THE PROFESSION OF SALESMANSHIP

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 79, 27 December 1928, Page 12

THE PROFESSION OF SALESMANSHIP

AN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM

BRITISH MINISTRY’S LEAD

Lord Eustace Percy, M.P., President of the Board of Education, was the guest of the Incorporated Sales Managers’ Association at a dinner held in London, to meet tlie members of the Committee on Education for Salesmanship appointed by the Department. Lord Levorhulme, president of the association, was in the chair. Mr. F. W. Goodenough, the chairman of the newly appointed committee, said that as chairman.of the Sales Managers’ Association he welcomed with enthusiasm the practical, constructive statesmanship that characterised the policy of the Board of Education today and the recognition by Lord Eustace Percy that the great need of the country was increased efficiency in the marketing of its goods. The real and lasting cure for unemployment was to be found in improved salesmanship, and the fundamental safeguard for British industry was efficient salesmanship backed up by efficient production and distribution.. The Committee on Education for Salesmanship met. tliat day for the first time and made it their business to define what they understood by salesmanship as a preliminary to considering the general problem. The view of the committee was that the end and aim of efficient salesmanship was to persuade the largest possible number of potential buyers to purchase and continue to purchase, on terms reasonably remunerative to the seller, the maximum quantity of the seller’s goods or services that the buyer could consume or utilise with advantage to himself, and so to establish permanent mutual profitable business relations based upon good will and confidence between the transacting parties. The question the committee had asked themselves, ■ arid were setting out to explore, was, what could education do towards ensuring the production of an increasing number of merchants fitted to establish and conduct such a policy of commerce, and of salesmen fitted to put it into practice under their direction? Such men of commerce requiri ed a high degree of character, ability, and knowledge. They needed absolute integrity, in purpose and in act, so that the scrupulous performance of every contract in spirit as well as in letter should be their alm and the complete satisfaction of the buyer their ultimate object. They needed courage, industry, determination, perseverance, courtesy, sympathy, patience, and, above all, enthusiasm. Important Questions. How much of this equipment as a preparation for a commercial career could our educational institutions consciously and purposefully provide during the student’s normal full education, during a period of part-time education, or while the student was in full-time employment? What facilities suited to the provision of that equipment already existed in the various educational institutions? At what age should specialisation begin, if at all, during school age? How, when, and where, if at all within the four corners of any system of public education, could or should the broad principles of commerce—the right attitude of producer towards consumer, the essential principle of “Service First”—be taught specifically as a part of training for commerce? How, when, and where could the prospects which commerce offered for the exercise of initiative, leadership, courage, resource, and energy, and for the development of all a man’s character and abilities, be made clear to the rising generation? Where could co-operation between individual trades or trade organisations an educational authorities usefully begin; and in what ways could it take place? What was being thought, done, and planned in other countries? These were some of the important and difficult questions which the committee had addressed to itself, and in the study of which it would need all the information and assistance the officers of the Board could -provide, as well as the opinions and help of the leading firms engaged in commerce throughout the country and of those engaged in various stages of the education of all classes of those destined for employment in the art and science of salesmanship. The committee had decided to proceed first of all by inquiries to be made by its inspectors personally of all these interested parties, and they took this opportunity of bespeaking, through the members of the association, the full co-operation of all firms they represented. They would greatly welcome all the assistance they could obtain from commerce and industry, and they would need, above all, propaganda by the Government and all interested in the commercial prosperity of tlie country, to arouse the public to the vital importance of the: problem, so that there might be an insistent demand upon local education authorities for tlie provision of adequate facilities for efficient education for the vocation of commerce. The Board’s Programme. Lord Eustace Percy, responding, said that the dinner marked the beginning of the new programme of inquiries into technical education which was being undertaken by tlie Board of Education in consultation with the business interests of the country. As the first step in that programme, two inquiries were being launclied simultaneously—one into education for salesmanship and one into engineering education—and a committee of business men and technical experts, together with a panel of teachers, had been appointed to advise the Board on each of these inquiries. The Committee on Salesmanship had got away first’from the post by a short head, thanks to the energy of their chairman, Mr. Goodenough. Besides those inquiries into education for particular branches of commerce and industry the Board were undertaking a second series of inquiries into the organisation of technical education in the various main industrial regions of the country. They had now completed a preliminary survey of tlie West Midlands. Tlie report of the Yorkshire inquiry had already been made the basis of a comprehensive scheme of cooperation between the various local industries in Yorkshire with the help of advisory committees representing the chief industries of the county. ’The Board hoped to proceed on similar lines in other regions of the country as inquiries are completed. Tlie idea was that the results of all these various inquiries should be embodied in a new “Industry Series” of reports comparable for instance, A'witii the reports issued by the Federal Board of Vocational Education in the United States. The first and introductory publication in this new series and entited “Education for Commerce and Industry.” It would take tlie form of a condensed survey of the existing methods of co-operation between commerce and industry on the one hand, and the local and central education authorities and technical institu-

