Music Trade Review

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Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
VOL. LXXV. No. 12
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Are., New York.
Sept. 16, 1922
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A Salesmanship Never as Necessary as Now
D
ESPITE the declarations of certain piano wareroom managers and other trade members to the con-
trary, ample proof has been afforded on numerous occasions recently of the fact that real salesman-
ship in the retail piano trade is not a forgotten art. Reports come from practically every section
of the country of the excellent results obtained by those who have gone out into the field and carried
on their selling campaigns in the sound, old-fashioned way, getting after the prospect and staying with him
until the order was signed.
It may be that all men who depend for their livelihood upon the selling of pianos are not salesmen in
the full sense of the word, and that some of them lack those qualities that make for successful selling, but
the fact remains that there are a great many men, and for that matter women, with experience and ability,
who are placing pianos in homes in very substantial numbers.
There are good and bad salesmen in every line of business and it is very likely that the piano trade,
although it may not be possessed of a sufficient number of skilled salesmen to produce a maximum amount of
business, nevertheless has its full share of those who can put the goods in the hands of the consumer in the
proper way. Because two salesmen pursue different methods in developing prospects and closing deals does
not of necessity indicate that either one of them is wrong, for it is the cultivation of an individual style that
frequently wins success for the salesman.
There are those who specialize with good effect on certain classes of industrial workers, others who
find their field with people in a higher strata of society, and still others who get their business, frequently in
record-breaking volume, exclusively from the farming population.
Those retail concerns that are backing up their salesmen with live publicity campaigns and in other
ways, and who stimulate their sales organizations to increased efforts through the medium of sales contests
or through special commendation when a particularly good deal warrants it, are rinding that the gift of bare-
handed selling is not dead in the trade. Business may not be as good as it has been in previous years, but
good salesmanship has proven, and is proving, that there is more piano business than the average business man
realizes when it is gone after energetically.
The piano salesmanship school started in New York under the auspices of the New York Piano Mer-
chants' Association is a move in the right direction, for it is calculated to give to the untrained or partially
trained salesman information and the benefit of experience within the space of a few days that he would
otherwise be forced to acquire through long and more or less painful apprenticeship in the none too easy trade
of piano selling.
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The school is calculated to increase in the metropolitan district at least the number of salesmen who are
properly equipped to get the maximum results, provided, of course, that the men themselves have sufficient
energy to make proper use of the equipment. There are, however, some thousands of piano salesmen right now
who have graduated from the school of hard knocks and are getting surprising results.
We are constantly hearing of individual salesmen in various sections who, even during the "dull"
months of July and August, have rolled up sales totals in excess of those of preceding years—years regarded
as prosperous ones. Sometimes the totals have been built up as a result of the stimulus provided by a contest,
and sometimes because the salesman knew his game, knew where to find and handle prospects and found enough
incentive in the results themselves to put forth his best efforts.
The art of selling is not dead in the piano trade by any means, although perhaps there is not enough
of it just now. Anything that will strengthen that art should be welcomed and heartily supported as
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