TUNING-UP TO THE CUSTOMER
Everyone has had the experience at some time or other of listening to amateur musicians who attempted to produce in harmony without first having tuned-up to the proper key. Although their efforts and interest may have been every bit as sincere, although the motions may have been the same and notes of music the same as those played by an artist, the effect produced could be nothing but discord, and the more persistent the effort to continue the more displeasing would be the result. The position of the salesman in relation to the customer is precisely the same. Unless he is, at the outset, able to understand something of the nature of the customer and the manner in which each one should be treated, there will surely result a lack of harmony that will end in killing the sale.
The salesman is called upon for the use of tact, which means an understanding of what is proper to be done under varying conditions as they arise under different circumstances. The clerk who asked his customer to go outside and look over the styles in the window, and to return after he made a selection, stamped himself at once as being a man without tact. He had not properly tuned-up to his customer and therefore the remark, although it seemed perfectly proper to the clerk, could only produce discord on the mind of the customer.
The salesman’s proper attitude of mind should be that of working along with the customer. He should train himself, as he proceeds with the sale, actually to feel the contact of his own foot in the new shoe as it slips on the customer’s foot. He should experience the satisfaction of the purchaser, who mentally notes that he has just spent, perhaps a considerable part of a week’s pay, in a good cause and with no regrets. He cannot serve the customer and hope steadily to get satisfactory results unless he can transplant himself into the customer’s frame of mind. He should be able to consider himself sitting in the chair, he should look at the shapes and colors submitted, through the eyes of the customer, and he should feel the shoe on his own foot as he adjusts it to the customer’s. Pure imagination, of course, but how else can he successfully work along in the sale with his customer—how else can he hope to work in harmony?
Most customers have a mind of their own and can make a decision when they feel assured that they have the shoe best suited to their requirements. It is recognized by merchants that the customer is more dependent upon the ability of the shoe salesman to supply the goods needed than he is upon any other salesman from whom he makes purchases. The shoe salesman who really lives up to his responsibility is a consulting expert to whom the customer comes for suggestion and advice, in the same way that the doctor is an expert to whom the patient comes for help.
The salesman’s responsibility therefore is to think with and not wholly for the customer.