Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, SEPTEMBER, 1U0
O
NE on getting business: Many
merchants asked me how it
was possible to fight heat and
have business hold up as
good as in the other months. Only
answer I gave is as old as the hills—
work. We do not recognize any sea-
sons as being good or bad at Sibley's.
All of the foregoing well said, Ray
Fagan, and it also helped the editor
out with these three scintillating and
powerful comments.
S
O M E T I M E ago we were rather
skeptical and so said, about the
possibility of reviving the
player piano, and Q.R.S. didn't
just like it so well and we lost an ad.
Recently, sales mgr. Rose question -
naired several thousand merchants and
75% of the answers said "yes" to the
following question: "As a piano dealer,
could you sell any new, small type con-
sole player pianos and approximately
how many and at what price?" Details
of number and price are still confi-
dential. So here is the other side of
the story, and we'll be pleased to run
comments by dealers on this problem.
A
MOST impressive factor of the
Music Trade Show was the
number of piano men, 70
I years or younger, who were
right on the button every minute, hold-
ing their own with anyone come who
may. Such agility at the three score
and ten bracket, after trade vicissi-
tudes that only the piano industry went
thru, indicates a quality of personal
stamina that deserves much more
commendation than this paragraph.
No radio mfr. is anywhere near this
age, nor any refrigerator maker, so a
hand grasp to these piano men of per-
petual youth.
EING a nut on the mechanics
of advertising and selling —
merchandising the experts
call it—I can't help but poke
my nose into examples of retail work,
B
and in some of the best places, the
routine of customer handling is the
goddamdest, worse than the retail auto
man, who takes the cake for being a
dope, saved in results by people insist-
ing on buying a/c the huge national
advertising used to develop sales.
Imagine a woman comes in, wants to
see a grand, and the first question from
the dope is: "Do you want a 4 foot six,
a 4 foot 8 or a 5 foot grand?" Now,
what does a woman know about sizes
in grands. All she knows is a small, or
big one. Finally, they reach some
grand, and dopey dildock starts to
comment about the scale—how some
guy with despeptia "drew" the scale
between burps and it so astounded the
piano industry back in 1870 that it de-
layed the Civil war recovering by 15
years. She thinks he must have been
some pen and ink artist to draw such
a swell scale. And so it goes, trade
terms, trade terms, all having little
understanding with the public, who
call them "piano seats" and not bench-
es and chairs. Let's talk the buyers
language, and I'll ask you this: what
would you do to a car salesman who
asked you: "what length wheelbase do
you want with your car, 116, 120 or
130 inches.
HEN again, the general quality
of salesmanship in pianos far
exceeds that of motor car
salesman, for the latter are
about as immune to enthusiasm as a
book-maker. Piano men at least smile
and are cordial, even if many use a
formula of approach which is criticized
above. Notice how poorly you are han-
dled when trying to buy something,
and as long as we have stream-lined
our pianos, let's give our retail sales-
manship the same modern treatment.
T