A NEW THOUGHT ON RETAIL SELLING
As soon as I had time, I went to Boston and saw Alex Cantling, as Barlow
had suggested, to find out how much money it would take to start an
automobile accessory department.
Alex Cantling was a big-boned, clean-shaven, healthy-looking man. He was
what I would call a brass-tack man. When I told him my business, he
pushed his papers aside and gave me his undivided attention. Then after
a little while he did some figuring on a piece of paper.
"Well," said he, "I should say you would want to spend at least five
hundred dollars for such a department."
He promised to work out and send to me a list of the different items
which I ought to stock, and he also gave me the name of one or two good
people to buy my supplies from.
"Now, come along and have some lunch with me," and he took me to a place
near Faneuil Hall Market, where I had about the finest meal I ever had
in my life.
After lunch, he advised me to go to see Barker. As soon as I entered the
store, and looked up at the little mezzanine floor on which he worked,
he looked up and called out cheerily, "Hello, Black, come right
upstairs."
I was surprised that he should remember my name, for he had only seen me
once before.
Well, he told me just about the same as Cantling, so I left him and went
to see George Field, who said, "Well, if Cantling and Barker both tell
you that, you may be pretty sure it's right."
When I got back to Farmdale I had a long talk with Barlow about
automobile accessories. After I had told him how much money I wanted, he
looked out of his office window, and leaned back in his chair a few
moments, then said, "I'll lend you three hundred and fifty dollars
toward your stock of those goods. I think that that should be sufficient
to encourage you to work with me on this gasoline deal."
"There's one thing I'd like to ask Mr. Barlow, and that is, if I have to
buy gasoline second-hand from you, shall I be able to sell it at the
same price as Martin's Garage, and make a profit on it?"
"Quite as much, if not more," he replied. "You remember I told you I
would supply it to you at half a cent above what it cost me. Now, by
buying twenty-five thousand gallons' worth, I get a very low price, and
can make four cents a gallon profit on it. You then buy what you need
and make three and one-half cents profit. If you bought a small quantity
yourself, you would not make more than two and one-half to three cents,
so you really make more money, buying it through me, than buying it
direct."
"I can't for the life of me," I said, "figure out why you are so anxious
about selling gasoline."
"Can't you conceive of my wanting to make some profit on gasoline?" he
said, smiling.
"Yes," I drawled, "but--"
"See here, Dawson," he said, putting his hand on my knee, "don't you
worry about reasons, if you get a square deal. I've helped you before,
haven't I?"
"Yes, indeed," I answered quickly.
"Well, I'm helping you this time, and I'm going to make some profit on
it, as well. There'll be room enough for you and me, Black, don't
worry."
Finally it was agreed that I should see these two firms which Alex
Cantling mentioned to me, and try to arrange for three hundred and fifty
dollars' worth of accessories, with the account guaranteed by Barlow. He
said it might not be necessary for him to put in any money, but that if
he did, I must give him my note for whatever he put in. I got a bit
scared when he told me that, but he said all he would ask, as security,
was the stock of automobile accessories, so that I didn't stand to lose
anything.
I was not going to put in the supply until the beginning of April.
Barlow said he would be glad if I would not mention a word of it to any
one until that time, so I agreed not to have my automobile accessories
delivered until the oil tank was ready.
Just as I was picking up my hat to leave Barlow's office, he called me
back and said, "Do you know why your friend Stigler isn't getting on
very well? It's because he's always talking about what he is going to
do."
"Yes, he is always shooting off his mouth," I said, "but--"
"But what?" he asked, smiling.
"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that, when I hear he's going to pull
off some stunt, I try to get there first!"
"Exactly; if you want to make a real success of yourself, never tell any
one what you are going to do until you really do it. It's much better to
have people find out what you do by showing results, than have them know
beforehand what you are planning to do and see you fall down."
"I'll take the hint," I said; then I left him.
I wondered what Barlow's real reason was in encouraging me to go into
automobile supplies. I didn't think it was the profit he expected to
make on gasoline. I was beginning to have more respect for Barlow than I
ever had in my life, and, frankly, I was beginning to have less fear of
Stigler.
Stigler's five-and-ten-cent store had been very slack the last few
weeks, and really it was helping, rather than hindering, me, for, while
he displayed cheap kitchen goods and was selling them just because they
were low-price, cheap articles, I was displaying similar kinds of goods
of real merit and quality, and selling them at a good profit. Any one,
looking into his window and mine, could see no competition, for, while
the goods were similar in kind, they were so different in quality as to
preclude any possibility of comparison.
