SALES WITHOUT SALESMANSHIP

BY JAMES H. COLLINS



"Say, you're a funny salesman!" exclaimed the business man. "Here I make

up my own mind that I need two motor trucks and decide to buy 'em from

your company. Then I send for a salesman. You come down and spend a week

looking into my horse delivery, and now you tell me to keep my horses.

What kind of a salesman do you call yourself anyway?"



"What made you think you needed otor trucks?" was the counterquestion

of the serious, thick-spectacled young chap.



"Everyone else seems to be turning to gasoline delivery. I want to be up

to date."



"Your delivery problem lies outside the gasoline field," said the

salesman. "Your drivers make an average of ninety stops each trip. They

climb stairs and wait for receipts. Their rigs are standing at the curb

more than half the time. Nothing in gasoline equipment can compete with

the horse and wagon under such conditions. If you had loads of several

tons to be kept moving steadily I'd be glad to sell you two trucks."



"Suppose I wanted to buy them anyway?"



"We could not accept your order."



"But you'd make your commission and the company its profit."



"Yes; but you'd make a loss, and within a year your experience would

react unfavorably upon us."



So no sale was effected. Facts learned during his investigation of this

business man's delivery problem led the salesman to make suggestions

that eliminated waste and increased the effectiveness of his horse rigs.



About a year later, however, this business man sent for the salesman

again. He contemplated motorized hauling for another company of which he

was the president. After two days' study the salesman reported that

motor trucks were practicable and that he needed about five of them.



"All right--fill out the contract," directed the business man.



"Don't you want to know how these trucks are going to make you money?"

asked the salesman.



"No; if you say I need five trucks, then I know that's just what I

need!"



A new kind of salesmanship is being developed in many lines of

business--and particularly in the rebuilding of sales organizations made

necessary by the ending of the war and return to peace production.

"Study your goods," was the salesman's axiom yesterday. "Study your

customer's problem," is the viewpoint to-day; and it is transforming the

salesman and sales methods.



Indeed, the word salesman tends to disappear under this new viewpoint,

for the organization which was once charged largely with disposing of

goods may now be so intimately involved in technical studies of the

customers' problems that selling is a secondary part of its work. The

Sales Department is being renamed, and known as the Advisory Department

or the Research Staff; while the salesman himself becomes a Technical

Counsel or Engineering Adviser.



Camouflage? No; simply better expression of broader functions.



As a salesman, probably he gave much attention to the approach and

argument with which he gained his customer's attention and confidence.

But, with his new viewpoint and method of attack, perhaps the first step

is asking permission to study the customer's transportation needs, or

accounting routine, or power plant--or whatever section of the latter's

business is involved.



The experience of the thick-spectacled motor-truck salesman was typical.

Originally he sold passenger cars. Then came the war, with factory

facilities centered on munitions and motor trucks. There being no more

passenger cars to sell, they switched him over into the motor-truck

section. There he floundered for a while, trying to develop sales

arguments along the old lines. But the old arguments did not seem to

fit, somehow.



It might have been possible to demonstrate the superior construction of

his motor truck; but competitors would meet point with point, and

customers were not interested in technicalities anyway. He tried service

as an argument; but that was largely a promise of what motor trucks

would do for people after they bought them, and competitors could always

promise just as much, and a little more.



Company reputation? His company had a fine one--but motor-truck

purchasers wanted to know the cost of moving freight. Price? No argument

at all, because only one other concern made motor trucks calling for so

great an initial investment.



So Thick-Specs, being naturally serious and solid, began to dig into

motor trucks from the standpoint of the customer. He got permission to

investigate delivery outfits in many lines. Selling a five-ton motor

truck to many a business man was often equivalent to letting Johnny play

with a loaded machine gun. Such a vehicle combined the potentiality of

moving from fifty to seventy-five tons of freight daily, according to

routing and the number of hours employed; but it involved a daily

expense of twenty-five dollars.



The purchaser could lose money in two ways at swift ratios, and perhaps

unsuspectingly: He might not use his full hauling capacity each day or

would use it only half the year, during his busy season. Or he might

underestimate costs by overlooking such items as interest and

depreciation.



