MEN AND METHODS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 12, 9 October 1928, Page 15

MEN AND METHODS

BUSINESS PLANS AND IDEAS (Conducted by "Observer”)' Training Retail Salesmen. To make sure that every hew salesman thoroughly understands the lines he will be called upon to sell, an organisation controlling a group of retail grocery stores has equipped a complete miniature store, in which all lines are stocked. Every new assistant has to make himself thoroughly familiar with the goods in the store, their merits, prices, and so forth. He Is then called upon to sell his goods to a group of, the Arm's representatives, who criticise his selling methods. By this means, the organisation assures itself that every assistant becomes more than a mere order-taker. Selling to Women. In selling goods to women, merchants and manufacturers must first find out what is in women’s, minds.. The contents of a woman’s mind are quite different from the contents of a man’s. The most effective way to advertise to women is to tell them new and better ways to do something. A woman is most interested in a subject that relates to herself, her family, her duties, and her surroundings. She is pot so much interested in general facts or in z abstract problems that do not personally concern her. Women are interested , in comfort, style, personal appearance, prices, children, and social position. The world’s greatest merchants have been men who had. a special gift for knowing what women want. —“Cus-tomer-Finding,’’ by H. N. Cassoy. The Changing Age. . Every manufacturer dreams of the day when he will have his products perfected and his methods well established—when he can operate for years at a steady pace, drawing deserved and continuous profit from initial creative energy. No one wants to endure perpetually the turmoil of change! 'But that’s just what he can’t do. That is a dream. A manufacturer must always change. And particularly true is this when a manufacturing business, is built on the desires, tastes and needs of the housewife, for women want and’(use the greatest percentage of the things we make. What they want to-day and what they may want to-morrow are the weightiest considerations in our designing and manufacturing plans. Do Executives Work Too Much? For three or four years now, two convictions have been growing with me as I have come in contact with hundreds of business men in many Widely different fields of enterprise, says R. R. Updegraff, in the “Magazine of Business.” The first conviction, he adds, is that most executives work too many hours a day, and the second is that most business executives accomplish too little in the course of their working day. Six hours of conscientious and concentrated application to the problems of a business are considered sufficient by this writer, who contends that the' man who devotes more than six hours a day to his work is probably handling routine details which, should be delegated to others. The modern trend In business is to work fewer'hours, but to make, those hours more productive. While this formula has been applied to a number of big organisations with successful results, long hours have, also proved equally successful. The romances of modern business, which reveal the great successes made in various undertakings by men with small capital, invariably show that hard work has been regarded as one of the essential qualities of a man who would be successful History records numerous examples of world-wide figures who. have achieved fame, wealth, and success, by concentrating on their task and refusing to let go until all difficulties had been surmounted. Six hours a day are all that the executive on a well-established, business need work, but if the business is one of the many sturdy infants that has been given birth in this and other countries during the last two or three years, much strenuous thought and work will have to be put into it before its executives can conscientiously accept a six-hour day. The Buyer—King or Victim? *'Ts the buyer king!” seems to be a perfectly fair question nowadays, in view of two conflicting ideas of the relation of the buyer to high-pressure salesmanship. To some observers one of the outstanding characteristics of present-day business is the relative helplessness of the buyer in the face of the organised solicitation that seeks to attract his custom, form his tastes, and work upon his social fears and prejudices. On the other hand, we are .told, those who emphasise the educative and selective functions performed by advertising are inclined to insist that the buyer is in the saddle and has been given the power to pick and choose among a greater variety of articles than would have been conceivable to a simpler age. Experience provides plenty of examples in support of each view.

The discussion -is evoked by recent statements made at an institute of business, describing the buyer “as a lord of the economic universe—a man occupying a strategic position, able to dictate what he will buy and when he will buy it, ready and willing to relegate to oblivion the seller who fails to respond to his ■whims in addition to satisfying his necessities.” There is no doubt at all that the public is nowadays better placed to exercise a choice, and has become more of a problem to be reckoned with in mapping out selling r campaigns, but, nevertheless, we read, “from many points of view he appears in the light of victim, not conqueror.”

Many, of his newly-acquired characteristics are a product of the competitive struggle carried on among those who desire to whet the flagging appetites of the buying public and are forced to invent new methods of appeal that often result in spoiling the market for excellent wares already im existence. Thus competition among sellers aided by expensive publicity methods often has the unfortunate effect of creating new demands through destroying established ones. Then the buyer is charged with being capricious, extravagant, and unreliable, instead of being recognised as the helpless victim of high-power competitive salesmanship methods carried on for the sake of immediate gain to special lines of business.

Much depends upon the point of view of the people who are studying modern sales problems. Those who are concerned ■with sales expansion are inclined to overemphasise the selective power and the strength of the buyer. Contrariwise, the students of consumption problems who note the helplessness of many buyers in face of the multiplicity of wares offered for their ignorant inspection go to the opposite extreme and allege that there never had been a time when it was more difficult for the consumer to choose intelligently or to know whether he was receiving his money’s worth. Within limits both types of argument are valid. There has certainly never been a time when the public was offered a greater variety of commodities for its use and delectation. Probably there never has been an age When it' was more difficult to : separate dross from substance.