Masonry Magazine April 1966 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.
He Asked The Customer's Help
James J. Dwyer, one of the leaders in institutional food sales, learned the most important lesson in salesmanship his first week on the job.
His experience had been in a retail grocery store, but it was his job now to call on restaurants, caterers, and hotels. The little item he had was called a Flavor Booster.
"I knew absolutely nothing about cooking or running a restaurant," he recollects. "I tried the usual thing: I tried bluffing my way through, but after I had floundered around with trying to think up answers to half a dozen questions, I knew that wouldn't be it.
"So I changed my tactics. I showed my prospects my product and my talk went something like this: I'm certain this is better than anything like it, but frankly I don't know too much about its use. I wonder if you'd mind showing me how I ought to go about explaining this to my prospects."
"Of course not, of course not, was the response of the flattered prospects, who thereupon proceeded to do the job of selling my product to themselves!"
Dwyer says he got more than orders: he learned that people get a kick out of helping their fellow man.
"Sometimes a salesman should let himself ask and accept," he opines.
He Loves To Close
In one of his delightful nature stories, W. H. Hudson tells about an English plowman whose one passion in life was to plow. All winter he would mope around, dreaming of the time when Spring would permit him to plow again. Then his eyes would light up, his bent form would straighten, and he was a man possessed, plowing again!
I know a salesman who has that same form of excitement in his work. The thing he lives for is a chance to close a sale. He doesn't like to find prospects, to give his presentation often bores him; but to close-ah, you should see Bob Patcher's eyes light up and his big muscular body spring into action when there is a chance to close.
Patcher is one of the nation's leading encyclopedia salesman, leading his division month after month.
Because Patcher likes to close so much he has built his whole presentation around the close, and he actually starts to close every sale the minute he starts the sale.
"Why not?" he asks. "Isn't that my purpose in making a call anyway, to close? Why postpone and make the close something you tack on at the end? Why not start right at the start with a close?"
I've told you Patcher's record and standing in his company, remember? That is what has come from his zeal as a closer.
He Crowded His Competitors Out
Martin Mahoney, who sells paper supplies in and around Boston, has what every salesman on the go likes - customers who buy all their needs from him to the exclusion of other salesmen. The other salesmen do not think so much of it, but to a salesman, what's better than a big exclusive account?
But they don't "just happen," and I am presently going to show what Mahoney did in crowding his competitors out of one of his biggest accounts, a college in Boston.
The situation was the usual one: 375 firms supplied the college in its needs. Now the school buys its sanitary paper supplies from one man only, Mahoney.
How'd he do it?
The first step was to win the confidence and friendship of the business manager. The second step was to give him the full "quality story."
"Once you sell a man on buying quality merchandise" Mahoney believes, "you have gone a long way toward winning him as an exclusive customer.
"But you cannot stop there. Other salesmen are in there everyday trying to take your pet away from you. So the minute you neglect him for one minute, it's curtains."
In the case of Mahoney's large customer, he makes regular calls on the same day each week at the same time - so regular the customer once said he could set his watch by Mahoney's calls. He makes in-between calls whenever there is anything new he feels it would be his customer's advantage to know.
"All I use are the components of true salesmanship; namely, integrity and trust in the company, and constant calls to check on any problems and to present new products.
Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference.
All rights reserved. APRIL 1966 CHARLES ROTH.