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THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
JUNE 28, 1924
THE POINT OF REVIEW
H P H E R E are some retail music merchants who declare that the
* canvassing method of selling may be all very well for the
small city or in the rural sections, but that in the larger communities
it is inefficient, due to the difficulty which the canvassing salesman
experiences in reaching the people he desires to see. It is a question
whether this point of view stands the test of investigation. Take a
city like St. Louis, for instance. It has approximately 750,000
population, yet in the canvassing campaign which is being conducted
there at the present time by the Kieselhorst Piano Co. it is stated
that the canvassing salesmen are succeeding in seeing 95 per cent
of their possible prospects and that without a great deal of trouble.
What is the answer? Is it not hard for the music merchant to find
if he will take the trouble to do it.
VS
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T
HE success of any canvassing campaign depends directly upon
the caliber of the men who conduct it. Time was when the
canvasser was regarded as the lowest stratum of salesmanship and
when, as a result in many cases, those who had failed at everything
else tried their hands at it, probably as a temporary occupation to
tide them over until they succeeded in getting something better.
Too often the word "canvasser" brought up the vision of a seedy-
looking individual, down at the heels and betraying a lack of
familiarity with the administrations of the barber, who more or less
slunk from one door to another with the certainty of failure written
all over his face. Naturally such men failed to get a hearing and
failed to get results. But to charge canvassing with such failure
is to burden it with a load for which it was not at all responsible
and to drop it because such a method brought no results was to lose
the benefit of a means of selling which in the long run is probably
the strongest of all the retail music merchant has at his disposal.
i*
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HE Kieselhorst Piano Co. attributes the success of its present
campaign to the caliber of the men employed to do this work.
As a matter of fact, the success of any campaign of a similar nature
at the present day must be attributed to exactly the same reason.
There is.a vast difference between the present-day canvassing sales-
man and his usual prototype in the past. He regards his work-
to-day as a definite career, as direct salesmanship is, and he lives up
to the ideas that have led him in to it. More merchandise to-day
is being sold by direct salesmanship, which is a much better term
than canvassing, for despite Shakespeare there is much in a name,
than at any previous time in mercantile history, simply because it
has been found to be a profitable and volume-producing method.
Every type of merchandise is sold by this means, even the automobile,
for one of the largest manufacturers of popular-priced cars is
at the present moment entirely recasting his selling and advertising
campaign for the purpose of embodying direct selling, or can-
vassing if you will, in the work.
is
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T is interesting to see the requirements which are demanded by
some of the biggest direct-selling organizations in the country.
One of them, which has been highly successful, endeavors at all
times to hire college men for the work because it finds they are
better in handling people. It finds little difficulty in getting this
type, once it has shown these men what they can do in this direction
and the- compensation they can earn. A man of this type finds
little difficulty in reaching people; even in the largest cities he can
get past the doorman of the exclusive apartment house and reach
the prospect. And a man of this type and with this training usually
obtains a courteous hearing; it is extremely difficult for the prospect
not to act otherwise.
T
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N one of the largest cities of the East a successful canvassing
campaign was conducted some two years ago in a section almost
entirely built up with apartment houses of the better grade, those
with hall service as a matter of fact. A crew of five men worked
this district for a period of four months with results that made
the campaign one of the most profitable the house had ever under-
taken. Rut the work was not done haphazardly. Lists of names
I
from various sources, such as telephone books, etc., were compiled
before the men were sent out, with the result that in practically
every house the salesman had at least one or two names before he
made a call. With this as a basis it was easy to secure other names
which were given to other men to work. No man made more than
two or three calls in an apartment house, so that the hall men
or elevator boys never became familiar with them. Most of the
prospects were seen and the results were good, for, as a matter
of fact, a prospect of this type, once he is reached, rarely refuses to
listen. He has not been overwhelmed with canvassers as is likely
to be the case in a poorer section.
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«« M*
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* I HERE is a saying that a salesman cannot be made, but, even
A if that be true, by no matter of means does it indicate that a
salesman cannot be helped in his work by placing at his disposal
all the possible information regarding the goods he is selling. A
Milwaukee retail music merchant, the Kesselman-O'Driscoll Co.,
Ampico representative in that city, recently compiled a sales manual
for that instrument which it furnishes to all its retail men that
should go a long way in aiding them to close their sales. The
manual, which is bound in loose-leaf form, contains names and
photographs of the homes of twenty prominent residents of Mil-
waukee who have purchased Ampicos, as well as a wealth of other
information concerning this instrument that the average salesman
does not have at his disposal. Another example of this work is that
conducted by the Gulbransen Co. for retail Gulbransen salesmen
throughout the country, whose sales manual recently was declared
by Printers' Ink one of the best that had come to that periodical's
notice, this after a long and thorough investigation of the field.
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HE growing use of these salesmen's aids brings to mind the
thought that every retail music merchant has at his disposal
a wealth of sales information which usually is not used because
it is not put together in a convenient and easily accessible form.
It is a matter of small time and energy for the merchant or his
sales manager to compile this information so that the salesman can
have it at his disposal and use it with a prospect. A customer
in Milwaukee, for instance, is much more interested in the fact
that a local musician or a family socially prominent in that city has
purchased a certain instrument than he is in the fact that a musician
in New York or a prominent family in Los Angeles has made
such a purchase. The endorsement given by the local buyer carries
the weight. Steinway & Sons have well realized this fact in utilizing
the names of local musicians who have purchased Steinway pianos
in cities where they have direct retail branches. Their Cincinnati
store has found this one of the most profitable ways of creating
new business. Every merchant can do the same thing.
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F the manufacturer himself furnishes a sales manual use that,
but supplement it with local information. It is the local touch that
tells, for the familiarity of the names creates a degree of confidence
which goes much further than is the case when the name comes
from some city a thousand or so miles distant. A salesman who
knows everything he can know about the goods he is selling is
always the better salesman, for knowledge of his goods is the
fundamental of all good salesmanship.
Hf
MS
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T N the death of Gustav Herzberg, veteran dealer of Philadelphia,
-*- the trade has lost a type of retailer with whom manufacturers
like to do business, a retailer of the solid, permanent sort, for Mr.
Herzberg had handled one line of pianos, the Kranich & Bach,
for the entire fifty years he had been in the trade, and another line,
the Mehlin, since its introduction to the trade thirty years ago.
Much of his business had been built up through the constant
pushing of these two and other makes of instruments, and that he
was successful and respected in his own community should make
his career an object lesson to the type of retailer who is inclined
to change his piano line with ease and facility.
T
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T H E RKVIKWKK.