put his eye on every possible need each car has-he wants that salesman to know the talking points of each item.

It is not sufficient for the "gasoline salesman" merely to suggest to the car owner that a gasoline gauge would be a handy trick, but also he must know, if he hopes to make many sales, the selling points of gasoline gauges. The salesman may create scores of orders and pick up many dollars for this one simple item each day by being alive and knowing the strong points.

"How much to-day?" he may ask, casually and apparently with no purpose other than to know how much the customer wants, but really with the purpose to convict the car owner of not knowing how much gasoline is in his tank. "Don't know; just fill her up," is apt to be the answer in most instances, which lays open the field for a selling talk on gasoline gauges that will enable the car owner to know at any time just how much gasoline he has. The sales talk is in the catalogue.

Or, while a colored porter fills the tank, the salesman may be inside the "glass front," sizing up the tires, the "attachments," etc., which the car owner has already put on, and the car owner himself. If an opening suggests itself he may stroll out to the curb and ask another friendly, simple question, just as harmless-sounding as "how much gasoline," but with a deeper purpose leading up to interesting the car owner in a new top or a new set of tires or a nifty radiator hood, or running board mats, or a car heater, or wire wheels, or any one of hundreds of things he may see an opening for the sale of-all providing he knows the talking points of the many lines in stock or which can be obtained quickly when sold.

The purpose of the catalogue, as Mr. Bowman sees it, is to put into the dealer's thought the main selling ideas of each item listed, so that he can see these uses; literally these markets.

All live dealers-and most dealers are live from a selling point of view-are looking for new

lines to push and new ways of pulling trade into a store.

Where most dealers fall down is not in the desire to make sales, nor to sell a given item, but in knowing how to sell each item. In the accessory business, for instance, more than a thousand separate lines now are on the market. Probably half of these can be used by any car owner, and the other half are special for the Ford only.

It is no small course of education for a dealer to learn how to sell each of those thousand items. He may himself be sold on a thing, and be convinced that every car owner ought to have one or a gross, but unless he knows why well enough to be able to convince the car owner, he is not apt even to try very hard to sell it. If he tries a few times and falls down, he may pass up the line as hard to sell and forget everything but his loss on it.

There also is a slowing-up element in the variety of lines for a given purpose, like tire pumps, lifting-jacks, etc. Not knowing which is best, the dealer is apt not to push any.

Nearly all, or at least a considerable part, of the alleged "slowness" on the part of dealers in selling different lines is due to this lack of information.

ENABLES DEALER TO LEARN ABOUT MANY LINES

A manufacturer will sell a dealer a thousand "tape-moisteners" as was recently done in the case of a Detroit office-equipment store by a manufacturer-and then expect the dealer to sit up nights learning how to sell it. The dealer knows how to sell it-cut the price to half and pile them in his window; though he never does this till he loses confidence in the line.

Merely sending such a dealer a hundred-page book giving selling points of the goods, won't do the trick, for the hundred-page book, taking a whole day to digest thoroughly, and written in such a leisurely style that he can't pry or

squeeze or tear anything out of it in the few minutes he can afford to give it, is exactly the same as no sales talk at all.

The catalogue, on the other hand, can condense the selling talk on each item to a few sentences or a few paragraphs, so that the dealer can get the gist of the arguments and the selling ideas quickly and inexpensively. The net result is that he knows the main talking points of hundreds of items and can call up the best points of each item on the instant.

The idea, as used by the Bowman people, is to assume that the dealer knows nothing about each item, even when it has been advertised several times around the world, and to give him in the listing of every item the principal selling points, the main uses, the reasons why and where it will sell, etc.

For, after all, what is the dealer but a purchasing agent for his community in his particular line? He gets his "wages" by buying well. If he buys things his "boss" (the trade) doesn't wish, then he loses, and the manufacturer who sells it to him is apt to lose also, through pricecutting and "dumping." He must know how to make his trade see the goods as he sees them.

Another important point not lost sight of by the Bowman people is that most any catalogue is apt to contain hundreds of items, or at least scores of items, not actually in the dealer's stock.

A car owner may come in some day and inquire for, say, "The Eugene" gasoline gauge. The dealer, we will say, never heard of this particular gauge, or at least has forgotten that he ever did, but instead of turning the customer away, or trying to sell him something else, he goes to his catalogue.

Yes, sure enough, here it is, "The Eugene Gauge." He shows the illustration, customer the reads the description and selling talk to him, explains, if need be, what that means, how it works, what it will do and the price.

Possibly he scratches his head and comments favorably on this ingenious device and declares: "Somehow we have missed that! We surely ought to have some of those! If you will stop tomorrow as you pass we'll have it for you."

Suppose that listing had been just a "price-list" listing, with a few technical descriptive phrases at most. The sale would have been harder and might have been lost, but right there in the listing, in a paragraph or two, was the whole selling talk, or all that was really needed to cover the important features.

It is important, though, very important, and must not be overlooked, that these selling talks in the catalogue must be brief and straight to the point. The dealer must be able to get the gist of the whole matter in a few seconds. He cannot in the presence of a customer, or any other time, read a whole page to get at the meat of the proposition. They must, rather, be suggestive, and written for the dealer; they must apply each particular device to the dealer's own general knowledge of such devices, or his general knowledge of the problems each item is designed to solve.

Price of Footwear Ac-
cessories

Retail shoe dealers of Cincinnati recently sent a telegram to be read at the convention of shoe finders in Milwaukee, to this effect:

"At a meeting of the Retail Shoe Selling Group of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, the following resolution was adopted:

"WHEREAS: The advertised retail price of an article of any kind, such as rubber heels, shoe findings, arch props, and polishes, is a great menace to our interests, and

WHEREAS: We believe it is the purpose and intent of your organization to carefully guard the best interests of the retail shoe selling business of America, therefore be it

"RESOLVED: That the Retail Shoe Selling Group of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce go on record as soliciting the co-operation of the National Leather and Shoe Finders' Association in the elimination of this phase of lost motion in the retail shoe selling business of America."