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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
( Salesmanship )
13
The Piano Salesman and the Question of His Pay
The Opportunities Existing in the Piano Trade Enable a Salesman Who Really Can
Sell Goods to Earn a Good Salary—Advice for Piano Salesmen Who Want to Succeed
N the mind of the salesman himself and in the mind of his
I dividual
employer there is apt to be a constant association of the in-
salesman with the individual's salary. Instead of think-
ing first of what a man is able to do we are very likely to think
first of what he is paid.
This is the wrong attitude for both parties to the transac-
tion. It is not good'business for the employer to think of what
a man costs him before he thinks of what he does for him. It
is not good business for the employe to think of how much pay
he is going to get before thinking of what he is going to do to
earn that pay.
The important thing about wages is not how much they
are but how they are earned.
By doing all he is told to do in the way he is told to do it,
the employe may manage to earn what he is paid at the start.
That is, he may succeed in putting in as much time as his wages
cover. But that method will never get a man out of the begin-
ning class. He will never rise above the first stages of de-
velopment.
The greatest difficulty confronting the retailer to-day is that
of "getting the right kind of salespeople. It is easy enough to
get men who are absolutely honest, who will work full time and
probably keep sober, who will even do what they are told to do.
But men who go no further than that will not be great helps
in carrying the business to success. It is in business a good
deal as it was in school. We all remember plenty of scholars
who were always on time, who always put up a good enough
recitation, who never gave the teacher any trouble. These stu-
dents, however, did not get the highest marks. They did not
graduate at the head of their classes. Always at the head there
were a few fellows who played hard, who sometimes seemed to
be full of the devil, but yet who worked their heads off trying
to find ways to learn more. These latter chaps made plenty
of mistakes and they did not often get to be teachers' pets,
but they were right there with the goods when examination
time rolled around.
In salesmanship it is not the man who never makes mis-
takes, it is not the man who is fairly successful; it is not the
man who possesses no individuality; it is none of these that
occupies the best paid position. The men who get to the top
are the men who realize they must keep growing in order to
get above mediocrity, the men who see the chance to do some-
thing worth while and are willing to run risks of making mis-
takes in order to do the big things.
A man's wages are what he makes them, not what his em-
ployer makes them. The constant question with him should
be not how he can get his boss to give him a raise, but how
he can earn more than he is earning. The man who is constantly
earning more and more is sure to be paid more, if not by his
present employer, then by some other. The light of high grade
salesmanship shines so brightly that there is no hiding it.
The customer who is treated right in your place of business
is not going to go out and keep the fact a secret. He is going
to advertise it and if the present boss does not hear of it, some-
one else will and there will be an offer of something better in
the way of another position.
It is well worth while to treat customers right in the in-
stance where their purchases may be important and it is well
worth while to treat them right when their purchases are merely
insignificant items.
However unimportant a customer's purchase, the actions of
the person making the sale cannot be unimportant. One does
not pay the retailer a profit for handling the goods and give no
thought to the service one gets for his money.
The other day a young man walked into a retail store and
applied for a position as salesman. He was asked what his
qualifications were and he told the manager he had spent several
years buying that line of goods from retail stores and he knew
what the faults of the average salesman were. On the strength
of this he was engaged though he knew little about the inside
of the business. He at once jumped to the head of the selling
force in that store because he knew what faults as a rule the
salesman showed to his customers and he eliminated all of them.
If you were to study the faults of salesmen in your line until
you were familiar with all of them, and then if you were to
eliminate those faults from your own selling methods, if you
never learned a bit of constructive salesmanship, you still would
have more than a good chance of filling a bigger and better
position each year of your business life.
You cannot take the easiest way of getting rid of the faults
of the tongue—of knocking or sharp retort, or "smarty" re-
marks. The easiest way is that which secured for William of
Orange the nickname of William the Silent, and that might be
all right for a man with William's job, but for a salesman, as
Perlmutter would say, "Silence is nix."
You cannot get rid of the disadvantages of careless dressing
by following the manner of Adam in the garden of Eden. You
must wear clothes and you must keep them neat and as far as
possible in style.
You cannot get rid of the faults of impoliteness by agreeing
with every remark of every customer with Chesterfieldian polite-
ness. If you agree with everything everyone says about your
goods you will make mighty few sales.
To try to get rid of a fault of one extreme by going to the
other extreme is merely to substitute one fault for another.
This might or it might not be an improvement.
The main thing in getting rid of a fault is developing enough
interest to want to get rid of it. If you want to get rid of it,
try and you will succeed.
If you are inaccurate you can become accurate by taking
pains. Genius has been said to be merely the capacity for taking
infinite pains. It is easy to be a genius if you will. Any man
can take pains with his work if he will think about it. Accuracy
is merely taking time to be right. Efficiency is the ability to be
right with the least waste of time. Your inaccuracy will become
accuracy and your accuracy will become efficiency if you will
take pains about your work. When accuracy has become a habit
with you, a second nature so that it requires no thought, it will
begin to bring in returns to your employer, and that means that
in the end it will produce for you.
Accuracy in a salesman is a great money saver for the busi-
ness. It prevents misstatements about the goods that will later
develop demands for adjustments that ought never to have been
required. It prevents customers being disappointed by expect-
ing more from their purchases than they have a right to expect.
It prevents loss of money by failure to charge credit sales and
it prevents mistakes in getting wrong names on the books, or
wrong accounts. It prevents errors in delivery. It eliminates
guess-work. No business transaction having in it the element
of guess-work can be profitable.
The salesman who thinks too much about his pay usually
thinks it is too small. When we find a man who is crotchety
about his pay being too small we are likely to find one who is
not living within his income. It is the man who is not living
on his pay who worries most about what that pay amounts to.
The man who is making his salary pay his expenses and a
little more very probably would like more money and will try
to earn it, but he will not waste his time worrying about the
matter. He will get busy.
It is not the amount of salary a man gets that makes him
a good salesman. It is something in the man himself. If you
are not willing to give your best efforts to your boss for the
wages he now pays you, no more would you exert yourself if
your pay was raised. Anyway, it is necessary for you to show
your ability to earn more money before there is the least chance
of your getting it.
Don't think you can secure an increase in salary by a tem-
porary whirlwind effort of selling. It is a mistake to overdo for
a time the matter of trying to sell more goods. You are going
(Continued on page 15)