CO-OPERATION
TEAM WORK
Co-operation is a matter of pulling together so as to produce the best results for everyone concerned. It requires that everyone in the organization shall work as a unit for the common good of the customer, the store and each person in the store. A salesman cannot hope for results by trying to work independently of his fellow workers, the office, the management and the whole store system.
A most important feature of co-operation is that called for in cases where it is necessary to turn over a customer to some other salesman to complete the sale. It is a valuable salesman who realizes, even before the customer himself, that there is a lack of interest or confidence on the part of the customer. There are times when he should be turned over from one salesman to another. When the customer first shows any restlessness and is not just satisfied with this, that or the other style that has been shown him the salesman has his first cue. He should not wait until he has shown the entire stock of merchandise. He owes it to his team partner to leave something for him to work with.
The transferring of a customer to another salesman does not necessarily mean that the second man is more capable than the first. If the sale is completed by the turnover man it may mean simply that his manner of approach and selling talk is more to the liking of that particular customer. People have special preferences for different styles of clothes or kinds of reading. Even the best of salesmen will have their occasional difficulties due simply to the fact that their personalities or methods of selling do not harmonize with the views and preferences of the customer. As a general rule the salesman who turns business to his team partner will often find that there are just as many instances when his partner will find it necessary to do likewise. For this reason the question is not so much one of salesmanship as it is of giving the customer the kind of service that pleases him most and that secures his business.
The salesman would not be doing himself full justice if he did not make a special effort to determine for his own good whether there had been any part of his selling effort that was weak and that may have been responsible for the customer’s lack of confidence. Perhaps he had misjudged what was wanted in the matter of style or quality or perhaps he had not been positive enough in his efforts. He may have been only lukewarm with the customer who needed to be assisted in making a decision or he may have been too insistent with the man who preferred to do his own deciding. It is well for the salesman to learn these things at the time so that he will be in a position to profit by the experience and steadily improve the quality of his work. A few minutes spent in going over the circumstances with the salesman who completed the sale will be found to be well worth the time and effort from the standpoint of better business made possible through the ability to understand and serve all classes of customers.
PULLING TOGETHER WITH OTHER DEPARTMENTS
The management of the store or department may provide for team work among the salesmen but it is for the men themselves to determine the degree of success they are to have in working together. No man can be a genuine success who cannot pull together with the men around him. Friction among the men and women who make up a business organization is like friction between parts making up a machine. It results in wearing out the parts that are not working properly and it retards the work of the whole machine. Any man in the organization who tries to work alone and in disregard of the other parts of the business machine is bound to cause friction, and as a result of this he will wear himself out and limit the advancement to which he would otherwise be entitled.
The salesman should pull together with the advertising department. He should make it part of his job to study the store advertisements as soon as they appear so that he may fully understand all the selling points of the goods advertised and so that he may know exactly what the customer has in mind when he calls for a particular style or quality advertised. This is part of the salesman’s responsibility to himself and his job, provided he is serious enough about it to figure beyond the weekly pay envelope and to plan each day’s work so that it will serve as a stepping stone to the position of greater responsibility—toward success, which is the goal of every red blooded and clear thinking man and woman in business. The salesman should actually study every piece of advertising matter put out by the store, whether it be a catalogue, sales letter, newspaper announcement or window display card. The interested customer will study the ads., and surely the salesman cannot afford to do any less.
Not only should he study the advertising of his own store but he should make himself familiar with what is being done by other stores in the same line. No man, no matter how capable he may be, is beyond the point where he can profit by the experience and ideas of other men. The salesman who is alive to his responsibility and who is pulling together with other departments of the business will often be able to make valuable suggestions based upon ideas that he has gathered outside the business.
Every advancement that has ever been made in business, in science and every other branch of the world’s work, has been the result of an idea of some one who was able to look a little further ahead than the rank and file of other people around him. The salesman’s idea may be one to improve the style of advertising or it may be an idea on some improved method of stock arrangement, window display, delivering the goods, or meeting objection on the part of the customer. There are dozens of such opportunities for improvement in every business but they come only to the man who has his net out to catch them. In other words, the salesman must go half way to meet them by taking the trouble to look around with an observing eye and by thinking along the line of improvement, both for himself and the business with which he is associated. The two are so closely related that a man cannot advance the interests of the business without advancing his own interests also. An original idea is one of the most valuable things in business. The man who can produce it is the director of his future.
