What the Salesman Should Know 



There are two things the salesman of any commodity ought to 

 know as much about as possible. One is his own commodity, and 

 the other is the requirements of his customer. 



A great many hardwood lumber salesmen fall down at one end or 

 the other, and some at both. Too few salesmen are familiar with 

 manufacturing and handling lumber. A great many of them are 

 located in consuming districts, and seldom get to the mills. They 

 have not learned the characteristics of the lumber they are selling, 

 and hence their talk regarding it, instead of expert characterization, 

 is usually colorless, bromidic repetition of the usual claims. 



If every lumberman were to make a point of having his salesman 

 go through his plant, study his lumber on the yard and see just what 

 is being done to insure good material for the user, it would solve a 

 great many problems that are exceedingly diflScult under present 

 conditions. 



On the other hand, even those salesmen who are close to con- 

 sumers often fail to grasp the essential features of their lumber re- 

 quirements. They merely take the announcement of the grades 

 wanted, and quote on them, without stopping to consider whether those 

 grades are best suited to the needs of the customer. He profits most 

 who serves best, and ' ' service ' ' in limiber is certainly indicating the 

 right stock for the purpose. Many consumers are not practical lum- 

 bermen, and buy without having really analyzed their own require- 

 ments, and the salesman who came along with ability to do this for 

 them would command their interest, attention and respect. And that 

 is the only royal road to business. 



It is true that many buyers of lumber are suspicious of the sales- 

 man, and do not encourage him to make suggestions, nor to depart 

 from the routine system of quoting on standard grades. But the 

 opportunity to improve over this method is so plain that it ought to 

 be taken hold of. 



How to Scare Away Business 



A good many people, hardwood lumbermen included, seem to think 

 that the only absolutely certain method of getting an order is to make 

 the price so low that it will be certain to foot the list of quotations. 

 That this is not always the case was indicated by the following 

 statement of a leading lumber buyer recently: 



' ' I have just placed an order for several cars of No. 1 common 

 quartered white oak. I got a number of quotations before ordering. 

 I didn't give the business to the concern which quoted highest, but 

 by the same token I withheld it from the chap who asked less than 

 anybody else for his stock. This happened to be a lumberman who 

 was willing to take $5 a thousand less than I bought the material 

 for. 



' ' Why didn 't I save the $5 ? Well, I was afraid of the lumber. 

 I figure that I'll just about get my money's worth, when I buy 

 material for my factory, and I would rather pay a fair price and get 

 good honest value than buy at the bottom of the market and get 

 scrubby stock. And I was pretty certain that was what would be 

 the result. 



"It's to the interest of the buyer, as well as the seller, that the 

 latter make money on the business. If he takes an order for less 

 than the intrinsic value of the material, the temptation to cut the 

 quality in accord with the previously cut price is so great as to be 

 ahmost irresistible. I always dodge the fellows who are quoting 'way 

 under the market, because I have been convinced that I caimot get 

 satisfaction in that way." 



"Give a Dog a Bad Name — " 



The old adage about the effect of giving a dog a bad name applies 

 also to lumber, and with particular force to the lumber which has 

 been rejected for one reason or another. A salesman recatly said 

 that he would rather be given the task of selling three care of stock 

 in the usual way than moving one car that had been turned down. 



' ' People find out about such matters, ' ' he said, ' ' and nearly always 

 smell a mouse if a car of lumber has been rejected. There may be 

 perfectly good reasons for this — misunderstanding of the order, or 

 a special requirement of the customer that the particular lot of 



stock shipped did not meet, or simply the fact that the customer had 

 bought the lumber cheaper after having given the order in the first 

 place. There are some concerns which will do a thing of that sort, 

 though most of them have been pretty well spotted. 



' ' The matter of taking care of some special requirement is the 

 hardest factor to dispose of. There is a certain automobile concern 

 which is a large buyer of ash. It specifies tough ash, however, and 

 if the lumber doesn't look tough to its inspectors, you have a big 

 car of ash on your hai^ds in that market. You may harve given 

 special pains to the seleajiion of the stock, but your views are not 

 given much consideration.'. If the ash isn't as tough as it ought to 

 be, according to the opinion of the consumer, good night 1 



"The only way to avoid having rejected cars is to be absolutely 

 certain that you know what the customer wants, and to put everything 

 into the order. The salesman may understand perfectly what his 

 customer requires, but if he isn't sufliciently specific in' sending in 

 the business, there is likely to be a mix-up that will result in a re- 

 jected car, with all its attendant troubles. Of course, you will have 

 kicks and rejections, no matter how hard you try, but the prescrip- 

 tion I have given will help to avoid a good many of them.'" 



Should the Salesman Settle "Kicks"? 



One of the mooted questions in the hardwood lumber business is 

 whether or not the man who sells the lumber should be the one to 

 go back and make an adjustment if this becomes necessary after the 

 stock is delivered. Though this is often done, and is perhaps the 

 rule, there are a good many logical reasons against it. 



In the first place, the salesman naturally feels favorable to the 

 customer from whom he has gotten business. When it comes to a 

 settlement, he cannot help thinking about the next order, and trying 

 to make the adjustment as favorable to the customer as the house 

 will stand for. Hence the latter 's interest is likely to suffer, be- 

 cause the man who is of the temperament to make a good salesman 

 and at the same time is judicial and cold enough to be a good ad- 

 juster or collector is such a rara avis that he ought to be catalogued 

 and put on exhibition. 



If the lumberman can possibly do it, he should use different men 

 for this work. He is much more likely to get good results in this 

 way, and he will not be handicapping the work of the salesman by 

 having him mix up in the settlement of complaints, which are likely 

 to cause more or less friction. 



One for the Small Millman 



One of the most common expressions heard in discussing the lum- 

 ber business with small hardwood manufacturers is the necessity of 

 getting the most out of the log. This reaUy means, as a matter of 

 fact, getting as many high grade boards, irrespective of thickness, as 

 possible out of every log that is put on the carriage. 



It sounds well, and looks impressive to see the sawyer keep cutting 

 and turning constantly with the effort to make as many good thick 

 boards as possible at every operation. But is it really the best possi- 

 ble plan? 



In the first place, inch is usually the standard dimension. To cut 

 thick stock when the log will permit will indeed raise the percentage 

 of high-grade lumber produced, but will it not, at the same time, 

 lower the quality of the inch? If the sawyer, every time he sees a 

 clear face, cuts it as thick as he can, and makes inch only when 

 there is nothing else to be done, it's evident that his log-run inch is 

 going to be less desirable lumber than the thick stock. That is to 

 say, his inch is not so valuable, intrinsically, as that of the man who 

 has cut his logs into inch right along, and who, consequently, has all 

 of the best material in that thickness. Getting the most out of the 

 log in the matter of grade does not necessarily mean getting. the 

 most money, for it stands to reason that the man who has used the 

 best he has to make inch ought to be able to get more for it than the 

 manufacturer who "robbed the inch" for the sake of pUing up 

 some thick high-grade stock. And everybody can realize the greater 

 difficulty of accumulating a stock of thick lumber and selling it than 

 is the case with inch. 



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