Music Trade Review

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ome Sack
elling
gram, depending upon your own personal pres-
tige, coupled with the fact that you have been in
business for half a century or more?
As stated before, I believe that the piano busi-
ness potentially has come back. It has been
proven time and time again that pianos can be
sold. It's our next move—we must simply or-
ganize ourselves as piano dealers to go out and
get business like the refrigerator and automo-
bile dealers are doing. At first we may have to
work just a little harder than those dealers.
We've been lagging behind—we have lost our
momentum, which will have to be regained.
There is a way to bring about that miracle
we've all secretly hoped would happen. Tt could
possibly happen that some fine morning we
might go down to our place of business and find
that overnight the piano business has come
back!
Let's let our imagination run wild for a
moment and imagine that during the night,
while we're sleeping soundly, someone were to
go down to your store and move out completely
your entire piano stock and take all the pianos
up the street to the electrical refrigerator store,
and in turn move all the refrigerators down to
your store. And instead of you going down in
the morning to your old place of business you
go up the street to your new location where
they sold refrigerators the day before. Shortly
after you open up, in walks four or five well-
trained salesmen witli a sales program well-
grounded in their minds. And to-day they're
going to sell pianos instead of refrigerators but
use refrigerator sales methods. The new girl,
as has been her habit in the refrigerator busi-
ness, mails out two or three hundred direct-mail
pieces, except this time the literature covers
pianos instead of refrigerators. The four or five
salesmen, armed to the gills with piano selling
information, snap into the job of combing their
territory—intelligently covering their prospects
one by one. Every night these men report back
and tell of their day's progress. Let's suppose
this goes on for a week! What would happen?
There's only one thing that could happen—the
thing that always happens when you really go
after the piano business—pianos would be sold
during that week.
But wait—let's go back to the old place of
business where they're now trying to sell refrig-
erators by using typical piano methods. Wow!
No sales this week. No direct-mail efforts! No
organized sales force! Instead of selling the idea
that a refrigerator promotes health, saves food,
and is more economical than dirty messy ice,
they've been trying all week long to sell the
occasional prospect who happened in, on the
idea that their refrigerator is the lowest-priced
in the field—that they have the best finish—that
the motor is a genuine "GE"—that the pump
doesn't leak, and that no refrigerator of their
make has ever worn out!
The refrigerator business has gone to the
dogs! The refrigerator dealer, after a few weeks,
decides that he had better take on a few more
items and give up the job
of specialty selling, so he
takes on radio, sewing
machines, a few ukuleles,
an agency for accident in-
surance, and becomes a
notary public!
All joking aside, this
isn't far from what would
happen if the above tale
were to come true to-night.
Isn't it time that those
of us in the piano busi-
ness should seriously take
ourselves to task for the
deplorable condition that
exists to-day in the piano
field?
Here we are, bungling
the job of selling the one
piece of merchandise that
should be in every Ameri-
can home. Hundreds of
thousands of old pianos
have lost their usefulness
and need replacing. We arc selling the basic in-
strument for all musical training and doing a
poor job of it. We are neglecting selling the
great benefits of a musical training. We are
passing up using in our selling arguments the
opinions of the world's leading educators and
thinkers. Just think!—we are doing a half-
hearted job of selling pianos, the basic instru-
ment of that training which so noted an author-
ity as William J. Bogan says "is more important
than the study of mathematics."
Let's apply an entirely new approach to the
piano-selling problem—let's organize our selling
arguments and use them instead of depending
upon our own personalities. Let's adopt the
selling methods of our competition! And in this
connection let's recognize just what is our com-
petition. It is the automobile, the radio, the
refrigerator, etc.
Remember also, that piano dealers arc the
originators and pioneers of house-to-house spe-
cialty selling. Piano dealers are the founders
of the selfsame methods that arc being used
successfully by our competing industries. Piano
dealers also originated and pioneered the time-
payment plan.
The time has passed for the piano men to
view their contemporaries in the same line of
business as their competitors, and it is neces-
sary for the members of the retail trade to stand
back to back in fighting the new and real com-
petition that has grown up through the devel-
opment of other lines. This competition must
be fought both with the old weapons and the
new, and it is essential that the piano dealer
who seeks to make his way to-day study mod-
ern salesmanship and adopt the new rules to
his business.
It is not a question of condemning the auto-
mobile, the refrigerator and the radio dealer for
taking that part of the public's money that the
"Let's apply an entirely new approach to
the piano selling problem—let's organize
our selling arguments and use them in-
stead of depending upon our own per-
sonalities. Let's adopt the selling methods
of our competition! And in this connec-
tion let's recognize just what is our com-
petition. It is the automobile, the radio,
the refrigerator, etc."
piano dealer feels really belongs to him, but it
is rather a question of seeing to it that he gets
his just share of that money through increased
and more intelligent selling effort.
Being pioneers in so many new merchandis-
ing methods should, under ordinary circum-
stances, give to the piano dealer a distinct ad-
vantage in meeting new situations as they de-
velop. He has had the benefit of a long ex-
perience in doing business along those other
lines that other merchants are emphasizing as
representing unusual service to the public. The
piano dealer, for instance, was the originator of
the time-payment plan and his burden has not
been lightened by the fact that in many other
lines of business the value of this plan for in-
creasing turnover has been recognized and its
principles adopted.
The instalment business has developed to a
point in fact where success in selling rests
largely upon the ability of the dealer or his
salesman-to make his contact with the monthly
or weekly pay check and to make this contact
means that the sales organization must be con-
stantly on its toes and primed with the argu-
ments that will place the piano in the home
instead of some other product.
The piano industry should not be backward
in adopting methods that have proven success-
ful in other lines of trade. Certainly it has
given cnoimh pnod ideas to other business men
to feel that turn about is fair play. The thing
to do is to adopt and put into practice every
sales plan that is calculated to put their instru-
ments into the homes. Just waiting for some-
thing to happen is not the answer.
The only "comeback" the piano industry needs
is to have piano dealers come back into their
own original selling methods coupled with mod-
ern selling arguments. Let's all go back to
work!