September 25, 1922 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



19 



Observations on Hardwood Selling 



A Few of the Elements of Success in Landing the ''Big Fish, '' as 

 Determined by Talks with a Number of Them 



By Aristotle, Jr. 



Possibly the mos!: elementary rule for the successful merchan- 

 dising of any commodity is to give the buyer what he wants. It 

 ■would seem that this truth would be one of the first to be dis- 

 covered by any man undertaking to sell anything. But you are 

 too hopeful of the wisdom of mankind! It is astounding, yet true, 

 that some salesmen, in fact a good many, never learn this ABC 

 of their calling. Many firms never learn it. Somehow their in- 

 tuition is so dull, their powers of observation so slothful, their 

 ability to put two and two together so poor that they go through 

 life trying to force upon the buyer what they want him to buy 

 rather than give what the buyer himself wants and needs. It 

 never dawns upon these fellows that any transaction, if it is to 

 beget further business aud create goodwill, instead of enmity and 

 bickering, must be mutually profitable. They fail ever to realize 

 that the only kind of business worth transacting, the only kind that 

 means ultimate gain, is that in which the customer as well as the 

 seller makes a profit, that in which the customer as well as the seller 

 is gratified. These shortsighted fellows manage to eke out a pre- 

 carious livelihood, but by their blindness to the finer aspects of 

 business they are forever doomed o the lower ranks of commerce; 

 they must content themselves with a limited success and suffer 

 throughout their careers the petty aggravations of doing business 

 with the little buj'er, with the bad risk and slow-pay fellow. They 

 never experience .he delight of dealing graciously, of building up 

 enduring trade and enduring friendships with big, rich and re- 

 liable customers. It falls to their lot to live upon the husks of the 

 trade, missing the rich meats altogether. 



These observations are concerned, of course, with hardwood lum- 

 ber and are prompted by conversations had here and there with 

 the purchasing agents, or buyers, for various great wood-using in- 

 stitutions. These buyers are representative of the most desirable 

 custom in the hardwood trade. They purchase annuallj' hundreds 

 of thousands and millions of feet of hardwood lumber and veneers. 

 There is no question of risk in selling such buyers any quantity. 

 Generally the concerns they represent pay cash on delivery and 

 there is no bother with long-term credits. Whenever you manage 

 to establish yourself with one of them you secure a safe, steady 

 and profitable outlet for thousands of feet of your product annually. 

 If you are able and willing to furnish the stock they require, you 

 receive on the average prices well above the market. After you 

 have demonstrated your reliability to one of these concerns, your 

 selling cost may be cut almost to the vanishing point. You no 

 longer have to sell this customer, he buys and continues to buy, 

 without your special urgiug, so long as you continue to give him 

 the service he demands. This is the kind of business that builds 

 up your profits and sustains you through good times and bad. But 

 over and above money profits there is the splendid compensation of 

 doing business with people of intelligence and high integrity, of 

 friendship and goodwill in your business life, tinder such condi- 

 tions merchandising hardwoods is no longer drudgery, but fun. 



Give the Customer What He Wants 

 But to succeed in capturing this kind of trade, the merchandiser 

 of hardwoods must have sense enough to resolve the problem of 

 selling into the simple formula of giving the customer what he 

 wants. The "clever" salesman, who conceives of his dealings 

 with his customers as a game of wits in which the aim is to "slip 

 some hing over" on the other fellow, whose policy is to give no 

 more in a particular grade than the most liberal interpretation of 

 the rules will permit, can not hope to get and hold this class of 



trade. We will .say that one of these clever fellows gets a trial 

 order (it is a trial order wlie her he knows it or not) from one of 

 these big users of hardwoods. He ships on this order no more 

 than the minimum requirements of the grades specified by the 

 buyer. The car arrives in the yard of the big consumer and the 

 firm 's inspector, who is almost invariably an expert, unloads the 

 lumber. This veteran inspector very easily discovers that the 

 grades have been "skinned," and he reports this to the buyer. If 

 the shipment falls below the minimum requirements, the buj^er may 

 kick and secure an adjustment. Or, if he thinks that the shipment 

 just will come wi hin the rules, he says nothing and takes his medi- 

 cine. But in any event he knows that he has been cheated; that 

 the man who so'.d him this sliipment has tried to "get away with 

 something." Therefore, he is resentful and he makes up his mind 

 that he will buy nothing more from this firm if he can help it. 

 Sometime later this clever salesman, working for the clever firm, 

 calls again, expecting a repeat order. Mr. Salesman is politely in- 

 formed by the young lady at the information desk that the buyer 

 is not just now in the market for any hardwoods. This salesman 

 may continue to call on this concern for years and not sell another 

 car of lumber and all the time be wondering why he is continually 

 rebuffed. 



The firm that gets the business this grade skinner is missing 

 and forms a valuable permanent connection is one that had the 

 foresight to restrain its greed, that did not seek to take advantage 

 of the technical latitude in grading rules, but furnished the buyer 

 the best class of stock within the grades specified, having in mind 

 the needs of the buyer, rather than the uttermost farthing of 

 profit. In other words, good lengths and widths were not "skinned 

 out," but left in. This might strike the "slick" lumberman as 

 poor business, but his successful competitor believes that it is the 

 best kind of business, because he knows that buyers who are worth 

 doing business with at all demand good service and are willing to 

 pay for it. 



Special Service Is Demanded 



As a matter of fact, the hardwood concern that wants to secure 

 the cream of the trade, must be willing to make concessions and 

 give special service. Service, or the lack of it, is what gets or 

 loses this trade. You cannot stand upon technicalities and deal 

 with this trade. "Whenever I find that I am dealing with a tech- 

 nical shipper, I quit doing business with him," the buyer for one 

 of the biggest piano manufacturing institutions in the country 

 said the other day. "I am not interested in the technicalities of 

 grading rules; I want a certain kind of stock, I have to have it and 

 I am going to get it. If one firm can't furuish it there is another 

 that can." 



This expresses the attitude of the majority of the experienced 

 buyers for industries using large quantities of hardwoods and rep- 

 resenting wealth and the highest measure of honesty and responsi- 

 bility. The buyers for these big concerns don't buy so much ac- 

 cording to grading rules as to their special requirements. "I don't 

 give a damn about grading rules. ' ' the buyer quoted aliove said 

 bluntly. Then he explained: "I buy all my poplar (and I buy a 

 lot of it) from a concern that ships me a special grade. It is a 

 grade somewhere between 2A and 2B, which just for the sake of 

 a name I call 'piano poplar.' Others have tried, or pretended to 

 try, to furnish this grade to me, but they either couldn't, or didn't 

 care to, train their inspectors to sort out the special grade I demand. 



tCotitinu^tf on page 49) 



