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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
5
"My Ideal Salesman" as Set Forth by a Man Who Has Hired Salesmen of
Many Sorts—Some Facts Based on Actual Experience—Belief in Business
Honesty and a Thorough Knowledge of the Line He Is Selling Essentials
"It is because I like The Review's idea of
setting forth the opinions of men of the trade
without naming their names that I will try to
give you my notions on the subject of sales-
men.
In the first place, I am not looking
for notoriety, and in the second place I don't
think I need that kind of advertising. Besides,
my views are perhaps a little original, and I
have no desire to pose as original; for
trade reasons. Again, the opinions are what
count, and I would rather read a sane opinion
by a nameless writer than a lot of 'bull' over
some well-known name.
"As you well know, our house has been in
business for a long time, as such things go, and
we have a reputation in the trade that is not, I
hope, undeserved.
I have been hiring sales-
men for twenty years and more, and I think
I have a license to say something about them.
The things I am going to tell you are based
on this experience, and I want especially to
make clear what, in my judgment, are the qual-
ities necessary to success in salesmanship as
regards pianos and especially player-pianos. I
want to draw a picture of my ideal player-piano
salesman. ' •
Of course, you know, and I know, that a
vast lot of so-called scientific talk is done in
these days about salesmanship. A lot of the
so-called science of salesmanship, in my judg-
ment, is no more or less than trying to teach
the ordinary clerk or workman to make a fool
of himself trying to use a mysterious and little-
understood so-called 'will-power' to do what he
cannot do on the merits of his goods. Will-
power is all right, if you know how to use it.
Teaching salesmanship by mail is like teaching
tuning by mail; it looks good till you try it
in actual practice.
Qualifications Necessary
"Now the first qualification I ask in a sales-
man is that he shall be weak on.theory.
I
don't want him full of talk about scientific meth-
ods. T want him to know that we are selling
several lines of player-pianos, that the pesky
things have to be sold pretty quick because they
cost money, but that every line we have is
worth what we ask for it; the cheap ones
worth the low prices and the dear ones worth
the high prices. I begin, in other words, by
having a salesman know that above all theo-
retical considerations I place the fact that we
are a house trying to be honest, and succeed-
ing fairly well, that we sell good stuff at fair
prices, that we don't want to force sales on peo-
ple not ready for them, and that we realize a
satisfied customer to be the best of advertise-
ments. That is the foundation of our creed.
"I know that some one will sneer at this
mid doubt whether a piano man can be that
honest.
But the people with these doubts
don't belong in the business; for the history of
it proves the great truth that persistent dis-
honesty in method will knock out the best man
that ever lived. I take no credit and ask none.
We try to be straight for two reasons; first,
because there is no real fun in being dishonest,
and second, because it never pays in the long
run. And that is another thing we insist on.
We don't want salesmen with reputations for
shady methods.
"Thirdly, .we want salesmen who understand
the construction of the player-piano sufficient-
ly to adjust a small trouble that may occur in
the demonstration room at an unlucky moment.
We want our salesmen to know the talking
points of the instruments they sell, well
enough to talk about them intelligently to a
'wise' prospect who comes in all tanked full
of player dope, and completely enough also
to be able to answer in words of one syllable
any one of the perplexing questions that un-
learned prospects ask.
Value of Technical Knowledge
"I do not for a moment believe that the
salesman is best who knows nothing about the
technical points of what he is trying to sell.
The kind of salesmanship which must depend
on talk and hot-air and suggestion is not my
kind. We want our customers know just what
they are buying, and just what its possibilities
as well as its limitations are. I will not stand
for bunk. A salesman in our employ is for-
bidden to make consciously false statements.
We have a player that is equipped with a very
good solo device. We are proud of it and try
our best to sell as many of that kind as may
be possible. But we do not say that it is the
only one. It is, in our opinion, the best now
in existence, and we sell it because experience
has so far proved it to be the best. We dem-
onstrate it and know its fine points by heart.
But we will not use it as a club to knock any
other. We show its points and invite the argu-
mentative prospect to compare these with our
competitors' rival devices. We find that this
policy is the best in every way. There are no
come-backs to straight honesty.
