Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
REVIEW
VOL. 85. No. 10 Published Weekly. Federated Business Publications, Inc., 420 Lexington A?e., New York, N. Y., Sept. 3,1927
Bln
*j5.£°g£
Seventy-one Piano Sales
From a Contest in a Month
How One Retail Merchant, Disregarding Precedent, Cashed in on the
Piano-Playing Contest by Canvassing the Homes Which Had No Chil-
dren Entered in the Event, Using Rivalry to Create Volume of Sales
A
MAN from another line of industry who
had occasion recently to come in contact
with members of the piano trade
throughout the country paid high tribute to
the capabilities of the retailers, but declared
that one of the drawbacks to the trade as he
saw it is its tendency to operate strictly accord-
ing to precedent and to avoid stepping out of
the beaten paths except in rare and notable in-
stances. This is not to say that piano selling
methods have not changed during the past dec-
ade, but there have been no really radical
changes, and an attempt to introduce a dis-
tinctly new method often meets with the an-
swer that it is simply not done that way in
the trade.
Those merchants who have taken occasion to
show originality in the conduct of sales cam-
paigns have in most cases reaped the reward
of their progressiveness. No better evidence
of this is found than in the sales enjoyed by
those who were the pioneers in introducing
group piano instruction and in conducting con-
tests of various sorts designed to arouse wide
popular interest in the piano and its playing.
Value of Originality
A case that emphasizes particularly the value
of originality is recited concerning the experi-
ences of a certain retail piano manager in a city
where a very successful piano-playing contest
was being run. The local dealers were behind
the contest almost to a man, and when several
thousand entries were recorded for it the
names of the entrants wjth their addresses were
turned over to the score or more dealers par-
ticipating. The result was that the homes of
the entrants were simply deluged with piano
salesmen in seeking to capitalize upon the con-
test interest.
Some pianos were sold, it is true, but it was
found that a greater percentage of the homes
were already equipped with instruments, which
was natural for the reason that those who en-
tered the contest must have learned to play the
piano somewhere. The actual sales when
divided by the number of concerns backing the
contest were really very few.
The manager referred to had a hunch that
the contest entrants would keep the salesmen
from the various piano houses very busy for a
couple of weeks at least, and realized that the
business resulting would not prove very profit-
able to any one individual concern, and probably
not compensate for the amount of effort ex-
pended. The result was that he took the list of
entrants and zoned them according to the
schools which they attended and from which
they had entered the contest.
He then sent
crews of canvassers into the districts surround-
ing the schools most strongly represented and
finecombed these territories upon a house-to-
house basis, keeping away from the homes of
those in the contest but calling on every other
home in the vicinity where there was a child of
school age.
Canvassing the Customer
The work was well done. The canvasser's
first query was whether or not the child or
children of the household were in the contest.
The answer was, naturally, no. Attention was
then called to the fact that Freddie Jones next
door, Tommy Smith down the block, and Mary
Brown around the corner, had all entered and
it seemed a shame that such bright children as
were to be found in this particular home were
denied the privilege of competing for one of
the handsome prizes. It requires no deep
knowledge of psychology to understand that the
mother of the household particularly presented
the fact that her children were not on equal
terms with those of the neighbors in this 1 pub-
lic event. When it was explained that the>re
were several months during which the child
could learn to play, or at least improve its
playing, before the contest finals the argument
was clinched.
Seventy-one Sales
The sum and substance of the whole matter
was that within the month this particular man-
ager had recorded some seventy-one sales as a
result of the intensive campaign, doing con-
siderably more business with non-entrants by
himself than all the other dealers did with
those who had entered the contest. The experi-
ence of this particular manager should serve as
a guide to others who seek to capitalize on the
interest aroused by local piano-playing con-
tests.
In this particular case the rest of the houses
followed the orthodox system. They had a list
of names and called on them, forgetting that
every other house had the same list and was
making the same calls and that the pianoless
homes in the list were few and far between, as
they soon discovered.
All to Himself
As a result of this sticking to precedent, the
one manager had the outside field all to him-
self, at least until some competitors tumbled
to what he was doing, and then he had a start
that gave him a distinct advantage. It is a sys-
tem, too, that does not require a contest to
make it practical.
The experience of this manager shows how
necessary it is for the individual merchant or
the retail branch manager to study the selling
situation as it exists, and to be guided in his
selling campaigns accordingly. And at no time
in the history of the piano trade was this
quality more necessary than it is to-day. Group
instruction, piano-playing contests, general pub-
licity on the piano as the basic music instru-
ment as exemplified in the national campaign
being conducted by the National Piano Manu-
facturers Association, are all creating different
conditions than have existed in the past, and all
require new methods of selling to meet those
changes. The dealer or the retail manager who
does not consider these facts, who does not
carefully study them and analyze the situation
with which he is confronted, is not going to
cash in on the general promotion work which
the trade is doing, and which as a result will
bring him no results.
Weight of Precedent
The weight of precedent is a heavy one for an
industry as old as the piano industry to carry.
The sooner it is thrown off and the new condi-
tions met by changed selling methods the
sooner the volume of sales is going to develop
and grow.