WORKING IN HARMONY WITH THE STORE SYSTEM
In every organization, business or otherwise where there are a number of people working together it is essential that there be provided a certain fixed method of operation to insure the best results throughout. A transaction is not complete when the salesman makes the sale. It must be followed up, for instance, with certain very important work in the office department. Records of sales and customers’ charge accounts, stock records and reports of various kinds must be prepared for the management. All these things are essential—no business can get its full share of success unless it has the benefit of correct statements concerning present conditions and results of operations in the past. The records serve the same purpose to the manager of a business as a chart of the sea serves the navigator in guiding the course of his vessel.
The salesman has a responsibility to co-operate with the office by providing a complete and correct record of every sale, exchange or return that passes through his hands. He may feel that certain of the information called for is not necessary and consequently he may disregard it in the preparation of his sales tickets. The important thing for him to remember, however, is that the work of the office begins where the salesman’s work ends. Every item of information called for is necessary and important—to supply any less means that the correctness of the office records will suffer and as a result their usefulness will be reduced. Customers’ names, their correct addresses, the address to which delivery is to be made, information concerning the billing and payment, records of the style and sizes of stock sold—all of these facts are of the greatest importance from the standpoint of the management. If the salesman fails in giving the correct information in the first place, the error will necessarily be passed along and limit, if not destroy, the usefulness of the whole record system. A moment longer spent by the salesman in preparing the ticket at the time the sale is made will give him the opportunity to get the facts, to get them correctly and to get them complete.
The store system requires of the salesman that he co-operate also with the shipping department. First of all this demands that he get the correct instructions concerning delivery and that he make it part of his job to get them down in black and white so that there can be no loop-hole for error in having the goods go astray. Anything that acts against the entire satisfaction of the customer is bound to reflect upon the salesman as well as the store. For that reason, if for no other, there is a responsibility to work hand in hand with every department, for the full satisfaction of the customer. Co-operation with the shipping or delivery department means, in addition, that the salesman shall know in a general way what is possible in the way of delivery before making a definite promise to a customer. Before giving the assurance that a package will be delivered “tomorrow morning” he should first of all know whether such a thing is practicable in view of the work already in hand. This may seem a small matter and, in fact, it is because it calls for but a small amount of extra effort on the salesman’s part to keep himself informed on such things and to guide himself accordingly. However, there is always the possibility of serious trouble and possible loss of business brought about through disappointment caused the customer as a result of unfilled promises made by a salesman at the time of the sale.
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY
It is a fact generally recognized that authority and responsibility move to the man who shows himself able to assume them. What every live, progressive business organization is looking for today is the man capable of measuring-up to the big jobs—not simply the man who has been with the concern for a long while, but rather the man who has shown himself broad enough to shoulder and to carry authority. There is a vast difference between the man who is merely willing to accept a bigger position and the man who shows himself able to accept. The one may have nothing more than a vague hope, whereas the other has a burning desire and a determination to move on and up.
The salesman of purpose puts into his work the spirit of partnership—the spirit that he is working in the interests of “our” store, of which he is a part. Another man measures the extent of his service according to the idea that his effort is entirely for “their” store—and he limits his own progress accordingly. The man of purpose will naturally show that he is capable of handling authority, he will take pleasure in doing his work well and he will steadily move up to the higher plane of usefulness and responsibility. Such a man will work with the management of the business to improve conditions as he finds them. No progressive manager is so satisfied with himself and his own way of doing things that he would not welcome suggestions for improvement coming from anyone in the organization. If he is a man of experience he knows that no matter how clever he might be he could not himself hope to discover every opportunity of improving his business. For years the oil refiners of the country had been throwing away the most valuable part of the petroleum product, as produced by nature, until one day a man with a different point of view proved that millions of dollars worth of oil products were annually being carted away in the dump wagons. Now we have a hundred useful products extracted from the mass.
