The Farmville Herald

Babson Discusses How To Check Unemployment
Babson Park Mass Feb 20
Everyone is aware of the fact that
employment had recently been falling
off despite attempts at rationalization
of increasing unemployment seasonal or as becoming
only once in industries.
We should face the fact; that it is a more general than is healthy for
our economy. It is important that
unemployment be checked
as soon as possible. Among many
propositions coming to me I
especially commend the following by
one of the Babson Institute professors:
Louis Foley.
Salesmanship Is The Problem
There is only one way this mounting
unemployment can be checked.
That is by increasing consumers
demands for finished goods and services
that industry can produce. Factory
halls cannot keep on turning, and
jobs for workers cannot continue
to exist unless their product is
being continually sold. Successful
salesmanship is vital to the prosperity
of all including those in occupations
not directly connected
with selling. So the threat of growing
unemployment becomes particularly a problem for salesmen of
goods and of advertising.
In the buyer's market in which
we now find ourselves, salesmen
will need to exert themselves more
strenuously than they have been
accustomed to doing. This is not,
however, a call for "high-pressure"
selling in the unfavorable sense.
It is neither honest nor effective
salesmanship to mesmerize people
temporarily into buying what they
do not really need or desire, or
what they cannot truly afford to
pay for; in other words, what they
ought not to buy. The best salesmen
are not necessarily "fast talkers."
They use their intelligence
in analyzing the situations of possible
customers
and in deciding
where genuine
sales possibilities
exist. They have the
imagination
and the ingenuity to
demonstrate
to each prospect how their product
is fitted to his requirements and
can furnish him real benefits. These
will appreciate when they are
shown him -- and will want. Salesmanship
is fast becoming a profession,
actuated by professional
standards.
Good Salesmen Are Required
More than ever before, it is
necessary for the salesman to have
thorough knowledge of what he has
to sell. In many lines nowadays
it is indispensable to have an extensive
technical acquaintance with
the products offered, in order to
explain accurately just what kind
of service they can be depended
upon to render. We have evolved
an economy in which success in
salesmanship requires an amount
of preparation and continuing study
that our ancestors would not have
dreamed of as requisite for being
a "mere salesman."
We have come a long way since
the time when "persons of quality"
found it obviously natural to look
down upon those who were engaged
in trade. Salesmanship has become
a completely respectable occupation
because countless intelligent
salesmen are taking their vocation
seriously and dedicating
themselves to it. They are realizing
that they are performing
great service to the nation as
a whole.
It Is Not So Simple Now
One of the saddest plays ever
produced in the theatre was "The
Death of a Salesman" -- sad, that
is, as the story of an individual
who went down to utter defeat.
Perhaps quite unintentionally, however,
it symbolizes something that
need not be considered sad at all
-- the "death" of a certain conception
of salesmanship. It makes
us realize the day of the "drummer"
who depended for success on back-slapping,
telling funny stories, and
being "well liked" is truly past.
Not, of course, that personality is
unimportant; it has always counted
and always will -- in salesmanship as
in everything else. That, however,
must be a factor added to actively
intelligent devotion to one's business
and all that it requires to be
up to date.
We cannot be saved by "security"
which can be only relative and
temporary at best. We can be saved
only by faith. In the final analysis,
it is faith that makes a great salesman
-- a humble faith in his own
ability, faith in the value of what
he labors to sell, faith in our
economy -- and, most important of
all, faith in God. Salesmen may
well be proud of their occupation,
for the maintenance of our way
of life is dependent upon them. We
need more praying salesmen.