The Harvester World: Volume 1, number 8, May 1910

              Current Advertising By M.R.D. Owings
® How many of our blockmen and canvassers and salesmen read the advertising and educational literature which we distribute among the farmers?
® How many of them read the bulletins issued by the Government Experimental Stations and tbe reports of the State Colleges?
®    How many of our men take an intelligent interest in scientific farming? ®    These questions came up at a recent meeting of the sales-managers in which it was claimed that our men generally do not read our advertising matter.
® If they do not, they limit their possibility of maximum sales. It is well understood in general that agricultural machines are purely utilitarian. They are made neither for ornaments nor for recreation. Their object is: first, to increase the farmer's profits; and, second, to lessen his work. If they don't square up to these tests, they are useless. If they do, every farmer should have them.
® Our advertising matter is confined almost entirely to explaining how our machines fulfill these two purposes.
® It is equally well understood that farmers are conservative. They must be taught how useful each machine is to them. This is the purpose of the machine experimentation at the Government Stations; it is the purpose of the educational literature prepared and dis¬ tributed by this Company.
® It is not enough for a salesman to know the technical end of the machines which he sells. Few farmers are mechanics and their real interest centers in the economic value of the machine to them. For instance, no farmer ever bought a manure spreader because it was a well-made, good looking vehicle. He buys because he believes a spreader increases the producing value of his land 30 to 50 per cent and helps him to do in three minutes a disagreeable job which originally took him twenty minutes to do. ® Neither does he buy a cream harvester because he likes to see the wheels go 'round. He buys it because it will increase the profits of his dairy cattle 25 per cent, and at the same time free his family from a laborious task.
® These are elementary facts, but it is to teach the farmer that these things are done and how these things are done that we issue our educational literature, and it is the knowledge and the intelligent demonstration of these things which help sell farm machines. ® We do not claim to be able by our advertising matter to teach the knack of selling or to develop full fledged salesmen, but we do claim that by careful research and by an intelligent massing of data we give the salesman a thorough equipment of selling arguments and selling facts. Salesmen, like poets, are born, not made; but even a born salesman is sometimes helped by knowing more about the goods that he is selling. He cannot demonstrate truth which he himself does not know, nor can he meet the competition of another born salesman better informed than he.
® A department manager came into our office a short time ago and claimed very emphatically that not many salesmen had informed themselves completely as to the possibil¬ ities of our machines. We thought of the $75,000,000 business of last year, and contradicted him. We believe thatagoodmany know theirmachines. Howmany,however, could tell the farmer.that he could pump 3,000 gallous'of water[for two cents]with an ordinary IHC gasoline engine, or give him any of the other data contained in our gasoline engine letter. No. 1? How many know the present twine situation? How many could give an interesting talk to a farmer on the changes which modern machines have brought about in the standard of living? How many know the length of time it takes an International tractor to pay for itself on the wage basis of the men and teams it supplants?
® In the face of the big business we did last year it would be interesting statistics on salesmanship to have these questions answered.
15