At the last meeting of our Merchants' Association, we had had a speaker
who was the advertising manager for a chain drug-store organization. He
had interested me very much in the need for increasing the amount of
sales per customer. He said:
"I wonder if you people here know how much each customer spends on an
average. For instance, our chain of drug stores must average thirty-five
cents a customer; that is, excluding the soda counter. Have you ever
added up the number of customers and divided them into the day's cash
total, and found how much each customer averages in expenditure?
"Suppose you have an average of one hundred customers a day, and that,
through good salesmanship, you increase the sale to each customer ten
cents only. That means that, at the end of the week, by good
salesmanship you have increased your sales sixty dollars without any
increase in your expenses at all, with the possible exception of the
supplies or delivery. Now, suppose your average gross profit on sales is
twenty-five per cent.; your increase of ten cents per customer means
that you make fifteen dollars a week of additional profit, or a profit
of seven hundred and eighty dollars a year. All this profit is yours, if
you will only increase the sale of each customer by ten cents!
"That is what it means every time you increase a sale: You increase
total sales; you increase gross profits; you lower cost of doing
business; you lower percentage of controllable expense; you lower
percentage of advertising expense; you help cut down surplus stocks; you
increase your turnover; you improve your service.
"All these things happen every time you increase a sale by as little as
a dime."
I remembered particularly the way in which he had said, "Isn't it worth
while, gentlemen, to encourage your sales people to sell every customer
an extra dime's worth, over and above what they had intended to buy?"
Seven hundred and eighty dollars a year extra profit, by increasing the
sale to every customer by ten cents. That certainly had got me going,
and I intended to devise some ways and means of increasing the sale to
each customer.
I thought this a good point for discussion at our next Monday's meeting.
We had dropped them while Larsen was ill; but, as the dear old fellow
was better again, though not quite well, we were to start them again on
the next Monday.
When Larsen was first taken sick I had hired a young fellow, named
Charlie Martin, to help out. Charlie was a college graduate, with a
father who was quite well-to-do. After he graduated from a college of
business administration, he had spent a year with a big chain cigar
store organization, after which he had been six months in a department
store in Detroit.
He and Fred Barlow had gone through college together and they were good
pals. He happened to be visiting the old man Barlow when Larsen was
taken sick, and it was through Barlow that he had come to me. Martin
told me that he would be glad to get some small store experience, so I
had hired him and he had been working like a Trojan at $8.00 a week. His
father was a banker in New York, and I had heard that he had been a
little bit disappointed in Charlie because he didn't take to banking;
but Charlie said that what he liked best was retail merchandising, and
he had spent a great deal of time and money preparing himself for such a
career.
When Larsen came back I told Martin I didn't see how I could keep him,
but he pointed out to me that our sales had been increasing, and that,
as Larsen was not yet well, it would be putting too much of a burden on
him, especially as we would really be short-handed. So I had kept him on
and I was rather glad I had, for his college training certainly helped
us at our Monday night meeting.
It surely had seemed good to get my small staff around me again at a
Monday night meeting. Mater had taken over Betty's usual task, and sent
in coffee and doughnuts, which quickly went the way that all good coffee
and doughnuts should. It was really a treat to see Jimmie eat doughnuts.
I didn't believe he did eat them; he just inhaled them.
Of course, Jimmie was there with all the importance of a young boy who
had been taken into the confidence of his grown-ups. Jones and Larsen
were there, as well as Martin. What a contrast there was between Martin
and Larsen--Larsen sadly in need of a shave, in rough home-spun clothes,
sitting in his shirt sleeves with the wristlets of a red woolen sweater
showing underneath them; and Martin, who always looked like the last
word off Fifth Avenue, in spotless linen, narrow sharp features, with
the air of a regular debonair young man about town. These two people,
the exact opposites of each other, had quickly grown to be good friends.
The one had gained his knowledge through more than two-score years of
rather bitter experience; the other had gained his through five years of
specialized training. Martin, the trained man, had the keen analytical
sense which only comes from training. Larsen, through intuition, backed
by practical experience, blundered more or less after the more
quick-thinking Martin. Yet theory and practice thought pretty much
alike. It certainly showed to me the advantage of training, for Martin
had mastered in five years all that Larsen had learned in forty.
The matter for discussion at our meeting had been, "How to increase the
amount of sales to each customer?" Frankly, it was Martin who solved our
problem for us, and six ways were developed whereby we could increase
the sales of each customer.
The first was by applying the law of association. It was a simple thing
to do, and yet it astonished me to find that, while we all knew about
it, we had not been applying that law. For instance, only that morning
Mrs. Wetherall had come in for a clothes line. Jones had got the line
for her and had said, "Nothing else?" and she had said, "No, thank you,"
and walked out.