Every man in business today should realize the important fact that his work, no matter what the nature of it may be, is not a cut and dried process or method to be accepted and worked upon as handed down by those who preceded him. Rather, it is a responsibility and an opportunity. He should, of course, take advantage of the experience of those who have preceded him in the work, but that should be to him simply the starting point from which he may begin to develop his own ideas and improvements. When a man gets into the habit of regarding his work as an opportunity rather than a task he naturally takes a personal responsibility in developing himself and improving the quality of his work. Whatever he does will have behind it a purpose. The man will work with his eyes open to opportunities for improvement. This does not mean, however, that he will take the attitude of criticizing or fault finding, but rather the attitude of working with his fellow workers and the management for the good of all concerned.
Too often we learn of the man of ability, who because of his modesty, hesitates to make known his ideas for improvements. He perhaps has the feeling that he is not able to contribute anything that his boss does not already know, and may never come to the point of making his ideas known. In doing this, he is of course working against his own best interests and those of the business. He should get himself into the habit of airing his views on anything that has to do with the interests of the business. He should get into the habit of talking with those in authority. His first suggestion, perhaps, may not be entirely workable but he will at least have the satisfaction of knowing why, and he will be the better informed in working out his second and third suggestions. All this calls for the putting forth of some extra effort and the use of brains, but it spells the difference between the man who is able to shoulder responsibility and the one who simply follows instructions. The difference is well worth the extra effort to the man who has the faith in himself to plan definitely his success.
THE SALESMAN AS A CONSULTING EXPERT
The twentieth century is an age of specialists—men who are experts in a particular branch of important work. The time was when a man was classified as a doctor; now he is a specialist in cases having to do with the treatment of the eye, the throat, the stomach, the feet or more than a dozen other of the specialized branches into which the profession is today divided. The lawyer also is a specialist. He may be an expert in real estate law, insurance law, trade mark law, or admiralty law, but he is a specialist or expert in some one particular subject and he is in demand because he is recognized as an authority by people desiring information and advice in his particular field.
In the same way the shoe salesman should aim to make himself an expert in his field of work. He should know the subjects of correct fitting, the processes of manufacture and the special advantages of each from the standpoint of the customer, the materials used and their particular points of merit—all these things and more he should know intimately because they have a very direct bearing upon the quality and success of his selling work. When the shoe salesman places his work upon such a level that the customer may consult him for advice and suggestion concerning style, service and fit he will then find himself in the same demand and of like importance to experts in other fields of business life. The opportunity is open. Only now are the people beginning to realize the possibilities of genuine service and advice to be had in the way of correct fitting and suggestion concerning styles and qualities. The salesman who is willing to meet the demand by preparing to establish himself in his work as a consulting expert is assured of a future limited in the degree of success by nothing but the standard he sets for himself.
CONCLUSION
Accomplishment in business or in any other field of endeavor is to a large extent a state of mind. It requires first of all that the man shall have a strong, healthy determination to succeed and confidence in his ability to do so. It requires also that he shall be willing to supply himself with the necessary tools to build success, in the same way that the shoemaker provides himself with the necessary tools to make a pair of shoes.
The Training Course for Retail Shoe Salesmen is the salesman’s kit of tools with which he may build for himself success in his work. But he must learn to use the tools. In other words, he must first read the Course and secondly he must make it a part of his daily selling work to apply the principles. The suggestions made are practical and workable. They are taken from the experience of men who have succeeded and therefore they are not simply opinions but proven facts.
A man’s development is not something to be completed in a day or a week. It is a gradual process of growth. The reader will do well to refer back to this volume from time to time for the purpose of refreshing his memory on the different matters bearing upon shoe salesmanship and self development. In this way he will be in a position to determine the extent of his progress along the lines suggested and, what is still more important, he will be encouraged to renew his efforts in the knowledge of his definite progress already made toward the greater success that awaits him.
THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS
NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A