Thick-Specs' first actual sale was not a motor truck at all, but a

motorcycle, made by another company. Within three months, however, this

motorcycle added two big trucks to a fleet of one dozen operated by a

wholesale firm. That concern had good trucks, and kept them in a

well-equipped garage, where maintenance was good. But at least once

daily there would be a road breakdown. Usually this is a minor matter,

but it ties up the truck while its puzzled driver tries to locate the

trouble.



When a motorcycle was bought for the garage, drivers were forbidden to

tamper with machinery on the road--they telephoned in to the

superintendent. By answering each call on his own motorcycle--about an

hour daily--the repairman kept equipment in such good shape that

valuable extra service was secured from the fleet each day.



The salesman-adviser did not originate this scheme himself, but

discovered it in another concern's motor-truck organization; in fact,

this is the advantage the salesman-adviser enjoys--acquaintance with a

wide range of methods and the knack of carrying a good wrinkle from one

business to another. He brings the outside point of view; and, because

modern business runs toward narrow specialization, the outside point of

view is pretty nearly always welcome, provided it is honest and

sensible.



In another case he had to dig and invent to meet a peculiar situation.



There was a coal company working under a handicap in household

deliveries. Where a residence stood back from the sidewalk coal had

often to be carried from the motor truck in baskets. This kept the truck

waiting nearly an hour. A motor truck's time is worth several dollars

hourly. If the coal could have been dumped on the sidewalk and carried

in later, releasing the truck, that would have saved expense and made

more deliveries possible.



A city ordinance prohibited dumping coal on the sidewalk except by

permit. Coal men had never tried to have that ordinance changed. But the

salesman-adviser went straight to the city authorities and, by figures

showing the expense and waste involved, secured a modification, so that

his customer, the coal company, got a blanket permit for dumping coal

and gave bonds as an assurance against abuse of the privilege. Then a

little old last year's runabout was bought and followed the coal trucks

with a crew to carry the coal indoors, clearing sidewalks quickly.



This salesman-adviser's philosophy was as simple as it was sound.

Confidence is the big factor in selling, he reasoned. Your customer will

have confidence in you if he feels that you are square and also knows

what you are talking about. By diligent study of gasoline hauling

problems in various lines of business he gained practical knowledge and

after that had only to apply his knowledge from the customer's side of

the problem.



"Put it another way," he said: "Suppose you had a factory and expected

to run it only one year. There would not be time to get returns on a

costly machine showing economies over a five-year period; but if you

intended to run your factory on a five-year basis, then that machine

might be highly profitable.



"In sales work it was just the same; if you were selling for this year's

profit alone, you'd close every sale regardless of your customer's

welfare. Let the purchaser beware! But if you meant to sell on the

five-year basis, then confidence is the big investment, and the most

profitable sale very often one you refuse to make for immediate

results."



He had a fine following when the draft reached him; and during the eight

months he spent in an Army uniform he utilized his knowledge of gasoline

transportation as an expert in Uncle Sam's motor service. Upon being

discharged he returned to his job and his customers, and to-day the

concern with which he is connected is taking steps to put all its

motor-truck salesmen on this advisory basis.



War shot its sales force to pieces--the Army and the Navy reached out

for men and tied up production facilities; so there was nothing to sell.

But war also gave a clean slate for planning a new sales force.



As old salesmen return and new men are taken on for sales instruction,

this concern trains them--not with the old sales manual, by standard

approach and systematic sales argument, but by sending them out into the

field to study gasoline hauling problems. They secure permission to

investigate trucking methods of contractors, department stores,

wholesale merchants, coal dealers, truck owners hauling interstate

freight, mills, factories and other lines of business. They investigate

the kinds and quantities of stuff to be moved, the territory and roads

covered, the drivers, the garage facilities. They ride behind typical

loads and check up running time, delays, breakdowns, gasoline and oil

consumption.



Engineering teaches people to think in curves. This youngster had to

make a curve of the grocer's trucking before he could visualize it

himself. His curve included factors like increase in stuff that had been

hauled during the past three years and additions to the motor equipment.

When you have a healthy curve showing any business activity, the logical

thing to do, after bringing it right down to date, is to let it run out

into the future at its own angle. This was done with the grocery curve,

and its future extension indicated that not more than three months later

the grocery house would need about four more five-ton motor trucks.