Martin asked Jones if he would allow him to make a suggestion relative
to that sale. Jones was a pretty good scout, and he said he didn't mind.
"I don't think," said Martin, "we ever ought to say 'nothing else'?
Because the natural thing for the customer to say is 'no.'"
"By Jove, you're right. I should have said, 'Anything else,' shouldn't
I?"
"That I think would be better," continued Martin, "but even that puts up
to the customer the burden of thinking if there is anything else wanted.
It would be better to suggest some articles. That is, of course,
applying the law of association."
"I see," said Jones thoughtfully, "I should have suggested she buy
clothes pins before I let her go."
"Yes, and other things."
"Well," said Jones, "I don't see anything else I could have suggested to
her, except that electrical washing machine we have got in, but it's
sixty-five dollars, and people won't pay that price for it."
Larsen snapped him up at that very quickly, saying, "Do you think,
Jones, that you know more about washing machines than the people do who
make them? Do you think those people would be such fools as to set a
price that people wouldn't pay for them? We've only had it in a couple
of weeks. No wonder we can't sell it, if we don't _think_ we can.
Wetherall's quite a well-to-do young fellow, and he could afford to buy
that for his wife if she wanted it, especially as she can buy it on the
easy payment plan."
I had bought this washing machine on the understanding that I could sell
it at the rate of ten dollars down and five dollars a month, and pay
them at the same rate for it.
Then Jones said, "Huh, I suppose I didn't do a blame thing right in that
sale. Well, I guess you can't kick at my sending the parcel home for
her. That little booklet we got out said we were 'long' on service."
"I guess you're all right there," I said, smiling. "What do you say,
Martin?"
"Why, yes, of course," responded Martin. "It is fine to give service."
Then, as if it were an afterthought, he added, "I wonder if it would
have made any difference if instead of saying 'Shall we send it?' you
had said, 'Will you take it with you?' Most people act on the suggestion
that is given. That is why, when we suggest to people to buy goods that
are associated with what they ask for, we put the thought of buying
those associated articles into their minds."
"And," broke in Jimmie impetuously, "they fall for it. I got yer!"
We all had a good laugh, and then continued the discussion of the law of
association. We decided that, whenever a man came in for a hammer, we
would always suggest nails, and vice versa. To every one who bought a
razor we would suggest shaving appliances. If a customer came in for
some paint, we would suggest brushes, and ask if he was going to paint
the barn, and, if so, whether he wanted some new door hangers, and such
like.
I told Martin that he had better make a list on cards of the articles
which can be associated with each other, and then we could tack up the
cards where we could see them and quickly suggest the associated
articles to the customer.
"I tell yer what," said Jimmie, "let's have a lot of cards printed, and
then, if a carpenter comes in, shove out a card at him and say, 'Look
through this and see what else you want'?"
That didn't strike me as being such a bad suggestion after all.
The second plan for increasing sales was to suggest novelties, or new
articles in stock, to customers.
"Look what we did with that Cincinnati pencil sharpener," said Larsen.
"Do you remember how we mentioned that to every one who came in, and we
sold a bunch of 'em."
"And they're still selling, for I sold three last week," said Martin.
"Gosh," said Jimmie, "everybody must be giving 'em to everybody else for
presents."
"I don't think," said Martin, "we have anything like exhausted the sales
possibilities of those pencil sharpeners, and I am going to suggest that
we make that our novelty suggestion for the next week. What do you say,
Mr. Black?"
I shook my head dubiously. "We seem to have pushed those so much," I
said, "I should think there would hardly be a novelty here now."
"There has not been one on display for a couple of months," he answered,
"and we have about half a dozen in stock. Let's put those around the
store in different parts and then put a little card over each one
saying, 'Sharpen your pencil.' I will wager that every man who comes
into the store will sharpen his pencil, and if he does--"
"And if he does," the irrepressible Jimmie broke in "good-by pencil
sharpener, you're going to a new home!"
A thought had occurred to me which developed into the third method of
increasing sales. I had remembered that, when Betty and I were in New
York, she had lost her handkerchief, and we went into a store to get
one. When Betty said she wanted one handkerchief, the girl brought out
one and said, "Ten cents. Anything else?" I had thought at the time that
she could have sold Betty half a dozen just as well as one, and,
furthermore, if she had brought out one at twenty-five cents Betty would
have bought it just as readily.
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."
