How to Read Essentials Of Selling RTF

Essentials Of Selling (1945)Author: Ward,Frank SLanguage: EnglishINTRODUCTION Selling...is a splendid vocation for any man or woman who likes people. Good salesmen are well paid. With less average educa- tion, they often earn considerably more than clerks and account- ants. Many a company treasurer has good reason to envy the pay checks he mails out to salesmen. Selling cannot yet properly be called a profession, but when the importance of training and experience for salesmen is recognized to the same extent that it is for doctors, accountants, or electri- cians; and when a satisfactory code of ethical practices in selling is developed, it may attain that status. In no true profession would a man be expected to "make good" with so little prepara- tion. However, industry is beginning to recognize that the chances of success in selling are decidedly improved by adequate educa- tional backgrounds. The importance of the salesman as an educator has scarcely been appreciated. What made America great? Was it the posses- sion of raw materials? Was it our great development of the use of machinery in mass production and our resultant high standard of living? These things could never have developed if salesmen had not continuously created public demand and expanded the markets for the products of our mines, fields, forests, and factories by forever showing people something better, something more to want than they already had to make life easier, more pleasant, or more productive. During the summer of 1943 the Small Industries Action Com- mittee representing the Committee for Economic Development in Rochester, New York, held a series of luncheons to which, in rotation, they invited executives of three different small busi- nesses each week. After about fifteen such luncheons it was quite apparent to Walter Niles, Chairman of the Small Industries Action Committee and Works Manager of the Electric Writing Machine Division of the International Business Machines Cor- poration, that after the war these small businessmen would sud- denly be faced with the acute problem of rebuilding their sales forces to prewar strength or greater. Many of these small industries had completely transformed their facilities to produce on contract or sub-contract for just one customer: Uncle Sam. Many of their former salesmen had gone to war; others were busily expediting the procurement of ma- terials or were working on production. Meanwhile those men were getting older and forgetting how to sell. After managing Stromberg-Carlson's radio sales force, I, too, had been a production man for four years. However, it was my good fortune to be Chairman of the Sales Managers' Club of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce * as well as Vice-Chairman of the local Committee for Economic Development when Walt Niles came to me with this problem. He had already looked among Rochester's public, vocational, and business schools and found that the sales training material being offered was surprisingly meager in fact, practically non-existent; whereas any number of schools stood ready to train draftsmen, screw machine opera- tors, or engineers for the hungry, war-busy factories. My immediate reaction was that the problem presented no difficulties. Here, represented in the membership of our club, are firms that have done extensive sales training for generations. All we need do is to write to a few of them, ask what they teach their salesmen, and just which subjects they feel would apply to sales- men in general whether concerned with industrial, wholesale, or retail sales of goods and services.