SOME IDEAS IN BUYING
Isn't it astonishing how easy it is to do things wrong!
A salesman came in one morning from the Cincinnati Pencil Sharpener
Company to offer me the local agency for the firm's pencil pointers. He
walked into the store with what I said to myself was a silly grin, but
Larsen, when we were talking the matter over afterward, said he looked a
jolly, good-natured fellow, so perhaps it was just my nerves twisting
things around.
I was just going over my stock of butt hinges when he came in. I was
feeling disappointed because our stock was lower than I had thought it
was, since I was getting so that I positively hated to buy! Well, I
looked up at him and snapped:
"What do you want?"
"Good afternoon, Mr. Black," he replied. "I represent the Cincinnati
Pencil Sharpener Company, and I want--"
Here I broke in testily:
"I'm too busy now. Besides, we're not in the stationery line. You want
to go to a stationer with that thing. . . . Well," I said angrily, as he
made no attempt to go, "if there is anything else you want to say,
please say it quickly; if not, you will have to excuse me, because I am
really too busy to waste time with drummers to-day."
"Excuse me, Mr. Black," he returned a little hotly, "I am not a
drummer--I am a salesman. I came to talk with you about giving you a
special agency, but it is evident that in your present frame of mind I
would only be wasting my time. I will come back later."
With that he walked out of the store.
I certainly felt mad! I could have chewed ten-penny nails!
"Did you ever hear such impudence?" I cried to Larsen.
Larsen looked up with that queer little expression on his face that I
had come to recognize as preceding something that disagreed with me, and
said:
"Impudence by who, Boss?"
"By him, of course! I'm the Boss here, and, if there is any kow-towing
to be done, he's the fellow to do it!"
Larsen didn't say another word, but shook his head.
"Larsen," said I testily, "you seem to take delight in pointing out
flaws in my management!"
Again I saw that queer expression come into his face.
"_Management_," I cried, "not mismanagement! What was wrong with what I
did just now?"
Larsen did sometimes make me mad, but I usually found on thinking things
over that he was very logical in his reasoning. I had learned a lot from
him and I had come to depend on him a good deal, and he had got me so
that he was quite free with me.
He walked toward me, leaned against a counter, and said:
"Boss, drummers like him makes money. More money than most retailers.
From money angle he is as good as people he sells to. He must know goods
to sell them. In that way he is equal to the merchant. He travels over
the country and he gets lots of ideas--and all that. He generally has
good schooling and comes from good home. He is, in how he lives and who
he knows, equal of his customers. Then, again, store keepers would be in
a h----"
"Tut, tut!" I said.
"--In a deuce of a mess if traveling salesmen did not call. You hear
about new stuff from drummers. Suppose you get mad and they won't call?
You are real loser. Simpson used to be that way. You know, Boss, I used
to hear some of them salesmen damn him like they meant it. One feller
came here with agency for Stamford saws. Now, you know, Boss, Stamford
saws is one of best agencies Barlow has. Simpson could have got it. I
don't know why he come to Simpson first, because Barlow is--was--leading
hardware man in town."
I smiled at the implied compliment.
"Well, in he come here, and Simpson treat him about like--well, he treat
him like a dog. You know what that feller did?"
"No," I replied curiously, "what did he do?"
"He put his grip on the floor, walked around the counter, took hold of
Simpson's nose and gave it one h----" I held up my finger warningly--"a
deuce of a pull!"
My hand unconsciously went to my nose, and I saw a twinkle come into
Larsen's eyes as he noticed the movement.
"Well, that feller, he went right over to Barlow. Barlow knew a good
thing when he saw it. He tied up that agency."
"Good Heavens," I said, "it never dawned on me that any traveling
salesman wouldn't be only too tickled to do business with anybody he
could!"
"I tell you, Boss," said Larsen, "I have been in retail business now,
let's see--forty years. The more I see of drummers the better they seem.
If I were boss of a store I'd never turn a salesman down cold. If I
couldn't buy I would say no, like I was sorry. Some day that feller
would have a real bargain. Would he offer it to the feller who balls him
out? No, sir-ree! He tip off to the feller who treated him white.
"Just think, Boss," he continued, "going around from town after town.
Lot of places he sleep at just like what a bum has. Lots of folks give
him cold turn-down. When he gets decent treatment from a merchant, he
look upon it as a--what do you call the place in the sand where they
have trees and water?"
"An oasis in the desert?"
"Yes, that's it, Boss. An oasis in the desert."
"Larsen, you old vagabond, I believe you're right; and if that pencil
sharpener fellow doesn't give his agency to Barlow"--I grinned as I said
this--"I'll--I'll turn him down with a smile!"
"That's all right, Boss; but how you know you want to turn him down?"
"Oh, we don't want to handle those things. We're not in the stationery
business. That's a stationer's line!"
"But why?" persisted Larsen.
"Why? Because stationers sell pencils!"
"Y-yes, y-yes," said Larsen with a drawl, "and so do 5 and 10-cent
stores--and department stores--and drygood stores--and drug stores. Why
not hardware stores? Do you know, Boss, I think hardware people sleepy
on the switch. We sell razors, and then let the fellers go to the drug
store to buy powder an' soap an' brushes. We got a few brushes, but seem
scared to show 'em. What happens? The druggist sells 'em the powder and
then they give us a devil"--again I put up my hand, I was trying to
break Larsen of swearing--"well, they give us a run for our money
because they sell razors. I was up to New York last year, and I saw a
drug store that had a picture frame department, and a line of toys, and
brass and copper novelties--everything what we ought to sell and what
was ours till we let these other stores swipe it from us."
