Music Trade Review

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SALESMANSHIP
A Complete Section Devoted to Piano Salesmanship Published Each Month
How Long Should a Prospect Be Considered "Live"?
The Experience of Most Piano Salesmen Proves That if Results Are Not Shown
Within a Certain Time, Further Efforts to Sell a Delinquent Prospect Prove Fruitless
time ago the Hallet & Davis Piano Co., in their bright
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little paper, "Chords and Discords," had some interesting and
pertinent things to say about prospects. The question at issue
was as to the length of time a prospect card should be considered
"live." In substance, the conclusion arrived at was that very
many prospects are being carried on their lists by salesmen,
which are no more or less than an actual weakness thereto, by
reason of being really "dead."
Now the difference between a live and a dead prospect is,
of course, the simple difference between the existence or the
non-existence of a chance to sell. Theoretically, of course, and
in the absolute sense, it may be argued that so long as a person
has not bought an instrument from our competitor or from our-
selves, that person is still a prospect. But the practical side of
the question is less accommodating. Practically speaking, it
seems to be a true and tried maxim that no single prospect is
worth more than a certain amount of time. When that amount
of time has been given, systematically and after the method of
good salesmanship, the prospect should have responded; or
should be considered dead.
The statement last made sounds radical, if not wild; but there
is a growing school of expert sales managers who have come
around to the view here expressed; namely, that less time should
be given to the cultivation of old prospects and more time to
hunting up new ones.
If a prospective customer does not buy at the first interview
and cannot be convinced by the ordinary visit to the store, the
salesman should certainly nevertheless call again and perhaps
twice again. But, after so many calls, any good salesman will
have found out for himself one of two things. He will have
found that the customer was only "shopping" in the first place,
or he will find that some real reason for not buying exists.
As a matter of fact, there always are a certain number of
people who begin the preliminaries to a purchase and then shy
off; and such persons are the hardest of any to close up ulti-
mately.
Apart from this, however, it is a fact within the experience
of every good salesman that prospects, unlike wine, do not im-
prove with age. Of course, almost every one of us has had the
experience of the prospect who showed up two years later, and
proceeded to buy, remarking that he had never forgotten our
courtesy the first time, etc., etc.; and most of us have had the
experience of selling finally to some one, after whom, for some
reason, we had unsuccessfully run for just as long. But all these
are really extremely unusual cases; and to keep one's card
drawer filled with old dead names on any such account is not
good business.
The important point is that we have only just about so much
time to spend and our biggest problem is how best to lay out
our expenditure of that time. When a prospect comes in of his or
her own accord, then the salesman who knows his business may
rightly regard that prospect as not only live but certain; unless
impossible conditions immediately develop. But when a pros-
pect is dug up from the outside and promises to come in some
time or other, then it is dollars to doughnuts that if that party
does not come in as promised after a little further argument or
persuasion, the prospect is dead; and should be decently interred
without further delay.
There is still another point. Every hour spent in writing
letters to, or making calls on, old prospects is an hour that might
have been given to developing new ones. The outside salesmen
who call on the persons whose names have been secured know
well that if they cannot make the sale within a few weeks, the
chances are slim of ever making it; and grow slimmer with each
month. It is actually more profitable to canvass from door to
door than to spend one's time running around with a bunch of
old prospect cards. For when the old prospect has neither left
town nor bought a piano, the chances are pretty slim that any
interest or ginger can be infused into him or her.
Some of the best sales managers in the country are now put-
ting a time limit on prospects. Every name that is more than
ninety days old and has not yet shown signs of immediate action
is relegated to the discard. Where a prospect hangs fire for
definite reasons that can be understood and that have some real
business meaning, the card may be retained; but where three
months have elapsed without producing anything more than
desultory conversation, the funeral is performed quickly and
quietly, and without flowers.
It is a well-known fact that the greater part of the piano
business is done in sales to prospects who have been dug up by
the outside men and who did not come into the wareroom of
their own accord at all. Such prospects the outside man will
not trouble much about, when once he finds himself unable to
land them at the first store demonstration. If the prospect is
one which deliberately is set aside for a time, for reasons that
appear good to the salesman, then the prospect may remain alive;
but not otherwise.
The writer has been in retail stores where the prospect
drawer seemed altogether to be too much of a fetish. It is well
to have system; in fact it is necessary. We cannot run a busi-
ness successfully on guess-work. We must know how to con-
centrate our selling efforts and so we must have some kind of
system for finding prospects as well as a system for selling them
if possible. But that is one thing; and the notion that every
name on a prospect card is going to bring us in a nice little
commission "some day" is a notion that spoils many a good
salesman.
It takes courage to scrap a lot of nice-looking names, just
as it takes courage to scrap a nice-looking lot of machinery that
nevertheless is out-of-date. The reason in each case is the same,
however. It is that whatever produces friction and clogs the
wheels of business must be got rid of, and that quickly, if the
business machine is to travel smoothly and efficiently along the
road of commercial success.