A co-orlinated selling campaign is essential to every undertaking. The selling scheme will be based on one root idea. This may be the idea under lying the business itself, because if we come to analyse the question, we shall find that most businesses are built round an idea. It may be to sell to the public goods of a high artistic value, it may be to sell goods cheaper than any ;ompetitor, itlmay be to sell goods of exceptional quality, or to pack them in a particularly attractive and convenient form, or to give special terms of freight. Whatever the main idea, it should permeate all the operations of the than. It may be, of course, that a firm having one. main idea will put 'rut a scheme, possibly a departmental scheme, having quite another subsidiary notion at the back of it. Before that scheme is started the master salesman, who, according to most organisations in this country, is the advertising manager (though this is not the right name for him), should have clearly outlined in his own mind the main principles of the scheme, and see that every operation on the selling side of the business forges a link between the customer and the actual sale.
Advertising.—Advertising is, of course, one of the most important features of any selling campaign. I have already said that the advertising manager is usually, in this country, the master salesman of a business. This is because the very nature of his training gives him a better grasp of the business, and a better knowledge of conditions from the customer's stand point, than any one else. He is really more than an advertising man, how ever, and should control the whole of the selling organisation. Iii America he is frequently called the sales manager, a title which, on the few occasions employed in this country, is sometimes taken to mean manager of salesmen— a mere gang boss by comparison. When advertising is conducted upon the principles I have suggested, and is co-relative with all the other machinery of selling, it is likely to be sane and to be divested of many of the frillings and mystery with which some men are accustomed to surround it. After all, advertising is merely "making known," and generally it succeeds in pros portion to its simplicity, directness and sincerity. There are a great many ways of "making known," and that accounts for the fact that there is room for men of intelligence and experience in the advertising field. But as I have already stated, when an advertisement is considered not as something apart, as something sacred, but as part of it selling scheme, and is judged by the amount it contributes to the general business, we get rid of a lot of nonsense which is usually talked of in this connection. AdNertising is a very big subject in itself, and is quite outride the scope of thfs article—I mention it as being incidental to the general selling campaign.
One piece of advice I always like to give to advertisers is, to get as near as possible in their advertisements to the arguments given by the successful salesman when actually selling to a customer. He must have clearly in his mind answers to the following general questions :—" Why should the public want my goods ?" and " Why should they buy them in preference to those of my competitors?" The underlying idea to which I have alluded should supply a sufficient answer to these questions. By keeping in constant touch with the salesman, the advertiser will also find out what are the points of resistance in the minds of customers, and he will learn to overcome them in future advertisements.
Of course, some selling campaigns practically begin and end with the adver tisements, the intention is to sell goods direct without the intervention of any salesman, or without obtaining personal contact with the customer, and quite a sharp line must be drawn between this class of scheme and those which aim merely to bring the customer into the showrooms with the view that the salesman will complete what the advertisement has begun. With regard to advertisements designed to sell through the post, which are com monly called mail order advertisements, it should he interesting to remember that those who arc inserting them do so with a definite knowledge that they must bring in sufficient sales to pay for the cost of the advertisement, other wise the business must cease. It is interesting to watch how free most mail order advertisements are from the peculiarities that are affected by what we may call "general publicity" announcements. The frillings are all gone, and in place is generally a simple direct description of the article, and all the particulars that a customer requires to know before purchasing. A mail order advertiser who has succeeded for twelve months, knows more about advertising titan a general publicity advertiser who has been at it for twenty years ; he has proved his knowledge and knows how to buy his business. He is a Master Salesman.
A great number of advertisements, however, are designed to do one of three things, viz. to bring customers to your showrooms; to bring orders by post; and to bring applications for catalogues. It is possible to " key " the results which follow under the headings two and three fairly conclusively ; but there are many ways to judge an advertisement, so far as it succeeds in bringing customers to your shop, if close touch be kept with the various departments. We will assume that the advertisement, as an advertisement, has succeeded, hut it is only a link in the chain of sales promotion. From this point the matter is often removed from the hands of the advertising malinger and is left entirely to the salesman. The salesman is often con sidered as belonging to quite a different section to the advertising, and some times does not even know what advertisements are appearing, with the consequence that he is unable to make the best of his opportunity. Adver tisements may be good or bad, but if they have succeeded in bringing customers to the showrooms, it is important that the salesman should thoroughly understand the line of argument which they contain, so that he may be able to supply further information in the saute direction. If the salesman does not realise the argument, or tries to adopt a new attitude, or does not understana what the customer, has in mind, the effect of the adver tisement is almost nullified, and the customer is not likely to purchase. The remedy for this is simple. Let copies of all advertisements and leaflets be posted in their respective departments each day, and let it be obligatory on the part of the selling staff to the advertisements carefully, and be prepared to carry on the same lines of reasoning. It is also desirable that the salesmen should be encouraged to discuss the advertisements with the advertising manager.