AN ALIBI

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 229, 30 October 1930, Page 2

AN ALIBI

EXTRA 9ALESMEN OR ADVERTISING. "I'd rather spend the money 011 extra salesmen than for advertising," remarked a manufacturer. The ansxver is supplied by Mr Lee E. Domieliey, a well-knoxvn American businessman, xvho says : — "Anyone xxdio cares to analy.se the subject keenly from an economic standpoint vvill discover some astounding opportnnities for cutting selling cosfc by using advertising. Assuming tliat you put on two salesmen and that these txvo are experienced, they will cost you, including salaries and tra\relling expences aceording to your oxvn estimates £3000 a year. "Noxv if each man averages four calls a day for three hundred- business days, he xvill make txvelxm liundred calls and two men will make twentyfour hundred calls a year. These should represent repeat calls on prospects at least once every sixty days. Now, if both of these men cail every sixty days, they are limited to calling on four hundred firms six. times a year, including present customers and prospects. "By simply dividing £3000 by four hundred prospects xve discover that each prospect that you xvork with one of these txvo salesmen costs £7 10s. In other xvords you _get six calls by one salesman on oue industrial concern for £7 10s. The only thing that makes this high cost per prospect profitahle is the possibility that you xvill find one out of a ,dozen xvho will buy in sufficient volume to caiT.y this exhorbitant cost. "As compared xvith £7 10s per prospect for six calls per year by a salesman, the advertising I haxre planned xvill give you txventy-six calls, a call every other week. on each of the same four hundred' prospects and about thirteen thousand others for 5s per prospect. Here is a difference of six calls against txventy-six calls, a difference of f £7 10s against 5s. Look on advertising as the rankest kind of speculation if you xvish, and good common business experience tells you plainly that advertising has possibilities tliat can't he achieved hy other methods. "I don't claim that this advertising xvill sell a pound's xvorth of goods tor you. It might, as in the case of The Company, unearth somo good-sized contracts, but no advertising man xvilf counsel- an industrial concern to expect advertising to do it all. "What this advertising will do is to help the salesman in the field to do his xvork more thoroughly, more effectively and cover more prospects. W e have knoxvn of cases where advertising has increased the calls per salesman one hundred per cent. I think you will be xvilling to admit that an advertising campaign on your products •would enable a salesman to make one more call a day, and remember xvhtle it's doing this the same advertising is reaching 13,600 prospects, some of xvhom are customers, or have been customers and thererore helping to keep them sold or helping to resell them. "This is not an argument against salesmen. There is no one in _ tlie xvhole business- world that believes more in salesmen tlian the professional advertising man, because he understands the exact functions, of advertising and- the exact- functions ' of a salesman. He linows that advertising has 110 more chance of replacing or performing the functions of salesmen than the moon has of shinin'g as hright as the 'sun. "Hoxvever, you have hgd the occasion to observ© perhaps in your oxvn experience hoxv a preliminary letter to a prospect has seemed to open up the way for the discussion of business, and the closing of business. Just recall one of those instances, ancl you will have a vivid picture of just what txventy-six insertions of advertising will do for your salesmen— not one of them, hnt all of them."