And I had done just the opposite! I first of all had told where I was from, then that I wanted to sell them a pencil sharpener, and I hadn't demonstrated it at all! I realized when I read the book that the trouble was that they had made up their minds not to buy before I had a chance of telling them what it was. I decided to try again, following the suggestions in the book and see if it worked any better.
One good point I learned from the book, which I put on the schedule for the next Monday's meeting, was that a salesman should always get the customer to see for himself how a thing works—that, when you get him to handle it, it helps to make the sale. Thinking of this reminded me of the time when Betty's kid sister had visited us. I had asked her if she would like to have a doll, and she had said yes, but she hadn't seemed particularly keen over it. Then I had pointed one out to her when we were passing Riley's store—he ran a stationery store, and sold dolls, school supplies, and toys as well—and she had thought it was a nice doll, but I had had no difficulty in getting her to come to the office with me first. But later on, when I took her into Riley's and she had got a big doll in her arms, I couldn't take it away from her to get it wrapped up! No, sir-ree, she had just hung tight to her doll, and nothing could induce her to part with it, and she had carried it away without having it wrapped.
Now, that was interesting, wasn't it? When I had just spoken to her about the doll, her interest was only mild. When she had seen it her interest was a little stronger. But when she actually had got it into her hands her desire was uncontrollable. I could see how the same idea would work out in selling goods to customers. If we simply told them about the goods, there would be only a passive interest. If we pointed the article out to them in the case, it might be stronger, but still not strong enough to make a sale. But if we put the article right into the customer's hands and told him to see for himself how it worked I could readily see how it was going to make the desire to buy much greater than anything else could.
I remembered, too, how Weissman, one of our neighbors, had been talking for a long, long time about buying an automobile, but had never reached the point of actually paying out the money for it. Well, a friend took him out in a car one day and showed him how to drive it, and Weissman came back so keen about having a car that he ordered one the same day, with instructions to have it shipped rush!
We'll adopt that idea as a rule at our next Monday night's meeting.
A day or two later, I again tried my hand at selling pencil sharpeners—and I sold five! The fellow that wrote that little book on how to sell Cincinnati pencil sharpeners had known what he was talking about, all right.
The first man I struck was Blenkhorn, who ran the meat market. He was considered the meanest man in town. I had make up my mind to start with a good, tough customer, because I wanted to give the new plan a thorough test, and I felt that if I could sell to a tough one I could sell to anybody. Well, the toughest customer I could think of was Blenkhorn, so I started on him. You see, I had my courage back.
Well, I went into his store. Blenkhorn nodded to me. "Hello, Black," he said.
"Hello, Mr. Blenkhorn," I returned. "How many pencils do you use in a year here?"
"Pencils? I don't know, I'm sure, but I think my people eat 'em. I'm everlastingly buying 'em."