23. The Premium Clerk.—You need clerks who can induce acquaintances to visit your store, cajole visitors into customers, and coax customers to become larger buyers. If you have a number of clerks and your business will admit of it, offer a monthly premium to the one who brings into the store the largest number of new buyers or into the cash-drawer the heaviest receipts. There are certain kinds of business where this plan will work, and will be provocative of such competition as greatly to increase trade.
24. The Railroad Mileage.—Arrange, if possible, with some railroad company to issue mileage tickets as premiums to those who will trade with you. At two cents a mile you could afford to give two miles of travel for every one dollar’s worth of goods. At that rate $500 worth of goods would buy a $20 mileage ticket.
25. The Dial Dollars.—How many figures on the dial of your watch? Twenty-eight, counting the number VI, which is generally either omitted or only partly indicated. Fix a big dial two feet or more in diameter in some prominent part of your store, and announce that when a customer has traded an amount equal to the total figures on the dial you will present him with a watch. Of course, the timepiece would be a very cheap one, but many a parent will trade with you for the sake of getting a watch for his child.
26. First Customer Package.—In some periods of the day you will have more custom than you can well attend to, while at other times you will have nothing to do. The following plan will perhaps help to equalize trade, and also give you additional buyers: Suspend a package in some conspicuous part of your store with the announcement thereon that it will be given free to the first customer in the morning.
27. The Carpet Coupon.—By a system of large-sized coupons—we will say a foot square—you can put into practice a unique system that will appeal to the heart of every housewife. Publish that you will give a free carpet of a certain size and grade when a fixed amount has been traded. A square foot of a coupon represents a sum of money spent in the store—perhaps one dollar. Every woman by measuring her room can learn how many dollars’ worth of goods she must buy before she can have a free carpet.
28. The House Lot Coupon.—This is an extension of carpet coupon. A certain amount of purchased goods entitles one to a building lot, which, if in the country, need not be of great cost. Have the particular lots selected and advertised. Another plan is to offer the lot to the largest purchaser within a certain time—possibly five years. This is a good way to hold on to customers.
29. Price-Time Grade.—If you have the credit system, have also a gradation of prices so as to encourage people to pay at the earliest possible time. A system like this would do—forty days full price; thirty days, two per cent. off; twenty days, three per cent. off; ten days, four per cent. off; cash, five per cent. off.
30. Sales Bulletin.—People like to buy where others buy. Success brings success. If you are doing well, you may do better. Have a large bulletin board in front of your store, or near it, announcing your sales for the past week. Newspapers boom themselves in like manner by publishing their enormous circulation.
31. Best Reason Prize.—Offer a prize to the one who will give the best reason for trading at Push & Pluck’s, and then insert in the form of an advertisement in a leading paper a list of the best reasons. Six months before Christmas offer presents to all who will trade a certain amount before that holiday.
32. Birthday Calendar.—A calendar with the birthdays of your customers (age of course omitted), would attract attention, and the offer to give a present to any one trading a certain amount before his birthday would certainly add to your receipts.