Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
REWtW
ffUSIC TIRADE
VOL. LXXIII. No. 21
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
Nov. 19, 1921
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Salesmanship Must Reflect Service
T
HERE has been a conference of business paper editors and publishers in Chicago. It is an annual
event, but the meeting of this year has surpassed in significance all previous meetings. The reason for
this is obvious enough. Business in all lines has been depressed. Some great industries have been
exceedingly depressed. Nearly all industries have been running on part-time and part output. All of
the business papers—the papers which weekly or monthly cover and serve the interests of these industries—
are vitally concerned in all that affects their clients. So when the country is going, or has been going, through
a period of business upheaval or disturbance the business papers—true barometers of trade prosperity—feel
acutely their responsibility and come together, not alone to discuss conditions, but also to look for remedies for
the evils disclosed.
If any one point emerges from these discussions more clearly than all others it is that a revival of business
can only be brought about by a revival of what was fast becoming the lost art of salesmanship. Salesmanship,
apparently, went to sleep during the years of the sellers' markets. Since 1916 ordinary salesmanship of the old
adventurous, hard-working type has, as a rule, been gradually sinking into flabby inefficiency. It must be
resuscitated. When the old spirit has been reawakened the tide of business prosperity—now just beginning
to flow—will be quickened into buoyant energy and will sweep the industries of the land before it to the very
top of the beach of permanent prosperity.
So thought the business paper editors, and no one will seek to disagree with their general conclusions.
But how is salesmanship to be revived? If that question can be answered there will be little need to worry.
The ancient proverb has it that there are as many opinions as there are men to hold them. One may
be as good as another. The editors of the thousand and one trade papers of the country have each his own
remedy. These are various. They differ in almost every conceivable detail. Yet they all exhibit one common
element. That element may be described in the single word "service."
If, in a word, we are to have a remedy for the recent slump in salesmanship we must provide a morale
for the salesman. We must restore the lost stimulus which used to nerve him to his task, and we must impress
upon him the fact that the dominating spirit of salesmanship must be the spirit of service.
The late Elbert Hubbard once said that no sale is legitimate unless both parties to the transaction have
made a profit. The seller must be satisfied with the money he has received and the buyer satisfied because he
has given that money for the goods which he has received. But to make satisfaction certain on both sides the
question of the salesman must not be "What can I put over?" though the thing to be "put over" be legitimate
or even good, but "Can I show this prospective buyer that the thing I want to sell him will inure to his advan-
tage, will bring him some definite good, ensuring him a profit on the investment I ask him to make?" In short,
the ideal is "What can I give?" and not "What can I get?"
An ideal like this is the most practical ideal in the world. Those who have the task of selling an article
like the piano, whose values are so very largely intangible, never more than half realized even by the most
musical of prospective purchasers, have the finest service-selling task in the world. To sell a good piano so
that the buyer is pleased and' happy, so that the seller gains his fair profit, and so that the future ownership
of that piano shall be a constant joy, that is the best salesmanship, because it is the best service and the best
business, because as service it has secured the continued interest and good will of the buyer.
The new salesmanship is only the old salesmanship of hard work and energy, of hustle and push, refined
by the spirit of service and purified from the spirit of dishonesty. It presents an ideal that is simple, practical
and attainable. The sceptic may sneer, but he will find, as the business paper editors found, and as they
acknowledged, that the revival of business means the revival of salesmanship, and the revival of salesmanship
means the establishment of the principle of service in place of the principle of selfishness.