It requires somewhat more time and a little extra effort on the salesman’s part to write a short, personal letter to his customers to accompany the season’s announcement. The telephone can be employed, perhaps, with less effort, but it is not always possible to make use of this means of getting in touch with customers. There are some buyers who live out of town, and others who cannot be reached by telephone—but the mails go everywhere.
The personal letter has its advantage in that it makes a more lasting impression on the customer’s mind. It is of a more permanent nature and is consequently less easily forgotten. Also it serves to get the salesman’s name before the customer in such a way that it will be remembered. It is a known fact that people remember what they read for a longer time than they do the things they hear. This is no small matter from the standpoint of the salesman, because he is continually working to single himself out from all other shoe salesmen in the mind of the customer and thus to build up a personal following of his own. A short, business-like letter will go a long way toward establishing such a relationship.
SALESMANSHIP AND DISPLAY FIXTURES
The inside display case is the shoe store’s open picture book. Almost everyone enjoys looking at pictures, which is proved by the success of the moving-picture show. Were the salesman merely to say, in suggesting an additional purchase, that he has a pretty suede pump of a new model, he could not do more than arouse a mild interest. On the other hand, if, with the aid of the display case, he is able to bring the shoe directly to the customer’s notice he at once has interest and his statements then are not mere words, but facts.
Very often the tendency is to let the show case tell its own story; to take it for granted that if the customer sees what he wants he will say so and buy it. But that, generally, is not what happens. Most people are inclined to hold back in making a decision to spend money, even though they realize their need for the goods. A word from the salesman to bridge over the gap many times is all that is required to complete the sale. Display fixtures are mechanical and have their purpose to reduce the salesman’s physical effort in showing the goods. They do not take the place of the salesman but serve as his convenience to show more and to sell more goods. It does not take a great deal of extra effort to finish off the sale of a pair of shoes with an additional sale of shoe trees, hosiery, shoe dressing or some other findings, but the business amounts to a substantial figure in the course of a month.
EXAGGERATION
Just as it is important for the salesman to develop positive, money-making ideas, it is necessary for him to guard against anything in his selling talk that will result to deaden the customer’s confidence. Lincoln very wisely said, with his original knack of expressing the point so that no one could miss it, that “you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” Ninety-nine per cent of the customers are in the class of people who may be fooled once but who make it their special business to guard against it the second time.
Exaggeration is one way of fooling the customer. There are times when a sale might be closed more quickly by stretching the truth, but the advantage to the salesman and the store cannot be lasting on such a basis. When the customer learns that he has been fooled, and in most cases he will find it out, his further business will very likely be lost forever. The customer has been given a just cause for grievance and it will be necessary to overcome his strong prejudice before he can be brought into the store again. He will never entirely forget the occurrence even though he might overlook it for the time being. Moreover, it will surely be revived in his mind at a later time upon any slight indication of what might seem to be an attempt at unfair treatment.
Exaggeration is largely a matter of habit. If the salesman allows himself to stretch a point today and he finds that it works, the chances are that he will try the same trick a second and a third time, until finally the exaggeration comes to him so naturally that he does not realize he is fooling the customer. On the other hand, it is a matter of habit also to cultivate honesty and square dealing. If the customer is given the true facts in the first place it means that there can be no come-back—that he will know what to expect of the goods he has bought and that he will respect the man who sold them, when he finds that they come up to his expectations.