N.Z. shipping industry ‘will regain respect’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 16

N.Z. shipping industry ‘will regain respect’

Sophisticated ships already working overseas would soon be in daily use in New Zealand; modern methods would be introduced, and the shipping industry would regain the respect it lost many years ago, the chairman of directors of R.A.O. Holdings and the Mayor of Tauranga and Mount Maunganui (Mr R. A. Owens) said last evening,

With good salesmen it would not be difficult to take cargoes back to shipping, from rail, between the North and South Islands.

He was addressing the distinguished salesmen’s award dinner of the Sales and Marketing Executives Club. “However, I am sufficiently patriotic to point out that there is room for a rationalisation between shipping and land transport, to enable both to live together in complete harmony,” he said.

NO “HOTCH-POTCH” “I believe they can live together very efficiently and the consumer in New Zealand re-

quires that solution, rather than some hotch-potch which involves subsidies, whether it be road, rail or sea.”

The first priority in salesmanship was to sell yourself Mr Owens said, and this meant that the salesman must have faith in himself and in his product, and he must be basically sincere.

Today a salesman must also be a diplomat, and an ambassador for his country

in international trading. New Zealand had been very well served by its international salesmen. HUMILITY NEEDED

A salesman also needed humility; he had to appreciate that everyone came into the world the same way, and would leave it the same way. He was not a person who indulged in political theory, but who should be convinced that the people under certain political rulings were still ordinary human beings and required the necessities of life.

Also, it was important today to remember that New Zealand had to sell overseas to people who had not the money to buy. In that case, help was needed from the Government and perhaps the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. IRONY OF STARVING

It was amusing, in an odd way, to go through the Western world and see the highpressure salesmanship being used to sell foodstuffs, when possibly 75 per cent of the world’s population was undernourished, and' in some cases, near starvation,- Mr Owens said. If these foods were offered to much of the world, they would' be grabbed—without salesmanship—and used by those who needed them to survive.

It was said this could not be done, because these people were not able to pay. “It is not my job tonight to look into the rights and. wrongs of the situation which allows three-quarters of the world to starve while the other quarter apparently has to advertise wildly in order to sell its food products,” Mr Owens said.