The New Mediocrity

SELLING & MARKETING

"A man who gathereth gold for the Department of Internal Revenue and hath no fun is a sounding ass and a tinkling idiot." Thus, wittily jumbling his '"Biblical passages, Madison Avenue's Charles Hendrickson Brower, 56, president of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, last week summed up what is wrong with the U.S. salesman, and perhaps the whole U.S. economy. Adman Brower told the National Sales Executives' convention in Washington that Americans in general and salesmen in particular have forgotten that work can be fun--and so they are not working hard.

"People are bored with us and the things we sell," said Adman Brower. "Up until the last few months, Americans have been the most desiring people in the world. Salesmanship and advertising and consumer credit have stimulated this desire. We have been the prophets who condemned the old and showed the way to the new. We have been merchants of discontent, creators of obsolescence.

"This creation and stimulation of desire has put more people to work and, in turn, made their desires possible to fulfill. But what if this desire is gone? I will tell you. When a car becomes nothing more than transportation, when new clothes become nothing more than protection against weather and immodesty, when a house is only a shelter, when the thrill is gone out of buying and pride fades out of ownership, we are headed for something worse than a mere depression. We are headed for a whole new kind of economy that none of us are going to enjoy."

Time for Tranquilizers. Well, then, what can be done to rekindle the desire? "The answer is not simple," said Brower, "because the mediocrity of salesmanship is only part of our pattern of being willing to settle for something less than the best. For this, in America, is the high tide of mediocrity, the great era of the goof-off. The land has been enjoying a stampede away from responsibility.

"It is populated with laundrymen who won't iron shirts, with waiters who won't serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe, with executives whose minds are on the golf course, with spiritual delinquents of all kinds who have been triumphantly determined to enjoy what was known until the present crisis as 'the new leisure.' We may lack a few of the refinements of Rome's final decadence, but we do have the two-hour lunch, the three-day weekend and the all-day coffee break. And, if you want to, you can buy for $275 a jeweled pillbox, with a built-in musical alarm that reminds you --but not too harshly--that it's time to take your tranquilizer."

Many salesmen today cry: "Sell harder!" Said Brower: "That's nonsense, if by 'hard sell' you mean nothing more than high pressure. There is really no such thing as 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' There is only 'smart sell' and 'stupid sell.' "

Bit of Advice. Brower did offer some advice. "What you and I have to do, patiently and day by day, is to teach that work can be fun, that the only real reward that life offers is the thrill of achievement. A hole in one isn't half as thrilling as landing a big order--a piece of furniture built in your basement workshop will never be as thrilling as a sales plan that works. You and I cannot take care of the whole nation, perhaps, but we can do such a job in our own small corners that others may notice the light and begin to imitate us."

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