THE OUTSIDER’S POINT OF VIEW
One shoe salesman who has recently moved up to the position of branch manager, says, in speaking of the need to keep customer service up to par, and of his method of doing it, that his first duty each morning is to look over the appearance of his store, his windows and his stock from the viewpoint of an outsider—to consider his services as a salesman as they would appeal to the customer who had never before made a purchase of him. He realizes that there is the tendency for him to grow “stale” in his efforts and to fall into the habit of considering the next sale as another mechanical operation. He says that the danger is to regard today’s work simply as a continuation from where he left off yesterday and to overlook the fact that as far as today’s customers are concerned there might just as well have been no yesterday.
The outsider’s point of view is that each sale is an entirely new experience. The salesman who is able to get himself into this frame of mind and to treat the customer on this basis can never become mechanical. He will never run the danger of losing business through growing stale in his selling talk and his effort to please. This is the difference between working for a future and working for the pay envelope. Every man of responsibility looks further ahead than the Saturday envelope. He is working for a future that means his development beyond his present job. His success in reaching it will depend upon his ability to grow out of one and into a bigger one. Promotion or success is not an over-night process; it is a natural and gradual growth cultivated by steady effort. Alexander Hamilton, the first treasurer of the United States and the greatest financial mind the country has ever known, was proclaimed a genius both here and abroad, because of what seemed to be a superhuman understanding and foresight. His simple reply was that although men gave him credit for genius, the only genius he had was in being able to work night and day on the subject in hand until he had sweated out a solution.
This may seem to be drifting a long way from shoe salesmanship but it is just as close as the pay envelope. The laws of success are unfailing whether they apply to merchandising or to statesmanship. No one ever got anywhere on a permanent basis except by hard work. To know what the customer wants and should have, to make a whole-hearted effort to serve him and to keep at it, is the formula for success in shoe-selling.