This first article for the "BETTER BUSINESS CLINIC
is the result
of many interviews with leading music manufacturers and dealers.
Have your key men read the entire series.
It will enable your men to produce more business for you.
It will create more customer
satisfaction.
The articles are non-technical—deal solely with business developments
and customer relations.
Available only through Presto Music Times, the Class Magazine of the
American Music Industries.
3. How alert you are to the public response to music, and
to your association with it in the mind of your community.
And here's a point to remember: Time and effort can be
saved at each stage of this sales process, and how much
actual profit you—as an individual or an organization—make
depends just as much on the good sense and efficiency with
which you sell as the profit of the manufacturer depends upon
the good sense and efficiency with which he operates his plant.
Everybody in the music trades has heard of some old-timer
who got into a buggy one day and drove out into the country
to make his fortune selling pianos from a catalogue. The story
usually ends with the old-timer returning to town, the buggy
loaded down with orders.
But there are very few stories about the subsequent careers
of those old-timers. As a matter of fact a surprising number
of them are still in business—still playing a profitable and im-
portant part in the music industry. But they no longer drive
their buggies from farm to farm, armed only with a catalogue.
They have adjusted their sales effort and sales practice to
new conditions, and experience has taught them that economy
in selling is even more important than economy in manufac-
turing.
This is no plea for more and fancier advertising—at least as
the term, advertising is generally understood. It is not an
argument for bigger and flossier direct-mail campaigns. In
most communities the potential customers of the music mer-
chant do not form a sufficiently large percentage of the total
population to justify the indiscriminate use of newspaper ad-
vertising. Effective mail campaigns only occur in the music
business when the mailing is done to carefully selected lists
and even then they have not been as successful as some of
their advocates would have us believe. To return to the
points listed above:
Tying in music with the social, civic, and business life of
your community.
This means identifying yourself prominently with the mu-
sical activities of your community and promoting them as you
would your own business. When Rachmaninoff comes to the
big city such a tie-up may cost the big music merchant a lot
in publicity, advertising, and displays; when the high school
band gives a concert in the small city, all the small music mer-
chant need do is feature the announcement in his store win-
dow, see that his wife's name appears in the program as a
sponsor of the concert, and go to the concert himself.
Per dollar invested in this way, the return to the little
man in the little town will be much greater than the return
to the big man in the big town.
More than anything else, tying in music with the life of
your community means seeing that the high school has a
band, and seeing that it gives concerts. If the economy-wise
school board wishes to compromise on a choir which can
use the ancient mail order upright the school already owns,
then take the compromise, even if it doesn't mean $10 a year
to you in sheet music sales. For people who listen to choirs
and choruses are bound sooner or later to demand instru-
mental music in addition.
Every radio set, every famous artist who comes to your
community, every school band and church choir is a mission-
ary for your merchandise. How you encourage these mis-
sionaries of yours and how closely you become associated
with them in the public mind are the final determinants of
your success.
After that? It is always easier to sell the prospect who
walks into your store—even if, without his knowing it, you
have made him walk in—than it is to go out, find a prospect,
and then sell him. And proper local tie-ups will make the
prospect walk in.
National Music Week, planned for the second week in May
and sponsored by the National Association of Music Mer-
chants and the National Piano Manufacturers Association, is
the time for music merchants to begin again the systematic
exploitation of their communities. The wise music merchant
will take advantage of this approaching opportunity.
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