Super Salesmen

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 296, 6 March 1928, Page 8

Super Salesmen

CRUSADERS OF THE STREETS Working Without A Salary HOW the ranks of house-to-house canvassers are swelled is revealed hv the selling operations of an American manufacturing company with an agency in Auckland. In answer to an advertisement a dozen prospective salesmen gathered at the branch office yesterday morn-ng. Lae proposition put to them is remarkable for its originality, it for nothing else.

rriHE salesmen of this concern are A invited to work on a commission basis only. “We pay no salary and no travelling expenses,’* explains the director of personnel, toward the close of the long peroration he delivers, individually, to each member of the prospective sales force. Since most of the applicants are out of work, and eager for something

touch with novel methods of organisaing a sales force. All are ushered into a sparsely-furnished room, and take seats round the director’s table. Nothing in the room suggests the nature of the concern with which they are negotiating. The “director,” a sharp-featured young man, distributes application forms, to be filled in by the candidates. Some of the questions seem altogether irrelevant. Name, age, address, last employer—these occasion no surprise. Reason for leaving—that, too, may warrant curiosity. But the number of a man’s dependants, and details about whether he boards, lives with parents, or rents an apartment, do not seem to warrant close attention at so early a stage. The candour expected of the applicants is not at first shown by the director, who in the early stages leaves his interviewers quite in the dark about the type of work offered to them. Having gathered in the papers, the director retires to another room, from which he calls for first one and then another of the mystified candidates. The process of interviewing them, one by one, takes a couple of hours. Each man is told the class of work open, the details of remuneration are explained to him, and if he likes to go on he is told to come back next day for the first instalment of the course in salesmanship. TRYING EVERYTHING Meanwhile the waiting group becomes more and more perplexed and impatient. “Is this a try-on?” asks one. “Search me. A bloke in the street showed me the advertisement, so up I came. A man has to try everything these days.” The atmosphere of mystery is deepened by the fact that the men interviewed do not pass hack through the original room, but retire by another door. At last, in the waiting group, one man rises to examine the lettering on a sheet, of paper folded back against the wall. Its substance is the details of a competition for selling: vacuumcleaners. “Vacuum-cleaners,” he tells the others. "This is no good to me." And he departs. But the others, feeling that any straw may offer hope, wait for their interview with the director. After absorbing a line of sales talk they may qualify as hawkers an 1 embark on their unsalaried crusade. Yes, a man must try everything these days.

more tangible than returns on a purely commission basis, this information is a distinct blow. No hint of it was disclosed by the newspaper advertisement, which merely stated: “Four men earned £7 each before they had been three days in their territory, and another earned £lO 10s during the same period.” Really ambitious men, even though they may lack experience, are promised special consideration by the advertisement, which adds that, as soon as suitable executives are developed, additional branches will be opened throughout New Zealand. Gathering at the appointed hour at the office of the “Director of Personnel,” the candidates are brought into