Salesman's Salesman

U.S. industry, which does a crack job of selling its products, often flops in trying to sell itself to the public. To see if there were a surer way to make friends as well as customers, 70 companies of the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, in northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania, formed a local organization called Industrial Information Institute, Inc. After rounding out its first year, I.I.I, last week had a pattern of local salesmanship that businessmen of other industrial regions could apply with profit.

Principal organizer and president of I.I.I, is William J. Sampson Jr., 51, head of the American Welding & Manufacturing Co. of Warren, Ohio. Big (282 Ibs.), bluff Bill Sampson had his own idea of how a free-enterprise system should be presented. He thought the job should be done locally, that national ad campaigns by big trade and lobbying groups were too general to be effective. "Besides," says he, "there's a feeling that anything that the National Association of Manufacturers or the American Iron & Steel Institute do has the kiss of death on it."

To correct any misconceptions about industrial profits, 42 members of I.I.I., including some privately owned companies which were under no obligation to show figures, totaled their profits and distributed the figures to employees. While most employees thought the companies were making up to 35-c- on each dollar of income, the figures showed that the average profit was actually around 7-c-. Along with open books, I.I.I, sponsored a program of open houses in factories.

To help people, realize that "they have a stake in the industries for which they work," I.I.I, is publishing the first of eleven books on local industries--their growth, what they make, how they make it, etc. Schools have agreed to use them as supplementary texts. I.I.I, is now preparing a manual of jobs available for graduating seniors, to be followed up by talks by industrialists to plug the theme that local opportunities are "as good as any in the U.S." In the works for moppets (and their seniors): a 16-page comic book on free enterprise.

I.I.I., whose membership now includes 87 companies, has no way of measuring results. But unions, which resent the N.A.M. type of salesmanship, have yet to criticize I.I.I. And, since I.I.I.'s program got started, President Sampson has noticed that his own employees work harder. Says he: "They know that in a sense it's their business, not only the business of a fat guy in the front office."

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