The salesman should always remember that he has an opportunity to pick up a great many new, progressive ideas which customers, who are closely confined to their business or who do not have the time to go about much, would not be likely to know about, and he can render them, as well as himself, a very great service by keeping them posted and up-to-date. Traveling salesmen are also traveling business teachers.
I know of no one quality which will help a salesman so much as an obliging spirit, the desire to be helpful, to accommodate, and to assist buyers.
Large jobbing concerns are finding that it is to their own interest to look after the interests of their customers, to aid them in every possible way, such as suggesting attractive ways of advertising, giving them new ideas and suggestions as to the best arrangement of their merchandise and advising them on other important points.
Many large concerns aid their customers financially. Mr. H. N. Higinbotham, Marshall Field’s well-known credit man, was noted for helping customers, especially when they were financially embarrassed. He often assisted them to get mortgages and loans, and, in fact, frequently made personal loans to the customers of his house. Of course affairs of this sort must go to the credit man, but at the same time a salesman often leads up to them, and thus relieves the embarrassment of customers.
Some time ago a manager of a large concern told me that he helped a customer to get a thirty-thousand-dollar mortgage on his property, an accommodation he was not able to get at the bank on a strictly business basis. Many small houses, especially in the West, have come to look upon the jobbing and wholesale houses they trade with as real friends, and whenever they are hard pushed for money they are the first places they go to for help.
Hundreds of Western concerns, through the initiative of the salesman, owe their prosperity to-day to the assistance of the jobbing house which carried them through hard times. When they could not have secured the ready cash they needed upon purely business grounds, firms accommodated through the efforts of a salesman become life customers and a perpetual advertisement for the concern which has helped them, always saying a good word for it whenever possible.
There are a hundred and one small ways in which both wholesale and retail salesmen can accommodate their trade. Be alert to do all these trifling personal favors, which mean so much and cost only a little thoughtfulness.
A word of caution in regard to promises. Guard carefully against making promises you can’t fulfill. In your zeal to help the customer do not, for instance, promise deliveries that are next to impossible or very hard for your house. You thereby hurt yourself, your customer and your firm. Be accommodating, but always use common sense.
Your customer may forget a lot of things which you say to him, but he will not forget how you spent your time and energy in trying to show him that which would be a real benefit to him; your effort to give him new ideas, to show him how he could be a little more up-to-date; your explaining to him how other progressive men in his own line were doing things. There is nothing which makes a better impression on a man or woman than the unselfish effort to please, to be of service, and the demand for salesmen and all sorts of employees who will put themselves out to do this is constantly growing. There was a time when human hogs could do business, provided they had the goods and could deliver them, but all this has changed; to-day the art of getting on in the world is largely the art of pleasing.