The talking machine world (July-Dec 1924)

24 THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD October 15, 1924 Efficient Speech Is Big Power in Selling The Art of Selling Is an Art of Talking, Says Braid White, in an Interesting Dissertation on This Phase of Retail Business The art of selling is an art of talking. Thought cannot be expressed save by means of words, and the choice and use of speech are the essence of good salesmanship. Of course, it can always be said by someone that he knows a very successful salesman who can hardly read or write and glories in having no education, and all that sort of thing, but none of that really has anything to do with the case. A man who thus succeeds is successful despite his handicap, and would be much more successful if he were better educated. The fact remains that the man who has any idea of rising above the lowest ranks needs to possess or to acquire the art of efficient speech. What "Efficient" Means I say "efficient" and not "correct," for the latter word is badly misused and in the popular mind has come to mean something stilted and pedantic. What I have in mind is the power of using words to convey one's meaning in the most efficient manner, and by the specific adjective "efficient" I mean the manner which, for any given purpose, may be most likely to achieve its end. Thus I do not confine myself to what is called "snappy" or brisk or brief or "forceful" speech. I mean whatever kind of speech will obtain the results aimed at in each case; which may mean anything and everything as to manner, although it can only mean one thing as to content. Clearness and impressiveness are probably the most valuable qualities in the speech of the salesman. By clearness is meant the quality of conveying to the hearer one's thought unspoiled, without losing half its weight and power in the course of conveyance. To be a "clear" speaker means, of course, to be a clear thinker and that, in turn, means that one must have practiced the art of arranging one's thoughts logically. A clear thinker who has read enough good literature to have learned something of the trick of expression will be a clear talker. What Is Clear Thinking? Now clear thinking depends upon certain conditions of the thinker's mind. These are mainly controlled by education and training. The sloppy apology for an education with which too many men and women have to be satisfied furnishes the most unfavorable soil for the propagation of a clear-thinking mind; but whatever one's educational circumstances may have been, it is possible always to appreciate the simple fact that clear thinking, which gives mastery over facts and persons alike, depends upon mental capacity to sift evidence and to distinguish between what is patently false and what is probably true. There is no royal road to mastery in thinking, but there are certain things to be done which if and when done will help immeasurably along the rather straight and narrow path laid out for the thinker. The first of these may be described by calling it the practice of examining evidence. A man who makes his living by selling is popularly expected to be an advocate rather than a judge, but this is true only in regard to his actual selling work. In respect of the judgments he frames about people, about business matters and about everything which demands soundness of opinion, he must be impartial and coolly determined to get at the truth of the matter in question. When selling he is a pleader, when managing he is judge and general in one. The practice of examining what is presented to one's judgment, instead of either at once accepting or rejecting it, is the first of practices to be undertaken by him who would think clearly. No business executive takes snap judgments; or, if one does at any time, he is sure afterwards to be sorry more often than not. The second thing is the practice of not allowing one's judgment to be warped by either prejudice or suggestion. Prejudice is the deadliest enemy to clear thinking and at the same time the subtlest of all human errors, for it is mixed up with education and environment and thus eats into the very roots of one's being. The Crowd and Its Power Crowd suggestion is another deadly enemy. To follow always the fashion, to be always "up to date," to fear always that one may be doing something not entirely in accord with the prevailing thought of the crowd, is to be merely a member of the mob and to surrender in advance all hope of mastery. The suggestive powers of the crowd are enormous; yet they dissolve like a puff of vapor in the clear dry light of independent thought. Given this determination to weigh all evidence and to use only independent judgment, without heed to the temptations of prejudice and suggestion, one acquires almost insensibly the habit of clear thought, which leads with equal certainty to the gradual and sure mastery of clear speech. No better way can be found of hastening one's progress than in the practice of writing down one's thought about propositions or ideas presented to one. To keep a diary may seem neither very important nor very useful, but a steadily written journal of his life from day to day will give a man a power over expression that he can hardly acquire in any other way. Impressiveness Impressiveness of speech is that quality which enables a speaker to press home his ideas to his hearers with magnified effect, owing to the manner of his delivery, apart from the actual matter of it. When a man is able to present his thought not only clearly, so that it shall be thoroughly understood, but also impressively, so that it shall be heard with pleasure and shall cause those who hear to be impelled towards assenting to the statements put forth, he may consider himself qualified to sell, whether his goods be material or mental, dry-goods or ideagoods. Impressiveness is part of the good salesman's equipment, but impressiveness does not mean noise, or ranting, or rhetoric. It rather means that quiet earnestness which comes when a man has both thought out all the facts about the proposition he is enunciating and has convinced himself that it is worthy his best efforts. Earnestness which is noisy is worse than no earnestness at all, for it then becomes mere ballyhoo. High-class salesmen never place themselves on a level with the Coney Island barker or the cheap jewelry auctioneer. Quiet earnestness, on the other hand, conveys to the hearer a sense of the speaker's power which is usually decisive and sometimes overwhelming. Reading Even good salesmen may resent the suggestion that more and better reading would be very good indeed for most of them; yet this is only too true. The sloppy thinking, the sloppier speech and the general sloppiness of mentality that permit a man to sell, yet never to surpass his fellows in selling, that make him a salesman, but never one of those big men to whom the apparently impossible tasks are given, are all characteristics of an age which despises learning; yet it is the most patent of truths that the big men are always learners from birth to grave. He who would know how to handle his ideas should, nay must, be a student; nor is there any road towards mastery in this department of life easier, more open and more certain to repay than the road of good reading. I am not selling books; but if I had long since collected them on my shelves one by one I should certainly want to have those volumes which together are called the Five-foot Shelf of Books, and which President Eliot selected. A man who has no more reading than is in these only will be a man who can talk because he will have learned to think, who can talk persuasively because he will have learned how Burke persuaded, who can talk impressively because he will know how Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, who can reason because he will know how Socrates argued. FULL LINE of HARDWARE FOR UPRIGHT, CONSOLE AND PORTABLE PHONOGRAPHS. IN NICKEL, GOLD AND SPECIAL FINISHES. We have been catering to the hardware needs of the talking machine and radio industries for a number of years. Consequently we are in a position to give attention and service of the highest calibre. H. A. GUDEN CO., Inc. 227 CANAL STREET NEW YORK, N. Y.