ON QUOTAS There are eight more days in February and so far you have fallen short of the quota that.I had hoped you would reach. Won't y-ou put forth an extra effort for the remain ing few day-s of the month so that your own earnings will be somewhere near what you should be making? I realize the difficulties that you are up against in the field ; I have been thru the mill myself ; but whenever business did not come for me in satisfactory quantities, I always made a self-analysis, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred I found that I was to blame. Some days I felt tired ; business suffered. Other days I saw the people and mechanically told them my message ; still business suffered. Usually when Thursday came I would awaken to the fact that I needed the business and the money that the business brought me; then I would get out and work along the right lines—and I always made sales.
You are not differently- constituted from any other sales man, and if you will stop for a few minutes to make a self analysis, you will come to the conclusion, just as I used to, that you are really to blame. There is sonic reason for your getting business one week and falling down the next. The prospects are practically the same. The product you are selling is better as each week follows, and it always resolves itself into this: Concentrated effort systematically put for ward, plus enthusiasm, will always bring results.
I am not writing this letter in the form of a criticism, but, if there is one suggestion in it that will set you thinking, I have done my duty by you and by the company. Get busy for the next eight days and send in enough business to make February a profitable month both to yourself and to the house.
8. Paragraphs used for training.—Many sales man agers wish to keep their men constantly in training in the principles of salesmanship and in theiest methods of selling the individual line. A salesman may fail to return answer papers to formal courses of selling in struction when these are given; he may neglect to read a course of instruction published in the house organ; but there is not a salesman in any organization who will fail to read his daily letter thru witb care and ab sorb any suggestions as to better selling methods con tained in it. The special paragraphs, then, may fre
quently be devoted to suggestions as to better selling methods.
9. Mottoes and is the practice of one very successful sales manager to include with his daily letter some sort of inspirational motto or quo tation on a card of convenient size. Another manager incloses every day a copy of some letter of indorse ment of the goods written by a customer.
10. House term house organ as used here is not intended to include publications put out by different houses for circulation among their cus tomers, dealers or prospects, but only those more in timate personal and confidential publications, the sole purpose of which is to keep the salesmen—and pos sibly other members of the organization—in close touch with one another and with the house.
These house organs are of two general styles: the newspaper type and the magazine type. Some are put out in the general form of neNvspapers and the articles are written in newspaper style with newsy headings and sub-heads, while others partake more of the nature of a magazine both in form and contents.
Some are published weekly and others monthly, Nvhile a few large organizations publish theirs daily. For the majority of organizations, the weekly house organ will be found most practicable and most ef fective.
11. Mechanical make-up of house organ.—In the mechanical make-up, a considerable difference pre vails among concerns. Many house organs are printed more or less elaborately, a number of them carrying artistic three-colored covers and being pro fusely illustrated with half-tone cuts. Others are pre pared in the firm's office by means of some duplicating device and the occasional illustrations run are printed outside as inserts. For the concern whose house oromn will have a limited circulation—which will o-o to an organization of, let us say, from to one hundred men—the latter is the much less costly method and will be found quite as effective. The me chanical make-up is after all much less important than the nature of the contents.