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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, FEBRUARY, 19W
Clinic
(Continued from page 15)
went over and tried our lowest priced Spin-
nette, and he made this great statement:
'There is the piano that has by far the better
tone,' which brings me to the point that 95
per cent of the prospects prefer a rich, mellow
tone and 95 per cent of the musicians prefer
a brilliant or hard tone. That should show us
just who should demonstrate the piano and
what type of music we should use in demon-
strating it.
"I haven't taken the front out of a piano
in over three years. I believe that tone is the
big thing, and if we are talking tone and
demonstrating tone, it isn't necessary to talk
about very much else.
"Infinite care should be used, in playing, in
the selection of what you are going to piay.
The young couple like swing, hot music. Some-
times they will buy a piano because of the
piece that you are playing. The greatest piano
salesman 1 have ever had the pleasure of know-
ing, a man I believe has sold more pianos than
anyone else in America, sold all of his pianos
by the way he played, 'Silver Threads Among
the Gold.'
"I sold over eight thousand pianos myself,
and the piece I have used—not the piece itself
but the way it is used—is 'Believe Me If All
Those Endearing Young Charms.' I have never
seen a piano sold by playing a march."
Mr. Fagan then stepped to the piano and
gave three demonstrations of what should be
played when endeavoring to hold the attention
of a prospect.
Mr. L. E. Fetter of Wilmington, Delaware,
said, "You spoke a while ago about enthusiasm
in selling. I would just like to get some
opinions of how in the name of Heaven you
can get enthusiastic over a $195 piano."
Another guest arose and said: "I agree
with this gentleman about working up enthu-
siasm about a $195 piano. Those of us who
know nothing about a piano cant do so. In
fact, we can't work up enthusiasm about our
$300 pianos."
Mr. Rice then said: "If you can't work up
enthusiasm about the merchandise you sell,
you shouldn't buy it."
To which the dealer answered further: "I
believe that most of us who sell the $195 piano
do not want to sell that piano. Our enthusiasm,
of course, should be worked up on something
that we really feel is good, and if we don't
know our product, we can't be enthusiastic."
"If that is the method by which we have to
merchandise pianos today," reiterated Mr.
Rice, "for the $195 piano or the $497 piano,
we just forget the enthuiasm on the net price
merchandise and we would have to develop the
enthusiasm on a product which you are enthu-
siastic about."
At this time the discussion went back to
the subject of music teachers and one guest
asked if he might go back to that subject, and
he expressed himself in the following manner:
Back to the Music Teacher
"Well, after thirty years of selling, I am
just as much prejudiced today against music
teachers as ever. They are actually a hindrance
and they should be excluded from our selling
field. We should not employ music teachers as
assistants in the sale of pianos. This problem
has gone over for a great many years, and I
will go back thirty years at the time when I
was in Portland, Oregon. We had four large
companies out there, and they got together
and formed an organized group and decided
they were not going to pay any more music
teachers, because the music teachers were such
a great problem. They would give the same
lead to everyone and create greater hardship
and more competition. That isn't what I started
out to ell you.
"There has been so much talk about the
music teacher, what we can expect of him.
When the piano business started taking a nose
dive, going down into the cellar, the music
teacher didn't do one single thing to help the
piano business along. You say today we have
over 115,000 pianos sold in a year's time. But
did the music teacher do one single thing to
help bring the piano business back? not at all!
Teachers Knock Small Piano
"The music teacher is proving a great detri-
ment today against the sale of the small pianos.
Invariably where a music teacher is involved,
they knock the small piano. They say there isn't
sufficient tone, sufficient quantity, and every-
thing else about it. I think that is something
that is very important, and more important
than going into the sales angle, is for us to
do something in trying to educate the music
teacher to the small piano, that the small piano
really is a musical instrument, that it is some-
thing that the pubic actually wants, and that
the music teacher may just as w r ell decide that
the small piano has come to stay, just as we
in the piano business have decided, and that
they had better stop knocking the small piano,
because they are injuring themselves as well
as us."
Mr. Rice then replied: "I think this problem
of music teachers and the knocking of Spin-
ettes goes back farther than the knocking of
the music teacher. I think we have, as you all
know, a great scarcity of piano tuners. I
would say this generally: 'The piano tuners
that we have to hire today are men 55, 60, 65
years old, whose hands are all out, that syn-
chronism between the hand and the eardrum.
Those piano tuners were brought up with a
large grand piano, and they still work under
the belief that there is no piano in the world
that will take the place of the grand or the
good-sized upright, and I find people in the
City of Philadelphia, piano tuners, do a lot
more harm than do the music teachers.'
"But working on your premise that they do
us harm, too, because they still think that one
must have a great big piano in order to get
certain results, we quite agree with that. We
cover it by this answer: 'Mrs. Jones, adequacy
is the word. How big a room have you?' "
"Well, a normal sized room."
