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THE
REVIEW
VOL. 85. No. 11 Published Weekly. Federated Business Publications, Inc., 420 Lexington Ave., New York, N. Y., Sept. 10,1927
8ln
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Nickels, Not Foot Work
Find the Prospect
Pfingsten & Lenz, Glen Ellyn, 111., Make
Seventy-five Telephone Calls a Day
and Get One Prospect Out of Four Calls
I
N securing piano prospects the tele-
phone has supplanted "porch climb-
ing" with the new method that
Pfingsten & Lenz, piano merchants in
Glen Ellyn, 111., recently adopted in
carrying out their Summer selling cam-
paign.
The telephone canvassing system
which this firm adopted at the beginning
of the Summer has worked out so suc-
cessfully that it has determined to spend
nickels for the balance of the year in-
stead of wearing out shoe leather in
canvassing for the illusive prospects.
Pfingsten & Lenz are particu-
larly anxious to continue the
telephone system,
following
the July sales, which
amounted to ten pianos
before the close of the
month with a number
of good deals pending,
which
will
probably
bring the total sales to
twelve or fifteen instru-
ments during the "poor-
est" month of the year,
which July is very often
termed by very many re-
... ._
Price is never
mentioned until
the prospect is
in the store and
interested
in
the purchase of
a piano. Pros-
pects will aver-
age one out of
every four tele-
phone
calls
made by this re-
tail piano house,
a
remarkable
Mr. Lenz {seated) talks over «
sales point with his partner,
Mr. Pfingsten
years he has sold on the average
of seventy-seven pianos a year.
Since entering business he has in-
creased this average and is deter-
mined to make it much larger.
With this record of success,
which has been attained through
the direct house-to-house canvass-
ing system, one might think that
with the adoption of the telephone
to carry on the canvassing the
merchants
were
following
the
line of least resistance to avoid
work during the Summer. But this
was not the case. They adopted
this method to eliminate unneces-
sary work, or rather to find better
"All piano selling
methods of selling, regardless of
begins in the home,"
how much work was involved. It
says Mr. Lenz. "and
ends in the ware-
is certain that these merchants do
rooms"
plenty of canvassing, for they have
worked West Chicago and other
nearby towns, including Winnfield, Downers
tail
piano
merchants.
Here is the
P. F. Pfingsten Grove, Wheaton, Elmhurst, Villa Park and
store of Pfing-
sten & Lenz. and C. J. Lenz, ex- Bloomfield, in addition to Glen Ellyn.
"The piano canvasser is not insulting a
Cuts by cour- p e r i e n c e d piano
tesy of Sales
canvassers,
formed
prospect
if he tries to sell a good piano," said
Management,
a partnership the
Mr. Lenz, "but how many times at the present
Chicago
first of the year
time do piano canvassers fail to introduce
and opened an attractive little
their proposition into the home because for
store in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of
some reason or other the housewife fails to
Chicago. They are perhaps among
give them an interview? In many instances
the best piano canvassers in this
she mentally classifies the piano salesman as
district, having made excellent another 'agent.' Perhaps she has had a half-
dozen or more agents at her door that
records during the past eight
years in working for one of the morning; perhaps she is not dressed to receive
leading houses here. Mr. Lenz a salesman; perhaps she is busy preparing for
has kept a record of his efforts,
a luncheon, or getting ready to go to the city
{Continued on page 4)
which show that for the past five