Then, too, you always will have some sales under way or coming up with old customers, and in many cases you can, by acting in advance, arrange appointments which will occupy otherwise empty time, thus leaving the more active periods of the business day open for routine selling. Time which cannot be spent with customers should be devoted to developmental work.
(b) Among many ways to speed up the selling process are the following:
1. Get down to business, and stay there. Much time is wasted both before the sale is made and afterward in purely extraneous talk, not calculated in any way to advance the sale or build confidence. Within the limits imposed by courtesy, confine the conversation to the business in hand. And don't yield to the easy temptation to talk about yourself.
2. So far as is possible, eliminate the element of guesswork in showing merchandise. Find out enough about your customer's room and what is in it, and about her tastes and plans, to enable you to avoid confusion and resistance, and to cut down the amount of time spent in showing goods there is no chance to sell.
3. Be sure that your appearance, manner, and language are such as to inspire quick confidence. This will make it unnecessary to spend too much time in demonstrating the fitness and value of your merchandise. Alertness, faultless courtesy, and unfeigned interest in the customer's comfort and convenience are vital.
4. Know your stock, including the small occasional pieces whose location is often shifted, so thoroughly that you can go directly to any piece you want to show. In a sale involving several articles, particularly if they must be shown on different floors, plan and route the selling process to eliminate unnecessary movement, and if the display is made during regular store hours, try to close the sale somewhere above the first floor, with its noise, confusion, and beckoning suggestion of the open door.
INCREASE THE AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF CUSTOMERS SOLD
Much of our study will be directed toward discussing methods for increasing the percentage of sales made to customers waited on. Everything is important, and every improvement in equipment will help. Doubtless what is most needed is more knowledge, which we can acquire; more patience, which we can force ourselves by a sheer effort of the will to summon and employ; and more energy, which we can and will develop in the degree that we recognize and desire its rewards.