EDITORIAL

The Gentle Art of Answering "How much will thot cost me"

In response to a number of recent remarks we had heard from a variety of people with no axe to grind we decided to do a one day, one man, informal survey to see if there was any basis for what we had heard.

What had tickled our curiosity was that the only thing any of these people had in common was that they were do-it-yourselfers and all had claimed to have been frustrated to some degree or another in their efiort to get any meaningful help from the lumber and building materials dealers they visited.

The words 'meaning{ul help' are the key ones here. And even our short, informal, unscientific checkout tended to verify that unfortunately their complaints are all too real.

It seems that when the customer, sometimes with wife in tow, first comes in the store or yard everything is fine. The rub comes when the customer asks a simple question and doesn't get a simple an$wer. Now we won't dispute that some of the customers seem a Little simple themselves, but that's not the point.

What is involved here is the delicate art, and that is the only thing you can call it, of explaining what is probably a complicated subject to someone who knows nothing about it in language so clear and simple that it can be easily understood.

The people we spoke with faulted the people selling the do-it' yourselfer for trying to snow the customer, not show him. They felt that the dealer talked in shop terms that might mean some' thing to us, but let's face it, probably doesn't mean anything to the guy who just wants "some kind of boards to put up a little thingamajig."

All it takes to kill ofi the enthusiasm in a budding home handy' man is to embarrass him by answering his questions with your questions that he can't answer and which he probably feels makes him look silly in his wife's eyes.

Perhaps it seems a small point, but then people often get their noses out of joint over small things. Take a look at your opera' tion and see if any of your customers might feel this way. Ve hope not.

Reoson qnd Common Sense

By the time you read this issue the election oI 1964 will have been held and the voters will have chosen the man who is our president.

Naturally we have our preference as you do, but we hope that whoever the president is he will approach the problems of the massive forest products industry by using all the force of his office to see that reason and common sense are used in making and applying the decisions that will affect the one out of every ten workers in the United States who is employed in some phase of our business.

(Weyerhaeuser makes 19 different hardboards)

This Side Starts Your Sale

Weyerhaeuser makes 1g types of hardboard-standard, tempered, utility, perforated, striated, grooved, even primed.

No other line is quite like it. These hardboards differ in oolor, quality and physical properties.

And most builders know it.

This simplified line is not so broad that it will com_ plicate your inventory, yet it covers everything your ctrstomers may ever want in hardboard.

...this side clinches it!

But it's the Weyerhaeuser name on the back of every panel that really sews up the sale.

No other firm iu the building industry carries so well known a reputation for integrity and quality of product.

Weyerhaeuser hardboards have to be good to live up to the name. This is the all important difierence that makes Weyerhaeuser hardboards so easy to sell.

If you'd like more facts, write us at Box B-12, Tacoma, Wash. 98401