"Does the tone of this piano sound good to
you? Don't you believe that this instrument
would be adequate for your needs?"
"In that way you can overcome that old
heresey of the large piano. Mrs. Jones comes
in and says, "Is the small piano a success? I
heard they don't stand up."
"Well, in my mind, I quite agree with that,
speaking to that gentleman who talked about
the $195 piano. There may be some credence
in that thought, but those things can be over-
come."
Mr. Onderdonk at Wanamaker's has the
same system. I know you retail music stores
pay 10 per cent. 'I didn't want to get into this,
but I think it is coming up to that. We pay 5
per cent commission, and I think most large
department stores do. I don't think you can
get away from the fact. I don't know how it
works in the small cities, but I still believe—
I don't see how you can get away from the
music teacher. I can't give you any figures on
how many were responsible for making sales
for us this past year, but I know that I have
a man that works on music teachers, and at
the end of the year I know that figures show-
that it pays.
"I know we have a lot of screwball—excuse
the expression—music teachers in our trade
that register their names in every music store
in the city. That has always been with us. It
has been in he business for thirty years. I
don't see how you can get away from it. If
that trade is worth anything to us at all, and
we work it correctly, I don't see how you can
miss anybody's cooperation in these piano days.
We need all the cooperation from everybody,
all our sources, and I will have to say we be-
lieve in this music teacher business."
John H. Gettell, Secretary of the National
Piano Manufacturing Co., entered into this
argument, with the comment that he thought
that as far as the teacher is concerned, a time
limit ought to be set, perhaps three months or
six months, and let the teacher know that.
19
"They know that the sale has to be consum-
mated within ninety days or within six
months," he said. "After that time there is
no remuneration to them for it. In that way
they really roll their sleeves up and go t».
work."
Ray Fagan then rose and said he was very
much opposed to commissions to teachers. "A
survey of the last three years," he said, "be-
fore I went with the store I am now with,
shows that all of the commissions paid were
paid to teachers on the piano that could not be
purchased at any other store. This always
seemed to me to be quite amusing, but I think
one thing that answers it pretty well is—and
I quote Mr. Sibley, the head of Sibley, Lind-
say and Curr, who pretends not to know any-
thing about business. I asked him if he
thought we should pay commissions to teach-
ers. He said ,"Well, if you think it takes some-
one else to come in and tell you how good your
piano is, let us hire that person and you turn
your job over to him."
The next speaker was S. C. Wolfe,
Manager of the Griffith Piano Company
in Plainfield, N. J., whose subject was
"Should the Customer Ever Be Left
Alone?" He said that he is connected
with the smallest store that his company
operated, a sort of a country piano store.
"Frankly," he stated, "when we get a cus-
tomer we don't leave him alone much. We sort
of hug him! I imagine that ten men would
have ten different solutions to the problem."
He then illustrated his remark with a story
about having left a customer to go to the phone
and upon his return found the prospect busily
engaged in playing one of the pianos, which
she purchased. "But,"' he said, "this very case,
was sort of disasti'ous to me because when
the next floor call came up, I was pretty much
convinced that I had unravelled the selling sit-
uation pretty well. After a few minutes with
the next customer, I left at the opportune time,
to give him a chance to sell himself. But much
to my regret, I left the customer just long
enough to allow him to give me a good reason
why he couldn't purchase a piano.
"I should say that if a customer is to be
left alone at all, it should be within the very
first few minutes of contact. If our store
were large enough, I think that I would be
tempted to allow a prospect to wander through
the place, let him sort of w T ear himself out,
and let him sell himself to some extent, and
then, of course, I like to step in and try to
sell him. But I think it is disastrous to leave
a customer after you have really worked him,
and give him an opportunity to build up some
resistance or some opportunity that would give
him a general way out.
"Again I say my solution of it would be
that if a customer is left alone at all, it should
be within the very first few minutes of sale,
to allow him to wander through, rather than
have the salesman direct him to a piano and
try to sell the particular piano that he would
like to sell. I think it is disastrous to leave a
customer alone after the customer has been
in the store any period of time.
Mr. Rice then called on Ernest Fink,
Manager of the Piano Department of
Hecht Brothers of Baltimore, Md., who
spoke on "What Should We Show the
Customer Who Doesn't Express a Pref-
erence on Entering the Store?"
Mr. Fink stated that he had divided the
subject into three groups, the first of which
he called the "Feeler." Stating that the custo-
mer generally wanted to find out what the
salesman knew, but that it was up to the
salesman first to find out to whom he was
speaking, where he lived and what type of
person he might be, which called for much tact.
"However," he said "that is our job, to find
out in the most tactful manner. Then we must
next try to find out what the size of room this
(Turn to Col. 3, page 20)