204 



SELLING LUMBER 



Salesmen 



Should 



Watch 



Trend of 



Public 



Demand. 



Acceptability 

 of Orders 

 at the Mill. 



doubtless it would be found that the manufacturers and producers 

 of these lines were more or less familiar with the troubles and ob- 

 stacles of distribution. The lumber business has the whole manage- 

 ment within its own hands, and it does look as if a practicable 

 working knowledge of the operations of manufacture by the sales- 

 man and some education in salesmanship for the producers would 

 give us gratifying results. 



As this paper is supposed to confine itself to the main line of 

 the subject judging orders I will not attempt to venture many 

 remarks about giving our mechanical departments an insight into the 

 mysteries of practical salesmanship, excepting to say that I consider 

 it one of the vital duties of every salesman to carefully watch the 

 trend of demand in his territory so that he may indicate to the pro- 

 ducers through his sales department certain tendencies of inquiries 

 that would help the manufacturing end to put onto the stock sheet 

 the most of the kinds and grades wanted at the proper season. 



While observations of various salesmen lead me to believe that 

 it does not necessarily follow because a man has been long ex- 

 perienced in a manufacturing end of a business that he will naturally 

 turn out to be a good salesman, it is true that a really good sales- 

 man will have the important facts of the details of manufacture 

 well in mind and know the things that cannot be done and those 

 that can be done most easily. 



It is well known that no matter how expert or skillful our 

 manufacturers may become in their art, a tree cannot be "moulded" 

 entirely into the shapes, lengths, sizes and grades that might be 

 demanded. Certain characteristics of the timber, defects, size of 

 trees and operating conditions are involved in the processes of man- 

 ufacture to such an extent that while it is surprising how much can 

 be done ; nevertheless, we have over-productions of some materials 

 and under productions of other items. As a consequence, our. sales 

 department finds itself with some stock at nearly all times that 

 the trade does not freely absorb. We have to force the movement 

 of this stock with every device of salesmanship, at the same time 

 holding in check the demand for the staple items, spreading them 

 carefully over as large a number of orders as we can to reap the 

 greatest benefits for the mill out of what desirable items it may 

 have. 



Every order received has a various degree of acceptability to 

 the mill for which it is figured. Quite a sprinkling of bad ones 

 come in, and lots of good ones; and it is probable that all sales 



