Just Salesmanship

To prop­erly under­stand adver­tis­ing or to learn even its rudi­ments one must start with the right con­cep­tion. Adver­tis­ing is sales­man­ship. Its prin­ci­ples are the prin­ci­ples of sales­man­ship. Suc­cesses and fail­ures in both lines are due to like causes. Thus every adver­tis­ing ques­tion should be answered by the salesman’s standards.

Let us empha­size that point. The only pur­pose of adver­tis­ing is to make sales. It is prof­itable or unprof­itable accord­ing to its actual sales.

It is not for gen­eral effect. It is not to keep your name before the peo­ple. It is not pri­mar­ily to aid your other sales­men. Treat it as a sales­man. Force it to jus­tify itself. Com­pare it with other sales­men. Fig­ure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good sales­men do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.

The dif­fer­ence is only in degree. Adver­tis­ing is mul­ti­plied sales­man­ship. It may appeal to thou­sands while the sales­man talks to one. It involves a cor­re­spond­ing cost. Some peo­ple spend $10 per word on an aver­age adver­tise­ment. There­fore every ad should be a super-​​salesman.

A salesman’s mis­take may cost lit­tle. An adver­tis­ers mis­take may cost a thou­sand times that much. Be more cau­tious, more exact­ing, there­fore. A mediocre sales­man may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre adver­tis­ing affects all of your trade.

Many think of adver­tis­ing as ad writ­ing. Lit­er­ary qual­i­fi­ca­tions have no more to do with it than ora­tory has with sales­man­ship. One must be able to express him­self briefly, clearly and con­vinc­ingly, just as a sales­man must. But fine writ­ing is a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage. So is unique lit­er­ary style. They take atten­tion from the sub­ject. They reveal the hook. Any stud­ies done that attempt to sell, if appar­ent, cre­ates cor­re­spond­ing resistance.

That is so in per­sonal sales­man­ship as in salesmanship-​​in-​​print. Fine talk­ers are rarely good sales­men. They inspire buy­ers with the fear of over-​​influence. They cre­ate the sus­pi­cion that an effort is made to sell them on other lines than merit.

Suc­cess­ful sales­men are rarely good speech mak­ers. They have few ora­tor­i­cal graces. They are plain and sin­cere men who know their cus­tomers and know their lines. So it is in ad writ­ing. Many of the ablest men in adver­tis­ing are grad­u­ate sales­men. The best we know have been house-​​to-​​house can­vassers. They may know lit­tle of gram­mar, noth­ing of rhetoric, but they know how to use words that convince.

There is one sim­ple way to answer many adver­tis­ing ques­tions. Ask your­self, “Would it help a sales­man sell the goods?” “Would it help me sell them if I met a buyer in per­son?” A fair answer to those ques­tions avoids count­less mis­takes. But when one tries to show off, or does things merely to please him­self, he is lit­tle likely to strike a chord which leads peo­ple to spend money. Some argue for slo­gans, some like clever con­ceits. Would you use them in per­sonal sales­man­ship? Can you imag­ine a cus­tomer whom such things would impress? If not, don’t rely on them for sell­ing in print.

Some say “Be very brief. Peo­ple will read for lit­tle.” Would you say that to a sales­man? With a prospect stand­ing before him, would you con­fine him to any cer­tain num­ber of words? That would be an unthink­able hand­i­cap. So in adver­tis­ing. The only read­ers we get are peo­ple whom our sub­ject inter­ests. No one reads ads for amuse­ments, long or short. Con­sider them as prospects stand­ing before you, seek­ing for infor­ma­tion. Give them enough to get action.

Some advo­cate large type and big head­lines. Yet they do not admire sales­men who talk in loud voices. Peo­ple read all they care to read in 8-​​point type. Our mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers are printed in that type. Folks are accus­tomed to it. Any­thing louder is like loud con­ver­sa­tion. It gains no atten­tion worth­while. It may not be offen­sive, but it is use­less and waste­ful. It mul­ti­plies the cost of your story. And to many it seems loud and blatant.

Oth­ers look for some­thing queer and unusual. They want ads dis­tinc­tive in style or illus­tra­tion. Would you want that in a sales­man? Do not men who act and dress in nor­mal ways make a far bet­ter impres­sion? Some insist on dressy ads. That is all right to a cer­tain degree, but is quite impor­tant. Some poorly-​​dressed men, prove to be excel­lent sales­men. Over dress in either is a fault.

So with count­less ques­tions. Mea­sure them by salesmen’s stan­dards, not by amuse­ment stan­dards. Ads are not writ­ten to enter­tain. When they do, those enter­tain­ment seek­ers are lit­tle likely to be the peo­ple whom you want. That is one of the great­est adver­tis­ing faults. Ad writ­ers aban­don their parts. They for­get they are sales­men and try to be per­form­ers. Instead of sales, they seek applause.

When you plan or pre­pare an adver­tise­ment, keep before you a typ­i­cal buyer. Your sub­ject, your head­line has gained his or her atten­tion. Then in every­thing be guided by what you would do if you met the buyer face-​​to-​​face. If you are a nor­mal man and a good sales­man you will then do your level best.

Don’t think of peo­ple in the mass. That gives you a blurred view. Think of a typ­i­cal indi­vid­ual, man or woman, who is likely to want what you sell. Don’t try to be amus­ing. Money spend­ing is a seri­ous mat­ter. Don’t boast, for all peo­ple resent it. Don’t try to show off. Do just what you think a good sales­man should do with a half-​​sold per­son before him.

Some adver­tis­ing men go out in per­son and sell to peo­ple before they plan to write an ad. One of the ablest of them has spent weeks on one arti­cle, sell­ing from house to house. In this way they learn the reac­tions from dif­fer­ent forms of argu­ment and approach. They learn what pos­si­ble buy­ers want and the fac­tors which don’t appeal. It is quite cus­tom­ary to inter­view hun­dreds of pos­si­ble cus­tomers. Oth­ers send out ques­tion­naires to learn the atti­tude of the buy­ers. In some way all must learn how to strike respon­sive chords. Guess­work is very expensive.

The maker of an adver­tised arti­cle knows the man­u­fac­tur­ing side and prob­a­bly the deal­ers side. But this very knowl­edge often leads him astray in respect to cus­tomers. His inter­ests are not in their inter­ests. The adver­tis­ing man stud­ies the con­sumer. He tries to place him­self in the posi­tion of the buyer. His suc­cess largely depends on doing that to the exclu­sion of every­thing else.

This book will con­tain no more impor­tant chap­ter than this one on sales­man­ship. The rea­son for most of the non-​​successes in adver­tis­ing is try­ing to sell peo­ple what they do not want. But next to that comes lack of true salesmanship.

Ads are planned and writ­ten with some utterly wrong con­cep­tion. They are writ­ten to please the seller. The inter­est of the buyer are for­got­ten. One can never sell goods prof­itably, in per­son or in print, when that atti­tude exists.

About the Author

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