Excess Capacity and Stability

(Continued from Page 37) take the business of other customers which you are in no better position to serve than they, then you do nothing but waste your money and force them to waste theirs waging war on you in an effort to move some of your customers over to their camp,

3. "Use direct mail and telephone to eliminate all except logical prospects."'

You would be amazed and mavbe amused if vou could sit in our office and see how many timei i seller starts franticatly chasing a buyer after he has already boueht.

4. "Get as much informatiori"-as possible about all your prospects in advance of your calls."

If you were guided by what you can learn from credit and other organizations you would not m-ake, or pay for, more than half the calls you now do. In our indu-stry 8 or 9 out of every ten calls are wasted and a dead loss to someone.

5. "Find out who buys and i_ee him."

One of the best selling lessons I ever learned was from a hard boiled executive of the old school whose motto was "never waste time chasing iron dogs."

6. "Train your men to 'sell' the logical prospect."

A great deal of the failure and inefficiency of your salesmen is chargeable to you. Too many Inen are selling millwork who don't know anything about salesmanship, and who do know too much about how to cut corners on a Millwork list. Mighty few men in this room make any efiort to train their men in salesmanship.

A great many oi you will irgue with me that "There Ain't no such animal." You will agree with me that a cello player must study technique, that to break a hundred requires study of golf technique, some of you study bridge, as well as play it, but you laugh at the idea of technique in salesmanship because you don't understand it and don't want to face the drudgery of mastering it. The time will come when millwork will be SOLD. When it does, quality will count more than price and exces-s capacity will cease to be boog-a-boo.

So far I have talked only aboqt what you could do all by yourself. All these things you can do beit-er thru you. group and it-ii ONLY thru your group that you can dgvelop balanced price lists; equitable trade practices; protect retail {istribution; do creative selling such as educating the buying public to the superiority of wood to metal; cure credit abuses; eliminate "gyp" builders from the field; prevent unfair lien laws, building ordinances, license laws, etc.; study and disseminate cost information: educate salesmen and estimators-and the most important and practi-ial function of organized groupssecure and assure an equal opportunity to all and at the same time mqintain legitimate profit margins.

And there is a broader aspect to association activities that I regard as the keystone to stability in the conditions that prevail in the lumber and millwork industry today and that is co-operation between all groups and all branclres of the industry. Eternal adaptability is the price of survival tgday. It is not enough just for retailers to be organized for thgir own benefit, but manufacturers should be organized, whotesal-ers should be organized, and every group should-cooperate with -eyery other group that is trying to achieve stable conditions in its own end of the business. And if any branch of the lumber or lnillwork industry is not organized in your territory, by all means encourage them to organize. The old idea that organization of one lranch is inimical to the interests of other branches of the same industry is outgrown. No branch of the industry, either retail lumbe_r, retail millwork, or the jobbing or manufacturing groups of eithel lumber or millwork cair follow unsound practicts without hurti{g ever}'one else in the industry as well as themselves. When a jobber or manufacturer sells a cutter, he is sawing off the limb on w-l1ich he is sitting; and a retailer who supports by his purchases an unethical jobber or manufacturer certainly has no one to blame exqept himself if conditions in the industry generally are unsound.

You can't catch two fish on one hook. You won't have sound conditions in your branch of tlre industry for very long if you encourage unsound practices in other branches. It is just good sound common sense to play with your friends and lend neither aid nor comfort to your enemies.

And one of the most useful functions of associations such as this Millwork Institute is its very re'al service in breaking down economic illiteracy; in making competitig-n more intelligent; in rounding off the square corners of the outsiders who have not yet learned that the only road to profits today i_s in working together, and teaching them how to co-operate

We need to present a unite{ front in the business struggle that confronts us. The old days arg gone, never to return. The lumber and millwork industry is turnin6; around and going back to take its proper place as one of the great industries of America. We are coming to have a broader per-spective of our own business and to forget the petty jealousies and narrow short-comings of the past. If we are to drive forward. dealers. wholesalers and manufacturers must join in lifting up the levdi of our industry. Unity of purpose and unity of action will carry our industry further in its fight for prosperity than can be accomp_lished by double the efiort expended haphazardly by individuals.

Co-operation is no longer just a fine theory-it is an economic necessity. And eo-operation doesn't mean €veryone else giving up his pet ideas and adopting youls-it means all working together on the most feasible and practicable common meeting ground that can be found. In the nature of thlngs that common meeting ground is going to be a compromise, partly your ideas, partly the other fellows. It must be developed out of a willingness to see and analyze things from a variety of angles-yours and maybe some one hundred or more others in your particul4r efiort to work together,

No co-operative effort can be nailed down to a definite unchangeable policy either. What is bgst today may have to give way iomorrow to something that bgtter meets tomorrow's needs, We must keep our hearts and min-ds in harmony with changing conditions and be willing at all time-s to toss old ideas and plans into the discard and adopt new ones in their stead if that seems the advisable thing to do after thorough and careful study of changing conditions.

The work of the world today is being done by groups. All of us know more than any of us. Together we can control the sale of our products. Separately we are at the mercy of chaotic conditions. Only by ORGA,NIZATION a4d CO-OPERATION can we achieve STABILITY.