ANYONE interested in improving his human
relations has much to learn from the art of salesmanship as it has
developed through the years. To begin with, the operation of selling is
almost universal. The human relations of professional men, for instance,
are largely with patients or clients—customers, if you please of their
services. Every producer must seek a market, even if it be through an
employment office or an advertising column or a business letter. To the
schoolteacher, the pupil or the parent may well be represented as a
purchasing agent. Even the clergyman has a selling job to do. Selling is
a two-way process: a buyer is also involved, and all people are buyers.
The mistakes, the temptations, and the insights of salesmen are present
to some extent in all these occupations.
Salesmen, furthermore, have had the courage to recognize their mistakes.
More intensive study has been made of the problems in selling than in
any other field of human relations. Much can be learned from these
pioneers.
Why do people buy? What do customers want, actually? How is the salesman
equipped to satisfy these wants? Even those whose occupation is far
removed from selling can apply these questions to their relations with
business or professional associates.
Why do people buy? There is no denying that price is a great
consideration. A recent survey in the United States showed the
importance of impulse buying, the kind of buying people do when they
happen to see something that appeals to them and decide to buy it on the
spot. Fifty-three per cent of all purchases in chain stores is impulse
buying. Forty-two per cent of department-store business, and even
twenty-four per cent of grocery purchases come from buying on the
impulse. Nothing freezes an impulse so much as high prices.
Prices, however, are by no means the whole story. People desire quality,
too. Often they are apt to think that quality makes an article
economical at a higher price. A salesman who was encountering among his
prospects a good deal of price resistance found that a frank admission
was his best approach.
"Our service is not intended for any but the better rugs," was his
initial statement. "I have called on you because I understand that you
are the owner of very good rugs…” If the lady of the house did not agree
that her rugs were better than most people's, the salesman gracefully
withdrew, because he could spend his time to better advantage talking to
other prospects who were interested in quality.
But more important even than price or quality is imagination—imagination
of the circumstances, the needs, the motivations of the buyer. "Were You
Mistaken?" was the arresting caption of an advertisement in a Rotary
club publication, which lead: "So you thought we were jewelers! Well,
well, does it not beat all how these ideas seem to get around. Just
because our vaults are bulging wide with diamonds and precious stones,
with quaint and beautiful pieces of gold and silver and platinum (and
because we have mentioned it from time to time) you naturally jumped to
the conclusion that our only business was selling jewels.
And now we have to tell you that you were perhaps mistaken. What we
really sell is something quite different than you think. We sell the
most precious, the most fragile, the most beautiful things in all this
world. We sell Love. We sell Romance. We sell Adventure. We sell Loyalty
that lasts through the years undisturbed by time and tide… . We traffic
in old-fashioned gardens with great hedges of lilacs. We are guardians
of your Memories, the makers of the only dreams that last" And so on to
the genial conclusion: "Everything else in time grows old but love and
truth, and jewels.”
Who would dispute the insight of this advertisement into the real
desires of the prospective customers? Pearls of greatest price are those
personal associations which they wish to commemorate.
A salesman who has the imagination to project himself into the mind of
another person to discover his real needs performs a high function, for
often the other person is not quite aware of them himself. The salesman
is able to crystallize vague desires perhaps, or he actually creates a
value not intrinsic in his product, but none the less real since it was
born of the salesman's sincere interest and perception.
How much better for the salesman to study the actual needs of his
customers than to try to get business by mere assertion of his own will
and desire for an order. Baked beans were a drug on the market in one
city where the housewives had the habit of baking their own. All the
rival manufacturers had done was to clamor: "Buy my brand!"
Then one of them had the imagination to present the housewife's side of
the picture. His advertisements told of the sixteen hours required to
bake beans at home and why home-baking could never make the beans
digestible. He pictured home-baked beans with the crisp beans on top,
the mushy ones below. Then he showed how the factory selected their
beans, used soft water, and steam ovens. A free sample was offered for
comparison. The customer was even invited to "Try Our Rivals Too!"
Success attended this selling campaign because the salesman did not
argue anything for his own advantage, but unselfishly considered the
needs of his prospective customers. People respond to the unselfish,
imaginative approach—by purchasing.
What do customers want, actually? First and foremost, they want to make
up their own minds. They do not want to be browbeaten or tricked or
persuaded. They want information that enables them to decide for
themselves. The salesman has to let them buy. They cannot be sold.
The salesman who sets out to provide the needed information as lucidly,
conveniently, and completely as he can, is the successful salesman. A
store that gives the impression of placing all its cards on the table,
face up, receives the gratitude of the customers and their respect. They
feel that no available information is being concealed when every article
has the price plainly marked, and when they are able to wander about
making up their own minds without the hot breath of the salesman forever
hounding them for a decision. Oh yes, they want him within reach ready
to answer their questions, to share his experience, and to help them
make comparisons. But he is wanted as a friend, not as an antagonist, as
someone they can trust to furnish an authentic background for their
purchases.
At a time when technology is multiplying the supply of goods available,
the estimate that 70 per cent of sales lost result from indifference on
the part of salespeople assumes an importance vital to the whole
economy. When questioned about their product or service, they are prone
to shrug their shoulders as if to say: "Don't ask me. I just work here."
