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PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, MARCH 25, 1922
The Logical Basis of Salesmanship
The Player-piano Will Never Occupy Its Rightful Place Until Those Engaged in Exploiting It Will Regard It Them-
selves as a Necessary Adjunct to Modern Life, and Will Proceed to Sell It to the Public on
That Basis, Plus Intelligent Demonstration, Good Service, and Forceful Advertising
Of the making of hooks, courses, talks and in-
structions on salesmanship there is no end and
the flesh is weary with the multitude of them.
At this particular time there is more of this
particular sort of literary excitement than ever
before, and the reason can easily he guessed.
The business world needs business. It needs
business very much, indeed, and it knows that
business it must have. So, the salesmen are told
to get busy. Busy the salesmen are getting, and
most of them are finding the getting busy to be
a rather difficult, not to say distasteful, sort of
job.
Wherefore, we find much talk about sales-
manship and how we must all of us get back to
the fundamentals of that art, together with much
more of the same sort, some of it good and some
of it not so good. "What is this salesmanship
stuff?" one may imagine the weary salesman
pointedly but ungrammatically asking. "Is there
anything to it? Will it get me any sales that I
cannot grab off now? Will it, anyway, help me
sell pianos and players,.reproducers, rolls, small
good and sheet music. If so, how 7 and why?"
The Unique Music Industries
The music industries ol the L r . S. A. have
existed for a good deal longer than a century as
important features of the country's commerce.
For a generation they have been very important,
indeed. For half a decade they have been na-
tionally organized tinder the aegis of a Music
Industries Chamber of Commerce. Just now,
like all other industries, these music industries of
ours need more sales. That much they have in
common with other industries at least—they
need more sales just now. Of course, all indus-
tries need more sales all the time—a point that
is sometimes forgotten by the gloomy and the
bewhiskered—but just now they need them
rather worse than usual. To that extent the
music industries are just like all other industries.
Rut from that point there conies a division of
paths, a change of direction. The music indus-
tries separate themselves immediately from all
others. And they do so on this very question
of salesmanship.
A Peculiar Selling Attitude
In other words, the music industries are alone
—almost if not quite—in their attitude toward
the public which buys their goods. In every
other recognized manufacturing industry the sell-
ing policy is based upon a thorough conviction
that the product represents the filling of some
duly felt public need and, therefore, upon the
idea that the people will continue to buy unless
and until there is a diminution in quality with-
out change in price, a failure to keep up with
changing standards of public taste or some com-
petition from a new and improved product. That
is to say, the sales policy is never based on the
idea that here is something which we have got
into the habit of making and which somehow
we must bluff the people into buying.
But is any sales policy based upon so false,
not to say ridiculous, an idea as this? Decidedly!
The music industries, and especially the piano
business, are based upon this idea precisely.
Their entire practice corresponds with this idea,
and if they do not hold it consciously, neverthe-
less it completely surrounds their circle of mer-
chandising ideas and prevents these from emerg-
ing into the light. There is not much use in
these circumstances in quarreling about terms.
'Organized Persuasion"
Now, of all the definitions which have ever
been offered as covering the word "salesmanship"
none is more nearly accurate than the simplest,
which is "organized commercial persuasion."
Salesmanship is the practice of presenting to
the notice of a prospective purchaser some prod-
uct which that purchaser may be expected to
need or the possession of which may be ex-
pected to advantage him in some way. If every
purchaser could be gifted with such supernatural
powers of perception as to be able to know in
advance all that he or she could ever need, and
to anticipate the filling of that need by demand-
ing inventions, products and improvements not
yet even materialized, then salesmanship as de-
fined would be quite unnecessary. In the circum-
stances of human life, however, it is essential that
some method be organized and perfected whereby
the product and the consumer may be brought
together. Salesmanship is a word coined to
describe this method. As a method it may, in
individual cases, be very good, very bad or
merely indifferent. It is, in all cases of legitimate
business, a thoroughly legitimate method or art,
without which commerce, trade, finance and the
whole machinery of modern life would come
to a dead stop.
The Position of the Player-piano
But is it fair to say that in the music indus-
tries, and specifically in the merchandising of
player-pianos, the art of salesmanship has
reached its highest, or even a high, position?
Hardly. Do the people of this country think of
the player-piano as a necessity, in the sort of
way in which they think of an automobile?
They do not. Even allowing that in every ten
thousand persons there are more who care noth-
ing for music than there are who care nothing
for automobiles (if, indeed, there be any at all of
the latter class) the fact remains that at this
present time, in this year 1922, when the player-
piano has had a good twenty years of exploita-
tion and improvement, the people of the country
do not regard it as either an essential possession
or even as something which "no gentleman's
house should be without," as they say of the
Encylopaedia Britannica. A straight piano, in-
deed, does hold in some sense the position of a
necessary adornment, even if not a necessary
piece of furniture, but the player-piano, with all
its immense possibilities, its striking powers and
its magical capacity for bringing music into the
home where technical skill does not exist, is still
a sort of politely regarded novelty, not quite as
attractive as a really first-class talking machine
in a console period case, and certainly not to be
considered when there is a question between it
and a car, a bedroom suite or a trip to California.
The Rich Soil of the People
Yes, but why? Is it that the people are not
music lovers? Not at all! If the question were
as to the musical education of the people that
would be another matter entirely. For the peo-
ple generally are not musically educated. But
then the peasants of all the Western world are
singers, dancers, players of all sorts of instru-
ments, who have preserved through generations
a gradually growing stock of ballads, songs, tunes
and traditions of performance. Representatives
of that peasantry are to be found all over the
United States and they form a very important
part of its population. One needs only look at
the well-dressed crowds on Michigan boulevard
or Fifth avenue to realize this.. They are here,
the sons and daughters of that peasantry! They
are here, and who shall be foolish enough to say
that they have no latent love for music?
Of course, American life is not affording a
rich soil for the cultivation of artistic ideas, but
a love for music is one of the most natural and
widely distributed affections the world knows.
The player-piano, as we all know, is the greatest
of domestic music makers, for it both makes
music and enables the hearer to partake of the
highest musical pleasure, that of personal pro-
duction. Why, then, in all these circumstances,
is it even possible to argue about the funda-
mentals of player-piano salesmanship?
The Fundamentals
For surely these are as clear as sunlight.
Bad demonstration, bad service, unintelligent
marketing of music, stupid and misleading adver-
tising have damned the player-piano-in the minds
of thousands of otherwise intelligent persons.
The job of the new salesmanship is to restore the
prestige of the player-piano in the public mind.
This cannot be done by any mere change in the
product. At present there is a great demand
for player-pianos which render music without
personal interference. But they alone will not
cure the disease. Unless and until the public
mind comes to believe in pneumatic music-mak-
ing, no automatic expression will solve the prob-
lem. It is not a change of method that is needed,
it is a change of thought.
Those who have to sell this year any kind or
(Continued on page 5)