Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
stupid and wrong to look down on the practical men of the house,
for to do this is to earn their ill-will. To earn the ill-will of the
tuners is simply to make trouble for oneself in advance.
Now, a gentleman can be polite, urbane, and courteous without
being in the least offensive. He need not be effusively familiar or
go around in the repair shop kissing the polishers. But he can
be always kindly, always courteous, and always obliging, whether
he talks to the tuner or to the president of the company. To do
aught else is to prove that the "company manners" which are
assumed to the customers are not genuine. When one puts on one's
manners as the customers enter the door, one is heading for a fall;
for some day the manners will be left off unwittingly and there
will be trouble.
The piano salesman, generally speaking, compares favorably
with the same sort of man in any other line that could be mentioned.
(Salesmanship)
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The high-class salesman must necessarily be a man of real mentality,
a man capable of going anywhere and talking to anyone. Such
men are always courteous, not because they were told to be, but
because they could not have risen if they had been ill-mannered.
No high-class salesman will fail to cultivate and earn the good-
will of the tuners employed by his house. He will have a kindly
and courteous greeting. He will avoid all snobbish superiorities of
manner. He will treat the tuners as if they were gentlemen, even
if they don't seem to be; and so will make them gentlemen if they
are not already so. He will utilize their many possibilities constantly
and gratefully; and will remember both the man whose ready mem-
ory brought him a sale and the man whose work made a sale stick.
The salesman who knows his business will not be so foolish as to
neglect the most important and most useful auxiliary he has or can
have, the piano tuner.
Confidence the Basis on Which to Make Piano Sales
HERE are many self-styled authorities on salesmanship who
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seek to give the impression that the art of selling is a mysterious
something that is beyond the ken of the average person—a deep
and highly involved art so permeated with psychology and theory
that only a genius can understand and apply it successfully. Noth-
ing can be further from the truth. There is a psychology in sales-
manship, but that psychology, based on absolute common sense, can
be understood and applied by any salesman who is sufficiently inter-
ested in his work to learn the fundamental principles of selling.
While salesmanship of all kinds is based on the same general
rules, each particular line has its own special problems, and the piano
line is no exception to this rule. Yet despite this fact, there are
certain general principles and definitions which can be safely laid
down which apply to the selling of any commodity.
The successful selling of a piano rests upon many small details,
all performed well. Piano salesmanship consists in the main of
creating the desire for an instrument, and then demonstrating some
one particular instrument in such a manner that the prospect will
become convinced that the instrument he is looking at is the best
instrument for him.
Confidence on the part of the prospect enters largely into the
sale of a piano, and there is nothing that begets confidence so surely
and permanently as knowledge. The salesman cannot sell a piano
unless he has a thorough knowledge of it, and the best way to sell
a piano to a prospect is for the salesman to impart enough of that
knowledge concerning the piano to the prospect, so that the prospect
himself will share to some degree the same liking and enthusiasm
for the instrument which the salesman has. Many salesmen often
overlook this rather important point. Thoroughly familiar with the
piano they are selling themselves, the salesmen sometimes forget
that many prospects come to them who are absolutely ignorant con-
cerning even the most simple features of a piano. While the minute
details of piano construction are sometimes rather technical and
even possibly too involved for a quick understanding by the lay
mind, yet it is a simple matter for a piano salesman to explain to
a prospect the general principles upon which a piano is built, so
that the prospect will know how the piano works and why.
A salesman may spend an hour's time enthusiastically prais-
ing the action contained in the particular line he is selling, yet
unless the prospect knows what a piano action is and how it func-
tions, he will be greatly bored by the salesman's talk on the subject.
Five minutes' time spent in removing the front panel of the piano and
tracing the action from the key to the hammer will do more to
teach the prospect the necessity of having a good action in a piano
than will an hour's general talk upon the excellence of piano actions.
Therefore, a successful piano salesman must always remember
that his prospect may not be as thoroughly conversant with the con-
structional peculiarities of a piano as is the salesman himself, and
that a few moments spent in explaining the rudimentary principles
of piano construction will ofttimes give to the prospect an under-
standing and appreciation of the various fine points of a piano which
otherwise would remain mysterious and unintelligible to him, an
understanding and appreciation which will result in confidence in
both the salesman and the instrument, which in turn, is one of
the surest and quickest means of bringing a prospective sale to a
successful close that can be found in the art of piano selling.
The Value of Technical Knowledge to the Salesman
ITH the coming of the player-piano with its more or less
ing Thomases who want to see what they are getting for their sev-
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complex mechanism, and with the claims made by the various
eral hundred dollars, and if not actually seeing, want to receive a
manufacturers that their particular player action has this or that
original feature, the piano salesman has found that a superficial
knowledge of piano construction will not suffice to meet the de-
mands of present-day buyers. A great many salesmen, as well
as dealers, have had factory experience, or lacking that have of
their own volition studied the details of the piano and read up
on it sufficiently to display some intelligence when discussing
various features. There have been many, however, who have de-
veloped a gift of gab to save themselves, figuring out, and in
some cases rightly, that the purchaser knows less about it than
they do, and therefore could not call their bluff.
Moreover, the inside of a piano could be displayed without
great difficulty; the action there to be seen; strings could be viewed
and discussed at length; the plate, the sounding board and its effect
in mellowing the piano's tone could be commented upon and with-
out being scientific the salesmen could point out to the customer
just about what he was getting, or what he was supposed to be
getting for his money.
The coming of the player-piano has changed all that. Most
of the player mechanism is hidden from view, and while numer-
ous customers are willing to take the word of the salesman, espe-
cially if he is a good representative, still there are plenty of doubt-
detailed description of the player's interior and how it operates.
If the salesman is forced to stumble along and base his talk on
supposition, it is naturally going to convince the customer that the
salesman doesn't know what he is talking about, and if the sales-
man doesn't know, and cannot explain the mysteries of the player-
piano, the customer soon wonders what chance he himself has to
penetrate those mysteries once the instrument is in his home.
A number of leading player action and player-piano manufac-
turers have prepared literature that affords the ambitious sales-
man an opportunity to make a study of and understand the instru-
ment intelligently. A much better plan, however; is that adopted
by a number of dealers, especially those within a comparatively
easy distance of piano manufacturing centers. In New York re-
cently there have been several parties of salesmen, from two to a
half dozen, brought in by their employers to visit the factories and
study piano and player making at first hand. The idea is a good
one. A technical, or even semi-technical description of a player
action or its parts may convince the man who must picture the de-
tails in his mind's eye. When he can actually see the parts of the
instrument, however, all spread out before him; see them as-
sembled and operating, he goes back to his store and is in a posi-
tion to answer ordinary questions regarding the instrument.