The salesman should pull together with the advertising department. He should make it part of his job to study the store advertisements as soon as they appear so that he may fully understand all the selling points of the goods advertised and so that he may know exactly what the customer has in mind when he calls for a particular style or quality advertised. This is part of the salesman’s responsibility to himself and his job, provided he is serious enough about it to figure beyond the weekly pay envelope and to plan each day’s work so that it will serve as a stepping stone to the position of greater responsibility—toward success, which is the goal of every red blooded and clear thinking man and woman in business. The salesman should actually study every piece of advertising matter put out by the store, whether it be a catalogue, sales letter, newspaper announcement or window display card. The interested customer will study the ads., and surely the salesman cannot afford to do any less.
Not only should he study the advertising of his own store but he should make himself familiar with what is being done by other stores in the same line. No man, no matter how capable he may be, is beyond the point where he can profit by the experience and ideas of other men. The salesman who is alive to his responsibility and who is pulling together with other departments of the business will often be able to make valuable suggestions based upon ideas that he has gathered outside the business.
Every advancement that has ever been made in business, in science and every other branch of the world’s work, has been the result of an idea of some one who was able to look a little further ahead than the rank and file of other people around him. The salesman’s idea may be one to improve the style of advertising or it may be an idea on some improved method of stock arrangement, window display, delivering the goods, or meeting objection on the part of the customer. There are dozens of such opportunities for improvement in every business but they come only to the man who has his net out to catch them. In other words, the salesman must go half way to meet them by taking the trouble to look around with an observing eye and by thinking along the line of improvement, both for himself and the business with which he is associated. The two are so closely related that a man cannot advance the interests of the business without advancing his own interests also. An original idea is one of the most valuable things in business. The man who can produce it is the director of his future.
WORKING IN HARMONY WITH THE STORE SYSTEM
In every organization, business or otherwise where there are a number of people working together it is essential that there be provided a certain fixed method of operation to insure the best results throughout. A transaction is not complete when the salesman makes the sale. It must be followed up, for instance, with certain very important work in the office department. Records of sales and customers’ charge accounts, stock records and reports of various kinds must be prepared for the management. All these things are essential—no business can get its full share of success unless it has the benefit of correct statements concerning present conditions and results of operations in the past. The records serve the same purpose to the manager of a business as a chart of the sea serves the navigator in guiding the course of his vessel.
The salesman has a responsibility to co-operate with the office by providing a complete and correct record of every sale, exchange or return that passes through his hands. He may feel that certain of the information called for is not necessary and consequently he may disregard it in the preparation of his sales tickets. The important thing for him to remember, however, is that the work of the office begins where the salesman’s work ends. Every item of information called for is necessary and important—to supply any less means that the correctness of the office records will suffer and as a result their usefulness will be reduced. Customers’ names, their correct addresses, the address to which delivery is to be made, information concerning the billing and payment, records of the style and sizes of stock sold—all of these facts are of the greatest importance from the standpoint of the management. If the salesman fails in giving the correct information in the first place, the error will necessarily be passed along and limit, if not destroy, the usefulness of the whole record system. A moment longer spent by the salesman in preparing the ticket at the time the sale is made will give him the opportunity to get the facts, to get them correctly and to get them complete.
The store system requires of the salesman that he co-operate also with the shipping department. First of all this demands that he get the correct instructions concerning delivery and that he make it part of his job to get them down in black and white so that there can be no loop-hole for error in having the goods go astray. Anything that acts against the entire satisfaction of the customer is bound to reflect upon the salesman as well as the store. For that reason, if for no other, there is a responsibility to work hand in hand with every department, for the full satisfaction of the customer. Co-operation with the shipping or delivery department means, in addition, that the salesman shall know in a general way what is possible in the way of delivery before making a definite promise to a customer. Before giving the assurance that a package will be delivered “tomorrow morning” he should first of all know whether such a thing is practicable in view of the work already in hand. This may seem a small matter and, in fact, it is because it calls for but a small amount of extra effort on the salesman’s part to keep himself informed on such things and to guide himself accordingly. However, there is always the possibility of serious trouble and possible loss of business brought about through disappointment caused the customer as a result of unfilled promises made by a salesman at the time of the sale.
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY
It is a fact generally recognized that authority and responsibility move to the man who shows himself able to assume them. What every live, progressive business organization is looking for today is the man capable of measuring-up to the big jobs—not simply the man who has been with the concern for a long while, but rather the man who has shown himself broad enough to shoulder and to carry authority. There is a vast difference between the man who is merely willing to accept a bigger position and the man who shows himself able to accept. The one may have nothing more than a vague hope, whereas the other has a burning desire and a determination to move on and up.
The salesman of purpose puts into his work the spirit of partnership—the spirit that he is working in the interests of “our” store, of which he is a part. Another man measures the extent of his service according to the idea that his effort is entirely for “their” store—and he limits his own progress accordingly. The man of purpose will naturally show that he is capable of handling authority, he will take pleasure in doing his work well and he will steadily move up to the higher plane of usefulness and responsibility. Such a man will work with the management of the business to improve conditions as he finds them. No progressive manager is so satisfied with himself and his own way of doing things that he would not welcome suggestions for improvement coming from anyone in the organization. If he is a man of experience he knows that no matter how clever he might be he could not himself hope to discover every opportunity of improving his business. For years the oil refiners of the country had been throwing away the most valuable part of the petroleum product, as produced by nature, until one day a man with a different point of view proved that millions of dollars worth of oil products were annually being carted away in the dump wagons. Now we have a hundred useful products extracted from the mass.