Selling Frocks Brings Back Prosperity

 Selling Frocks Brings Back Prosperity 

   WHEN S. P. Liest lost his job, his family became panicky. They had no savings, and the prospect of Liest getting another job quickly was remote. But his plucky wife did not despair. She had read about a manufacturer of women’s frocks who appointed agents to sell his products. She wrote to him asking for a local agency, and presently received a number of style cards and a selling kit, with some practical suggestions for getting started. The plan was to call upon housewives in their homes. Determined to make money the first day, Mrs. Liest started out. “I was lucky on my first call,” Mrs. Liest declared. “When I approached the door I felt the porch would open up and swallow me, I was so frightened. When the prospect opened the door and smiled good morning, I couldn’t talk, and I believe if I hadn’t been so desperate for money, I might have quit right there. This prospect was very gracious, however. She seemed to feel sorry for me. She asked me to step inside, and by degrees I recovered from my stage fright. Then I started to talk about the frocks, and the dresses I was selling just as though I were visiting a friend. We talked styles and colors and fashions. I showed her the style cards, pointing out that they featured the latest Parisian fashions, and that she had probably seen similar designs in a current woman’s magazine. We got the magazine and compared the style features of my frocks with those illustrated in the publication, and I soon forgot I came to get that woman’s order, having become so absorbed in talking about clothes. When she presently told me that she would take each one of three numbers the manufacturer was pushing, I was not a little surprised. My commission, $4.30, was the exact amount of the deposit required, the balance being collected by the manufacturer C.O.D. I was elated. I didn’t make another call that day. I hurried home, stopping at the grocery on the way to get things for dinner, and entered the house loaded with bags of groceries.” Mrs. Liest was not so successful the next day, however. She made several calls, but failed to get an order. Analyzing that day’s selling effort made her wonder why it had seemed so easy to make her first sale. “I couldn’t help believing that my first sale was prompted by the charity and kindness of my first prospect,” Mrs. Liest pointed out, “and that was disappointing, but the more I thought about it, the more inclined I was to change this view. I saw after some time, that when I started out I didn’t make a conscious effort to get an order. I talked dresses and dress styles. I was just one woman talking to another woman about clothes. This touch, present in the first interview, was lost in those that followed, and I was making a stilted, unnatural effort to build interest. I changed my method. Now when I call to see a woman about frocks, I talk as most women would talk about clothes. I get my selling points over in this way, and it’s natural. I make a point to wear my sample, and the prospect then can visualize the way it hangs and looks when being worn. I ask the prospect to note the depth of the hems, the French seams, the latest style features, and the washable guarantee that is sewn into each frock. In this way I build the prospect’s interest to the buying point.” During her first nine months, Mrs. Liest made a profit well over $1,000 from frock sales. Commenting on this, she said: “All I do is talk woman to woman about clothes.” She was not required to invest in a sample kit or style cards. Her entire selling outfit was furnished by the manufacturer. She makes an average of thirty calls a day, and sells not less than four frocks daily, on which her commissions total $5.17. Mrs. Liest has had days when she sold as many as fifteen frocks, and more than one day she has sold from ten to thirteen. She has found that the best time for calling upon housewives is between nine-thirty in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon. Because women like to talk about clothes, they willingly admit the representatives of dress and frock manufacturers who call at their door. You may readily become a representative for such a manufacturer who sells on the C.O.D. plan. The deposit, or initial payment, made at the time the order is taken, is retained by the salesperson as the commission on the sale. The balance is collected C.O.D. when the parcel post shipment is made. 

A Good Way to Sell Radios 

    ENTERING the lobby of a small hotel frequented by salesmen and guests who resided there permanently, James Winton placed a radio on the clerk’s desk and said to him: “May I connect this to a light socket? No ground, no aerial is necessary.” The clerk obligingly permitted Winton to connect the radio and several men in the lobby gathered around him out of idle curiosity. In a few moments a local station was tuned in and music floated over the heads of this group, across the lobby. For some minutes Winton contented himself with a demonstration of the radio, moving its volume control from a whisper to a loud clear tone, without saying a word. When he felt that he had secured the undivided attention of his audience, he took a punch board from his brief case, and addressed the men in the lobby. “This radio retails for twenty-nine fifty,” said Winton. “It is one of the best small sets you can buy. The fellow who punches the right number gets it.” He extended the board to one of the men, and in less than thirty minutes, the board, passed from one to another, was completely punched out. A guest in one of the rooms on the third floor started away with the radio, smiling. Winton, pocketing the proceeds, suggested to the clerk that he take a punch board. “You keep 25 per cent of what you take in on the board,” said Winton, “and the radio will be free.” The clerk agreed, so Winton left a board with him and then went on to his next call. “I made twenty dollars profit on that first punch board in the hotel,” said Winton. “On the board left with the clerk, I made five dollars. I delivered the radio when the board was punched out. The radios were sold to me at the usual discount to dealers by the manufacturer, so I had a nice profit from those two boards. But small hotels are not the only places where I sell radios. You’d be surprised at the number of barber shops, cigar stores, billiard halls, and other places of this nature where you can put in these radios and do a nice business. Some of the more popular barber shops, lunchrooms, and recreation parlors use as many as three boards weekly. I had a little difficulty getting the hang of lining them up at first though. I thought it was only necessary to sell the proprietor or a clerk. I was fooled. You have to show them how to make money on the board. That’s why I connect the radio first. No one is interested in a demonstration that doesn’t demonstrate. They want to hear the radio as well as look at it. My present method proves the money making possibilities to the clerk and shows the crowd just how good the radio is.” Winton pointed out that trying to talk up the sale isn’t effective with him. He buys his radios from a wholesale company, specializing in this type of radio distribution, and during his first four months his profits were well over a thousand dollars. He builds up his business by establishing an “agent” in a barber shop, pool room, or tavern, in the manner described above. Each agent, so appointed, uses between three and six boards monthly. He pays for the boards and the radios he uses when delivered by the wholesaler, and the cost of the first radio is the extent of his original investment. This amounts to twelve dollars. It is possible for anyone who will really work to make a good profit supplying the hotels, restaurants, lunchrooms, cigar stores, drug stores, barber shops, and billiard halls with this sales plan. By making about twenty calls on prospects daily, Winton averages over nineteen dollars a day when he is working.