Self Control
If given
the opportunity, any customer will give the alert salesman a clue as to
the particular merchandise, which should be stressed in an effort to
make a sale.
I then moved over to the shirt counter.
Here I was met by an elderly gentleman who asked: "Is there something I can do for you today?"
Well, I thought to myself that if he ever did anything for me it would have to be today, as I might never come back to that particular store again. I told him I wanted to look at shirts, and described the style and color of shirt that I wanted. The old gentleman made quite a hit with me when he replied by saying:
"I am sorry, sir, but they are not wearing that style this season, so we are not showing it." THE man who is afraid to give credit to those who help him do a piece of creditable work is so small that Opportunity will pass by without seeing him some day. I said I knew "they" were not wearing the style for which I had asked, and for that very reason, among others, I was going to wear it providing I could find it in stock. If there is anything which nettles a man - especially that type of man who knows exactly what he wants and describes it the moment he walks into the store - it is to be told that "they are not wearing it this season."
Such a statement is an insult to a man's intelligence, or to what he thinks is his intelligence, and in most cases it is fatal to a sale. If I were selling goods I might think what I pleased about a customer's taste, but I surely would not be so lacking in tact and diplomacy as to tell the customer that I thought he didn't know his business.
Rather I would prefer to manage tactfully to show him what I believed to be more appropriate merchandise than that for which he had called, if what he wanted was not in stock.
One of the most famous and highly paid writers in the
world has built his fame and fortune on the sole discovery that it is
profitable to write about that which people already know and with which they
are already in accord. The same rule might as well apply to the sale of
merchandise.
The old gentleman finally pulled down some shirt boxes and began laying out shirts, which were not even similar to the shirt for which I had asked. I told him that none of these suited, and as I started to walk out he asked if I would like to look at some nice suspenders.