Читать книгу Selling Home Furnishings: A Training Program - Walter F. Shaw - Страница 8

In order to increase your daily average of people waited on, you must (a) arrange to secure customers for the otherwise idle hours of the day; and (b) develop the ability to speed up the selling process, which will enable you to sell to more people during the active hours.

(a) To secure customers for the otherwise idle hours of the day, begin with the "lookers" and your "call trade." The woman who has been planning what is to her an important purchase frequently will want to consult her husband or a friend in whose judgment she has confidence. If you have been successful in creating real interest in your merchandise, it will not be difficult to make an evening appointment, obviously as a means of saving the time of the husband or the friend.

When you suggest an early or late appointment you may readily promise exceptional service. You will be assured of the individual attention of your group under conditions removed from the confusion of regular store traffic. If the appointment is during the early morning hours or during evening hours, it will be easy to group the pieces as they are to be used and thus show them as they might actually look in the home.

Then, too, you always will have some sales under way or coming up with old customers, and in many cases you can, by acting in advance, arrange appointments which will occupy otherwise empty time, thus leaving the more active periods of the business day open for routine selling. Time which cannot be spent with customers should be devoted to developmental work.

(b) Among many ways to speed up the selling process are the following:

1. Get down to business, and stay there. Much time is wasted both before the sale is made and afterward in purely extraneous talk, not calculated in any way to advance the sale or build confidence. Within the limits imposed by courtesy, confine the conversation to the business in hand. And don't yield to the easy temptation to talk about yourself.

2. So far as is possible, eliminate the element of guesswork in showing merchandise. Find out enough about your customer's room and what is in it, and about her tastes and plans, to enable you to avoid confusion and resistance, and to cut down the amount of time spent in showing goods there is no chance to sell.

3. Be sure that your appearance, manner, and language are such as to inspire quick confidence. This will make it unnecessary to spend too much time in demonstrating the fitness and value of your merchandise. Alertness, faultless courtesy, and unfeigned interest in the customer's comfort and convenience are vital.

4. Know your stock, including the small occasional pieces whose location is often shifted, so thoroughly that you can go directly to any piece you want to show. In a sale involving several articles, particularly if they must be shown on different floors, plan and route the selling process to eliminate unnecessary movement, and if the display is made during regular store hours, try to close the sale somewhere above the first floor, with its noise, confusion, and beckoning suggestion of the open door.