“Use Barbasol – just spread it on – shave it off – nothing else required!” Sales in this Sears store increased one hundred and two per cent, with only one negative reaction. A man with fuzz on his face said, “My gracious, it only takes me three minutes to shave anyway!” This answer gave us an idea, and the single- sentence sales “opener” was cha nged to, “How would you like to cut your shaving time in half ?” When this even more basic approach was used at William Taylor’s store in Cleveland, sales increased three hundred per cent, according to reports from Richard Roth, vice president. And here is further proof that once a sentence or a sales appeal is sufficiently basic, it will sell as high as seven out of every ten people on which it is used properly. The same sentence was sent to Benson, Smith & Company in Honolulu, and in three days sold fifty-one out of seventy-eight people, or all of the product on hand! Thousands of such case histories are in our files, but these are sufficient to indicate there is something fundamental about Sherlock Holmes’ law of averages: Basically we are all alike and respond to the same buying urges, and the same emotions that sold customers 20,000 years ago sell them today.
Now let us see in the next chapter what these basic buying urges are so that we can direct our “Tested Selling Sentences” at them and thus eliminate “blind selling.”
P. 31
Powered by FlippingBook