Читать книгу Selling Home Furnishings: A Training Program - Walter F. Shaw - Страница 48

Assuming that we have acquired adequate knowledge of the materials and construction of our merchandise, how are we going to use it effectively. We suggest a few general principles as guides to sound practice:

Both materials and construction normally are factors to be employed in closing a sale, but not in opening it.—If you went into a store and asked to see a pair of shoes and the salesman, seizing the first model at hand, assured you that it was made of tanned box calf, with waterproof soles, cork filling, and tacked insoles, by a process involving more than 150 separate operations, all of which made it a wonderful value at $8.50, would you tell him to wrap up a pair? Hardly.

Neither materials nor construction would interest you until you were comfortably fitted with a shoe that satisfied your ideas of style and color, and at a price within your buying limit.

When a customer asks for an advertised article and seems pleased with its appearance, the demonstration of its value can start at once. In any other situation it must wait until you find something with which she is pleased.

There are those who appear to believe that selling is a game in which the object is to beat down the customer's opposition and make her buy. In dealing with customers of any type above the most unenlightened, this idea always has proved a boomerang.

In talking materials and construction, preserve a sense of relative values.—When we say about a $35 chair everything that properly could be said about one priced at $65, our customer either believes or disbelieves us. If she disbelieves, the sale is lost. If she believes, our chance to get more than $35 of her money is lost. Even if we leave out of account the basically important matter of business honesty, it is unwise to overstate the values of any article. In a well-managed furniture store every article possesses points of merit sufficient to sell it on the basis of what can be fairly claimed for it. To claim more, whether intentionally or through ignorance of the facts, is to deceive our customers, and—inevitably—to cut down our sales volume.

Demonstrate the value of all merchandise under serious consideration whether you believe it to be necessary or not.—Many sales of advertised articles or merchandise chosen on the basis of its decorative appeal can be closed without discussion of materials or construction. As a safety-first measure, these factors should be mentioned somewhat carefully after the order has been booked. Sometimes a customer will buy an article in complete good faith, and yet within the next half hour will start shopping in other stores to see whether or not she has bought wisely. Even more important is the fact that in every case the new purchase, when delivered, is subject to inspection and criticism not only by members of the family but also by neighbors and friends. Some of this criticism is bound to be adverse, and unless we have taken the precaution to build up an unshakable confidence in the excellence and value of our merchandise there may be a telephone order to come and get it, or at least a loss of goodwill and future patronage.

These precautionary build-ups can of course be brief. For example, if you have sold a bedroom suite on the basis of appearance only, it will be enough to say in substance: "You have bought this suite because of its beauty and style, which will continue to delight you always. But before you leave I want you to realize that these fine qualities rest on a foundation of sturdy construction. This dresser, for example, is * * *."

Contacting the "I'll-buy-later" prospect.—There is always the chance that the sale can be closed. A woman's statement that she is not yet ready to buy is in many cases merely a "defense mechanism"—a psychological device to serve as an excuse to leave if she senses that high-pressure selling effort is being applied. It is possible that if we answer, in effect, "Please don't think of yourself as a customer, but rather as a valued guest of the store. This is not a busy hour for me, and while you are here I hope you will let me show you some more of the new things, which are particularly interesting this season," we may be able to develop the confidence and desire necessary to effect a sale.

If we fail to do this, we can at least see to it that the customer leaves with a clear impression of the value of the pieces she has been considering. If this impression is sufficiently clear and deep she may come back. Otherwise, in all likelihood, she will not.

The shopper in a hurry.—Many of us habitually make little or no effort with the customer who enters with the warning "I am in a great hurry," or "I have just a moment to look around today, and will come back later when I have more time." This is a mistake. Such statements may or may not be entirely true. In many cases they are another form of defense mechanism—a way out, prepared in advance. In other cases, they are merely a form of exhibitionism—a native desire to appear important. Such customers, properly handled, often can be held indefinitely, with the average chance to make a sale.

Price important in judging value.—Those who sell are rightfully apt to think of value as the total sum of a number of costs. While this method of evaluation is not fundamental economically, nevertheless our opinions often crystallize when we view the cost records. Our customer, however, is dually interested in what it costs to make and distribute what we sell her and in what our product means to her through its uses in her home. The merchant's, and hence the salesman's obligation, is to satisfy her that the price she pays is in strict conformity with the actual reasonable costs of making and delivering the goods. Simultaneously, however, we must teach her how our product will fit into her home, the satisfaction it will give her, the use it will stand through the years, in order that she may correctly weigh her satisfaction against her cost and reach a final conclusion as to her purchase.

This does not mean, of course, that the price should be stated first, but simply that it must be stated at the time it becomes important in the mind of the buyer. Assuming a skillfully conducted preliminary talk, this will normally be after an article has been tentatively accepted on the basis of appearance, and fitness, but before the beginning of a serious effort to close the sale.

Avoid resistance, and answer unspoken objections.—Use of the "How do you like this?" type of question sets up unnecessary hazards of resistance and should be avoided. The same is true of positive assertions not susceptible of immediate proof, and also of statements which tend to suggest inner doubts.