Or they are like the salesman who offered a fine pair of shoes priced
accordingly. To try him out, the customer exclaimed: "That's highway
robbery'" Did the salesman tell him that he had other good shoes for
less, but this was the finest produced? Did he point to the additional
costs in manufacturing quality shoes? Not at all. He blamed the
manufacturer for "holding us up" in a tone which implied:
"That's your problem. I couldn't care less." Such indifference is a sure
way to irritate a potential purchaser and to frustrate all the ingenuity
and passion for perfection that has gone into the production of the
goods. Only a genuine interest in the products and a genuine desire to
help the customer equip salespeople to play their vital part in an
expanding economy.
Salesmen who go out. of their way to teach customers how to make better
use of products or get. longer wear from them may lose immediate sales,
but they are watering the delicate flower of confidence which blossoms
in repeat orders—the most profitable kind of business. A wire-brush
manufacturer found a way to double the service of a brush used
extensively on a certain kind of polishing-machine. So he made a point
of visiting every purchaser of this brush to show him personally how die
saving could be accomplished. It looked like plain suicide for the
manufacturer, but these visits enabled him to demonstrate also other
uses for his brushes. He clinched many profitable accounts and
profitable repeat business followed. This was not plain suicide, but the
salvaging of a threatened relationship, for, sooner or later, someone
else would have discovered the saving and confidence in the manufacturer
might have been shaken.
Like the fabulous Janus of Roman mythology, the salesman is always
looking in two directions to improve his knowledge of what people want.
He is the channel of information that conveys the needs and desires of
the consumer to the producer, as well as a source of expert knowledge to
the buyer.
Such, ideally, is the vocation of the salesman when he is convinced that
service is his business. But actually… ? How does the salesman become
equipped to satisfy the needs of customers?
Training—specialized training—is the answer. The employer of the
salesman should be his teacher. To be a teacher, the employer should be
utterly genuine. If he is thinking of profit rather than service—it he
is putting pressure on his salesmen to "produce"—then his attitude will
be reflected in the salesman, whatever the teaching.
The employer who is genuinely interested in improved service can inspire
his salesman with that sincere interest in people and their needs which
spells successful selling. The salesman will be trained, not to win
arguments, but to ask questions—to make the other person feel that he is
the important factor in the transaction.
The salesman will be trained as an expert in his line, as a mine of
technical information about the background of his products—not for
arrogant display, but as necessary equipment for feeling his way toward
the actual needs and interests of the customer. An old lady listened
patiently to the long sales talk that a clerk had memorized.
Overwhelmingly, he set forth all the fine points of a stove, its many
“gadgets”' its chromium plating, and the like.
At last, timidly, as he paused for breath, she ventured a question:
"Will it keep an old lady warm?"
No small part of the salesman's training comes from his experience with
customers. Arrogance, insincerity, and downright deceitfulness may and
often do merely reflect the kind of reception accorded the salesman by
those whom he aspires to serve. It is uphill work for him to develop a
wholehearted devotion to the interests of his customers if they snub
him, keep him waiting fruitlessly, and behave generally as if he were an
enemy and a bore to boot. Like begets like. The customer who shuts
himself off from these sources of information is not serving his own
interests. He is needlessly increasing the cost of serving him. He is
failing to realize that buying and selling are operations, not opposite
in character but essentially alike, combined operations to achieve more
efficient distribution.
Reproduced here is a card which is prominently displayed at the
receptionist's desk of a company that interviews many salesmen. How
encouraging to the salesman a visit to this organization must be. So
much depends on atmosphere in a business or in a town. Every gesture of
courtesy lights a torch that is passed from hand to hand, lighting for
each one, new vistas of opportunity for better human relations and
greater service.
What has been said about the salesman's problems and purposes applies to
the buyer in equal measure. He, too, is vitally concerned to secure a
source of supply on which he can depend. His main function is also the
provision of accurate information to his source about his plans and
problems, so that together they can work out solutions beneficial to all
concerned. If all the facts cannot be disclosed by the buyer, at least
he will be frank in admitting it. He will never attempt to mislead the
salesman by exaggerations, hedging or half-truths, for such insincerity
is fatal to the atmosphere of cordial cooperation which is his chief
aim.
In the creation of this atmosphere, Rotarians can play a great part, not
only by their personal conduct and influence, but through club
activities. An interesting attempt to get Rotarians to look into the
mirror —as employers, as salesmen, and as buyers— was made in a Rotary
program where a salesman and a purchasing agent lore the problem of
their mutual relations apart in terms of "My Pet Peeves" and "The Kind I
Like!' As members of the club joined the discussion, a richer
understanding of the common task of these two vocations emerged.
The same idea is stimulated by another Rotary club which sponsors a
so-called "peddlers' picnic" to which each member invites a salesman for
a day of better acquaintance and jollity at the country club. Or there
is the project of a "courtesy contest" undertaken in many towns by
Rotary clubs which offer prizes for letters describing special acts of
service by salespeople. Any Rotarian can make it his business to suggest
projects of this kind to his club, and any club that undertakes them can
be sure that the effects will be far reaching.
An unexpected result of a courtesy contest, for instance, was that
several local firms and a hospital started courtesy contests of their
own for their employees. The town as a whole became conscious of the
possibilities for improvement in human relations, and the results
quickly became apparent to visitors from other towns.
What steps are you taking to improve your buying and selling
relationships?
