HOW TO CREATE A DEMAND.
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Do Agents Display Enough Originality in Their Sales Methods ? How Many Actually Plan a Sales Campaign, and Carry it Through ?
By "Vim."
ASALES CAMPAIGN means a settled scheme to secure publicity that will make people want to buy the goods offered. Anybody can sell an article to a person who is yearning to buy it. There is nothing in that; and yet what a lot of agents advertise and conduct their sales policy, if any, simply with the man who wants to buy in view. Pick up any local newspaper, and study the announcements of the agents within the area of its influence, and you will agree with me that only in one instance in a thousand have they the slightest appeal to the man that has not yet realized that he will want to buy. In the same way, the showrooms of most agents are arranged without the slightest intention to create a demand, and simply to meet the need of the person that has already made up his mind that he will purehase a vehicle of some sort.
This lack of enterprise a.ppearseto be due to the smallamount of attention that is, as a. rule; devoted by commercial men to the psychology of the buyer. Only persons who are mentally-deficient purchase any article without rhyme or reason. Norneal individuals have to pass through a whole series of thought-processes before they even know that they desire a thing : unless something occurs to set the train of thoughts in motion, they may actually die without ever having been aware that the desire was latent in their minds. Usually, the necessary initial impetus is imparted by some commonplace circumstance, as, for example, the acquiring by friends of an article, of the merits of which they were until then ignorant.
The Vast Field of Potential Buyers.
There are, at this very moment, tens of thousands of tradesmen in this country 'who, although many of them are quite unaware of it, are going to buy motor vans and larriee during the next_ year or two. Why wait for them te go through the long-thought-out processes of their own accord'? Why not deliberately .plan to set these processes in motion, and to simplify their ordinarily complicated movements by guiding them in the direction that will bring them most rapidly to desire, and from that. to purchase? The typical sales methode of the motor agent begin too late. They do nothing towards creating business ; they merely. grasp at the orders that have spontaneously come to maturity and are for them or their competitors to pluck. On the whole, they remind one very forciblr of that gardener who spent all his time and energies in making baskets to hold his flowers and fruit; but who gave no thought to the cultivation of the plants and trees that he might be assured of a crop.
I think that, if agents would put a little, more ginger into their selling, if they would Americanize it to some extent, though not so thoroughly as to make it. objectionable, they would soon be surprised at the results. To be persuasive and educational is one thing ; to be blatantly aggressive over the goods one has to sell, is another. No Britisher likes being harried from pillar to post, and (Mee he gets it into his head that he is being so treated, nothing on earth will induce him to buy. He must, be asked, not told ; led, not driven. In America, so I understand, they have a great admiration for the salesman who won't take "no for an answer, and who rings them up on the 'phone_ after they have gone to bed, and first thing in the morning before they are up, with no justification at all beyond that the victims are on his card index of "prospects." Failure to show a proper appreciation of one's order in this manner is, I gather, looked on in America as discourtesy. Over here, we view nuisances in a different light; and, perhaps, are all the happier for it.
Careful Planning of the Sales. Campaign.
To bring success, a sales campaign must be a campaign in something more than name. It must be a carefully-planned-affair from start to finish, definitely aiming to achieve certain ends; and it must be followed through when it has been put into action.
Spasmodic efforts are worse than useless, for they are only wasted efforts ; and any .kind of wastage is abhorrent to the business mind. The campaign should be planned on paper, so that every point may receive full consideration, and weak ones be elimi nated. Unless the complete scheme is committed to writing, it will be " subject to alteration without notice," like the prices and specifications of motor war-babies.
The right procedure having been settled, nothing short of fire, flood, or civil commotion should be allowed to alter it. First conceptions, formed with calculated deliberation and with due regard to remote but dependent details, are always best.
If we take stock of the weapons available to an agent who is determined to initiate a selling attack on the firms within the territory covered by his agency, instead of waiting for them to walk into his showrooms with halters round their necks, so to speak, and with cheque books in their hands, we find that these consist of the fallowing :— Newspaper advertising ; Circularizing (letters and printed matter); Bill-posting ; Canvassinge Displaying his demonstration vehicles in the street; Practical demonstrations with those vehicles; a,nd Showroom diselays.
Formidable weapons all these, -whet you come to size 'them up ; and capable of great execution when employed systematically and not at haphazard. The order in,whieh they have been put down here bears no relationship to their respective value as lethal instruments, bythe way, for all are equally. impor tant to the campaigner. In warfare, as we have learned of late, the hand grenade is as vital to success as the big gun ; propaganda by leaflets droppedlover the enemy's lines as essential to victory as the largest battleship. And, towering in importance over all else a,re the personalities of the men to whom will fall the task of using the weapons ; for the human element counts as heavily in business as in war. No sales campaign stands the ghost of a chance of proving effective unless handled by men made of the right stuff. 1 have already had a good deal to Say about salesmanship in previous articles, so, beyond referring to it in this way, I will leave the human factor out of the subject at present under review.
Before attempting to plan our campaign, we must first decide broadly the objects that we are out to accomplish, and put them down in black and white as nearly as possible in correct sequence. Subject to the reader's correction make these to be :— • To arouse general interest in goods transport by motor vehicle amongst the tradesmen in the district. To stimulate latent demand into becoming active demand.
To make tradesmen desire to buy the makes of vehicles for which we hold the agencies.
Thus, in a very few words, we have located and got the range of our main Objectives—which are, to sell our vehicles, and to sell as many of them as the locality can absorb.
[1'n a inhere article or articles " Vim"proposes to giur his Ideas as to how a sales campaign should be conducted.----Ed. " CS. ."1