SELLING LUMBER 211 



writing, holding up of orders, and actual dollars and cents loss due 

 to simple mistakes is astonishing. It has been said the American 

 people waste three hundred million dollars per year making and 

 correcting clerical mistakes. Our sales offices check over and work 

 through twenty to fifty times as many orders as each salesman 

 averages daily. The sales office force watches the orders very care- 

 fully, but there is such a mass of work at times that occasionally 

 something slips by. The misplacing of a grade, mistake in the size 

 or length, or in a moulding number can develop easily into an amount 

 of loss that would overcome a substantial average in price. If 

 you will organize your work and. follow some system of carefully 

 checking back every item and phase of an order, a great many mis- 

 takes can be avoided, besides the saving of time and actual money 

 loss and embarrassment. 



This is the kind of a paper difficult to get up without causing 

 the suspicion that the sales agents are a bunch of kickers and cannot 

 see anything pleasant in any order; but such is not really the case. 

 Nobody hopes for perfection yet; we realize that there are many 

 obstacles for our boys to overcome in their work, and in the main 

 everything considered the lumber salesman shows gratifying re- 

 sults, under his handicaps. We are here to try to raise some of 

 the bars, and this meeting marks the beginning of a campaign of 

 education along broad lines which is going to tend to lift us out of Criticism 

 the ruts and put us all into motion towards the highest efficiency in That May 

 our distribution scheme. We are all here expecting to have a good 

 deal of criticism piled on us, and hope to make that criticism in- 

 structive and helpful rather than mere fault finding. You know 

 the first thing to do towards correcting something that is wrong 

 is to find out what is wrong. I am only anxious that this paper may 

 give you an insight into some of the points considered by sales de- 

 partments about the mechanical features of orders and salesmanship 

 that will start such discussion in your own mind and with others, as 

 in the end will prove helpful. 



