Then I remembered how often we did the same thing with our customers, to
whom, when they came for a pocket-knife, for instance, we offered a
twenty-five cent one when we might have sold a fifty-cent or a dollar
one just as easily. I said to myself, "A number of our customers will go
into a restaurant and spend two dollars for a meal and then they will
come into our store and we will insult them by saying, 'Do you want the
five-cent size or the ten-cent size?' In other words, we treat them like
pikers."
So with this thought in mind, I suggested that another way to increase
the amount of each sale is to suggest higher-priced goods than the
customer has in mind. Yet another plan would be to suggest larger size
packages. For instance, we sold both ten- and twenty-five-cent packages
of some articles. Once a customer had come in and asked for a stick of
shaving soap and Jones had brought down the ten-cent size and the
customer put the ten cents down and walked away with the soap. He might
just as easily have been sold the twenty-five-cent size.
So we decided that, when a customer asked for an article, if there was a
larger size package, or a better quality, we would always show the
largest or the best, taking care, however, in every case to show reasons
why the better quality or larger package was best for the customer to
buy.
From all this we finally developed three rules. One was to offer
higher-priced articles, another to offer a larger size package, and
another to offer a larger quantity.
Jimmie asked irreverently, "What's the diff between them last two?"
"Well, for instance, we sell scouring soaps for enamelware, and, as we
have two sizes, we always want now to sell the larger package. If,
however, a customer comes in for, say, seven pounds of nails, we want
him to take twenty-eight pounds, or a keg, if we can."
The last rule was one suggested by Martin, and it was this: Always
watch the customer's eye, and try to sell any article in which he
appears to be interested.
We decided that we must not ask the customers if they were interested in
the articles they are looking at, nor must we bring the articles to
them, but we must casually say, "That's quite an interesting so-and-so,
and is proving a mighty useful little thing," or some such remark as
that. In other words, just make a casual comment on it, and then, as
Martin said, "If they respond with a remark expressing interest, the
sale is half made."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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