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Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
V O L . LVI. N o . 10. Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bffl at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, March 8,1913
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^OO°P P ER S VEA£ E N T S -
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UCCESS in life cannot come without incentive; but whatever may be the cause, effort, continuous
and undeviating, is absolutely necessary to achieve desired results.
'
Talk with successful men in any of the divisions of the industrial world and you will learn
that the path which they followed to achieve results was not flower-strewn. On the contrary,
there were many thorns scattered along the wayside, and they pricked and impeded progress, but still
the men kept straight on.
You will find some men who can advance beautiful arguments and theories but who lack the necessary
mental concentration to carry them out.
So, talk, merely for the sake of talk, will never carry anyone to success. There must be the desire
back of it.
It seems to me that in the piano line many salesmen defeat their own earning capacity by failure
to grasp the value of educational work.
I mean by this that many of them do not know the piano technically. They have merely a superficial
knowledge of it. A technical knowledge of any merchandise, particularly such an intrinsic composition
as the piano, enables the salesman not merely to give expert advice to customers, but to impress them
favorably with certain individual points which the particular instrument he is displaying possesses.
Selling pianos cannot be treated from an indifferent standpoint. It is a profession which enables
one to use many faculties, and after the technical knowledge there should be a study of the characteristics
of patrons.
All people who enter piano warerooms cannot be treated alike.
Lack of tact in treating certain customers has prevented the closing of many a sale, thereby reduc-
ing the earning capacity of salesmen through a loss of patronage to the firm.
The successful salesman must be not oiierely mentally alert, he must be quick to understand a caller's
wants and have an earnest desire to satisfy them; and, above all, he must use good language.
The analysis of personal experiences will cultivate a knowledge of what is wrong with certain busi-
ness methods. It will open up possibilities and show how trade'may be developed instead of lost.
Two salesmen may be working on the same wareroom floor—one misses sales, the other makes them.
Study the man who makes sales and you will find that he pleases customers and does all that could
be reasonably expected of anybody in his position.
He is tactful. He studies his profession and he has learned that certain requirements are absolutely
essential for salesmaking; that is, for one who wishes to increase his usefulness and by so doing his salary.
You will find that the other man lacks many of these excellent faculties. The lack of them keeps him
down whereas, if he could only concentrate his mind on his work, he would build up a much more lucrative
position.
He figures that he is just as competent as the other man, and wonders why the successful man's sales
increase while his own continually grow less.
The successful salesman studied while the other man dreamed. He saw wjiere his opportunities lay
and he sized them up and adjusted them to his own personality.
He did not wish for fortune, for he knew full well that the world has nothing to give for the asking;
but he worked where the other man was squandering valuable time and blocking his own advance.
Every man has more or less handicaps, and it can be pretty safely asserted that the man has not
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