Excerpt from a 32-page practical guide to selling by telephone which shows how the phone changed business practices.
Date: Written in 1932.
Publication: Published by 'The Efficiency Magazine' as No. 25 in a series called 'Up-to-date bulletins for business men'.
This booklet is a forerunner of modern telesales and call centre manuals. Written by John May, it gives an often unintentionally humorous insight into the emergence of telesales in the 1930s.
The guide is aimed at retailers, and describes:
- The perils and pitfalls of telephone sales
- 16 reasons why shops should have telephones
- The value in building up a mailing list and recording customer details.
A section on 'How to speak on the telephone' stresses the importance of speaking clearly:
'Only a man with a good telephone voice should be allowed to call up customers. A croaker may easily lose more orders than he gets.'
The booklet ends with a positive claim:
'You see there is money in this new way of selling. And any retailer with a telephone can start now to double his profits and the number of his customers.'