UNDECIDED
Everyone with selling experience has met the customer who is unable to make a decision—the person who is thoroughly satisfied with the goods but cannot come to the point of saying “yes.” In a recent booklet written for salespeople[[3]] the following important points are brought out and clearly state the position of the salesman in relation to the undecided customer.
[3]. Chats on Garment Salesmanship, by Margaret Sumner.
Now for the woman who needs to be helped in making up her mind. She is a very trying type and needs careful coaching, bolstering up and nursing along to the point of decision. Her other characteristics will be more or less your guide in showing you how to bring her to the point of decision, but your own manner must be very firm. Do not let the least hint of a doubt that she will finally buy creep into your manner or voice. At the same time don’t try to overwhelm her with your own forcefulness, for then she will be frightened. Caution and timidity are the natural weapons of the weak nature, and in all dealings with such persons you must use all the kindness and patience at your command. You have to make decisions for them but let them think that they are making up their minds. Be very gentle but firm.
The weak person must be led like a little child. She simply hesitates to make up her mind without any reason at all. Do not try to reason with her; just be cheerful, smiling and confident, until you inspire a little confidence in her. Some remark about the reliability of your goods and the reputation of their makers and of the store behind them will help.
Other woman find it hard to make decisions when the mind is a little weakened through worry or too great an expenditure of nervous energy. This is the nervous, unhealthy, irritable type, and your method must be as cheerful and sympathetic as with the timid woman, but less insistent. Try to convey the impression, without saying it in so many words, that it will be a relief to get the matter off her mind by making a decision now. These poor women run around from store to store, get half a dozen different styles and desirable qualities fixed in their minds and then lie awake at night trying to decide between them. If this method of shopping is hard upon the salesperson, it is many times as hard upon the shopper. When such a one leaves with the promise to “decide later” be just as polite and cheerful as ever, yet without any abruptness. Leave as good an impression as possible, remarking that you hope she will come in later and in many cases she will. Often the personality of the salesperson is the deciding factor in a case of this kind without the customer realizing it.
Still another type of customer who is undecided and has difficulty in coming to a decision is the person who, for example, has a short, thick foot and always admires the long, slim-looking styles and wishes to be fitted accordingly. Then there is naturally the opposite—the person with the long, slim foot who laments of its size, who thinks of the length, which to her seems enormous. One practical salesman with years of experience mentions that such a customer, if well served, can actually be made to feel pleased with the shape of her foot. He says: “When reasoned with properly the customer can be made to feel much comforted if not really proud of the shape of her feet. The salesman can mention, for instance, that the cubic contents of this 8AA foot is less than a size 5½E—and besides a tall woman would not be well proportioned if she had short feet, short arms and short fingers. To be properly proportioned is an advantage—and before the customer realizes it the size 8AA looks pretty well, after all, she thinks they will do all right, the price is satisfactory and the sale is made.”
There is nothing dishonest about this means of serving the customer. It is a genuine, whole-hearted effort to please her and to supply her with the shoe she should rightly wear and that will give her the maximum of service. Hugh Black, a prominent Scotch writer and a close student of human nature, made the statement, after having toured the United States, that one of the chief characteristics of the American people, as he noticed them, was that “no matter what they are doing they want to be doing something else; and no matter where they are they would go somewhere else.” It is perfectly human for everyone to seek variety. The woman with the long, thin foot has become tired of looking at it and consequently it seems commonplace. The salesman in mentioning that the slim foot has its advantages is simply reassuring his customer of a fact, and in doing so he is serving her well.
One of the fatal mistakes in shoe selling is to attempt to please a customer with a size or proportion that is not the proper one for her to wear. This can result in nothing but a loss of business through dissatisfaction when the shoe fails to give the service expected of it. To understand the customer, to use tact—but not deceit—in selling the shoe she should wear, is the responsibility of the salesman.