CORPORATIONS: Life of a Salesman

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Propped up by a traction device, the boss of Borg-Warner Corp.'s Norge Division sat in bed at Chicago's Wesley Memorial Hospital last week, a telephone at his side and papers spread out in front of him. All morning 54-year-old Judson S. Sayre took calls, received visitors and dictated letters at a rapid clip. At noon, with his neck in a brace, he left the hospital for his office, returned later in the afternoon to finish up his 15-hour workday in bed.

Sayre's fever chart was normal (he was suffering from two painful slipped disks). But his sales charts showed the results of some remarkable medicine. In the first half of 1954, while most other appliance-makers were barely holding even, Norge sales of washing machines, driers, refrigerators, stoves and other major "white goods" were 50% ahead of last year. In July they were 72% higher, in August 126%. With Norge in the middle of a $6,100,000 expansion program, Sayre expects sales to hit $75 million this year, $100 million in 1955. He is no man to let a few wobbly vertebrae stand in his way.

Rummy & the Races. Fast-thinking, tough-talking Judson Sayre has been a crack salesman most of his life. He worked his way through Columbia University by selling salesmanship courses, once told a wavering prospect: "If you can't make up your mind faster than that, the course won't do you any good." (He made the sale.)

Sayre started selling appliances for Kelvinator in 1925, moved up to national sales manager in four years. He switched to Montgomery Ward as appliance boss, in two years converted a $900,000 loss to a $900,000 profit (and became one of the rare "Monkey Ward" alumni to leave on good terms with crotchety Sewell Avery). Then Sayre moved over to Bendix to introduce the nation's first line of automatic washers for the home, sold 42,000 before a single production model came off the line, and eventually put out more automatic washers than all his competitors combined.

Last year Salesman Sayre decided to retire and live in leisure at his Surfside, Fla. home. He soon saw that it was not the life for him. Says he: "There's only so much gin rummy you can play, so many times you can lie on the beach, so many times you can go to the races. Then you get damned sick and tired of it, and wish you had a job to go to." Last May Sayre found the job to go to at Borg-Warner.

Track to Run On. For five years, while BW's 27 other divisions (Pesco pumps, Warner gears, etc.) were making money, Norge had operated in the red. Said Sayre: "I plan to run this outfit the way I ran Bendix—at a profit." When he took over, Norge had a new line of topnotch appliances. But in large areas of the country its products were not even being distributed. Sayre launched a "dealer-getting" program, set up selling tie-ins with distributors for Motorola and Zenith, which make radio and TV sets but no white goods. Dealers began signing up at the rate of 100 a day. From May through July, 2,093 were added to the Norge roster, an increase of 26%.

To meet deliveries on the sales that he was sure would come in, Sayre put $1,000,000 into new plant layout and equipment. He also looked over the line of Norge products, decided to add a new no-volt, $149.95 automatic drier, $20 to $40 below the prices of most competitors.