When a prospect refuses to come to the back door, one door-to-door salesman I know of goes to the front door and says: “I didn’t think you were receiving at the back door today, so I called at the front door.” Improbable? Perhaps. But it works for him. One real estate salesman gets away with this light banter. He always tells the prospect, with a smile, of course, “Now this fi ne house is only five minutes from the Long Island Railroad – if you run a little.” Another real estate man I know has often told me: “If the place has an eight -foot closet, I’ll sell the entire house.” The management of a department store in New York told its piano buyer one day, so I am informed, that he couldn’t allow people to take eighteen months to pay, because that tied up its money too long. The management stated that the department could allow piano purchasers only twelve months to pay, instead of the usual eighteen months. Everywhere else in New York people could still purchase on the eighteen-month plan. After some thought, the buyer, not to be discouraged, ran full-page advertisements shouting: “A Whole Year to Pay!” People read the adver tisement. “A whole year to pay?” they would say. “That is certainly considerate of the store.” Sales increased! This was taking a handicap and turning it into a selling “sizzle.” Don’t sell the piano – sell a whole year to pay for it! Even pianos have “sizzles.” “No Canvassers Allowed” W. W. Powell, of the Hoover Company, sold 92 per cent of the people who had signs on their doors saying: “No Canvassers or Beggars Allowed.” When I asked him what his reasoning was, he told me that only people with weak sales resistance put up those signs, after they had bought so much from front-porch salesmen that they secured the sign for self-protection. Zenn Kaufman, who with Ken Goode wrote, Showmanship in Business, tells how the Electrolux salesman “Says It with Flowers” by lighting a giant size match, saying, “It runs silently as this match burns!”
One of New York City’s foremost department stores saved itself nearly $7,000 in unnecessary delivery costs by giving its clerks “Tested Selling Sentences” which we h ad designed to induce customers to carry their own small packages.
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