The first step in the successful sale of proper bedding is to discover tactfully the preference of the customer and the type of sleeping equipment that is to be replaced. Find out if a cotton mattress or a curled hair one or an early inner-spring type has been used. This is important for two reasons. First, only through knowing what has been used can you make an honest recommendation of better equipment and, secondly, through this knowledge you will be able to understand better what the customer implies when she asks for a "firm" or a "soft" mattress.
The customer may have been sleeping on a curled hair or cotton felt mattress; for example, which she characterizes as "much too hard," and she is, therefore, asking for a very soft inner spring. Future complaints will be avoided in this instance if you will take the time to point out that after using an unusually firm mattress, the greater flexibility of an inner-spring mattress may be found uncomfortably soft. After a customer has used a very firm mattress, she will view as soft a new one which is actually medium firm.
Customers select their clothes and shoes to fit. They have ideas as to what they want in sleep equipment. But their descriptions of what they want and need may not tally with your trade terms. It is your duty to help them to select exactly the right type of mattress to fit their needs rather than to point out that what they term hard or soft is not what the industry feels about these mattresses. You are the expert. It is your problem to see that your customer finds exactly the right mattress, spring, or pillow for her individual sleeping needs. When a customer is selecting sleeping equipment for another person her attention should be called to the variance of individual taste, and wherever possible the requirements of the individual who is to use the equipment should be ascertained. To equip satisfactorily an entire family with full cognizance of the requirements of individuals indicates proficiency and expertness in the salesman.
STRESS OUTSTANDING FEATURES AND SELL BETTER BEDDING
As you show your merchandise, study your customer, learn as much as possible about her individual needs and preferences and discuss the importance of proper rest.
Unless your store has a definite and effective method of "trading up" you will make more sales of better equipment by starting at the top. There is a wide market for mattresses and springs at $19.75. Too many customers, however, who can afford and who should have better quality equipment, are buying at that price level because no salesperson has tried to sell them better merchandise. If a customer comes in asking to see the promotion mattress on which an advertisement has been run, she must be shown that mattress. However, from the head of your department, from the manufacturer's salesman, and from your own knowledge of the merchandise you should know in advance what additional value and extra service she will receive by buying the $29.50 or $39.50 mattress instead of the $14.95, or the $19.75 one. Because most mattresses look alike, you must build up her confidence in you and your recommendations by telling her and showing her facts. Use the cut-out samples intelligently. Point out in an understandable manner the various features and explain how they produce the comfort and the durability in which she is interested.
Discuss features in terms of what she is looking for in a mattress—springs, for instance, not as coils of 10- or 12-foot wire, but as the means of providing proper resilience and buoyancy. Her interest in the upholstery will not be in so many pounds of cotton linters, staple cotton, or curled hair, but in what these things mean in terms of comfort and restful sleep. Know the technical construction of the bedding offered for sale, but discuss this construction only in language that is easily understood.
VAST REPLACEMENT MARKET
Bedding is, of course, a "must" in every new household as well as in every house and room where people sleep. Without losing sight of the constant and tremendous market that comes from newly created homes, a bedding specialist should always keep in mind the vast replacement possibilities in the countless families where bedding has outlived its useful span. This is a market which may have to be awakened, one in which natural complacency tends to dull the keen edge of spontaneous demand.
According to a survey conducted for the National Association of Bedding Manufacturers, nearly 20 percent of the mattresses owned by the housewives interviewed were over 16 years in use. By statistical reasoning this might indicate that 8 million mattresses in the country have had similar use and it is at least reasonable to presume that after 16 years' service, most mattresses are no longer providing complete comfort and rest.