Masonry Magazine July 1965 Page. 16
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.
Sure Cure For Hurt Feelings
What right has a salesman to permit his feelings to be hurt anyway? Why not develop such an attitude of impersonality that when someone says or does something that might hurt your feelings you don't feel it at all? It is as if it were happening to two other people?
That is the way it should be. But is it? Is it? Alas, it isn't, and some of the most sensitive people in the world, the easiest to hurt, are salesmen. And what a good wrecking job hurt feelings do to a salesman!
Other people when their feelings are hurt can curse, can cry, can mope, can drink and no one is hurt, except themselves. But let a salesman have hurt feelings-oh, boy, the world is blasted. His sales suffer. His customers suffer. His firm suffers. And he suffers the most of all.
The method of relief for hurt feelings isn't to seek revenge. It isn't to tell everybody our troubles. It isn't to cherish hatred. It isn't to go to the person who slighted us and "tell him off." It is something much simpler, much easier, much surer.
The cure for hurt feelings is merely not to let them enter your life.
Refuse to recognize a slight or even an insult. Just refuse to recognize it at all. Treat it as if it doesn't exist. It is only when we honor these things by permitting them to enter our lives that they do hurt.
Try this plan the next time you have your feelings hurt. Pretend you don't hear the cutting remark or that it is intended for someone else. It is as-
Be More Personal With Them
A man with a world of experience as a marketing counselor offers this advice for salesmen who want to sell more: "Put your selling on a more personal basis."
Sound this advice is, as you will see when you read his reasons for making it.
"Price and quality of products being equal, or nearly equal," he begins, "it is natural for people to place their business with salesmen they know and like.
"At least 80 percent of all business is done through personal connections.
"Therefore the problem of every good salesman is to get on the good personal side."
How to do this? Why, it's easy:
1. Look for clues. A man surrounds himself with what interests him-clues. Look for them evidences of his hobbies, his interests, his family.
2. Study him as he talks. We all tend to talk about what interests us most trouble is, most of those we talk to don't listen. Be an exception. Be a listener. A clue-finder.
3. Remember things about your prospects. Mention the things they have mentioned to you that always pleases, flatters.
4. Be sincere. No one likes a phoney. We are quick to spot phoniness in others. Customers spot insincerity in an insincere salesman.
5. Work. Customers detest lazy salesmen, admire salesmen who work and one of the best ways to make a customer into a friend is to work hard in his behalf.
It Almost Takes A Superman
The young salesman confided in me that he didn't think he'd ever make that grade as a salesman. I pointed out that in aptitude tests he was high, pointed out that for years his ambition had been to be a salesman. Why now, I was insisting, is he giving me foolish talk like that?
"Well, to tell you the truth I don't believe anybody can be a salesman," said he, and I sensed he was trying to pull my leg a bit.
I didn't mind. I told him to go ahead and pull it, but to explain what was in the back of his mind.
He said: Well, I've been reading about the qualities a salesman must have he must be this, he must be that, he must do this, he must do that. And do you know I think that a man with all those qualities wouldn't be a man at all he would be a tin god or a superman, not an ordinary man in the pants guy."
Different writers make different lists, emphasize different qualities, but a typical specifications chart for a salesman will run like this:
He must be loyal; he must know every blessed thing about his products; he must kow all about his customer's products and their business; he must have a desire to sell; he must be sold on himself; he must have confidence in himself; he must be neat but not gaudy; he must have infinite patience; he should be polite under all conditions; he should never talk too long and know everything he is talking about, he must, he must he must and the list trails off into the mist, with head unbowed.
Of course if a man could live up to these ideals he would be a good salesman, but take heart; you don't have to be a superman to succeed in selling. Try your best to ingratiate these plus qualities in your life, but don't shoot yourself if you notice now and then one is missing.
Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference. JULY 1965 © CHARLES ROTH, All rights reserved.
MASONRY • July, 1965