Business Marketing Advertising

Last week one of the big office equipment concerns of Chicago put a young man to work as a company salesman. He had all the qualities of what we sometimes call “a born salesman,” but he lacked one thing.

A day or so after a customer came into the office to buy a credit file ? “one with an adding machine attached.” The new salesman went over the models on the floor, explaining to him the points of each in great detail. The customer, however, decided that he would shop around a bit. (1) The salesman urged him to buy. The more the salesman urged the more decided the customer’s “No” became. Finally he grew angry.

The sales manager of the company, who had been watching out of the corner of his eye, intercepted the customer as he had his hand on the door. The sales manager explained that he had overheard the merchant telling about the system he used for keeping accounts in his store. He wondered if the merchant wouldn’t tell him more about the system?

The customer was quick to respond (2) to the sales manager’s expression of interest in the one thing that was closer to the merchant’s heart than anything else ? his business. So they pulled up a couple of easy chairs and for almost an hour the customer talked about his town, his store, and his way of doing business. (3) Not a word was said about credit files.

After the merchant had told all there was to tell about his system of account keeping, the sales manager had an assistant bring in some packages of merchandise. On these the sales manager put down a string of figures, supposedly an order of groceries. Then he added up the figures ? wrong. He passed the package to the merchant and asked him if he had added them right. The merchant said “Yes.”

“If that were a sale in your store,” said the sales manager, “it would mean that you lost twenty-five cents profit on that one order. You say you fill two hundred orders a day. I’ll bet you a hat that you are losing five dollars every day in your store.” The merchant admitted he might be losing a little, but not five dollars. He agreed that probably $2.50 would be about right. The sales manager took the merchant’s own figure, cut it in half and showed him (4) how he could buy the credit file, pay for it in a few months, and have enough money over at the end of two years to take a much-needed vacation.

There are four distinct suggestions in the above story (each numbered in its proper place) which you can profitably apply to your work. Can you make the connection?

Selling is like golf ? you can generally improve your game by watching the club champion perform. In this case the salesman was far from being a champion, but even so you can use his mistakes to improve your own “game.”