Masonry Magazine June 1965 Page. 27
# THE SELLING PARADE
Dy CHARLES B. ROTH, America's no. 1 salesmanship authority
The Selling Parade by Charles B. Roth is another new feature added by masonry. Watch for it in all future issues of the magazine for the entire Masonry Industry. Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference.
Character Analysis That Works
You know by now, if you have read nything on the subject I've written, that I am the avowed foe of character-nalysis or character-reading by salesmen. Many men pin all their hopes in some system that will enable them, they think, to judge the character of their prospect.
It's all baloney, and anyone who sells you any different doesn't know what he is talking about. A salesman's job is not to read his prospect's character. It is to make a sale to him. If you can make a sale to a man why do you care what kind of character he has? If he has money, you get the money and let him hold fast to his character whatever it may be.
Still, I know why salesmen like to believe in their little secret systems of getting the better of prospects by reading their character. Salesmen are dreadfully insecure as a class, dreadfully in want of some secret weapon to help them make their sales.
Now, just after blasting character analysis as a process of head-shrinking, I am going to recommend a system that is so sound I cannot help but believe in it and recommend it.
A salesman whose work I know well was telling me about it. In place of analyzing a prospect's character by the shape of his head or the bumps hereon, his system makes a time-study of the prospect's reaction rate.
That makes sense. We do not all think at the same rate of speed. Some of us think with lightning speed; others plod along like a glacier. All a salesman needs to know about a prospect is his time-rate.
You cannot plod with a fast thinker or speed with a slow thinker, and if you try to get a man out of his mental speed you get yourself into trouble. This is what my friend told me.
I asked him what kind of thinkers there are. He said there were fast thinkers, slow thinkers, and moderate thinkers. He asked me to keep thinking pace in mind when I talk to prospects. I hope you will also.
He Froze Their Palates
An appliance dealer out in California, a crafty fellow, figured that if he could get a prospect to keep still while he gave his talk, he could easily make a sale.
But nine-tenths of his prospects are women. Tell me: did you ever have any luck getting a woman to keep still while you talked? You can see the immensity of this man's problem.
He was telling me about it:
"I merely freeze their palates, and since they are unable to talk with a frozen palate they have to listen while I talk. By the time their palates are thawed out I have got their name on the order." I could see he was only half in earnest, so I asked for more.
"I have an upright deep freeze on my sales floor," he explained, "and in it I always keep a big dish of our lovely California grapes. When a woman comes in I open the freezer and invite her to have a grape. When she takes it in her mouth, I know she is good for a few minutes of silence, and that gives me a chance to get in my good licks."
Show Them What They Want
Out of his long career as salesman and no man has had a longer or more honorable or more successful career than he-Frank Bettger has summed up the essence of salesmanship in a single sentence. It is his infallible law. I think we should call it Bettger's Law.
All there is to it is this: "Show a man what he wants and he will move heaven and earth to get it."
Before you dismiss this as an over-simplification, live with it for a day or two, tossing it around in your mind now and then during the day.
Always A Helper At His Side
Morris I. Pickus, surely one of the great selling giants of our times as well as an authority on an important phase of salesmanship handling objections- admits that he has never in his life made a sales call alone. Always he had someone else along to help him out, Morris admits.
The someone was there in spirit and in Pickus' imagination, not in person; but his presence was as much felt when Pickus was using him as if he were a real man in the scene.
"I like a FTP when I call always have one along," explains Morris. "My FTP I mean 'Friendly Third Party.' I'd be lost without him in my selling.
"The way it works is this. I am calling on a druggist named Vincent. I represent Gillette Safety Razor Company. I want Mr. Vincent to put in a display.
"I expect the usual resistances, and they come. At first I pretend not to hear them. But still they come. I listen to them all, very attentively. Then I call in my FTP, in this case a Mr. Vargas another druggist in another part of town. I tell Vincent what happened to Vargas. He wasn't interested either. But he put in the display, and look what happened to Vargas! Vincent figures if it happened to Vargas why not to Vincent, so he buys. I didn't make the sale Vargas did."
Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference. JUNE 1965 CHARLES ROTH. All rights reserved.
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