If you say of a certain sheen-type rug, "This rug, in pattern and coloring reproducing one of the celebrated Isphans of seventeenth century Persia, is woven of a special brand of imported oriental wools, by methods which give to its deep, close pile almost unlimited durability, plus this rich, velvet-like softness and luster," you add to its value without setting up a possible source of resistance to unspoken objections. But if you say, "The construction of this rug makes it the best value on the market," you cannot prove your statement, which may serve to remind the buyer that other stores are offering special values, or that her friend is enthusiastic about a rug bought recently at Blank's.

Unproved assertions destroy confidence.—Suppose you are trying to sell a table with mahogany-veneer top and red gum legs. To call it a mahogany table will lose the sale immediately, if the customer knows woods. To say that it has a mahogany-veneer top and mahogany finish gum legs may suggest to the buyer that a veneer is a poor substitute for solid wood, and that gum cannot be desirable if it must be finished to look like something else. To ignore the whole matter of materials and construction and to try to sell the table on its beauty and fitness alone may cause the customer to wonder just what you are trying to conceal, which will mean loss of confidence in yourself and your merchandise.

The wise course is to tell the entire truth about the piece in a perfectly matter-of-fact way designed to avoid any invidious comparisons of woods or processes. For example: "This table whose design and coloring you so much admire is as sturdy as it is good looking. Following the practice of some old eighteenth century cabinetmakers, the maker of this piece has combined several woods. Those used in the top are built into the modern five-ply construction, which brings out the full beauty of grain of the mahogany upper ply, ensures freedom from any danger of warping or splitting, and provides the strength of steel. For the legs he has used the beautiful straight-grained red gum of the South."

It is a costly folly to try to sell one material or process by condemning another. We show a table, for example, and speak of "solid American walnut" as if no other wood or construction were worthy of consideration; and 5 minutes later, finding that we have misjudged her price level, we stammer and stumble over an attempt to convince her that plywood is an acceptable substitute.

These are the dangerous devices of mental laziness. When a customer asks us if mahogany is better than birch, or Axminster carpets better than velvets, or solid construction better than veneer, a positive answer is misleading. We certainly should know that mahogany, like birch, varies in excellence according to the individual board; that some Axminsters are better than some velvets, and vice versa; and that the construction is best which best meets the particular requirements of design and purpose, in furniture precisely as in shoes or ships.

The fact is that everything used in making home furnishings of worthy quality has stood the test of time, and therefore is interesting and desirable in its own right. If we cannot make it seem so to customers, we have not learned enough about it.

In selling materials and construction, repetition is needed.—We must be governed by the results of our preliminary talk in picking out for emphasis the particular points which promise to be of interest to each customer. Having made these points, we sometimes need to repeat them, in varying language and in different parts of our sales talk. Moreover, we must never forget that many things which are as familiar to us as the multiplication table are strange to our customers, and therefore difficult to remember.

We know, for example, that concealed differences in construction may make one easy chair worth twice as much as another of identical appearance; that in sliced walnut veneers, figured woods may cost 5 or 10 times as much as plain; but most buyers do not know such things. Accordingly, if we merely state such facts, but fail to groove a memory channel by one or more repetitions, there is an excellent chance that even the customer who wants and can afford good things will look elsewhere, completely forget what we have told her, and buy a cheaper article in the honest belief that she is getting something equally good. What too often happens is that in building up the value of our merchandise we fail to fix the facts in the customer's mind.

Treat merchandise carefully, and show it under the most favorable conditions.—It is self evident that valuable merchandise must be so handled as to imply that it is of distinguished excellence.

Respect in handling inspires respect.—A woman will not buy an article unless and until she has identified it with herself—conceived of it as belonging to herself, and in her own home. Suppose that we are showing her a length of drapery fabric. If we crush it, or handle it as if it were calico or cheesecloth, or chance to step on it before she makes this unconscious identification with herself, she will think less of it; if after, she will think less of us. Either reaction will be harmful.

In departments using rug racks, often it is necessary to remove a rug and show it on the floor before the sale can be closed. If we do this in a way that permits the piece to fall in a wrinkled heap on the floor we will not damage the rug, but we will hurt the buyer's opinion of it. A shrewd salesman will ask his customer to walk on the rug; but he will not walk on it himself.

The same care applies to showing furniture. It is folly to jerk a drawer violently, or pound a table or dresser top, or thump the seat of an easy chair, or sit on the arm of a sofa. Such actions reveal an awkwardness and lack of poise which one does not associate with good homes and their furnishings. Then, too, your customer, if she is seriously considering a purchase, thinks of you subconsciously as pounding her table or sitting on the arm of her sofa.

Similar care should be given to the language with which you characterize or describe your merchandise. Many an automobile salesman has lost a live prospect because he insisted on calling a beautiful car a "job." "This stuff," or even "these goods," may lose the sale of a fine damask. Wrong inflection in phrases like "It is veneered," "This is a cretonne," often is fatal.