10. Conferences with execu tives spend a half-hour now and then with each cor respondent, running over his carbons, and making such suggestions as occur to them at the time. This work is important. Even the most valuable officer in the business can afford to give some of his time to it. Here again the problem is to get the corre spondent to feel that he and the critic are thinking together, and to forget that his letters are being criti cised. It is important, therefore, that the executive criticise favorably as well as imfavorably. But if a correspondent seems to resent just criticism, perhaps he is not the right man for that kind of work.
The mere fact that a man happens to be presi dent, or vice-president or treasurer of an organiza tion is not, of course, proof that he could train cor respondents successfully. Yet almost any executive who knows a good letter when lie reads it could do this work if he were willing to devote to it the time and effort necessary. A man who has "a good ear" for effective letters, even if he lacks the ability to "lecture," may, in fact, become the best kind of coach on correspondence.
11. Reading method of Western manufacturer, who gets about 40 per cent of his sales by sending letters to dealers in various lines, has a manager of correspondence who picks out the letters that will sell, apparently by instinct. He is able, invariably, to forecast the comparative results of tests that the firm often applies to several letters written to accomplish the same result. He began work with this company as a personal salesman, and in that capacity visited nearly every state in the country when his firm was getting a foothold. The president of the company discovered that he could write a good letter, and before long placed him in charge of a mail sales department.
There are now eight correspondents in this depart ment, and each one was trained by "Bill," the man who could judge letters. Bill, however, cannot point out just what is wrong with a poor letter, or just why a good letter will be successful. For the first few weeks after a correspondent begins work, Bill takes time to read every letter that the new man writes and asks him to rewrite every letter that does not have the right "ring" to it. Bill gives him carbons of successful letters and tells him to read them all and to note any differences that distinguish them from his own. This is the main part of his training method.
The new man is kept reading successful letters un til sooner or later he catches the right spirit and ob tains sufficient information to enable him to write well enough so that, of all the letters he writes, per haps half of them pass Bill's censorship. If the cor respondent has the perseverance to stand this grind of reading and re-writing, he has the right stuff in him.
12. Educational principles funda mental educational principles involved in training correspondents are the same as those which apply in training men for personal salesmanship, since cor respondence is one phase of this art. A few of the more basic considerations follow: Good selling sense is the basis of the ability to write effective letters—letters that cause the reader to think and feel and do as the writer desires.
Selling sense may be developed. Salesmen are both "born" and "made." There is no limit to the possible improvement of the selling sense in any in dividual.
Self-training is the best kind of training in written salesmanship, as well as in personal salesmanship. Actual experience is the best basis of self-training.
Help from reading and from personal criticism is effective in so far as it tends to stimulate self-train ing.
In self-training the correspondent takes advantage of the opportunities that his practice offers to find out why his letters succeed or fail, and how to cut down the percentage of failures.
Willingness to learn from experience—from the experience of others as well as his own—is charac teristic of the man who has good selling sense.
The amount of training that the correspondent gets out of his experience varies with the amount and quality of the thought that he puts into it.
Among other things, the thinking that he does should include a definite conception of what consti tutes good selling sense.
Whether or not the correspondent will have the right attitude toward the addressee depends largely upon whether or not he possesses the proper personal qualifications—optimism and aggressive confidence, for instance. These, in turn, depend to a consider able degree upon sound health, which is almost as im portant to the correspondent as to the personal sales man.