Closer investigation of facts behind the curve revealed an unusual

growth in sugar hauling, due to the increase in supply and removal of

consumer war restrictions. And that grocery concern bought additional

trucks for sugar within two months. With the insight made possible by

such a curve a salesman might safely have ordered the trucks without his

customer's knowledge and driven them up to his door the day the curve

showed they were needed.



"Here are the trucks you wanted to haul that sugar."



"Good work! Drive 'em in!"



What has been found to be sound sales policy in the motor truck business

applies to many other lines. Yesterday the salesman of technical

apparatus sought the customer with a catalogue and a smile--and a large

ignorance of the technical problems. To-day that kind of selling is

under suspicion, because purchasers of technical equipment have been led

to buy on superficial selling points and left to work out for themselves

complex technicalities that belong to the manufacturer of the equipment.



In the West during recent years a large number of pumps of a certain

type have been sold for irrigating purposes. Purchasers bought from the

catalogue-and-smile type of salesman, hooked their pumps up to a power

plant--and found that they lifted only about half the number of gallons

a minute promised in the catalogue. Manufacturers honestly believed

those pumps would do the work indicated in their ratings. They had not

allowed for variations in capacity where pumps were installed under many

different conditions and run by different men. The situation called for

investigation at the customer's end; when it was discovered that these

pumps ought to be rated with an allowance for loss of capacity a half to

two-thirds of the power, due to friction and lost power.



It might have been dangerous for the salesman to show up again in an

irrigation district where a lot of his pumps were "acting up," armed

only with his catalogue and smile. But when an engineer appeared from

the pump company to help customers out of their difficulties, he won

confidence immediately and made additional sales because people felt

that he knew what he was talking about.



The superintendent of a big machinery concern found that his expense for

cutting oils was constantly rising. Salesmen had followed salesmen,

recommending magic brands of the stuff; yet each new barrel of oil

seemed to do less work than the last--and cost more in dollars.



One day a new kind of visitor showed up and sent in the card of a large

oil company. He was not a salesman, but an investigator of oil problems.

The superintendent took him through the plant. He studied the work being

done by screw-cutting machines, lathes and other equipment operated with

cutting oil. Where salesmen had recommended brands without technical

knowledge of either the work to be done or the composition of the oil,

this stranger wrote specifications that cut down the percentage of

costly lard oil used on some work; and he eliminated it altogether on

others.



Moreover, he pointed out sheer losses of oil by picking up a handful of

metal cuttings from a box, letting them drip, measuring the oil that

accumulated and recommending a simple device for reclaiming that oil

before the waste metal was sold.



This new viewpoint in selling is developing in so many lines that to

enumerate them would be to make a national directory of business

concerns manufacturing milling machinery, office devices, manufacturing

and structural materials, equipment for the farm and the mine.



People who purchase such products have been accustomed to meeting two

different representatives of manufacturers: First, the salesman skilled

in selling, but deficient in technical knowledge.



"This chap is here to see how much he can get out of me," said the

prospective consumer to himself; and he was on his guard to see that the

visitor got as little as possible, either in the way of orders or

information.



The other representative came from the mechanical department to see how

present equipment was running, or perhaps to "shoot trouble." He was

long on technical knowledge, but probably dumb when it came to

salesmanship.



"This fellow is here to help me out of my troubles," said the customer.

"I'll see how much I can get out of him."



Presently manufacturers of equipment woke up to the fact that their

mechanical men--inspectors and trouble shooters--had a basis of

confidence which the salesman pure and simple was rapidly losing.

Moreover, the technical man gained a knowledge of the customer's

requirements that furnished the best foundation for selling new

equipment.



The salesman discovered the technical man and went to him for tips on

new equipment needed by customers whose plants he had visited. The

technical man also discovered the salesman, for it was plain enough that

equipment well sold--skillfully adjusted to the customer's needs--gave

the least margin for trouble shooting.



So there has been a meeting of minds; and to-day the salesman studies

the technicalities, and the technical man is learning salesmanship, and

their boss is standing behind them both with a new policy. This is the

policy of performance, not promises--service before sales. Under that

policy the very terms salesmanship and sales department are beginning to

disappear, to be replaced by new nomenclature, which more accurately

indicates what a manufacturer's representative can do for the customer,

and gives him access to the latter on the basis of confidence and good

will.



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_(Munsey's Magazine)_