Radio today (Jan-Dec 1938)

KNIFING THE RECESSION Nothing sells like selling — here s a blast of ideas for your attack on a dull season Caro Miller of L. Hart & Son Co., San Jose, Calif. F. J. Degroot (and wife) A. J. Davis of Wauof Sanborn, Iowa. kesha. Wis. D. Tofallos of 9th Ave., NYC. C. Llewellyn of T. J. Byron, also Los Angeles, Cal. of Los Angeles. Pictured above are the dealers who had a hand this month in our coast-to-coast collection of vigorous selling methods. Promote a stock of small colorful kitchen model radios to be pushed as ideal Mother's Day gifts, lightening the burden of her working hours. With each radio give a small memo pad, ostensibly to be used for radio recipes and a list of various morning programs with the hour and the station where each may be heard. Dust off the trade-marks of manufacturers and give them a chance to register with your customers. Spot them on appropriate sets against colorful backgrounds and remember that old ones may be as interesting as newer emblems. Knock at the door of your customer's most likely neighbor, when you deliver a set, as if by mistake. Among people who live in flats and bungalow courts, this does not seem far-fetched. Apologize for your mistake, but start a sales talk and angle for an invitation to return as soon as you have installed the set you came to deliver. Fasten a series of large sheets of paper together, to represent an enormous book with the binding at one end. Spot it in the center of your window, opened to a page upon which is lettered the features of a new model. Either a foot-light or a spotlight may be used to seize attention for the sales message. Encourage the practice ot your salesmen taking new table models home with them, one by one. Suggest that more intelligent selling will result from a thorough testing of each receiver under local conditions. Experiences collected from such tests can be worked into sales arguments. Ask customers whether they know the difference between a megacycle and a motorcycle. To encourage listening to Continental broadcasts, explain that the short wave proposition is really very simple; use an authoritative yardstick of radio wave bands, common sense and non-technical talk. Choose a feature model to show in mass display. Conduct the stunt so that the prospect will get the definite idea that you have stocked the number by the dozens; convey the impression that you have only the utmost confidence in the job — its quality and its coming popularity. Make a list of all the dramatic serials on the air, under the head of "What will happen next?" Be sure that you are familiar with the broadeast stories yourself, and get your prospects interested in the plots. Introduce the programs briefly in demonstration periods, if necessary. Get up a mailing piece which features the sales and engineering phrases used by manufacturers in 1938. Be sure that you have the latest, and that you tell them a little something that prospects were not able to get, in the way of explanation of these phrases, from other sources. Don't be so general that the prospect won't feel the urge to come into the store. Tell your assistants that your store must be kept slick as a whistle from front to back. See that the whole establishment has a "first class" atmosphere that will influence the mood of the salesmen as well as the customers. Publicize the idea that the day of the junky radio sales and service shop is gone. Re-check the lighting in your windows, and see that your displays introduce your store to the public as a clean shop. If your competitor wishes to fill his window full of special prices, teach him a lesson by keeping special price signs out of your window, but meet him in values. 10 Radio Today