SALESMANSHIP AND PROSPERITY

Hokitika Guardian, 3 January 1931, Page 6

SALESMANSHIP AND PROSPERITY

(Auckland “Star”)

The appeal of the Prince of Wales for more attention in Britain to seamanship and better general equipment for the business life may send up immediately the sales of books on the art of selling, and the attendances at salesmanship classes, but, of course, the problem goes much deeper than mere specialised instruction. the Prince raises again a question that lias been troubling many Englishmen for decades past—the effectiveness of the general equipment of the Englishman for the battle of commerce and industry in a changed world. Serious apprehensions were expressed long before the war; it is thirty years since the present King returned irom a voyage round the world, and advised Britain to wake up. Britain had to be shaken out of a condition of security and self satisfaction that was the product of a long period of industrial supremacy. In the nineteenth century Britain was supreme as a manufacturing country, and too many manufacturers and traders, presumed on this fact. “This is British, and that is enough ; take it or leave it” ; there was too much of this spirit in the industrial world. Complaints of lack of interest in customers’ requirements, of failure to study markets and move with the times, are familiar to our readers. An English diplomat records that on a voyage to South America he compared the attitude to their work of English and foreign commercial travellers. The Englishmen were busy amusing themselves, but the foreigners were studying Spanish.

Tt was one of the grievances of the thorough-going German that the Englishman, as the “idle-npprentioe,” had inherited and kept so much of the earth, hut the question is whether liecan maintain his success. The call of the Prince of Wales for greater effort must not blind us to the fact that much has already been done to improve the equipment of the Englisliindustrialist and business man. Education for business has been improved, and there is much less than there was. of the old spirit of impregnable and Providence-ordained superiority. But in the re-conditioning generally of" British industry much remains to be done. A competent authority, in a recent survey of Britain’s conditions, attributes/ her present state of depression partly to inertia, to want of mobility and adaptability, to lack of a. bold effort to meet new conditions by reconstruction on scientific lines. It is true that this, state, .bf 1 things ..is the product partly of Britain’s very virtues. Payment of national debts, and determination to raise and maintain the standard of living, with consequent, heavy taxation, absorb money that might be used in much-needed replacement of plant and general industrial expansion. But, apart from all this, the deadweight; of tradition is still heavy, and it must be made lighter if Britain is to hold: her own.

Salesmanship is only one department in which improvement is declared to be necessary. Tt is significant that at the last meeting of the British Association that agnnst body was addressed on salesmanship by a business man, who appealed to the country to give its best sons to the romantic career of business. Sir Francis Goodenough thought salesmanship should awaken the same sort of enthusiasm as any scientific problem, and tha£, in the words of the “Manchester Guardian,” voung men should throw themselves into business as ardently as into a sonnet. This is a good method of appealing to an Englishman, who is at heart an incurable romanticist; persuade him that selling is also a sport, and he may leave all competitors behind. Especially in its higher forms business may often be both romance of sport, calling for initiative, adventure, endurance and imagination. Ti follows that purely specialised training will not suffice. The man who knows motor cars from mascot to tail-light, but knows nothing else, may be a less efficient, salesman of cars than a University product who has picked np some social- knowledge after bis academic career. Success in business comes from a combination of qualities, and the educational system that gives a liberal education and develops a character is a better' preparation than a curriculum that enforces early specialisation and proceeds along the narrow groove of utilitarianism.