Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
Manuals. Investigate this Distributive
Education work in your own city and
state. Visit a class. Write your State
Board for Vocational Education.
For All Instrument Selling
The manual is to cover merchan-
dising music in such a way that it
may be applied to the selling of all
musical goods: pianos, organs, band
instruments, accessories, radios, phon-
ograph-radio combinations, records,
stringed instruments, sheet music, and
others, without special emphasis on
any one commodity. We are to sell
the "sizzle" of music and service as
it applies to these products.
Sales Training, NAMM Objective
Sales Training is item number five
(of twelve objectives) on the current
program of the National Association
of Music Merchants, as adopted by
the Board of Control in its mid-year
meeting. Item three under Sales
Training objectives is, "Hold sales
training conference to study possibility
of preparing manual on selling mu-
sical instruments." President E. R.
McDuff, Executive Committee mem-
bers Louis LaMair and George Byerly,
and Executive Secretary William A.
Mills, are to be commended for rec-
ognizing the needs of and pushing
the plans for, the accomplishment of
this objective.
Some Needs for Sales Training
In our endeavors to become better
merchants, and in our efforts to in-
crease our prestige and profits, many
of us will find it greatly to our ad-
vantage to improve and refine our
selling methods. One of the best ways
to improve and refine our selling is
through better training of our sales-
people.
• During the war period, our sales
forces have been greatly depleted for
one reason or another. Not only have
they been depelted, but the force that
remains is greatly unprepared to meet
real selling conditions. It has drifted
into bad habits. It has followed the
lines of least resistance. In many
cases, it is untrained. Very few of
the desirable members who have drift-
ed away will return to the force.
Buyer's Market Will Force Selling
When our economy changes from
a sellers' market to a buyers' market,
we will need to sell again as we have
had to sell in the past. We will need
trained salesmen to be able to "step
out and sell". The seller's market
has spoiled many of us. It has made
us soft. Although we are in a new
era, the pendulum will soon swing
into a buyer's market, so we should
prepare now, through sales training
now.
Our business will soon meet strong
outside competition for the buyer's
dollar, as the great war production-
capacity is reconverted into the man-
ufacture of attractive and longed-for
consumers' goods. Industry after in-
dustry will be in competition with our
musical merchandise. The consumer
will be tempted in many ways to spend
his musical dollars. |We can hold them
better with well-trained salesmen.
If our industry is to have a balance
between production and consumption,
—it must be accomplished through
efficient distribution. Salesmanship is
the most mportant phase of distribu-
tion, therefore, efficient salesmanship.
Considering our musical instrument
factories' ability to produce (many
are gearing to produce twice their past
records), retail merchants have a real
job to do in efficient salesmanship
and distribution,—if production does
not outrun consumption and bring on
the dreadful evils of over-production.
If we are to help our nation attain the
goal of full employment, we must help
balance doubtful consumption and de-
finite tremendous production-capacity,
with most efficient
distribution,
through better salesmanship.
Distributive Education Tie-up
It is to make distribution more
efficient that the U. S. Office of Edu :
cation is cooperating with merchants
over the nation in sharing the expense
with the States for classes in Distri-
butive Education in public schools,
and in merchants' own stores. Distri-
butive Education is a phase of Voca-
tional Training. It's purpose is to
assist and up-grade those who are
employed full or part-time in any
phase of distributive work such as
buying, advertising, selling, or mer-
chandising an idea, service or com-
modity.
To many music merchants, Distri-
butive Education is something new,
but it has been in operation since the
George-Deen Act was passed in 1937.
It's training is widespread. In the
State of Texas alone, 243 cities and
towns have public school classes in
Distributive Education, with an en-
rollment of 23,388, this year. NAMM
Executive Secretary, William Mills,
has known of the work of Distributive
Education before coming into our
industry, and it is largely through his
efforts and contacts in Washington
with the U. S. Office of Education,
that the NAMM's Sales Training Man-
ual will be prepared in cooperation
with the most efficient distribution,
and will bear its approval for use in
Distributive Education classes in pub-
lic schools.
War Training Experience Helps
During the war, many of us dis-
covered the techniques, and the values
of training, so training and teaching
should come easier in the post-war
period. We were trained with a man-
ual in classes for first-aid, and for
many other phases of Civilian De-
fense. Men in the armed services were
trained carefully with manuals in
classes for all of the important jobs
they had to do in war. Never before
has so much civilian and military
training and teaching been done. This
should make it more natural for mu-
sic merchants to train and teach their
salespeople, with the aid of the Sales
Training Manual.
Son of R. C. Bristow
and Wife in Accident
The Son of R. C. Bristow, head of
R. C. Bristow and Son, Petersburg,
Va., and his wife are slowly recover-
ing from a tragic automobile accident
which occurred on October 7th. They
are in the Maria Parham Hospital,
Henderson, N. C.
They had been visiting in Raleigh,
N. C. and on returning at night a
colored man tried to run around a car
and get back on his side of the two
lane drive and drove squarely in front
of the Bristow car and both cars were
demolished. The State Police thought
both had been killed.
Doctors say that recovery will take
a long time. The colored man died on
Tues. Oct. 9th.
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, DECEMBER, 1945