Making the Pie Bigger

What ever happened to the great American salesman? In a new book, Why Do People Buy? (McGraw Hill; $3.50), the editors of FORTUNE conclude that he may not be gone forever, but at least he is deep in hiding. Almost everywhere they looked--in drugstores, department stores, gas stations--FORTUNE'S editors found little evidence of the old-style selling that helped make the U.S. economy great. "An unfortunately large proportion of businessmen," they conclude, "do not look on selling as an integral function of management . . . They view selling as an after-the-fact activity in which the principal job is to keep costs down."

FORTUNE'S editors present a different philosophy: "Good selling is ... integral to all management and not merely a way to distribute what has already been produced. Competitive selling is more than a way of slicing up the pie; it is a way of increasing the size of it as well." But for all the gloomy evidence they unearthed, the authors nevertheless draw an optimistic moral: "If it is true that too much of our selling effort represents a static acceptance that there is only so much pie to go around, then it follows that there are scores of opportunities yet unseized." One big opportunity: genuine competitive selling as an instrument to keep the U.S. "relatively depression free."

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