INCREASING SALES AND EARNINGS
There are three ways by which one can increase his sales and earnings:
1. Increase the daily average number of customers waited on.
2. Increase the average percentage of customers sold.
3. Increase the average volume of each sale.
INCREASE THE DAILY AVERAGE NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS
In order to increase your daily average of people waited on, you must (a) arrange to secure customers for the otherwise idle hours of the day; and (b) develop the ability to speed up the selling process, which will enable you to sell to more people during the active hours.
(a) To secure customers for the otherwise idle hours of the day, begin with the "lookers" and your "call trade." The woman who has been planning what is to her an important purchase frequently will want to consult her husband or a friend in whose judgment she has confidence. If you have been successful in creating real interest in your merchandise, it will not be difficult to make an evening appointment, obviously as a means of saving the time of the husband or the friend.
When you suggest an early or late appointment you may readily promise exceptional service. You will be assured of the individual attention of your group under conditions removed from the confusion of regular store traffic. If the appointment is during the early morning hours or during evening hours, it will be easy to group the pieces as they are to be used and thus show them as they might actually look in the home.
Then, too, you always will have some sales under way or coming up with old customers, and in many cases you can, by acting in advance, arrange appointments which will occupy otherwise empty time, thus leaving the more active periods of the business day open for routine selling. Time which cannot be spent with customers should be devoted to developmental work.
(b) Among many ways to speed up the selling process are the following:
1. Get down to business, and stay there. Much time is wasted both before the sale is made and afterward in purely extraneous talk, not calculated in any way to advance the sale or build confidence. Within the limits imposed by courtesy, confine the conversation to the business in hand. And don't yield to the easy temptation to talk about yourself.
2. So far as is possible, eliminate the element of guesswork in showing merchandise. Find out enough about your customer's room and what is in it, and about her tastes and plans, to enable you to avoid confusion and resistance, and to cut down the amount of time spent in showing goods there is no chance to sell.
3. Be sure that your appearance, manner, and language are such as to inspire quick confidence. This will make it unnecessary to spend too much time in demonstrating the fitness and value of your merchandise. Alertness, faultless courtesy, and unfeigned interest in the customer's comfort and convenience are vital.
4. Know your stock, including the small occasional pieces whose location is often shifted, so thoroughly that you can go directly to any piece you want to show. In a sale involving several articles, particularly if they must be shown on different floors, plan and route the selling process to eliminate unnecessary movement, and if the display is made during regular store hours, try to close the sale somewhere above the first floor, with its noise, confusion, and beckoning suggestion of the open door.
INCREASE THE AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF CUSTOMERS SOLD
Much of our study will be directed toward discussing methods for increasing the percentage of sales made to customers waited on. Everything is important, and every improvement in equipment will help. Doubtless what is most needed is more knowledge, which we can acquire; more patience, which we can force ourselves by a sheer effort of the will to summon and employ; and more energy, which we can and will develop in the degree that we recognize and desire its rewards.
INCREASE THE AVERAGE VOLUME OF EACH SALE
Trade Up Consistently.
The first requirement of one who would increase the size of individual sales is that he shall trade up consistently. Obviously, this does not mean that the salesmen should disregard prudence and common sense and try to sell a $100 article to the buyer who can afford to spend only $50 or $75, nor does it mean use of high-pressure selling methods. It does mean that he should develop the ability to estimate the buyer's tastes, means, and real needs, and to present elements of value in his merchandise other than price.
Ten years ago a woman who made a shopping tour through 12 department and furniture stores reported that 8 out of 10 salesmen quoted the price of every article immediately, with strong emphasis upon its low price. A number of salesmen mentioned the wood and finish of the article, quoted the price with the usual comments, and stopped—their entire stock of ideas apparently exhausted by this effort. This same kind of selling is still too prevalent. Today's emphasis upon service for specific needs rather than upon low price to build sales volume has given us an ever-increasing number of salespersons who understand that it is foolish to start a sale from the bottom, foolish to assume that no one desires or can afford to buy good things, and not only foolish but dishonest to discuss furniture of poor quality and low price in terms which fairly could be applied only to better quality and higher price.
Suggest Related Merchandise.
A second and extremely important way to increase the size of your average sale is by the skillful suggestion of related merchandise.
A great many persons buy home furnishings only when they need them as a physical utility. Quite naturally, they get along with the minimum number of pieces and buy for the lowest prices consistent with their ideas of desirable quality.
To be prepared for this type of emergency or "suggestion selling" each salesman should work out for himself, with the help of other salesmen, and by wide reading of trade journals, magazines, newspaper articles, and books in his field, a list of articles in the home-furnishings field which naturally belong together. These lists of "naturals" should be memorized for ready recall at any moment.
"Specials," modern accessories, new designs in small occasional pieces, when advertised to the public, lend themselves to a suggestion-selling program used in connection with a carefully selected call list. In suggestion selling, emphasis should be upon the quality of charm or fitness to be added to a particular room, with the furnishings of which the salesman already is familiar.
Sell More Than Utility and Price.
Those who buy furniture for satisfactions other than utility naturally buy—insofar as their means will permit—whatever pieces they believe to be necessary in order to insure those satisfactions. It is clear that salesmen in order to sell to this type of customer must be able to arouse the interest of these utility and price buyers in other satisfactions.
To do this, they must be able to sell something more than furniture. They must sell on the basis of the enticement of comfort and cushioned ease, the lure of beauty, the appeal of smartness and style. They must sell distinction, the acclaim of friends and guests, the pride and pleasure of the children, and the joy of living in an attractive home.
Does this tend to provoke a skeptical smile from those who have been selling furniture for years? Well, let those smile whose earnings have been wholly satisfactory. As for the others, let them remember that in diminished volume is told the story of those who consistently have attempted to sell furniture as nothing more than furniture and who have stolidly ignored the power of imagination and sentiment in quickening interest and deepening desire.