MONEY IN TRADE.
What Kind of Advertisements Pay--“Don’t Fail to See the Blizzard
Saturday Night”--The Keynote of a $20,000,000 Sale--Selling Goods
by the Mile--Watches for Bait--How to Get Five-Year
Customers--“Trade With Me and Get a House and Lot”--Why Trade at
Push and Pluck’s?--Bargains in Buttons Often Means High Prices in
Broadcloth.
Thousands fail in business every year when an idea put into practical
operation would have tided them over the trouble and opened the road to
a competence. This chapter will tell you how to succeed. No man with
common ability and industry who puts the half or even the quarter of
these ideas into practice can possibly fail. The great thing is to make
people buy your goods. But to induce them to purchase you must first of
all call attention to what you have to sell. Here are a few of the ways
in which this is to be done. The following methods will fairly compel
the people to trade with you, but you must bear in mind that as soon as
the influence of one device begins to flag it must be immediately
succeeded by another.
17. THE INTERLINED ADVERTISEMENT.--Advertisements are not read unless
persons are looking for something in that line. This is because they are
all placed by themselves. Your bid for patronage must be put in the
midst of the reading matter if it is to attract general attention. Many
publishers will not do this, but your chief and only point in appearing
in the paper is to have your advertisement read, and it pays better to
insert it in a journal with 5,000 readers who will all see it than in
one having 100,000 subscribers, hardly 100 of whom will glance at the
advertisement. You can afford to pay handsomely if the publisher will
give you a line of black-faced type to eight or ten lines of news.
18. THE PICTURESQUE NAME.--Have a name for your store such as will
easily fit everybody’s mouth. “The Beehive,” “The Blizzard,” “The
Buttercup,” or “The Bonanza,” are suggestive titles. Many customers are
attracted by the talk of their acquaintances, and it is much easier to
tell a friend that you bought an article at “The Hub,” or “The Sun,”
than to attempt the unpronounceable name of a proprietor, or to give a
forgotten number. Successful men in several lines of business assert
that they owe much of their good fortune to the happy hit of a popular
name.
19. THE PICTORIAL WRECK.--A writer with the gift of a lively imagination
can write something interesting in the way of a fanciful battle between
customers and goods. Head lines, “Great Slaughter in ---- (the taking
name of your store),” “Wreck of Old Conservatism,” “Smash of High
Prices,” “Ruined by the Rush.” Then would follow a graphic description
of the charge of customers upon wares in which the store was almost
wrecked by the enormous number of people who took advantage of the
under-cost prices. People enjoy this kind of pleasantry, and the impulse
to follow the crowd is almost irresistible. A certain New York house
grew from a small to a great one by this method of advertising.
20. RED LETTER DAY.--Have a day in which you offer special bargains to
the people of a certain town, village or hamlet. Put up flaming posters,
announcing “Squashville day,” “Jonesboro Day,” “Bloomington day.”
21. CLASS DISCOUNT.--You may draw numbers of men to your place by this
means. Secret fraternities, workingmen’s orders, church societies,
wheelmen’s leagues, will be attracted to you if they know you specially
favor them. Fortunes have been made by close attention to these great
organizations.
22. THE HONEST FLAW.--Strictly instruct your clerks to tell your
customers the precise nature of every article; if the quality is
inferior, make them to understand exactly what they are getting for
their money; and if there be a flaw, let them be careful to point it
out. By such means thousands of people who cannot trust their own
judgment in these matters, will be attracted to a place where they are
certain to be treated fairly. A. T. Stewart, who began business in a
modest store, and who, in the latter part of his life sold $20,000,000
worth of goods every year, declared that this plan was the keynote of
his success.
23. THE PREMIUM CLERK.--You need clerks who can induce acquaintances to
visit your store, cajole visitors into customers, and coax customers to
become larger buyers. If you have a number of clerks and your business
will admit of it, offer a monthly premium to the one who brings into the
store the largest number of new buyers or into the cash-drawer the
heaviest receipts. There are certain kinds of business where this plan
will work, and will be provocative of such competition as greatly to
increase trade.