"We insist that our salesmen should be able
to demonstrate thoroughly, both on the ordi-
nary foot-driven player with straight-cut rolls,
on the same kind of player with hand-played
rolls, and on the various types of electric-
drive and solo players. On the whole, we lean
towards the player, which is controlled by the
human performer because we find that if peo-
ple become interested enough in a player to like
the job of working out their music on it by
themselves, they will buy liberally of new rolls
and will be good boosters for us. So we try
to sell personal control players to the prospects
who are obviously musical. That is why we in-
sist on salesmen being able to demonstrate.
We cannot afford to have the player-piano made
to sound like a hurdy-gurdy through the mere
ignorance of a salesman, for impressions count,
and we want our customers to respect what
they buy from us and to like it, to believe in
it and to be satisfied. They cannot get into
this mental condition when the player-piano
is presented to them as a sit-and-pump prop-
osition only.
"On the contrary, however, we discourage all
the 'look-at-me-how-clever-I-am'
demonstra-
tors.
We are not selling personalities, but
players. The salesman has to learn that to
perspire profusely, wiggle levers and jump
about, is only to amuse or frighten, but never
to create a desire to buy. Our salesmen, be-
fore they go to work on player prospects, have
to show me—me myself—how they demonstrate,
and unless they can play the player quietly, and
well at the same time, concealing the effort
while producing the result, we don't want them.
"We want gentlemen, too, men who know
how to respect women, who do not, every so
often, want to go out and smoke, who leave
the booze alone. We want men fairly well
educated, and discourage absolutely the sporty,
the loud-mouthed or the offensively familiar
types. Selling pianos and player-pianos is real
business and not a game.
we could handle. You see, we pay our men
well, take an interest in them and make it
worth their while to stick to us. When a new
man asks for a job, we take his references,
look him up, and if he is all right we put
him in for two weeks on trial at a straight
salary of moderate amount. We let him try
the floor work first, we watch his handling of
customers, take notes on his ways, and sec how
he demonstrates.
Then we let him try the
outside work if he wishes, but not unless he
has had special experience and prefers this
department. At the end of the two weeks, 1
send for him, talk things over, compare notes,
ask him what he thinks of our methods, tell
him where he is in right according to our ideas
and where he is in wrong. Trjen I let him know
whether we want him as a member of our or-
ganization or not. If we do, I invite him to
name, on the basis of all he has seen and heard
during the two weeks, his figure for the year.
That puts it up to him, and I find that not
once in ten times do men overvalue themselves.
Sometimes they do the other thing, and we
would rather in such a case tell a man that he
is worth more—and give it to him—than have
him kick himself later on and grow dissatis-
fied. No, we have no difficulty in getting sales-
men.
Getting the Right Men
"Can we get them? Yes, we have never
had any difficulty in getting all the applications
The Brook-Mays Piano Co. has arranged to
maintain a permanent branch store at 814
Travis street, Houston, Tex.
"We do not fire many of them, either, save
for special causes. We insist that a man adopt
certain principles, such as I have set forth to
you, but apart from that we want him to stay
with us, belong to us and realize that we are
taking an interest in him. We sincerely try
to pay every salesman what he is worth, and
this has to be determined, not only by mere
figures of sales, but also by a thousand other
considerations. A man may be in poor health
for a time, may be in trouble, may have a
run of ill-fortune. We try, in our imperfect
way, to take these points into consideration.
We are slow to hire, but still slower to fire.
We pay as liberally as we can, knowing that a
man on liberal salary will not throw down his
job if he can help, in most cases anyway. We
pay on salary only, no commissions.
Salesmen Well Tried Out
"Our salesmen are all tried out well in the
vvareroom before they are allowed outside. An
outside salesman of ours is even a better sales-
man than the Hour man. He must know our
methods thoroughly, understand our policy, be
able to represent us in the right way. We have
salesmen who specialize on the foreign sec-
tions, and are fully at home with their own
races. We have a colored salesman making a
very good income indeed. All these, too, we
pay on salary, and we prefer that they do their
own closing of sales un the floor with their
own prospects. .So really we have the artificial
division between indoor and outdoor depart-
ments abolished to a large extent. Of course,
the outside work is systematized more or less,
but we do not fine-tooth-comb very much. Our
advertising brings people to us, and our outside
men are more engaged in nosing out inquiries
than in any canvassing. Our system is very
simple and gct> good results, and although I
do not care to give you the inside details, you
may know that I am right in calling it effec-
tive and free from complications. We believe
in being systematic, but not in 'system'; in
being efficient, but not in 'efficiency.'"