The first new men engaged should be of the same mature and able type as the pacemaker. In some eases this testing out of the best selling method may extend over a long period of time. As the article be comes established, the selling methods, as well as the methods of training new men, will become more or less fixed. When this point is reached, the type of men required to sell the proposition gradually changes. They need not be so mature, nor need they ordinarily be so well compensated at the start, as were the sales men first employed. Men with no previous selling experience can be trained. Eventually, the type of men desired is definitely determined and the methods of their selection also become more or less well defined.
4. Securing salesmen thra advertisements.—Ad vertising is the first method that one thinks of for getting into touch with recruits for the sales force. By this means it is possible to get some very good ma terial. Sales managers are divided, however, as to whether it pays to use the classified columns of the newspapers. Altho some hold that applicants thru this source are usually unfitted for the work, veiy good results have been obtained from high-class papers. Trade papers are often used because they are in touch with applicants who are trained in the particular lines for which salesmen are desired. An especially wide-awake and ambitious class of men are secured from classified advertisements in such medi ums as Printers' Ink and System. The fact that a man reads such mediums proves that he is good ma terial.
The Buck Stove and Range Company some time ago ran the following advertisement in newspapers in various parts of the country : Attorneys wanted as traveling salesmen. If not satis fied with your profession, why not enter the commercial field? We desire the services of several educated men of good appearance and address. A splendid opportunity for ener getic, ambitious men.
The company explained this advertisement by say ing that a great many bright young attorneys found it difficult to get along in their profession and that if the company were given men with trained thinking pow ers, it could make high-grade salesmen of them.
5. Securing salesmen from the inside organiza tion.—The selecting of sales material from within an organization insures that the recruit will know a great deal about the product he is to sell. For this reason it is a good plan, where the commodities are intricate or technical, to choose salesmen from within the con cern. One large mechanical specialty house follows
this method almost entirely. The sales manager picks the likely men from various parts of the organization, calls them into his office, tells them that they are being trained for the selling organization and then puts them to work in the shop for a course of training.
Sales Manager Taylor of the American Steel and Wire Company makes the statement : We hire our office boys with a. view to their becoming salesmen and then develop them in the office. In picking the boys, we get those of big stature, coming from good families and having a grammar school education. By promoting our men from office boys to salesmen, step after step, we find that they stay with us and feel that the experience they have in our office is a reason for making their future with us.
The Sherwin-Williams Company of Cleveland also recruits its selling force largely from the inside ranks. The sales manager of the Winton Motor Car Com pany of Cleveland states that many of his best sales men were developed from chauffeurs and mechanics who understood both human nature and the car they were selling.
6. Obtaining salesmen from competing organiz-a tions.—Unless the salesman from a competing organ ization comes to the sales manager on his own initia tive, it is rather unsatisfactory to recruit the sales force from rival organizations. The ethics of the practice may well be questioned, and the salesman who has shown disloyalty to one house by going over to a competitor may show disloyalty to another. These objections do not always hold, however, and the advantage of the method is that the probable value of a man thus secured may be gauged with considerable accuracy.
'7. Obtaining salesmen from non-conipeting organ izations.—A good recruiting source is the non-com peting selling organization which for some reason or other is not doing sufficient business to hold its good men. For example, when the stock exchanges were closed at the opening of the great European war, and the bottom fell out of the bond market, the Addresso graph Company of Chicago approached men who had been selling bonds on commission, and thus se cured a number of good salesmen. Being accustomed to meet men of prominence, the former bond salesmen took readily to selling addressographs to large con cerns.