Article Surfing Archive

An advertising and sales manager whose business it in to put novelties on the market, '"dovetails" his advertisements and selling talks with pictures and demonstration. He thinks the interview through from approach to "get-away," studies out what buyers want in the novelty and what they will take for granted, looks at the proposition from their side and tries to anticipate objections. When he has found the strongest possible attraction, he plans a demonstration precisely in line with it. He finds how to tell or echo his main points to the eye, to the tongue, to the fingers.

In the same way, you can adapt a demonstration to almost any interview.

"With that dealer," a salesman reported to his employer, "the mere mention of dust-absorbing cloths is the signal for a brainstorm. He has been stuck with several worthless imitations which women bought on his reputation. Their complaints have driven him to quit handling such goods. Quality and guaranty do not matter'he won't listen to them.''

"Don't ask him to listen," said the manufacturer. "You wouldn't ask a deaf man to listen. You'd talk on your fingers'you'd make him see."

A few days later the salesman again visited the dealer. Without a word, he opened his case, took out a sample cloth and held it up. Half covering the square of cloth was a prominent trade-mark. The dealer's eyes snapped, but he waited. "If the woman who buys this cloth doesn't like it," said the salesman concisely, "our trade-mark will forever warn her against our line. We ought to know whether she'll like it. Would we make the trade-mark so prominent unless we knew it is watched for?"

The eye appeal got past the man's prejudice. The first sentence of the talk clinched it, and the every-day phases of demonstration followed with success.

Just as the fan demonstrator sold by sample a current of cool air always at command'just as the dust-cloth salesman crushed down a prejudice by addressing his quality guaranty to the eye instead of the ear; so sheet music is best sold by demonstration on the part of trained performers; so an invention which in blue print failed to interest capital, succeeded when the working model was put before the prospect's eyes; so the automobile is sold by a talk which hinges upon a demonstration over city and country roads, up hills and over " thanks ma'ams." Similarly the executive who hires men or develops business plans can use his tools of demonstration'the telephone, the desk pad, the technical book, the lucky chance of his surroundings and the careful prearrangement of his office'to heighten interest, prevent interruptions, prove his points and urge immediate decision.

Demonstration goes even further. Expertly handled, it keeps your listener's senses busy in line with your talk. It prevents him from criticizing, from raising objections, from noticing interruptions and from turning to competing propositions. A mail order house keeps country visitors so interested in the demonstration of its own business facilities that their whole day is taken and no opportunity left to visit a competing concern. A western road salesman happened in on a large dealer the day he was starting for the eastern market. He came with him to Chicago and induced him to stop first at his own wholesale house. There a day's visit so completely satisfied him that he abandoned the eastern trip.

The ambition of advertisers is always to short-cut the word path and play directly upon the senses. Electric signs, moving pictures, music and mechanical noises, advertising phrases that carry the fragrance of perfume, the velvet softness of fur and the smack of good eating are the efforts of the advertiser to do what demonstration does for every skilled business talker. The advertiser, however, is striking at the crowd! The talker can focus his demonstration upon his individual listener's interest'upon the inner desires which control that particular man's decision.