Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
The Management of Salesmen
T
HE details of the management of salesmen necessarily vary
with varying conditions. In the ordinary manufacturing
establishment, with but two or three men in the office and one or
two on the road, it is the manager of the business who governs
the salesmen just as he does other employes. In the larger
manufacturing concerns and in the jobbing houses there is too
much of detail to make it possible for one man to handle it all,
and the sales manager naturally takes charge of the salesmen.
Sometimes he hires them and dismisses them, but more often there
is someone with greater authority than he possesses who engages
the men, fixes their salaries and turns them over to the sales mana-
ger for instructions. Usually this method works satisfactorily,
but sometimes it is just the reverse, and leads to ill feeling which
affects the salesmen's work. Instances can be cited in which the
sales manager, thirsting for greater authority, has deliberately
handicapped salesmen in order to prove that the man who em-
ployed them was lacking in judgment.
The man who would successfully manage a force of salesmen
must be possessed of tact, courtesy and an ability to command re-
spect, and he must pursue a consistent policy along definite lines
so that his men may know what to expect in any contingency.
He must be scrupulously honest and straightforward in his deal-
ings with them and avoid any semblance of trickery, for his men
are usually at a long distance from him, and it is very easy to de-
stroy by a false move or a poorly worded letter the confidence
which alone makes cordial relations possible.
And the relations must be cordial to gain the best results.
The men must feel that the house is treating them fairly at all
points, that their prices are right, that orders will be filled as taken,
that the instructions they receive are to be depended upon to the
very letter, and that their work will not be judged in a captious,
fault-finding spirit. In short, to achieve the best results the sales-
men must be filled with a spirit of loyalty to the house, and must
receive treatment which will call forth their earnest support and
hearty efforts for its best interests. A man who seeks to emphasize
his own importance by belittling his men on the road can never
hope to succeed as a manager of salesmen.
One of the most common errors on the part of a manager of
salesmen is to curb them too tightly and hamper them with a lot
of non-essential rules intended to prevent mythical or extremely
rare violations of the usual order of things or to save trouble in
the house. Given such a manager, and one salesman who is unruly
and wont to overstep his instructions and provide cause for the
formation of new regulations and restrictions, and a force of sales-
men can be easily nagged into a state of discomfort and distrust
that well nigh destroys their effectiveness.
Equally injurious is the manager who cannot distinguish be-
tween valuable system and useless red tape. There is many a
conscientious, hard working manager of salesmen who feels that
he ought to control or at least know of every occurrence or con-
dition that may affect the sales who burdens his men with a lot
of useless work in the way of reports. He would know the goods
that were offered and the prices, why sales were not made, whose
goods the merchant is handling, when he will next be in the mar-
ket—all information of value to the salesman, and which he gains
for his use later, but which burdens the manager's records need-
lessly and by its prolixity forms a mass of detail which cannot be
conveniently handled.
It is usually the case that the sales manager is a man who has
at some time been upon the road. Often it is his ability to make
sales as there displayed that has led to his being given charge of the
entire department and the management of the men among whom
he formerly worked. He naturally feels that he can enter under-
standingly into the experiences of the salesmen and is competent
to advise and instruct them not only as to the goods and their
prices but the best methods of presenting them and of meeting
objections raised by customers. If his confidence in his own
methods is unbounded he is apt to try to make his men all con-
form to his pattern; if he believes that the salesmen should be
given all possible freedom he may go too far to the other extreme
and fail to keep in proper touch with them. It is not enough that
a man has been an unusually good salesman to warrant his choice
as manager of a traveling force. He must be a man of excellent
business judgment and possessed of a goodly amount of adminis-
trative ability.
In the very largest jobbing houses—probably not more than
a dozen in the entire supply field—the management of sales-
men has been reduced to a science. On matters relating to his
territory the salesman has to deal with a routing clerk, and on
credits and collections with the credit man. The manager of the
sales department gives him prices and terms and handles his orders,
and the auditing department figures the profits on his sales and
thus fixes his remuneration. He is told when he may sell, and to
what amount, and is advised by the bookkeepers of the condition
of accounts, and at every step he is kept informed of everything
that may possibly affect his relations with the customers in his ter-
ritory. If he loses in independence he gains in knowledge and is
able to render the best service possible.
Nothing is more necessary in the successful management of
salesmen than positive knowledge of a few essential facts. Ignor-
ance of these facts is fatal, and no less fatal is it to be unable to
distinguish between necessary facts and useless detail which is
really a source of annoyance and overburdens the salesman and
sales manager unnecessarily. This does not mean that detail is
not essential. It is to the fullest extent, but there are some people
nowadays who have "system" on the brain and too much time is
spent in working out formidable details when the) should be sim-
plified.