I really felt that Martin had, in his quiet way, dominated the whole of
this meeting, but he had done it so neatly, and without in any way
trying to overstep my authority, that I really felt that he had been a
lot of help to us without making his show of knowledge obnoxious. I
really believed Martin knew more about retail merchandising than all of
us put together. What he had done was to suggest that it _might_ be a
good idea to do such and such a thing, instead of arrogantly thrusting
his knowledge on us by saying we _ought_ to do so. He was a clever man,
Martin, and Barlow's son was lucky to have a fellow like him for a
friend. I wished I could tie him up to my store somehow, but, of course
that would be impossible in a little store like mine, for there were no
prospects for a young fellow like him. . . .
The day after our meeting I saw the cleverest example of selling that I
had ever seen. Probably it was old, but it was surely new to me, and the
man got a small order from me, too.
About 10:30 in the morning, a well-dressed, jolly-looking man came into
the store. I was busy serving at the time. In fact, we all were busy,
but Larsen was disengaged first and so he asked what he could do for
him.
"How do you do?" said the stranger, smiling. "I've got a message to tell
Mr. Black," and he nodded toward me.
"He'll be free in a few minutes," said Larsen.
"Thank you," replied the salesman. Then, noticing a display of
electrical goods which we had on one of our center tables, he said, "The
man who dressed that table knows something about display, doesn't he?"
"I did it," said Larsen.
"Oh, I beg your pardon; I thought that one of your assistants had done
it."
I heard this even while serving my customer and I don't think I had ever
seen Larsen act so pleased. The old chap almost purred with delight. The
salesman didn't say any more to Larsen, however, but turned around and
inspected the electrical goods.
When I was disengaged he walked over to me.
"Good morning, Mr. Black; I have a message for you; but, before I
deliver it, I wonder if you have such a thing as a bit of scrap zinc or
tin around the place?"
"Yes," I said, and told Jimmie to bring a piece.
The jolly-looking man then took a pocket-knife from his pocket, opened
it and cut two or three slivers off the zinc. Passing the knife over to
me, he said: "Did you ever see a pocket-knife before that could do that
without denting?"
"No. But I never heard before of any one cutting zinc with a
pocket-knife."
[Illustration: "SNIPPED THREE SHORT PIECES OF WIRE FROM THE COIL"]
"Of course they're not meant for that purpose; but a pocket-knife that
can do that must have quality in it."
"Yes, indeed." I looked at the knife curiously to see if the edge was
dented at all, but it wasn't.
"That is the kind of pocket-knife we sell," he continued. "Isn't that
the kind of pocket-knife that will please your trade? Just a moment,"
putting up his hand, "there's a bit of copper wire on your counter
yonder. May I borrow it a moment?"
I smiled and fetched it to him.
This time he brought out a pair of shears and snipped three short pieces
of wire from the coil, passed the scissors over to me and said, smiling
in the most friendly manner, "Same story on the scissors, Mr. Black."
My hand instinctively stretched out for those scissors and I examined
the cutting edges carefully.
"Look at this, Larsen," I called out without thinking. . . . "Mr. Larsen
looks after our cutlery--tell him about it."
I held out the scissors to the stranger, but he didn't take them.
"Try it for yourself," he said to Larsen.
Larsen did try it.
"Any good shears'll do that," said Larsen.
"Exactly," said the salesman, laughing; "which shows these must be good
shears. Isn't that so?"
"How much?" asked Larsen.
Well, I need not go any further. We had always bought most of our
cutlery from a jobber, feeling that it was best for us under the
circumstances. This salesman got us so interested in his cutlery,
however, that, really before we knew it, he had our order.
Martin had been unpacking some goods which had just come in and didn't
get behind the counter until afternoon. I told him about the selling
stunt that we had seen. "That's fine!" he said. "Let us adopt it," and
thereupon we decided that on pocket-knives of one dollar and over, and
shears of seventy-five cents and over, we should demonstrate their
superiority in the same way that the salesman had done.
"Why not on the cheaper ones?" I asked.
"Do you think," replied Martin with a dry smile, "that people would pay
extra for the higher priced knives or shears if we demonstrated to them
that the lower priced ones would stand the same test of quality? There
would be no logical reason for them to pay the extra price, would
there?"
A few days after our meeting Jimmie complained that the whole town was
using our store as a pencil sharpening emporium. "Everybody is
sharpening their pencils all day long, since we put up that notice about
the Cincinnati pencil sharpener," he said.
"How many have we sold?" I said, turning to Jones. As a matter of fact I
had forgotten our plan.
"There's only one left," he answered.
"Great Scott! Order another dozen right away!" I said excitedly.
"Martin ordered them on Tuesday."
Martin again. He thinks.