Self Help
With tact well worth remembering, this salesman engaged me in
conversation while I unburdened my woes and then managed to get
me to go back with him and look at the suit. Before I left the store I
purchased the suit I came in to look at, and two others which I had
not intended purchasing.
That was the difference between a salesman and one who drove
customers away.
Moreover, I later introduced two of my friends to this same salesman and he made sizable sales to each of them. I was once walking down Michigan Boulevard, in Chicago, when my eye was attracted to a beautiful gray suit in the window of a men's store. I had no notion of buying the suit, but I was curious to know the price, so I opened the door, and, without entering, merely pushed my head inside and asked the first man I saw how much the suit in the window was. Then followed one of the cleverest bits of sales maneuvering I have ever observed.
The salesman knew he could not sell me the suit unless I came into the store, so he said, "Will you not step inside, sir, while I find out the price of the suit?" Of course he knew the price, all the time, but that was his way of disarming me of the thought that he intended trying to sell me the suit. Of course I had to be as polite as the salesman, so I said, "Certainly," and walked inside.
The salesman said, "Step right this way, sir, and I will
get the information for you." In less than two minutes I found myself
standing in front of a case, with my coat off, getting ready to try on a
coat like the one I had observed in the window. After I was in the coat,
which happened to fit almost perfectly (which was no accident, thanks to the
accurate eyes of an observing salesman) my attention was called to the nice,
smooth touch of the material.
I rubbed my hand up and down the arm of the coat, as I had seen the salesman do while describing the material, and, sure enough, it was a very fine piece of material. By this time I had again asked the price, and when I was told that the suit was only fifty dollars I was agreeably surprised, because I had been led to believe that it might have been priced much higher.