The P.M. system is intended as a means of stimulating the salesman’s ability to serve and to satisfy the customer. If you, as a salesman, do not plan for the steady improvement of your work day by day, you will fail, whether you are working on the P.M. system or any other system.
When properly understood by the salesman, the premium plan encourages better service, better business, better salesmen, bigger profits for the store and bigger earnings for the salesman.
RETURNS, EXCHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS
THE CUSTOMER’S FRAME OF MIND
The responsibility of meeting and bringing about a settlement with the customer who presents a claim for adjustment, exchange or return is generally placed in the hands of the store manager or an assistant. However, this important matter will be considered here for the reason that every shoe salesman, although he may not at present be holding either of these positions, is looking forward and preparing to assume the greater responsibility. For that reason he has a special interest in this subject of complaints and adjustments.
When the customer returns to the store for the special purpose of registering a complaint concerning the goods, he sometimes has the feeling that he has been unfairly treated. He may have the suspicion that an imperfect article was intentionally sold to him because he seemed “easy.” In fact, if he thinks about it long enough, he will probably recall that when he made the purchase the salesman spent some extra time looking over the stock—and before long the customer will convince himself that the selection was made from a job lot. He may decide that he has had palmed off on him a shoe that was a “second,” and that it was done deliberately. Nothing but imagination on his part, of course, but in a great many instances these are the thoughts that go through a customer’s mind if he is dissatisfied with a shoe or if it has failed to give him proper wearing service.
He approaches the store with fire in his eye, and is all keyed-up to meet opposition. “I’m not at all satisfied with these shoes; they are imperfect and I expect you to make good,” he blurts out and expects a similar reply. “I’m obliged to you, Mr. Jones, for bringing them back so that we may get at the cause of the trouble,” is the salesman’s reply—and the customer is at once without defence. He has planned to meet opposition but finds that the salesman is with him rather than against him, and the one-sided argument has ended. The customer is then in a frame of mind to listen to reason.
A brief explanation to tell him of the special care that is exercised in the inspection of shoes is often a good means of establishing the customer’s future business on a permanent basis. Explain to him, for example, that “a rigid inspection of all shoes is made as they arrive, and never is anything allowed to go into stock when there is the slightest indication of weakness—still we cannot always tell what is underneath the surface of the leather. Of course, in cutting shoes only selected skins are used, but even with this extra precaution occasionally a weak spot is found in a skin after the shoes are worn.” These are features of service the customer receives and still in most cases he knows nothing about them. The opportunity is offered in a case of this kind to impress upon him the facts and thus to strengthen his confidence in the ability of the salesman and the store to serve him well in the future.
RETURNS
There is a story of an old woman who had her small savings in a bank which was reported to be in difficulties. At once she started out and appeared, bank book in hand, before the paying teller’s window.