1917 The Agent's Year Article IV.
Page 7
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A Plea for Very Early and Very Careful Settlement of this All-important Question by a Peace-time Agent who Means to Take his Share After the War.
It seems to be particularly appropriate that two such pressing questions as "The Status of the Engineer" and "The Agent's Function in the Industry" should have been brought up in the "C.M." columns, although quite independently, yet to all intents and purposes at the same time. I consider that the two problems arc very importantly related, and I should be glad of your indulgence to place my views briefly on record.
We Must Keep Up the War Pace.
First of all then it is obviously going to be of vital .umportanee to initiate a greatly-improved system of distribution and of propaganda work in regard to the commercial motor in its many sizes. This must be brought to fruition before our much-extended factories are brought up short with a Ministry of Munitions notice to the effect that their output will not be required after so many weeks or so many .months.
Outputs on the Munitions Scale.
Continuity must. be secured, and to a small extent 3rders booked for priority delivery in war time, will carry the most popular of the firms along well enough for a while. But if outputs on the Munitions scale 1,re to be, maintained or even approached economically, orders must be secured at all costs, both for home and 3verseas consumption. Beyond his praiseworthy decision to keep his name before the public so far as he can, what steps can the maker possibly take at present to watch, nurse and develop probable after-war markets in countless local districts? If he have his 3wn district offices and branch showrooms he may do something, but relatively it will be little. Orders secured only in that way will cut but a poor figure when outputs.of as much as 40, 50, or 00 threeor fiveonners, to say nothing of far more extensive ones of ill the lighter models, have to be absorbed.
Learning What Real Output Means.
The agent must he used. The war has forced what Ehe indusfiry, on the whole, was loath to face. We lave, in this country, been bound to learn what outnit, real output, means. Now we have learned our esson, most of us will no longer be content to think n dozens. We shall have to make in thousand's, and o justify that we must promptly learn the lesson of listribution. Output is useless without it.
Something We Can Still Learn from America.
Distribution is a commercial term which only bears ts proper business significance in America, however ye may fail to appreciate U.S.A. "hot air" about erritory and branch and sub-branch managers, conaintions and what not. But they have the scheme here, and whatever a first-class output factory can iroduce. both at home and abroad, they can distriiute. We shall have not a great deal to learn from Vmerica after the war about production, and there till be much in character that America will do well to earn from us and our Allies. But we can well take a 3af out of the U.S.A. hook about distribution. There hey have "tried out" as they put it, every conceivble form of distribution, branch houses, branch epots, subsidized agents, travellers in hordes, service lethods, and so on. And on..the whole the best ocgaizers there have come to the conclusion that the wellquipped, well-trained, go-ahead energetic profesloner agent is "the goods" for absorbing increasing utput all the time. The Very Best Men Wanted.
. That is what has got to happen here. We already use it in our Colonies and, in a pitifully small way, abroad. But, and it is a very big but indeed, the agent for the British-built commercial motor, be it five-ton. steamer, double-deck bus or parcelcar, must be a trained man. He will-have to sell some of the best products in the world. He has got to be a commercial engineer, that rarest of-birds, in-pure strain. The agent, who at one time sold bicycles and sewing machines, and then pushed on to his more well-favoured customers some pleasure car or other for which he had obtained an "agency," must, in. the few exceptions, be ruled out. He wilr-only spoil the market. Selling "commercials " is a different job to selling ea! s or. bicycles, petrol, Oil and grease. Each customer is a business man and a very cute enterprising one as well in ninecases out of ten, or he would not be risking his capital by improving his delivery.
Why You Want Engineers.
The ordinary salesman, who hits, with eondescending and specialist references to his own conspicuous ability to drive—and there it often ends—sold numberless touring cars from a florally-bedecked and carpeted saleroom, will always cut a sorry figure when asked: What tonmileage he can prove to be the capacity of his offered, machine or exactly why a three-ton worm-driven Petrol lorry should tackle a certain job for 2.35d. per mile run less than a rubbertired steamer on a, certain job i not to mention countless queries of a highly technical and constructional nature.
The Agent Must Have the Means.
The commercial-motor agent is certain to come into his own, and so is the engineer, as your correspondent "Once an Apprentice " suggests. But he has got to be the very best of his sort, and to have plant and equipment that look after the machines that are sold. He must have the ability and the banking account to undertake maintenance work or, if necessary, to own a fleet and let it out on contractb.
Recruits from the M.T., A.S.C.
The home country Must be covered with a network of agency activity, and that right soon. It is, a great chance for the best men, and the MT., A.S.C., will yield a number home from the wars before very long. But there must be no great pause and interruption of outputs. Let the industry get ready for that six weeks notice or whatever it is.
The Alternative for Makers.
One word more. If the big makers a-re inclined to think they can cover the country -without agents— and I do not think they are,. any longer—there are agents of note who will,nothesitate either to manufacture largely on a co-onerative• basis, to: import enormously if they are so allowed, or to make it worth while for some manufacturer to steal a march on his
slower-moving fellows. • The Editor is right. 1917 will be the first real agents' year. but may it also be 'true that the corning upheaval of methods will only be entrusted to the best men and largely to the commercial engineer. There are already thousands of incompetents, who are looking forward to this industry as.a profitable hunting ground in the future. That is serious. Some clay I should like to find time to write wily I think the independent, yet well-supported agent is a better man than the branch manager.