STARTING THE SIMPLE SALE
The experienced salesman is accustomed to form a quick judgment of the customer and to base his opening procedure on that judgment. The technique presented here is designed particularly to help this salesman make large sales or handle small sales which may be expected to produce future business.
Let us assume that your customer has not asked for an advertised chair, and that there is nothing in her appearance or manner to enable you to make a close guess as to her tastes and means. All you know is that she is interested in an easy chair. Since she has not told you exactly what kind of chair she wants, it is safe to assume that she doesn't know. On the other hand, you may be certain she wants a chair to serve some particular purpose of her own. The chances are that she has only a vague idea as to the particular type of chair which will best serve this purpose; you as yet have no idea whatever. Accordingly, you must choose one of three methods for starting the sale.
THE HAPHAZARD METHOD
The first is to lead her through your stock in the hope that she will see a chair that pleases her and buy it. This sometimes will happen, and there are some customers—though few—who can be sold in no other way. However, this method wastes so much time, and results in such a heavy percentage of lost sales, that it should be your last resort. It is open to three serious objections:
First, it will not help you win the customer's confidence. By relinquishing all control of the interview, you forfeit her respect for you as a competent adviser in the processes of home furnishing, and become merely an order taker. If she happens to like your merchandise, you are fortunate; but you can do nothing to influence her toward liking it.
Second, no one can look at a great many different things, however interesting and beautiful, without becoming confused and losing the power of discriminating judgment. The woman who is shown furniture by this undirected method is likely to become tired and certain to become confused, and may be expected to decide to "think it over," "look around," or "bring her husband."
Moreover, you cannot show many chairs, even by this method, without making some comments about them. If you are like many salespersons you will fall into the habit of describing half the pieces shown either as the most beautiful, the smartest, the most comfortable, the latest, or the best bargain. If this happens, any normally intelligent person will suspect that you are either insincere or incompetent.
Third, if a sale results, it is likely to be at an unnecessarily low-price level unless the question of credit limit is involved; and in any event there will be no sale of additional merchandise, no information of future value, no loyal business friendship.
THE HIGH-PRESSURE METHOD
You may decide to make a persistent and, if necessary, a high-pressure effort to "sell" her something. This method, like the first, will work with a limited number of buyers. However, it results in much wasted time by reason of the high percentage of returns for credit or exchange, and in ill-feeling and impaired confidence which over a period of years make it difficult for the salesman to build up a personal following among the buyers of his community.
As a matter of cold fact, this method of selling home furnishings has caused the retailers an immense loss in public confidence, as well as in money. Because of wrong selling methods, multitudes of women now stay out of certain stores except on those rare occasions when they are forced by actual needs to enter. Although these women want to buy, they are afraid of being sold.
More accurately, they are afraid of being sold the wrong thing. Most of the women who ask to see a chair or rug or other home-furnishings merchandise really want something much more important to themselves, although they do not tell us about it. They want beauty, comfort, distinction, or social prestige. In other words, they want to buy furniture as a means of making their homes more attractive; but their past experience, or the experience of their friends, often leads them to believe that the salesman will not really help them. To overcome their hesitancy, they must be made to feel at the beginning of the interview that no one is trying to sell them, or even to let them buy, but rather that the desire of the salesman is to help them buy.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
The third possible course of action is based upon a study of the customer's needs. The salesman will seek to discover the customer's purpose in looking at easy chairs and then to show her the particular pieces in stock which are best adapted to serve that purpose. He will need information about the size, style, and coloring of the chair required, and the amount that the buyer is able or willing to pay for it. Do not, at the outset, ask for this information.
In selling home furnishings avoid questions which will force the buyer to make definite commitments in advance as to her tastes or the amount of money she is prepared to spend. In the first place, it is probable that if she had fixed ideas on these subjects she would have told you exactly what she wanted at once. If you force her by direct questions to make a statement, she may feel impelled to abide by it later; you thereby have placed yourself and your stock under an unnecessary handicap.
In the second place you run the risk of annoying her, since few women welcome a direct question at the beginning of a sales interview as to how much they are prepared to spend. Finally, such questions may be so clumsy and amateurish in technique as to under-mine a customer's confidence in your ability. Your questions at the outset should be directed toward determining her needs. If such questions are skillfully put, she will welcome them as evidence that you are trying to help her buy economically and intelligently.