The Story Behind Tested Selling
Before giving you the Wheeler formulas, rules and principles for devising word combinations that make people buy, it may be interesting to you to learn how this Wheeler Word Laboratory was established and has become the first and only business wherein spoken words and sales techniques are developed and tested. When Mr. Wheeler was an advertising solicitor some ten years ago on the Los Angeles Herald, and then on the Rochester Journal, the Albany Times-Union, and the Baltimore News-Post, he developed what to him was a fine sales presentation for retail merchants. He would inform them, with considerable sincerity, and volumes of figures under his arm, that his newspaper had the largest circulation in town, and therefore more people who needed shirts, hosiery, umbrellas, needles and thread, and pots and pans would read the merchants’ advertisements in his paper and be down to their places of business the next day to buy. A convincing sales argument, he thought, but Mr. Merchant would always shrug his shoulders and say, “So what?” He would then point to the hundreds of people in the aisles of his store and inform Mr. Wheeler that perhaps he did represent a newspaper with plenty of circulation that brought people into his store – but pe ople just didn’t buy. The merchant called them “shoppers,” “lookers,” and “walk - outs.” This sales obstacle had Mr. Wheeler perplexed for many years, because as a newspaper representative his only job was to get people into the stores. Then one day it occ urred to him that maybe this wasn’t the end of his job - but really the beginning. Therefore he set about making a careful analysis of the merchandise sold to the stores by the manufacturers. It was the right merchandise, sold at the right price and at the right season. On going over the store’s advertisements, he found that they were usually pretty effective. He then narrowed down the problem of why people came to stores and purchased so little to the salespeople themselves behind their counters. Here was the weak link in the setup of the retailer, the manufacturer, and the newspaper.
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