tions of England and Wales on the other, with a preface summarising, for the information particularly of business men. the existing system of national education from the point of view of commerce and Industry and describing the programme of inquiries which the Board had in mind. Unfocused Activity* The trouble was, not that our education was inferior to that of other nations, or tliat we were out of touch with the needs of commerce and industry, but rather that our methods ot consultation with commerce and industry tended to be local, partial, and patchy. While expressing the view tliat tlie general system of administering education on a local basis through education authorities was sound, he considered that nothing less than arrangements for consultation on a national basis could adequately meet the needs either of commerce and industry or of the schools themselves. Such arrangements were already in operation some of the iimin industries, and tlie development of them had been greatly assisted by tlie growth of research associations. He thought, however, that it would be no exaggeration to say that even in industries which had established an organisation for consultation on a national scale with the Board of Education, there were many important firms who were hardly aware of tlie existence of such an organisation, and more who made little use of it in practice. We were, in fact, in a stage of unfocused activity. The general aim of their programme of inquiries must be, first, to make the industries and businesses of this country, both individually and collectively, self-conscious of their educational requirements ; secondly, to provide them witli a recognised machinery for expressing those requirements and to popularise the machinery which already exists for this purpose; and, thirdly, to formulate preliminary statements of the requirements of each main branch of commerce and industry, ami to set the teaching profession to work on tlie translation of these requirements into terms of a liberal education, riot only in the technical college or the university itself, but in the schools which prepare pupils for them. It was peculiarly appropriate that the inquiry into salesmanship should be the first of'the committees to get to work. There was no branch of commerce and industry in which we were more commonly supposed to be lagging behind our competitors, and there was probably none which less deserved this sweeping criticism. As a nation we had as a matter of fact very great skill in the selling of goods, and an Englishman who desired to make himself an efficient salesman had command of much better educational opportunities for fitting himself for that work than was commonly realised. But it was perhaps no branch of commerce and industry in which these opportunities were so miscellaneous or so little focused by our schools into coherent courses of education. A Great Profession. National industry required and already professed a great intelligence service for the study of markets, for detecting, both at home and abroad, the development of new needs and the trend of new tastes. It required also a rather more active type of representative of traveller, not merely to do the “drummer’s” job of pushing certain lines of goods, but to educate the consumer and above all the retailer in the cultivation of new tastes and appreciation of new comforts. Finally, and in some ways most important, it required men at home in each industry who were sensitive to the reports of their intelligence service and who had the imagination and inventiveness to change and adapt production accordingly. There was, further, the very important but somewhat different problem of retail salesmanship, for there was no point at which misinterpretation of popular demands and popular tastes might have a more deplorable effect on the adaptability of British trade and industry than in retail selling. This great and complex organisation was not a theoretical dream. It already existed, and yet its requirements had only the faintest and most indirect influence on the work of our schools, mainly because its members were not sufficiently conscious of themselves as forming a great profession which required, and should ‘exact, a high standard of education. That, roughly, was the wide extent of the field which the committee had to survey, and was, he thought, the crux of the problem that they had to focus and to consider. But lest the public should misunderstand, he would say that the last thing he expected or desired from this programme of inquiries was the splitting of commercial and industrial employment into a number of new professional institutes, each with its own examinations and professional standards. If they asked how business men should recruit salesmen, the answer would probably always be: from every type of school and college and university, and from every grade of worker already in their employ. What he expected and desired was that a new realisation of the profession of salesmanship as a great and worthy career of human service would exert a growing influence on the range and choice of studies in the courses of education offered by schools and universities, and that teachers and students in our technical institutions "would receive clearer guidance as to the nature of the specialised training required by commerce and industry. Education and Business. It always seemed to him that one of the most pressing problems at the present moment was that business men had in the last few years become increasingly alive to the advantages of general education. Many of them ’would say, “Oh, yes, what we want is public school men.” That was all right so far as it went, but the supply of public school men and tlie capacity of public schools were not unlimited, and if they wanted to have that type of men they would have to get them in tlie future from tlie great bulk of the secondary schools of the country, who were increasingly day by day living more fully up to what public school men like himself thought was the public school tradition. Those schools had as high and almost as ancient traditions as many of tlie public schools, and the type of education was tlie same. If they wanted tliat type of public school education, all their efforts ought to be concentrated on building up that secondary school system, which could alone supply the need in the future. The whole problem of the Board was to give a new stimulus to popular education in its best and widest, sense. It was concerned with everything new—new standards and new inducements to popular education, which should be as wide as the nation and should offer inducements to boys and girls, irrespective of social stations. to rise to a position in which, they might perform a real service to their country.