Executives Should Sell

Retail Lumber Dealers Misht Follow in Footsteps of Big Business Executives and Do Some Personal Sales \ilork

By Harold Knopp General Sales Manager, The Celotex Company

Executives of big businesses are difficult to see these days. They are seldom at their desks. Frequently, they are reported "out of town" by their secretaries. And they actually are out of town.

These men have deserted their desks for "the road." Some of them are selling their company's products. Each of them is selling his company, itself-the personnel of his organization, his company's policies, the idea behind its merchandising plans and the benefits of its promotional activities. These executives have recognized the fact that customers like to know about the orgAnization they are dealing with as well as about its products, that they prefer purchasing from people they know and from companies they understand.

A few years ago these executives believed they lvere too busy for this type of selling, that they could not find the time to get acquainted with their customers. But today they have discovered that because of this, many a customer carries a distorted picture in his mind of what the executive's company really is, what its aims and policies are and what it is striving to do for its customers. Those executives, that during the past year have deserted their offices and learned to know their custo-.rs' ha'oe found that many times the latter viewed the former in an inac:curate and frequently unpleasant light.

; Executives have found many customers with a secret grudge engendered by a long past misunderstanding. Or ,the customer has viewed the executive's company as a 'hardboiled organization, difficult to do business with or .perhaps unfair and grasping, simply because he, the cusitom,er, has never learned the company's side of the picture.

The attitude with which many customers, or prospective customers, regard some companies reminds me of a story told many years ago by old Tobe Dabs when I lvas rworking next to him in the Eastman Gardner plant at ,Laurel, Miss. He told about his father and mother going ,down to the railroad station during the Civil war to see the first batch of Yankee prisoners go through that u'ere being taken to a concentration camp near Nerv Orleans. Seeing these despised Yankee soldiers for the first time, his mother exclaimed, "Why, they look jest like folks !"

To me, it seems that there is a valuable lesson for every lumber merchant in Tobe Dabs story and also in the 'things executives of big businesses have discovered about their customers. That lesson is this-that the lumber merchant who makes himself and the complete services of his company known to the most customers and prospects will get the most business, both today and next vear. This is possible only if the boss, himself, whether he be owner or yard manag'er, can escape from the routine that chains him to the office and go out to give his custonters and prospects a chance to learn what he and his company can do for them. Also, it is only by doing this that he can become well enough acquainted with the individual prospects's needs to ofier helpful, profitable suggestions. Obviously, I am speaking here of the boss of the average and small yard. Even if he has little office help he will get more business if he can escape and leave routine work in the care of a clerk or girl. The owner or manager of a big retail lumber establishment cannot, of course, personally contact more than a small percentage of his customers and prospects. But the manager of a large yard should delegate the remainder of the task to his junior executives.

The method of approaching the prospective customer the lumber merchant is to use depends somewhat upon local conditions. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Vosler and Deloof Company are carrying the sale of small farm buildings directly to the farm doorstep. They are using a truck carrying three Celotex insulated farm buildings-a brooder hous.e, a milk house and a hog house-on the rou.nds of the farms in their territory. The salesman accompanying the truck is a man who knows the farmer's viewpoint and appreciates his problem. Stopping in a farmer's yard, this salesman is able to show the farmer the particular advantages of each of the farm buildings carried on the truck. But more important than this he is maintaining a close relationship between Vosler and Deloof Company and the farmers in their territory so that he is not only building immediate sales but also sales in th,e future.

In Modesto, California, United Lumber Yards. Inc.. for five years has used electrical household appliances such as refrigerators, radios and washing machines to maintain close contact with the public. "It has been our experience," declares T. W. Kerwin, president of the company, "that wherever we have sold a refrigerator we have established in that home the name of the United Lumber Yards, Inc., and we find these users to be our best prospects not only for other electrical products but also for all products handled by us." Mr. Kerwin, himself, spends much of his time "on the outside."

Joe Donahue and Jess Pavey of the South Bend Lumber Company, South Bend, Indiana, have a set-up similar to that of United Lumber Yards, Inc. They handle a complete line of electric refrigerators, washing machines, Vacuum cleaners and such household appliances.

Another method of cultivating close contact with prospective customers u'as employed recentlv by 29 P-K Associated Lumber Yards in Ohio. A traveling exhibition in lvhich the products of 4O manufacturers lvere displayed \,vas arranged by the Peter Kuntz Company of Dayton, Ohio. This exhibition traveled from yard to yard for more

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Trvo of the accompanying illustrations shor,v the exterior and interior of one of the new lodges under construction at Switzer's Camp in the Arroyo Seco Canyon located in the foothills near Pasadena, Calif. L. B. Austin, owner of Switzer's Camp, has extensive improvements going on and plans to make this one of the finest and most attractive mountain resorts in Southern California. For the interior finish of the cabin, Mr. Austin used Harbord Douglas fir plywood rvallboard, sanded to one quarter inch thickness, which rvas furnished through the Johnson Lumber Company of Pasadena.

Switzer's Camp is now reached by the new Palmdale State Highrvay from Flintridge. The photograph below shows the new reinforced concrete bridge over Fern Canyon about five miles from Lacanada, on the scenic Palmdale highway. Harbord Douglas fir plywood panels, sold under the trade name of "Plycrete," were used throughout the bridge structure for concrete forms, giving the bridge the smooth finished surface required by the California State Highway Department. The bridge was recently constructed by Houghton & Anderson, of Los Angeles, general con-