24. THE RAILROAD MILEAGE.--Arrange, if possible, with some railroad
company to issue mileage tickets as premiums to those who will trade
with you. At two cents a mile you could afford to give two miles of
travel for every one dollar’s worth of goods. At that rate $500 worth of
goods would buy a $20 mileage ticket.
25. THE DIAL DOLLARS.--How many figures on the dial of your watch?
Twenty-eight, counting the number VI, which is generally either omitted
or only partly indicated. Fix a big dial two feet or more in diameter in
some prominent part of your store, and announce that when a customer has
traded an amount equal to the total figures on the dial you will present
him with a watch. Of course, the timepiece would be a very cheap one,
but many a parent will trade with you for the sake of getting a watch
for his child.
26. FIRST CUSTOMER PACKAGE.--In some periods of the day you will have
more custom than you can well attend to, while at other times you will
have nothing to do. The following plan will perhaps help to equalize
trade, and also give you additional buyers: Suspend a package in some
conspicuous part of your store with the announcement thereon that it
will be given free to the first customer in the morning.
27. THE CARPET COUPON.--By a system of large-sized coupons--we will say
a foot square--you can put into practice a unique system that will
appeal to the heart of every housewife. Publish that you will give a
free carpet of a certain size and grade when a fixed amount has been
traded. A square foot of a coupon represents a sum of money spent in the
store--perhaps one dollar. Every woman by measuring her room can learn
how many dollars’ worth of goods she must buy before she can have a free
carpet.
28. THE HOUSE LOT COUPON.--This is an extension of carpet coupon. A
certain amount of purchased goods entitles one to a building lot, which,
if in the country, need not be of great cost. Have the particular lots
selected and advertised. Another plan is to offer the lot to the largest
purchaser within a certain time--possibly five years. This is a good way
to hold on to customers.
29. PRICE-TIME GRADE.--If you have the credit system, have also a
gradation of prices so as to encourage people to pay at the earliest
possible time. A system like this would do--forty days full price;
thirty days, two per cent. off; twenty days, three per cent. off; ten
days, four per cent. off; cash, five per cent. off.
30. SALES BULLETIN.--People like to buy where others buy. Success brings
success. If you are doing well, you may do better. Have a large bulletin
board in front of your store, or near it, announcing your sales for the
past week. Newspapers boom themselves in like manner by publishing their
enormous circulation.
31. BEST REASON PRIZE.--Offer a prize to the one who will give the best
reason for trading at Push & Pluck’s, and then insert in the form of an
advertisement in a leading paper a list of the best reasons. Six months
before Christmas offer presents to all who will trade a certain amount
before that holiday.
32. BIRTHDAY CALENDAR.--A calendar with the birthdays of your customers
(age of course omitted), would attract attention, and the offer to give
a present to any one trading a certain amount before his birthday would
certainly add to your receipts.
33. CONSPICUOUS PRICE-LIST.--Buyers are caught like fish. Display in
your window a list of cut prices. Passers-by who cannot resist the
opportunity of a bargain will come in, and often be induced to purchase
the goods which are not reduced.
34. THE EARLY DISCOUNT.--In order to equalize the trade of the day
announce that you will give a slight discount to persons trading during
the dull hours.
35. THE MONEY-SPACE COUNTER.--Determine that every portion of your store
shall pay. Have every lineal foot of your counters calculated at a
certain rate of profit. If you find a department that does not pay,
change methods or your goods, and if still unsuccessful drop it. Many
large dealers fail because they keep departments where the expenses are
more than the profits. But if every foot of room pays only a little, the
entire store must pay handsomely.
It will be seen in the foregoing how every leading impulse in human
nature is appealed to--curiosity and cupidity, honesty and economy,
personal flattery and local pride. If, in addition to these powerful
inducements to patronage, you combine shrewdness in buying and
cautiousness in trusting, if your goods are excellent in quality and
generous in quantity, if your place of business is neat and attractive,
and your service marked by promptness and politeness; then it is
impossible to fail; you have all the elements of prosperity, and are
certain to be a great and successful merchant.