The Edison phonograph monthly (Dec 1914-Dec 1915)

EDISON PHONOGRAPH MONTHLY, SEPTEMBER, 1915 SOME EXPERIENCES IN THE SALE OF PHONOGRAPHS By E. J. Heffelman of Canton, Ohio. A Paper Read Before the Edison Dealers' Convention. WE operate a department store at Canton, Ohio, under the name of Klein & Heffelman Co. We were the first house to sell phonographs in Canton. The occasion dates way back to the first old cylinder-wax record machines. Later we did a jobbing business for the Edison Company and covered the entire State. Cur Piano and Phonograph Departments are located on the second floor, but we keep an Edison Diamond Disc instrument playing during business hours on the first floor, front. This practice has been the means of many sales. On one occasion last summer, while I was standing near the instrument which was playing, a man came in the rear entrance (which was two hundred feet from where I was standing) and said he had heard the music as he was passing by and could not resist coming in. I sold him an A-250 then and there. We have had many similar cases. We have found that the placing of instruments in homes on approval (or over the week-end) is the most effective means in making sales and there is never a time that we do not have from ten to fifteen instruments out in this way. We have a strictly private telephone in our Phonograph Department. One of our salespeople is daily calling subscribers from "A" to "Z" asking for the privilege of sending an instrument to their homes without obligation to buy. We find that fully one-half of these instruments so placed are sold. The greatest factor in the sale of records comes from suggestions made by the salesman at the time of demonstration. Up to the present time our chief trouble has been to get enough popular records. While we have been doing above the average amount of advertising, conditions in a city of our size (some 60,000) are totally different from a very large city. We do not have the transient trade and are obliged, to a great extent, to go out and dig up our prospects. At the present time we are working the country trade. Since summer is the only time we can do that, owing to the condition of the roads, we send out a piano salesman, together with a salesman for our phonograph department, in a Ford truck, and give Edison Recitals at every farmhouse along the roads leading out of Canton. The piano salesman works for piano and player-piano sales; the phonograph salesman works for phonograph sales. We have made a great many very nice sales in this way. We have also been very successful in smaller towns by placing instruments on approval with the wealthier class of people; also in confectionery stores and restaurants. There is scarcely a town within a radius of twenty miles of us in which we have not sold several instruments in this way. While on this subject I can say that we have sold more than twenty instruments in the leading dining rooms, confectionery stores, restaurants and drug stores in Canton. These sales have been the means of making many other sales in homes. In one case the dining room proprietor's wife insisted on having the instrument taken home at least every other week. The guests at the hotel set up such a clamour for the return of the instrument that the proprietor was obliged to return it before a week was over. Finally he was obliged to buy one for his home to keep peace in the family. I find that the most important factor in the sale of anything is enthusiasm. Hear all of the new records as they are placed on sale and enthuse your salespeople by making remarks on the particular beauty and merit of each record. It makes no difference how much merit anything has, it will not sell itself; it requires push and enthusiasm. It is not necessary for me to elaborate on the wonderful tone of the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph, as you are all familiar with its beauty, but this knowledge helps mightily your enthusiasm in making sales. APPROACHING A PROSPECT By Alphonzo Smith, Jr., Brooklyn. Extract from a Paper Read at the Dealers' Convention. TO sell an ordinary talking machine requires no more skill than to sell a novelty; any clerk can handle a novelty customer so as eventually to book the order, for the party wants either this style or that, or none at all. But to sell the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph takes salesman ship ! If one is laboring under the novelty idea — he had best "get out from under" the Edison proposition, for to be successful in the Edison line one must put his own PERSONALITY into his selling, or else employ a salesman of the very best caliber. A customer must be approached properly; the instrument must be introduced in such a way that the customer forms a receptive attitude; that is, disposed to stay a while, be seated and spend enough time for you to demonstrate the instrument properly. You want your prospect to absorb the music the record produces; you want him to take in, as well, what you have to tell him; therefore, he should not feel in a hurry. He owes it to himself as well as to you to take time to investigate and listen. You, as salesman, must impress this on him.