Masonry Magazine January 1966 Page. 10
THE SELLING PARADE
by 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.
They Call Him "The Human Univac"
It used to be thought that to be a real top salesman you had to be typed as an extrovert, wanting to be with people all the time and not wanting to be bothered by little details. Leave those to detail men, like accountants and researchers; let salesmen sell.
But the world's most successful life insurance salesman is such a bear for details that those who know him term him "the Human Univac."
There is no detail in Alfred J. Ostheimer's life too small to receive not only his attention but his most meticulous and unending attention.
Ostheimer looks the part of a scientist rather than a salesman, reserved, not too eager to make friends, the introvert rather than the extrovert. The secret of his success is not in being a good fellow. It is being a good digger of facts.
One of his associates has explained a further reason for the man's success - doggedness. Once he starts working on a prospect, he allows nothing to deter or detour him; once he sets a goal there is no price too great for him to pay in attaining it.
He's a salesman on the go all right. Alfred Ostheimer.
He Made Them Help Him Talk
One of the most effective group salesmen I ever heard is the head of a sales stimulation organization in Waco, Texas, by the name of Paul J. Meyer.
Meyer, years ago, perceived that to get ahead a man must know how to speak in public. He began spending money taking public speaking courses. He told me that he has some $5,000 invested in this phase of his education.
But when you hear him give a presentation before a group, you would never know that he had ever made a speech in his life before. It is an ordeal to have to listen to Paul, I tell you. He hems and he haws, he gropes for words, he seems in mortal agony up there in front of you trying to explain his simple proposition.
And what do you find yourself doing? Why, you begin trying to help him make a speech. When he reaches for a word, you reach for it too. In place of feeling distress over his performance, you feel sympathy for the man.
And that is what he wants. It is part of his sales presentation, this hesitancy, this silent appeal for help. It brings about what Paul regards as one of the most important of all selling qualities empathy.
"You are at my level when I talk to you," he explained, "and we are doing something together. That is what empathy means, you know. It is a great selling weapon, empathy. Too bad more salesmen don't use more of it."
The man himself holds a major in English from an important university and taught it in college for several years before he went into selling.
It must hurt him every time he hears himself abuse the King's English, but he does it with a purpose: He talks in the language of those to whom he sells. That is another man's way of gaining his empathy.
The 51st Call
Charles E. Merrill was young then, a young salesman on the go, with an idea so new nobody wanted to listen to it. Merrill, who was destined to head the world's largest securities selling organization, was trying to market an issue of stock in a chain store. His prospects were other brokers and dealers. They turned him down cold, absolutely cold. They wanted nothing to do with Merrill or his stock, said so, sent him on his way.
Fifty turned him down before one broker decided to take on a few hundred shares; success on his 51st call. Suppose he had quit on No. 50. But he didn't. He had the doggedness which every great salesman I have ever known has had.
It is a form of courage which comes to a man who has absolute belief in himself and in what he is selling; the same kind of belief Thomas J. Watson had during the depression of the early '30's.
Firms were folding all around him and it was a well-known fact that business was bad. But Watson would never admit it. He refused to admit that hard times could affect his company; and they did not. He laid the groundwork for his billion-dollar growth on that firm belief.
Cut out this article and future articles and place them in your business file for further reference.
All rights reserved. JANUARY 1966 CHARLES ROTH.