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REVIEW
THE
VOL.
L I V . N o . 22.
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, June 1,1912
SINGLE COPIES L 10 CENTS.
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Personal Contact
O
NE of the visitors to the Atlantic City Conventions who came in to see me at the close of the week
| remarked among other things upon the advantage which he derived from an annual visit to the
' trade conventions.
He said that he had not time to call upon his dealers personally, hut he felt that once a year
meeting with them in a social way enabled him to get closer to them than merely through correspondence.
Of course it does.
Personally, I believe that a survey of the business field from the office is not the same as a handshak-
ing acquaintance.
The head of a business enterprise may sit at his desk and touch buttons to get reports and may dis-
tribute instructions daily; but, at the same time, that work does not approach hitting the trail himself
once in a while and getting in touch with his trade in various localities.
It is only by actual contact with the selling forces and with a study of different environments that a
man gets close to his trade.
The wheels may go round in the office, but the real business vitality—the bread and butter, so to
speak—of the house comes out of the retail trade.
The business may move along fairly satisfactorily and expanding naturally with no specially de-
pressing problems to handle, and many men rest in perfect contentment under such conditions, believ-
ing that their position is invulnerable. But is it?
There are a good many shrewd, intelligent, progressive men on the road, and they are moving up—
they are getting closer to the piano merchants, and the chief executive cannot remain in his office entirely
out of touch with his agents everywhere.
He cannot do this successfully any more than a college president can remain aloof from a sympa-
thetic participation in the athletic sports of the young students who are under his care.
What colleges are drawing to-day the most young men?
The answer is easy—the colleges whose [residents take a personal interest in the athletic sports of
their students. The things that interest the young men who are with them.
I never have taken a long trip in my life but that I have been repaid many times by the information
gleaned.
The trade scenes are shifting all the while and men of the East particularly have an inadequate knowl-
edge of the marvelous expansion of the West.
No Eastern man can realize what is going on in the West until he has been out there and inspected
the ground personally.
Eastern manufacturers who are perfectly contented with the way things are going on in their busi-
ness and who do not realize the broadening and stimulating influences which will come to them as a result
of intimate acquaintance with Western business—Western men and Western methods—are losing some-
thing.
There is a degree of progressiveness and prosperity evidenced in the Western section of the country
that must be seen to be appreciated, for newspaper reports or travelers' stories do not convey to the far-
away man a perfect picture of the scene.
Again, a man learns the particular local environments of the different men with whom he is doing
business.
He appreciates them better, and when letters come to him from them he is in a better position to
solve the little differences of opinion which may come up between them.
Yet it certainly pays the head of a business to get out at least once a year and hit the long trail so that
he may have a better knowledge of men and methods, of conditions and environments.
His whole business will run smoother, and it will
be stronger by personal contact with virile selling
forces. Personal contact counts.
A