SELL EQUIPMENT TO MEET CUSTOMER'S NEEDS
The retail selling of sleeping equipment, in the opinion of many store executives, calls for more skill and study than almost any other line, but to the man who really knows his merchandise there is no easier line to sell and few which offer greater opportunities for increased earnings and personal satisfaction.
No other line of merchandise needs intelligent selling as much as does sleeping equipment. The consumer, through magazines and newspapers, is learning much about style, decoration, and periods in furniture. When shopping for a living room suite she needs the salesman's help, certainly, but she usually comes into the store with some idea of what she should have. Bedding, however, to most women is too often something to be selected through bargain advertising.
Because the mind of the prospective purchaser has been conditioned to expect bargains in mattresses, springs, pillows, studio couches, and sofa beds, it is necessary for you to use your intelligence and exert sincere effort to sell the sleeping equipment which the customer should have. The average customer is unfamiliar with standards by which bedding may be judged; so the responsibility of guiding her to a proper selection rests with you.
This is all the more important because sleep equipment has an actual effect upon one's health and rest. How well a person sleeps is a natural topic for conversation.
You may shirk this responsibility to the physical welfare of the customer by making quick sales of low-priced merchandise. However, if you want to build a clientele who will recommend you to their friends in an ever-widening circle, you will remember that you are selling sleeping comfort—something that the customer will be able to check every night of the year.
WHAT DOES THE CUSTOMER NEED?
The first step in the successful sale of proper bedding is to discover tactfully the preference of the customer and the type of sleeping equipment that is to be replaced. Find out if a cotton mattress or a curled hair one or an early inner-spring type has been used. This is important for two reasons. First, only through knowing what has been used can you make an honest recommendation of better equipment and, secondly, through this knowledge you will be able to understand better what the customer implies when she asks for a "firm" or a "soft" mattress.
The customer may have been sleeping on a curled hair or cotton felt mattress; for example, which she characterizes as "much too hard," and she is, therefore, asking for a very soft inner spring. Future complaints will be avoided in this instance if you will take the time to point out that after using an unusually firm mattress, the greater flexibility of an inner-spring mattress may be found uncomfortably soft. After a customer has used a very firm mattress, she will view as soft a new one which is actually medium firm.
Customers select their clothes and shoes to fit. They have ideas as to what they want in sleep equipment. But their descriptions of what they want and need may not tally with your trade terms. It is your duty to help them to select exactly the right type of mattress to fit their needs rather than to point out that what they term hard or soft is not what the industry feels about these mattresses. You are the expert. It is your problem to see that your customer finds exactly the right mattress, spring, or pillow for her individual sleeping needs. When a customer is selecting sleeping equipment for another person her attention should be called to the variance of individual taste, and wherever possible the requirements of the individual who is to use the equipment should be ascertained. To equip satisfactorily an entire family with full cognizance of the requirements of individuals indicates proficiency and expertness in the salesman.
STRESS OUTSTANDING FEATURES AND SELL BETTER BEDDING
As you show your merchandise, study your customer, learn as much as possible about her individual needs and preferences and discuss the importance of proper rest.
Unless your store has a definite and effective method of "trading up" you will make more sales of better equipment by starting at the top. There is a wide market for mattresses and springs at $19.75. Too many customers, however, who can afford and who should have better quality equipment, are buying at that price level because no salesperson has tried to sell them better merchandise. If a customer comes in asking to see the promotion mattress on which an advertisement has been run, she must be shown that mattress. However, from the head of your department, from the manufacturer's salesman, and from your own knowledge of the merchandise you should know in advance what additional value and extra service she will receive by buying the $29.50 or $39.50 mattress instead of the $14.95, or the $19.75 one. Because most mattresses look alike, you must build up her confidence in you and your recommendations by telling her and showing her facts. Use the cut-out samples intelligently. Point out in an understandable manner the various features and explain how they produce the comfort and the durability in which she is interested.
Discuss features in terms of what she is looking for in a mattress—springs, for instance, not as coils of 10- or 12-foot wire, but as the means of providing proper resilience and buoyancy. Her interest in the upholstery will not be in so many pounds of cotton linters, staple cotton, or curled hair, but in what these things mean in terms of comfort and restful sleep. Know the technical construction of the bedding offered for sale, but discuss this construction only in language that is easily understood.
VAST REPLACEMENT MARKET
Bedding is, of course, a "must" in every new household as well as in every house and room where people sleep. Without losing sight of the constant and tremendous market that comes from newly created homes, a bedding specialist should always keep in mind the vast replacement possibilities in the countless families where bedding has outlived its useful span. This is a market which may have to be awakened, one in which natural complacency tends to dull the keen edge of spontaneous demand.
