Music Trade Review

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THE
VOL. LXXXII. No. 13
REVIEW
Published Every Saturday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y., Mar. 27, 1926
8lBi
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New Ways of Getting Past the Woman
Who Answers the Door Bell
Canvassing To-day Is Personal Salesmanship Carrying the Selling Message Directly to the Home—The Old
Time Straight Canvasser No Longer Produces Results in the Face of Intense Canvassing
Competition — Making Mistakes One Direct Means of Contact with the Prospect
HE principle of going after business
• where it is instead of waiting for that
business to come into the store, still
holds good in the retail piano trade for those
who have the ambition to concentrate on out-
side selling, to handle it properly, and a desire
to increase turnover.
A retail piano house in New Jersey, which
had been noted for its success in canvassing
and outside selling in that suburban district ad-
jacent to New York where competition is plen-
tiful and keen, has arranged to move to a new
store in a couple of months. The manager felt
that, in going into a new store with new ware-
rooms, it might be well to do a little cleaning
up on the prospect list so that a clean start
might he made in that direction.
Eliminating the Dead Names
The result was that every prospect in the
house, old and new, those who ftad been placed
in the discard as well as those considered active,
were placed on a list and checked up against
the current city directory and telephone book
to see that the addresses were correct. Where
an address could not be checked, the name was
eliminated. The rest were retained. The new
list was then divided into districts and the out-
side sales crew turned loose on the prospects
and the near prospects.
Theoretically, the plan was all wrong, for it
meant that outside salesmen were to devote
their time to work that might be described as
plain doorbell ringing. As a matter of fact, the
campaign brought in close to $20,000 in sales
within a period of a little over two weeks. Some
of the old prospects had bought pianos from
other houses. Others were still undecided. But
a surprisingly large number was found to be
most amenable to reason, either being on the
verge of buying or in a frame of mind that
placed them in a good prospect class. The
main point is that the actual sales were satis-
factory, to say nothing of the possibilities to be
found in the revised list of prospects.
What Life Prospects?
The experiment was particularly interesting
for it reopens the age-old question as to how
long a prospect is a prospect. Some dealers
are inclined to be a bit impatient. They follow
a lead for some time and then feel that, unless
it is of an unusually promising character, it may
be neglected more or less in favor of another
T
who looks more live. In the face of this, a
New York piano house, keeping a careful rec-
ord of sales this year, found that two instru-
ments have been sold since January to individu-
als who had been on its prospect list for a mat-
where the business is is the only
way to do business. The most direct
way of doing that is through the canvasser.
But the old-fashioned canvasser no longer
produces results in selling pianos.
What
does to-day is personal salesmanship, planned
and directed with selling intelligence.
The
article on this page gives some of the meth-
ods which are proving successful with retail
piano houses that use this method and that
use it right. Every one of them has found
it a profit-maker.- Every other dealer can do
the
same.—EDITOR.
ter of nine years, and that a surprisingly large
number of sales were made to those prospects
who had been followed up from periods rang-
ing from three years and up. The experience
of the New Jersey firm would seem to bear
out this finding, because it proved that even a
discarded prospect can develop promising quali-
ties through a change of circumstances or for
some other reason.
There is, of course, a certain amount of
wareroom trade—sales made to people who
deliberately make up their minds to buy
pianos without outside persuasion and who then
go directly to the piano store. But as canvass-
ing increases in other lines of business, it natur-
ally has an effect on this drop-in trade, not per-
haps because of lack of interest in pianos, but
largely because of the fact that other canvass-
ers and outside salesmen have gotten an option
on the money that might have found its way
into the coffers of the piano dealer.
Growth in Canvassing
We find practically every line of business re-
sorting to canvassing and outside sales. The
automobile salesman goes to the home to de-
velop the prospect's interest; so does the sales-
man of electrical appliances and of furniture
and other household equipment. It is argued
that when the music salesman follows this
horde of canvassers into the home, he is going
to meet with strong antagonism from the lady
of the house who has been greatly annoyed and
is inclined to be resentful of the interruptions in
her daily tasks. That in a measure is truer to-
day than it was a few years ago. But at the
same time the proportion of sales made to
those who can find time to be convinced is suffi-
ciently large to eat a sizable hole in the fam-
ily budget, and the piano man has just as much
right to go after his share of this budget as
those in other lines. If he doesn't go after it
there will be nothing left to buy at his store.
Canvassing and outside selling costs money,
but it means turnover and the more successful
the effort the lower the ultimate cost. This
method of selling carries out largely the prin-
ciple that the more points of contact developed
by the salesmen, the more sales are bound to
be made in keeping with the law of averages.
It is found that those retailers who give the
most attention to outside work enjoy a larger
percentage of sales than those who make it a
secondary consideration and who depend upon
store visitors for the bulk of the business, utiliz-
ing the telephone and the mails for arousing
interest.
Reaching the Real Buyer
There are those dealers in the metropolitan
district who emphasize the difficulties in making
. successful canvasses as an argument against
any great amount of effort in that direction. It
is true that such a plan of selling may be over-
done in certain sections where the growing
number of apartment houses with guarded por-
tals adds to the difficulties in congested dis-
tricts. It is found, however, that as the diffi-
culties increase there are those who can dis-
cover ways and means for getting around them.
Not long ago a suburban housewife was
called to the phone to be informed that the
tuner from a well-known piano house would be
out the following day to tune the piano as per
her order. The lady was somewhat surprised.
"I didn't order a tuner," she said. "I'm awfully
sorry," replied the young woman at the other
end of the wire, "but there must have been a
mistake." Then followed a check-up of name,
(Continued on page 27)