“Everyone else seems to be turning to gasoline delivery.  I want to be up to date.”

“Your delivery problem lies outside the gasoline field,” said the salesman.  “Your drivers make an average of ninety stops each trip.  They climb stairs and wait for receipts.  Their rigs are standing at the curb more than half the time.  Nothing in gasoline equipment can compete with the horse and wagon under such conditions.  If you had loads of several tons to be kept moving steadily I’d be glad to sell you two trucks.”

“Suppose I wanted to buy them anyway?”

“We could not accept your order.”

“But you’d make your commission and the company its profit.”

“Yes; but you’d make a loss, and within a year your experience would react unfavorably upon us.”

So no sale was effected.  Facts learned during his investigation of this business man’s delivery problem led the salesman to make suggestions that eliminated waste and increased the effectiveness of his horse rigs.

About a year later, however, this business man sent for the salesman again.  He contemplated motorized hauling for another company of which he was the president.  After two days’ study the salesman reported that motor trucks were practicable and that he needed about five of them.

“All right—­fill out the contract,” directed the business man.

“Don’t you want to know how these trucks are going to make you money?” asked the salesman.

“No; if you say I need five trucks, then I know that’s just what I need!”

A new kind of salesmanship is being developed in many lines of business—­and particularly in the rebuilding of sales organizations made necessary by the ending of the war and return to peace production.  “Study your goods,” was the salesman’s axiom yesterday.  “Study your customer’s problem,” is the viewpoint to-day; and it is transforming the salesman and sales methods.

Indeed, the word salesman tends to disappear under this new viewpoint, for the organization which was once charged largely with disposing of goods may now be so intimately involved in technical studies of the customers’ problems that selling is a secondary part of its work.  The Sales Department is being renamed, and known as the Advisory Department or the Research Staff; while the salesman himself becomes a Technical Counsel or Engineering Adviser.

Camouflage?  No; simply better expression of broader functions.

As a salesman, probably he gave much attention to the approach and argument with which he gained his customer’s attention and confidence.  But, with his new viewpoint and method of attack, perhaps the first step is asking permission to study the customer’s transportation needs, or accounting routine, or power plant—­or whatever section of the latter’s business is involved.

The experience of the thick-spectacled motor-truck salesman was typical.  Originally he sold passenger cars.  Then came the war, with factory facilities centered on munitions and motor trucks.  There being no more passenger cars to sell, they switched him over into the motor-truck section.  There he floundered for a while, trying to develop sales arguments along the old lines.  But the old arguments did not seem to fit, somehow.