Here Larsen stopped for breath. This was a lot for him to say at one
time, but he was "wound up" evidently for he resumed.
"Look at automobiles! If we fellers had been alive, we would not have
let them specialty places crop up all over the place. Hardware stores
oughter have the garage. We oughter have the profits of automobile
accessories. Some fellers are getting alive to the job, but some still
say we oughten ter butt into somebody else's line!" He sneered as he
said this.
"If owned a hardware store I would sell anything I could get a profit
on. I'd put in a line of pastry if I thought I could get away with it!"
"Your forty-five years in the hardware trade hasn't got you into a rut
then, Larsen?" I said with a smile.
"You bet your life, nix, Boss! You are the first man that let me speak
right out to him, and you know I don't mean to be--to be--you know what
I mean--bossy like. But it gets my goat how hardware folks has let good
things get away from them!"
I had sometimes wondered why Larsen, with all his experience and
knowledge, and many good ideas that I had found him to have, hadn't got
farther ahead in the world. I had decided that it was perhaps because he
was lacking in a certain independence of spirit--and while he spoke
freely to me, and wasn't afraid to correct me, it was more because I was
young and inexperienced compared with him, and because I had got so I
didn't take offense at it. Perhaps under an older and sterner boss he
would have been rather afraid to give expression to his views. However,
he certainly was valuable to me.
The conversation ended there, because the salesman from the Cincinnati
Pencil Sharpener Company came in again. I didn't wait for him to say
anything, but beckoned to him, and said:
"I can give you a little time now. I was really busy before, and I am
afraid I spoke a little more sharply than I meant to."
"That's all right, Mr. Black," he replied. "I think I owe you an apology
for losing my temper. A man in my position can't afford to lose his
temper. I'll tell you now my proposition. Mr. Sirle of _Hardware Times_
told me you were a coming man in the business and suggested I show you
this line."
"Well," I replied hesitatingly, "it seems to me that a pencil sharpener
is not just the thing for a hardware man to sell."
"Mr. Black," he responded, "I am not going to try to persuade you what a
hardware store should or should not sell; but I want to show you, with
your permission, what you can make by handling this line. I have spent
most of the day around here calling on some of the residents and other
people. I have taken orders for eighteen of these pencil sharpeners. I
will turn these orders over to you and you can deliver them and make the
profit on them."
He passed me over eighteen orders for the dollar Cincinnati Pencil
Sharpener, "to be delivered by the local hardware store."
"These sharpeners," he continued, "cost you 69¢ each f. o. b.
Cincinnati. We will turn these orders over to you on the condition that
you buy an additional eighteen. That is three dozen in all. In addition
to this, if you wish to use this 'ad' in your local paper"--and here he
showed me a very attractive advertisement for the pencil
sharpener--"which will cost $4.00 an issue in both your papers--"
"How do you know?" I broke in quickly.
"Because we found out before we came here.--We will pay half the cost of
three insertions. You notice the 'ad.' is already prepared, except for
filling in your name. We don't provide electrotypes because, if we did,
your local paper might not have the type to harmonize with the rest of
the 'ad.,' so that it would look like a regular filled-in affair; but
by having the paper use the nearest type to this that they have, the
advertisement has the stamp of your own individuality."
That was a pretty good thought, it seemed to me.
Well, the upshot of it was that I bought the three dozen and agreed to
run the advertisement on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday following the
arrival of the sharpeners.
I shook hands with him as he left the store, and couldn't help thinking
that my foolish haste and rudeness might have lost me what I was
convinced would be a valuable agency to me.
As he left the store--Mr. Downs was his name--he gave me a little
booklet, which he said might refresh my memory on a few points which I
was doubtless familiar with. The booklet was entitled "A few reminders
on selling methods for Cincinnati Pencil Sharpeners." It outlined
methods of approaching schools, private houses, business offices, etc.,
giving samples of form letters and a whole lot of useful selling
information.
It seemed to me on looking it over that no one could help buying those
pencil sharpeners!
It never occurred to me, until after he had left the store, to ask about
the quality of the sharpener and I wondered why, and then I realized
that I had bought the pencil sharpeners, not because of their quality,
but because of the sales plan which had already been worked out for me.
If other concerns, who sent salesmen to see me, had presented worked-out
plans like these they would have had more business from me. I don't know
how it was, but I seemed to be rushed all the time with so many little
things that I hadn't had the time to try to think out plans and ideas
for selling; and the fact that it was easy for me to go ahead to sell
these pencil sharpeners was the main thing that induced me to buy them.
Larsen was unquestionably pleased, and the man had hardly gone out of
the store when he said:
"Couldn't one of our fellers go to folks and sell some? . . . And
couldn't we sell pencils, . . . and while we are about it--"
"For heaven's sake, Larsen," I cried, "you're trying to run me off my
feet!"
The thought of sending salesmen out to get business for a retail store
had never occurred to me, although on thinking it over it seemed so
reasonable that I decided to think it over some more, and maybe I would
send one of the boys out to see if he could not drum up some business on
those pencil sharpeners, and perhaps some other things.