Music Trade Review

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Time Never Waits
When the Sale Is Ready to Close
Retail Piano Salesmen Find One Hour as Good as Another
to Get the Signature on the Dotted Line—One Sale Closed
at Breakfast and Another in the Cab of a Switch Engine
HE comparison of the working hours of
a piano salesman with those of a
physician, from the point of view of the
uncertainty of both and the necessity for night
work, has long been a by-word in the trade.
This does not apply to the routine piano man,
who appears at the store punctually at 8:30
or 9 o'clock each morning, and, in the case
of the metropolitan worker, catches the 5:15
commuters' train for his home each afternoon.
There are, perhaps, five or six thousand piano
men of this type throughout the country, who
are making and have always made a living
wage in the music business, but they are not
the fellows who earn the big money or ever
get anywhere in an executive way, according
to the men holding executive positions in the
trade.
As one salesman, working in a large Eastern
city, put it: "I would have to be satisfied
with less than half of my present income if I
were to eliminate my night calls on prospects
who find it inconvenient to come into the ware-
room." This does not mean that the salesman
talks to the customer from a catalog, as was
a common practice in the old days. It is more
likely to be that the woman of the house or
one of the children has already selected a piano
in the warerooms and it only remains for a
good "closer" to run up to the house to get
"father" interested.
There are cases, too, where a man may be
working near the store and is attracted to a
particular piano, but finds his wife obstinate
on the proposition. Possibly she prefers using
the surplus on their budget for house decora-
tions or additional clothes. In a case of this
kind the husband may even suggest that the
salesman drop around some evening when he
is home, in order that they may play their
hands together in selling "mother" on the in-
strument. There are countless other varieties
of these situations, which are familiar to anyone
acquainted for even a short time with the piano
business.
Advantage of Selling in the Store
It is preferable, of course, to close as many
transactions as possible in the store, aside
from the personal sacrifices made by the sales-
men in giving up their evenings, for it is a
distinct advantage in selling any reputable
merchandise to be able to exhibit the article
itself. Many a strong selling point is pushed
over for a score by the salesman who sits down
at the piano or player and brings forth a clear
bit of melody at the crucial moment. All such
tactics are eliminated when working in the
field, and it follows that it takes a better man
to make sales in the prospect's home, depend-
ing only on his personality and the force of
his arguments.
To avert as much of this sort of thing as
possible, the smaller merchants manage to keep
their stores open until 9 o'clock certain evenings
each week, to give their salesmen a chance to
bring in their prospects after the latters'
working hours. Under this plan, salesmen are
often rotated so that none will have to work-
too many nights. Tn the case of the larger
warerooms and the piano departments in the
department stores, keeping open nights for the
T
sake of possible sales is generally deemed im-
practical, and it is under these conditions
that the department manager has to use
real diplomacy in keeping his men going after
"night cases."
One of the successful heads of a piano de-
partment, using a 6 o'clock closing hour, is W.
T. Hahnemann, manager of the piano section
in the Hahne & Co. store, Newark, N. J. Mr.
7
HE breakfast table may not be
the best place in the world to close
a piano sale, but if that's the only time
the salesman can find the prospect—why
that is the time to do it. The salesman s
time has to be the prospect's time.
Hahnemann worked up to his present position
through the route of outside salesman and is
conversant with all the difficulties of selling in
the field, at the same time admitting the neces-
sity of following up the prospects at their
convenience, whether it is at midnight or be-
fore dawn.
Sacrificing Comfort and Leisure for the Sale
Mr. Hahnemann cited two cases occurring
during the past month where pianos were sold
at unheard-of hours by his men, who were
willing to make the sacrifice to get the con-
tract. The first salesman, L. A. Ochs, called
in a remote section of New Jersey one evening
in the hope of finding a husband at home, who
had been promising to come into the store for
several weeks to decide on a piano selected by
his wife. It happened that the evening of Mr.
Ochs' call was a "lodge night" and the man
was not in. The woman expressed her sym-
pathy for the salesman in driving a distance
of ten miles or so in his car without getting
the desired interview. She urged him to return
before 7 o'clock the next morning, at which
time the husband left for business, and added
that she could almost guarantee that the sale
could be made.
Mr. Ochs arrived at the house just as the
husband was finishing his coffee and offered
to take him to the station, a few blocks away,
to meet the 7:10 train for New York. The
man had heard of his visit the night before
and was in a sympathetic mood to talk over
terms while riding to the depot. Before the
train arrived he had signed the contract and
the piano was delivered after his check arrived
for down-payment on the following day.
"One of our salesmen went even a step fur-
ther," continued Mr. Hahnemann, "and com-
pleted a sale before 9 o'clock on a Sunday
morning, just before a man started for Sunday
School with his family. This does not mean
that we work seven days a week as a regular
thing, but our salesmen realize that during a
great part of the day they are not particularly
busy and are consequently willing to stretch a
point now and then to clean up a protracted
sale. The best part of these cases was that
the salesmen in each instance showed the per-
sonal initiative of going out for the contract.
It" I had men working .for me who had to be
pleaded with each time there was an encroach-
ment on their leisure, it would be a different
story and our sales would suffer, 1 am fire."
Where There's Business There's No Complaint
Another retail piano executive relating the
experiences of overtime work by his salesmen
is John Yarborough, manager of the store of
the Sterling Piano Co., at 81 Court street,
Brooklyn, N. Y. Mr. Yarborough stated that
for some time it has been found desirable to
keep the store open until 9 o'clock each evening
to enable salesmen to demonstrate instruments
to prospects who are tied up with business
during the day. "The strange thing about it,"
said Mr. Yarborough, "is that the salesmen
themselves frequently want to stay in the ware-
rooms until a much later hour. In the week
before Christmas the store was filled with cus-
tomers until almost midnight because of the
persistence of the salesmen in getting contracts
signed before allowing the customer to go
home to bed.
"We have a convenient plan of rotation for
the men, so that each man works only one oi
two nights a week and sometimes even less,
but we have never had any complaint from the
men as long as there is business in sight for
them. One or two of them have even given
up definite engagements, parties and the like,
to get a new piano contract, which is a fine
spirit, but by no means a new one."
Getting a Ride With the Order
Mr. Yarborough went on to mention a case
in his own experience, which happened in a
little town in West Virginia over twenty years
ago. He related the incident to show that the
piano business has always required personal
sacrifice by the salesman if he is to keep up
his selling quota. The "story" is a unique one
and bears retelling as one of the strangest
piano sales on record.
It seems that Mr. Yarborough had been call-
ing at the home of a railroad engineer, who
worked nights on a small switch engine in the
yards near the city limits. The man was al-
ways sleeping during the day and after about
three calls Mr. Yarborough asked the engineer's
wife what he could do about it. She answered
that she knew her husband wanted to buy a
piano and suggested that he call out to the
railroad roundhouse for the possibility of get-
ting in a few minutes' conversation before he
stepped into the cab of his engine.
Mr. Yarborough was there and met his man,
who was oiling his locomotive preparatory to
starting his night's work. To his great sur-
prise, the engineer said, "Jump in for a while
and talk over your proposition while we ride
around." There was nothing to do but get
in, and, above the roar of escaping steam and
the grinding of the wheels, Mr. Yarborough
stated his case. Fortunately there was a lull
in the engineer's activity once, while brake-
men were hooking up chains and coupling pins,
giving him a chance to produce the contract
and have it signed. It was a long, dangerous
walk down the tracks back to town, but it was
worth it, according to Mr, Yarborough,