Automatic Age

LITTLE BENEFITS
— most often it is the little things, not
the big ones, that move folks to buy, writes Lewis
C. Brownson in "O pportu n ity" the
straight line selling magazine— eloquence or dominating personality or exceptional
force and aggressiveness do not always make the sale. --------------------------------
N one of our larger cities
there is a night club that
enjoys a very large patron­
age and makes a great deal of
money. Its owner is inevitably
the target of innumerable at­
tempts to sell promotional plans
and advertising.
Recently one of the most
“high powered” advertising
salesmen in the city called on
this prospect with an elaborate
advertising plan, concocted by
“the best brains” of the adver­
tising world. The salesman was
eloquent, forceful, and aggres­
sive and thoroughly accustomed
to “push over” prospects. But
this particular prospect refused
to be pushed. The gorgeous
prospectus was a dead loss.
“That guy needs advertising;
he can make a profit in adver­
I
tising ; yet he is so dumb that he
can’t appreciate a marvelous ad­
vertising plan when it’s shown
to him!” the salesman fumed.
“It’s over his head!”
HE GETS A N IC E ORDER
But an elderly man, shabby
and diffident, sidled into that
night club in the dead hours of
a Monday afternoon, the next
week, and sidled out again with
a nice order for advertising. His
advertising did not have the
benefit of “the best brains,” nor
of a high priced art department.
He carried nothing but a sample
wrapped in a piece of news­
paper.
He said to the night club
owner, “I been noticing that
more than half your customers
come from the smaller towns
ENTERTAINS PAMPA MUSIC MERCHANT AND DAUGHTER
Recent visitors to
Commercial
Music Company's
Dallas distributing
headquarters were
M. M . Rutherford, W urlitzer music merchant and his daughter . . . Daughter was said to
be highly intrigued by the display of W urlitzer equipment and phonographs, while her father
penned an order that proved his opinion, "Wurlitzers are first choice o f the better Pampa
locations."
66
AUTOMATIC AGE
© International Arcade Museum
out through the state . . . small
town boys bringing their girls in
for a good time. Would you like
to have more such customers ?”
“I sure would!” the owner an­
swered, “those small town fel­
lows are good spenders when
they come to town. One of them
will spend more in an evening
than a local fellow would spend
in a month.”
THE " Y O U " A N G L E IN SELLIN G
“Well, in that case,” the sales­
man said, “here’s something that
every out-of-town woman will
take home with her. She’ll show
it to her women friends because
she wants them to envy her for
her trip to the big city. Her
friends are going to keep up
with her if it’s the last thing
they do; so they will needle their
husbands and boy friends to
bring them to your place, too.
Any woman that comes here has
at least a dozen or more friends
at home; so you will get a dozen
or more good plugs for your
place for the cost of this one
souvenir at 15c. Take 2,000 of
’em and I can let you have ’em
for 13c.”
“It’s a deal!” the prospect an­
swered. “I ’ll take 2,000!”
Do you see the essential differ­
ence between the sale that failed
and the sale that succeeded?
The “high powered” salesman
was trying to sell something so
big, so broad, that it was far
beyond the prospect’s experience
and foreign to his accustomed
way of thinking and acting. The
successful salesman first turned
the prospect’s mind to a fa­
miliar, simple, everyday subject
with which he was thoroughly
familiar and then proposed a
August, 1941
http://www.arcade-museum.com/