According to a survey conducted for the National Association of Bedding Manufacturers, nearly 20 percent of the mattresses owned by the housewives interviewed were over 16 years in use. By statistical reasoning this might indicate that 8 million mattresses in the country have had similar use and it is at least reasonable to presume that after 16 years' service, most mattresses are no longer providing complete comfort and rest.
The investigation also showed that 32 percent of the pillows in use by these families had been slept on for over 25 years. This may indicate that over 25 million pillows in the United States have been similarly used beyond the state of true comfort-giving usefulness. Twenty-seven percent of the bed springs were found to be more than 16 years old.
YOU MUST KNOW YOUR MERCHANDISE
The first step then in becoming an able salesman of sleeping equipment is to learn everything that you can about the mattresses, pillows, springs, studio couches, and sofa beds sold in your store. Because the consumer usually is not well informed, the salesman should know everything about the merchandise which he recommends.
Only after he knows his merchandise, its component parts, the quality of its manufacture, its life expectancy, resiliency, and its other characteristics in use, can he become a successful salesman capable of handling quality merchandise, rather than an order taker who is able to move only "bargain" promotions.
In the following pages you will find much general information about the various types of sleeping equipment. In a field, however, where each manufacturer is stressing individual and patented constructions and units, no one bulletin can provide all the information you need. You must continuously study the literature provided by the manufacturers of the goods on your floor. Furthermore, never lose an opportunity to talk to manufacturers' salesmen. They are specialists and can give you detailed information which will enable you to explain the qualities of their merchandise.
SELL THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD REST
You should also know something about the physiology of sleep. Talk to your store's physician, if there is one, or to your family doctor. The medical profession has in recent years discovered a great many new facts about sleep and it will help you to sell quality bedding to know them.
You should not try to pose as a medical authority, but you certainly should be able to discuss intelligently the effects of sleep on the mind and body, the need for proper rest, and the general results of insomnia. If your store has a book department, read the various volumes on rest and relaxation. Recent books of this type include You Can Sleep Well, by Edmund Jacobson, M. D., and Sleep, by Ray Giles.
As you learn more about sleep equipment, you will discover that the major improvements in bedding date back only a comparatively few years and that many of your customers do not appreciate how much scientific research and manufacturing care go into the production of the springs and mattresses which are now on your floor.
These and the other interesting facts that you will learn in your reading and conversation with manufacturers' salesmen will convince you that in sleeping equipment you are selling one of the most important items of merchandise the average family ever selects. It is now possible for you to conduct the bedding sale so that you impress on the customer (1) the importance of the purchase and (2) that she should buy the equipment that will give the sleeper the most comfortable rest.
HOW TO OVERCOME PRICE OBJECTIONS
Except in rare instances price will always be a factor in the sale of bedding. Retail advertising in too many communities is daily educating housewives to expect quality at low prices. Your best argument is to prove through your conversation about the importance of sleep and through an actual demonstration of cut-out samples that the customer will receive in bedding, as in everything else, exactly what she pays for. Sell comfort and rest, and show how the equipment you are recommending will provide both comfort and rest. There is no better way to anticipate the objection of price.
In the opinion of the best merchandising experts in the country the average consumer is not looking for cheap bedding as such. Because of the constant price promotion of all types of sleeping equipment—mattresses, springs, pillows, studio couches, and sofa beds—comparative prices, however, are an important factor. You will make more sales, sell better merchandise, and build a permanent clientele quicker if you constantly keep in mind that you are selling sleep and rest, and not merely so many pounds of upholstery and steel to be bought only because the figure on the price tag has been "slashed 50 percent this week only."
Show that the first cost is relatively unimportant—that when measured in years of comfortable service even the best equipment costs but a few cents per night. Impress upon her the tangible benefits of receiving good sleep from proper equipment over a reasonable number of years' service. Whenever possible, use tactfully the experience of customers who are pleased with the quality items selected with your assistance. In no other merchandise or department will customer satisfaction bring you so much additional business.
As a result of conflicting comparative price advertising, women frequently shop in several stores for bedding. Recent studies show that 60 percent of specialty store customers seem to switch from one store to another each time they purchase. Regardless of your enthusiasm for quality equipment—regardless of your sincere desire to recommend only the right equipment—you will still hear that "Blank's have one just as good and $10 cheaper." Your best defense for this is to know what Blank's actually are offering. If it is a promotional item with cheap padding and fancy ticking, show the customer that you, too, have a mattress of similar quality but that the one you are recommending is superior and explain why it is a better value.
If, in spite of your best efforts, the customer walks out to shop in the bedding departments of your competitors, let her go gracefully. She is going to do it anyway in spite of what you say and if you impress upon her the strongest arguments for your goods as she leaves, a surprisingly large percentage will return—particularly if you have shown her you were recommending the equipment that satisfied her particular needs.