7. Studying a competitor's com mon method of keeping track of competitive adver tising consists simply in responding to a competitor's advertising and in keeping accurate record of the way in which the competitor answers and follows up the inquiry. The inquiry is usually made in the name of someone who might be considered a possible pur chaser. As each letter or piece of literature comes in, it is dated and compared for appearance, quality and the impression it creates with other literature re ceived from other competitors. By this method an advertiser is able to learn the following facts in rela tion to competition : a. How promptly inquiries are answered.
b. How many pieces of literature are sent to each prospect.
c. The quality of letters used—whether all inquiries are answered with personal letters, inultigraphed let ters or printed literature.
d. The cost of a competitor's follow-up. This can be roughly estimated by adding the cost of postage to the probable cost of the letters and the other ad vertising literature that is received.
e. The relative emphasis given to each sales argu ment. This is an interesting test. A complete set of each competitor's literature is taken and the sales arguments of each listed. Then a record is made of the proportion of space used for each argument and the order in which the arguments are introduced. Such a test often reveals some most valuable facts.
f. How completely the sales organization cooper ates with the advertising department.
8. Correcting errors by studying manufacturer of trucks wanted to know the sales and advertising methods used by his competitors. He found that while he was using form letters to answer inquiries, twelve of his fourteen competitors were using personal letters and referring in these letters to trucks they had sold to buyers located in the city or district from which the inquiry came. This led to his keeping an accurate record and a set of testimonial letters for every truck he sold. He found that eight of the fourteen competitors spent a dollar and a half on each inquirer in letters and booklets. The most striking discovery was made in studying the dates on which the different pieces of literature were received and the promptness with which the district repre sentatives of his competitors called on the inquirer. Twelve of the fourteen competitors sent a sales rep resentative to call on the inquirer before he received or could have received a letter from the manufacturer in reply to his inquiry. This clearly indicated that
these twelve manufacturers did not wait for the mails, but were in the habit of wiring their district agents on receipt of inquiries from responsible persons. The manufacturer who conducted the investigation had not been doing this. He had been losing consider able business in his own territory, but until he made this analysis he could not understand why.
9. Comparison of sales policies.—Advertising, the putting of one's sales arguments on paper, has prob ably had more to do with developing sales policies and the ideals of business than any other force. A non-advertiser usually follows the crowd. But as soon as advertising is undertaken, definite sales poli cies must be chosen and adhered to. Many adver tising campaigns have had for their purposes the remedying of some particular sales conditions.
One manufacturer has a competitor who is in the habit of overselling. It might seem that to avoid sub stitution by dealers, the only way to meet such com petition would be to oversell also. But the sales manager, realizing the weapon he would have by pur suing a different policy, instructs his men to undersell rather than oversell, and to make a talking point of it. The advertising man, seeing his advantage, calls the attention of the public to the fact that his goods in the dealers' hands are always fresh; and the policy of competitors is thus made to pay handsome re turns.
10. Quality arguments versus price There never has been a more vivid illustration of fierce competition than that furnished by the condi tion which existed in the flour business at the begin ning of the twentieth century. Ten thousand millers were crying, each with a loud voice, that their prod uct was "the best, the best, the best." And yet each was competing on the same basis with all the others— cutting prices and lowering quality. In this condi tion the larger mills, being able to buy wheat at the lowest prices in the world's market, had a great ad vantage over the smaller mills which, located in small towns and forced to grind the high-grade local wheat, found hardly enough profit in the business to make a decent living.