Transfer her interest to her room as a whole, with your chair as a part of it, and you immediately rob most of these details of their earlier importance in her mind. Paint a sufficiently attractive mental picture of her room as it will become with your chair in it, and she may buy the picture, and the chair as an essential element of it. She will not care to shop further for a better looking or cheaper chair, in the fear that even if one could be found the picture would be spoiled.
THE SHIFT FROM UNIT TO ENTIRE ROOM
Possibly you have had the experience of losing important sales to men working in stores far smaller than your own or to decorators with no more physical equipment than could be condensed into a small office or studio. Why should you have lost such sales when you enjoy the great advantages of ample stocks, lower prices, better terms, and the prestige of a well-known and financially solid house? Obviously, because the other man had the skill and the power to shift your customer's interest and desire from merchandise, as such to what merchandise will do.
In order to make a normal sale by means of this "room-picture" method, you will require:
1. Full knowledge of your own merchandise from the technical and artistic aspects.
2. Considerable knowledge of the customer's room and its important elements.
3. Adequate knowledge of decorative principles, including the emotional values of light, color, texture, line, and proportion.
4. A little knowledge of the decorative accessories—pictures, potteries, glass, embroideries, and the many small things necessary to save a room from bareness, and to give it color, snap, and intimacy.
It is desirable but by no means necessary that you have these accessories for sale; however, you must know how to talk about them, because it is impossible to make a living room genuinely attractive and satisfying without them.