POWER OF PERSONAL SALESMANSHIP 1. Importance of distribution.—Distribution is to day the most important single problem in practically every business. There was a time, not so many years ago, when production possibilities and limitations de termined the growth of a business. The demand was for inventive genius that could devise new articles; and for machines that would produce such articles at a reasonable cost. In many cases where these things were available, the problem was to secure adequate financing to carry on production. In short, anything which could be produced could be sold.
Today, exactly the reverse is true. Anything which can be sold—for which there is.a market, or for which a market can be created—can be produced. Reliance upon individual inventive genius has, to a large extent, given way to experimental departments, so called, manned by engineers, chemists and other technical men, to which can be referred the problem of devising a new article or a machine for producing it, with the calm assurance of a satisfactory result. The channels thru which outside financial aid can be secured are fairly well defined; consequently the prob lem of securing adequate finances for the handling of a marketable article is fairly easy of solution. And while the financier's old-time question, "Can it be pro duced at a reasonable cost?" is still an important one, the larger question in his mind today is, "Can it be marketed in satisfactory volume at a profit?" The problems of production and financing have given way in order of importance to those of distri bution, or marketing.
2. Salesmanship's place in field of marketing.— We have observed that both advertising and personal salesmanship are subdivisions of the broader subject of marketing methods. It should be understood that advertising and personal salesmanship are not ordi narily to be looked upon as two separate and distinct methods of selling goods. Generally they constitute different parts of the same big marketing plan. The one supplements and helps the other; advertising shortens the salesman's labor by delivering part of his message—by making his firm and his product known and by creating a confidence in both in the mind of the prospect; and personal salesmanship makes the advertising campaign effective by turning the inter est that has been aroused into actual orders.
3. Relation of advertising and salesmanship.— Any impression that advertising, as a general rule, eliminates the necessity for personal salesmanship is, of course, erroneous. Of the enormous sums of money spent each year for advertising, only an ex ceedingly small amount is spent on advertising de signed to carry thru every development in a sale, and bring orders in response to the ad ; and these adver tisements are almost without exception confined to small space and to articles of low price.
With few exceptions, all newspaper and periodical advertising and the great bulk of direct-by-mail adver tising must be followed up by an aggressive personal selling campaign, or by some substitute for a personal selling campaign, if the advertising campaign is to be effective, and if the interest aroused is to be turned into actual business for the advertised article. Any substitute for personal salesmanship at this point will inevitably lower the percentage of logical prospects or actual inquirers that are turned into customers. The catalog of the mail-order house does not secure the same volume of business from its recipients as it would if it were accompanied by a salesman's talk. The cost of personal correspondence as a substitute for the salesman's talk would be prohibitive ; it would never be entered into unless it were begun by the prospect. The percentage of prospects turned into customers by a formal follow-up system, no matter how effec tive, must inevitably be smaller than it would be if those same prospects were followed in person. It is doubtful whether any method will ever be devised that will turn as high a percentage of prospects into cus tomers, of inquiries into orders, as will personal sales manship, irrespective of whether the article sold be widely advertised or not.