Chapter 10 The Farmer’s Daughter Moves To Town Don’t try to hoodwink her today. She knows more about Broadway than the traveling salesman does. Hokum is gone with the wind. People are fountain-pen shy and sales-talk conscious.
MR. CHARLES LESSER, president of Bost Tooth Paste Company, invited our Institute to study what should be said and done to sell his tooth paste in drug stores. After making a survey in a series of drug stores, we arrived at a method tested to sell the product at the cigar counters of the drug stores. Again the “how about it - ?” salesman was discarded, and the modern question - mark salesman was substituted. After a customer purchased some tobacco, the clerk would say: “Have you ever used the smoker’s tooth paste?” It was natural for the customer to say that he was not familiar with such a paste, and with this opportunity, with complete attention secured, the clerk would hold up a tube of Bost Tooth Paste and say: “It is made ESPECIALLY for people who smoke.” Here was a unique sort of tooth paste. The benefit was obvious. If the customer demanded proof, the salesman would blow cigarette smoke through his handkerchief, and rub away the stain with a little of the paste. (Wheelerpoint 3, “Say it with flowers.”) Results: the Standard Drug Store s of Ohio sold a three months’ supply of Bost Tooth Paste in one week, according to one record in our file on this “Tested Selling Sentence.” The Barn Has a Double Lock A few years ago J. C. Penney Company, operating 1400 stores nationally, felt that if their salespeople would say the right thing at the right time, they would sell better quality merchandise and more of it to every customer. I was given the assignment by Mr. W.A. Reynolds, vice president, of developing a word laboratory for these great stores, to analyze the selling features and owner benefits of each piece of merchandise. In particular, I recall an incident that increased the sales of a high-quality pair of bloomers.
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