Music Trade Review

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THE
MUJIC TRADE
VOL. LXXV. No. 6
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Are., New York.
Aug. 5, 1922
Teaching Piano Salesmanship
announcement of the consummation of plans by the New York Piano Merchants' Association for
the holding of a school for piano salesmen in the metropolis, beginning next month, has naturally aroused
widespread
interest. The news columns of this paper will carry the details of the school and its prog-
vvid
ress, but the possibilities that are likely to flow from it are of immediate interest.
Whether a permanent addition to the machinery of the trade is being put into operation, or whether
it is merely a case of a temporary enthusiasm which will die out at the first breath of skepticism, the fact
remains that a truth is to-day acknowledged in this action of the New York piano merchants—a truth which
this paper has frequently urged upon the attention of an unwilling industry. That truth may be expressed
most briefly by saying that the piano industry has been in the past, and up till now, an industry in which the
product was bought by the consumer, but that it has now become an industry in which the product must hence-
forth be sold.
When we learn that the annual output of pianos and player-pianos scarcely altered for better or for
worse during the twenty years before 19T4, and when we learn further that the figure expressing this output in
number of instruments was not higher than 300,000, we begin to see that there is a vast difference between
the possibilities of an industry in which the goods are merely bought and of an industry in which the goods
are actually sold.
It has been pointed out over and over again by business men whose experience and success give them
the right to talk that it is salesmanship and salesmanship alone which keeps the business world moving. Left to
themselves people would buy next to nothing. All the luxuries and half the necessities of Western civilization
would cease to exist if the people who actually buy-them were left to their own initiative in the matter. It
may or may not be well for one's confidence in public intelligence, but there can be no question of the fact that
this statement is correct.
Piano salesmanship has for too long been regarded as something quite unique, something set up in a
corner by itself, something which can only be understood by a special sort of salesman. There has been always
the idea that to sell a piano involves some kind of a trick, and that no pianos, or even player-pianos, would be
sold merely on their merits.
Perhaps, indeed, the latter assumption is correct enough; but that does not
alter the fact that the piano would not be worth selling if it were not a legitimate article, if it did not benefit
those who buy it, if its possession were not in itself the possession of an investment which pays constant and
perpetual dividends in enjoyment, in entertainment, in pleasure.
To sell the piano, the player-piano or any other musical instrument is to sell the pleasure and refining
influence of music in the home. To sell this the salesman must himself be able to feel what he wants his pros-
pect to feel. When he has made the prospect feel this much, then he has made the sale.
Too long has the selling of pianos and player-pianos been made a process of wheedling the prospect
into the belief that the price and the terms constitute the important factors. The practice of selling price
and terms, instead of selling music in the home, has arisen as the result of the existence of a race of salesmen
who care nothing for what the piano does or gives, and who would be just as much interested in selling sewing
machines if the conditions were otherwise parallel. It is time to produce the new salesman—the salesman
who is genuinely interested in what he has to sell and who, indeed, would not be trying to sell musical instru-
ments if he did not believe and feel about music as deeply and as sincerely as he wishes his prospects to feel.
If the projected New York school of piano salesmanship can make its students understand these truths it
will solve the problem of boosting retail piano sales, for the solution of which problem the school is primarily
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