourse.
The same principle accounts for a man's ability to improvise
means of escape from great and sudden danger, which would have
been entirely beyond his ingenuity at other times.
E
VERY salesman is more or less an advertising man if he does
his work properly. Jt is his business to continue the work
which those who are managing his firm's advertising campaign
have begun.
A salesman should know that there is some special reason for
impressing on the public every statement made in the advertisements
of his firm. He should understand that none of these statements is
made casually, with no other purpose than to fill up the space on
the magazine page or the billboard with mere observations about
the product advertised.
He must know what the reason is for giving prominence to the
particular facts which the advertiser has chosen, in preference to
others which may seem just as important to one who is uninformed
on the subject. In other words, he must understand his firm's ad-
vertising policy and further it to the utmost.
T
HE piano trade has been for years hampered by a lot of old-
fashioned methods which have clung to it as a sort of legacy
from by-gone years. It is, however, fast cutting loose from some
of these fettcrings, and as a resvtlt it is becoming a trade of vaster
importance than ever before. Manufacturers and dealers are dis-
carding many of the old-time theories, and in their place arc substi-
tuting modern and up-to-date plans. We sec this in factories, in
business offices and in warerooms. System has replaced the go-as-
you-please methods of former days. Leakages arc stopped and
wastes are done away with completely.