Masonry Magazine December 1965 Page. 9
THE SELLING PARADE
by CHARLES B. ROTH, America's no. 1 salesmanship authority
The Selling Parade by Charles B. Roth is another new feature added by masonry. Watch for it in all future issues of the magazine for the entire Masonry Industry. Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference.
Be A Well-Bred Salesman
I detest the term well-bred, because it smaks of animal husbandry, but I don't know of anything else to describe a salesman who has all the attributes of gentility and civilization that a salesman ought to have to take his place alongside other professionals.
That is why, when I came across an eye-stopping headline "Are You Well-Bred?" I read it, pondered over it, decided it was something important enough in the life of any salesman for me to include in this month's SELLING PARADE.
Just what does a person have to be to be called well-bred? But let me quote the article in full:
"IF YOU ARE WELL-BRED
"You will be kind.
"You will not use profanity.
"You will try to make others happy.
"You will not indulge in ill-natured gossip.
"You will never forget the respect due to age.
"You will not boast of your achievements.
"You will think of others before you think of yourself.
"You will not measure your civility by the people's bank accounts.
"You will not forget engagements, promises or obligations.
"You will never under any circumstances cause pain if you can help it.
"You will not think that good intentions compensate for rude manners.
"You will be as agreeable to your social inferiors as to your equals and superiors."
That is what makes a well-bred person. It seems to me that it would also make a well-bred salesman; the kind everyone would like to deal with.
Change The Emphasis
Sometimes you can use the strategy of changing the emphasis and make a sale. One of the stories of persuasion I like the best concerns the great Dr. Alfred Adler, psychologist.
A woman neurotic was in tears when she came to him. She had had a romantic attachment for a man who walked out on her. She contemplated suicide.
Dr. Adler listened to her gravely. He nodded. Then he said: "Don't ever let him see you again."
The cure was complete. The cure was dramatic. It was complete and dramatic because of where it placed the emphasis.
Can You Manage Yourself?
Right now I know where there are three jobs, really good jobs, paying up to $25,000 a year and more, open for salesmen who have learned a rare skill among salesmen. It is the skill of self-management. In these three cases, the salesmen have to be away from the home office for weeks, and have to know how to manage their time and money. The executive heads of the firms tell me the hardest thing in the world is to get a man who is a good self-manager.
I asked one just what self-management meant? He told me this:
"It means, first of all, being punctual managing your time so you are where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there.
"It means managing your temper I have seen many good salesmen wreck themselves on the rock of lost temper.
"It means managing your appetites eating and drinking but not too much.
"It means managing your leisure time keeping your body healthy, and your mind at ease.
"It means managing your money budgeting your living, saving money, a little every month.
"It means managing your promises which means keeping those you make. Many salesmen fall down here.
"It means managing your time on the job spending enough of it with prospects where it will do the most good being careful not to fritter it away with long coffee breaks and curbstone conversations.
"But I think all these types of self-management are included in the main kind of self-management.
"It means managing your discipline, so that you work when you ought to and do everything you ought to do."
It doesn't sound too awfully hard to be a good self-manager, do you think? It must be hard, though, because there are so few good self-managers around, my executive friends say.
Know And Use More Words
The salesman said to his customer I head him "I know what I want to say but I can't put it in words." "Then you don't know it," said the customer, not tactfully. He added: "Unless you can put a thing into words you don't know it in the first place.
The salesman told me about it later when he was explaining a nightly practice, of mastering at least two new words a day vocabulary building, you know.
He said he had discovered that a man's vocabulary is really the key to his intelligence and that a larger vocabulary enables a man to be more exact in what he says.
"A salesman is as much a wordsmith as a writer," is the way he put it, "and I figure that every new word mastered gives me an extra power in closing sales and explaining my goods."
Wise lad, I remarked to myself as he walked away.
Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference. DECEMBER 1965 CHARLES ROTH. All rights reserved.