Word: salesmen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...each enrollee. Xerox sells its customers on the fact that managers spend 45% of their time listening to others; yet let most of what they hear go in one ear and out the other. The half-day drill brings marked improvement: "retention" rates in one group of salesmen (notoriously poor listeners) rose from 20% to 84% after the course. Jarman was so enthusiastic about the program that he ordered the sessions for 800 other Genesco staffers. "The listening course sharpens a latent skill," says General Electric Personnel Consultant Dr. G. Roy Fugal. "It's like a game of golf...
...Hang-Up. The games get trickier in other courses. More than 55 companies have each paid a minimum $6,300 to send more than 10,000 salesmen through the 25-hour "professional selling skills" course. In small groups of six or so, the pitchmen analyze realistic, tape-recorded selling situations, then break off for "roleplay" sessions with "pretend" customers. The students soon overcome what Xerox's Ted Lee says is the salesmen's major hangup: "Most salesmen hate to ask for a final sales commitment because they are afraid of getting turned down...
...Incentives. "Nobody works for Marion who isn't productive," says Kauffman. His salesmen, young and mostly recruited from small colleges, are expected to see 20% more doctors and pharmacists a week than competing salesmen and to increase their sales consistently. Those who pass these tests are rewarded with air-conditioned cars, color television sets, shotguns and longer vacations. Ultimately, the most productive salesmen are admitted to membership in the "M Club." They get an Oldsmobile instead of a Chevrolet or Ford as a company car, take double vacations and stay in hotel suites instead of rooms...
Wayne M. Hansen, co-editor of the Avatar, said that yesterday's free distribution was a protest against the obscenity charges and Cambridge's arrest of two Avatar salesmen for selling without a license on Tuesday. Jessie B. Lyman, a writer for the Avatar, said, "The 11th issue [which was banned in Boston] wasn't obscene, so we made the next two obscene in defiance...
...data. Yes and no, or multiple choice answers never capture crucial nuances in subject response. Take a hypothetical attempt to measure the education of southern Negroes by asking if they have encyclopedias. A yes response could mean a high literacy; it could mean encyclopedias are status symbols, or local salesmen are on the ball...