70
50TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
Art of the pitch, box stores and an uncertain future From page 69
PERFECTING THE PITCH Most of my days in the early years were spent making advertising sales calls – some planned, most cold called. I met many young through old people with small- or medium-size North Shore businesses and came to admire their hardiness. It’s tough to make a living on the North Shore. Rents are high, wages are higher and customers are choosy. One of the rules of the sales business, that I learned the hard way, is that one never interrupts another salesperson who is making his pitch. You wait your turn, which is an opportunity to check the merchandise and formulate a pitch. One listens and watches customers and listens to staff while trying to design a way for the business to make more sales. I sincerely told most prospects that I wanted the ads to make money for them, because then they would continue to use the North Shore News and know it cost them nothing; and urged them to make the News their voice at every North Shore door. One learns what would sell some merchandise for your prospect. One also listens to what’s going on if for no other reason than to find out when it’s a good time to become visible again, and one hears what customers have to say and how the other sales staff perform. One learns a lot. Many small business owners and operators are not wealthy. They have payrolls and rent and taxes and also interest payments and a lot more. The first three expenses are all higher on the North Shore than they are elsewhere in the Lower Mainland. Payrolls are higher at a place where rents, taxes and values are sky high. In the 50 years that the News has been
active there have been massive changes in retailing. Box stores, internet shopping malls, category killers, Costco and Walmarts, all pretty well sprang into being over that. A great many small businesses and small chains disappeared. Franchises began to appear, a new avenue of escape for entrepreneurs.
EVER-CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE I was always ambitious, in an undisciplined sort of way. Looking back now I see a young man facing a pyramid of radiators and I’m grateful that the bankruptcy saved me from that. But I always wanted to escape. Because, for a lot of people like me, conventional employment didn’t work. Small business people aren’t always at their store or task because they want to be vendors. They want to escape too. Some people just can’t stick to wage work. Some people can’t find jobs. Some people have beautiful dreams which they think the market wants. Franchisees make very few local decisions. Chains favour centralized flyer production and do not buy much ROP (newspaper advertising). How the media world is going to look in a very short time is very interesting and alarming. The absence of many advertisers, who have moved to the latest thing, the internet, is forcing more and more restrictions on what traditional media can do in the way of investigation, reporting and effective dissemination of news and opinion. This is not just a newspaper concern. All media are suffering. Known and trusted names are disappearing as salaries are eliminated or frozen. Investigative reporting is rarer. Mostly, I wonder what the mice are going to do, now that the cats are not able to look so hard. !
nsnews.com north shore news
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2019
ews? How do you use the N and I have been an interested rth happy reader of the No a Shore News since 1969, well-put-together paper. I am 93 and I start my of day by clipping articles to interest to me and ones s ends. I check the food ad share with family and fri opping list; growing up in before making up my sh y “a penny saved is a penn the Thirties, we lived by les that way. I do the puzz earned” and I still think k over the births, deaths with my breakfast. I loo . y a prayer for all of them and celebrations and sa A good start to the day. er the years to have I have been fortunate ov res printed in the paper. several articles and pictu rk for the Queen’s One having tea at the pa on a bench at Ambleside birthday, another sitting d harbour view. Another enjoying the fresh air an t almost two years, 1944 a Legion picture; I spen ’s in the Canadian Women to 1946, as a secretary I still have my canvas kit Army Corp. C.W.A.C. 100690 stenciled on it. bag with my number W ~ Jean E. Hubbard
PS…CONGRATULATIONS….FROM THE PAUL SUGAR PALLIATIVE SUPPORT FOUNDATION
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