Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, PIANOS ONLY, JANUARY, 1942
Making Stubborn
Customers Buy
HE ability to sense the temperament
of a prospect always proves invalu-
able to a salesman. Stubborn custo-
mers are perhaps most aggravating but
making them buy is usually an interesting
experience.
I heard of a clever piece of salesman-
ship recently which happened in the
piano department of a big department
store where several salesmen were stand-
ing about. A well dressed man came in
and immediately all the salesmen were
on the alert. In fact they must have made
it appear to the well dressed man that
they were too much so, because he turned
to one of them and said, "Can't a man
look around here without being fol-
lowed?" Immediately there was a retreat
on the part of the salesmen who let the
gentleman in question browse around
among the pianos on display:—all but
one. This salesman watched him and
when he disappeared into one of the
small rooms where grands were displayed
he quietly stood just outside the door
where he could not be observed by the
prospect. When the latter came out he
quietly said, "I thought I would stand
here and keep the other salesmen from
annoying you." Caught off his guard by
this expression of supposed service, the
gentleman immediately mellowed and a
general conversation ensued which after
a short time led to a $900 sale.
According to Dr. Daniel A. Laird, who
spoke last year at the convention in New
York, stubborn customers are apt to yield
when presented with just the opposite
ideas they may have in their minds. Said
he:
"Another very well-known type, the
stubborn customer, and we all are a little
bit stubborn at heart, some very much
more than others, and I am going to give
you an idea right from your own life. I
am going to call out one word, and I want
each person to shout the first word that
that word makes him think of. Up. Au-
dience; 'Down'. Dr. Laird: Hot. Audience:
'Cold'. Dr. Laird: Black. Audience: 'White'.
Dr. Laird: Business. Chairman Clark:
'Good'. Dr. Laird: That's the spirit, and he
wasn't coached on it, either.
T
"Now the first idea that occurs to
people, is usually the opposite idea, and
that makes some people who have that
sort of feeling ingrained in their natures
very obstinate as customers, and the best
way to get them not to buy something
is to try to force it onto them, try to high
pressure.
"I know one textile man in Utica. New
York, a millionaire, who was so stubborn
—this is the God's truth—that when a
salesman would call on him, he would
turn his back and say, 'all right, tell your
story', then only four -words would this
man say. Standing with his back to the
salesman, after the salesman got just a
good start in his story, the man would
say, 'How much?' And then, 'Too much',
and that ended the interview.
"Now, people who are slow in making
up their minds are oftentimes that way
because they are stubborn. Here is the
way to handle them. First, sell them by
quoting their own words. Say, 'As you
said/ not 'As I said.'
"The second point is to take the other
side, mildly. A tractor salesman at Green-
ville, Mississippi, sold $5,600 worth of
tractors on a Tuesday morning after 1
had given him this second point on a
Monday night, to an old planter who had
worlds of money, but wasn't going to
part with it and was still running his
plantation with mules. This man went out
the following morning and said, 'I'm
sorry, but after thinking it over, I don't
believe your plantation is big enough to
use tractors/
" % It isn't?'
"And in an hour the stubborn man had
sold himself $5,600 worth of machinery."
TESTS ON STUBBORN CUSTOMERS
"We were talking about stubborness,
which is all too prevalent; customers take
too many sales away. Here are two brief
tests to tell whether you are going to
make it difficult for the customer to get
around this stubbomess. One step is ask
him to lean over, look inside. When you
ask some people to do that, they stand
bolt upright and take just a fleeting
glance out of the corner of their eyes.
"If a person is a little frigid about
looking inside the mechanism or bending
over to try the action, then you are wise
in following this second rule, to make it
difficult for the customer to buy, just a
little bit difficult, by saying. This is the
last run we have; there are no more in
the warehouse/ or 'Somebody else was
ui earlier this afternoon and put sort of
an option on this, so we are not quite
sure whether you can have it or not/
and oh, how the person who won't look
down wants it then.
There are a great variety of stubborn
customers but most of them are licked
when they are told that the article they
want to buy cannot be purchased. I have
seen this work in several instances. While
talking with a retail piano salesman re-
cently he told me of an experience he had
had just before the 10% excise tax went
into effect last October.
BACK TO THE FIRST ONE
A woman had come into the wareroom
in the Spring and had looked at a piano.
At that time she was just in the "looking
around class". She tried to explain to the
salesman the particular type of style she
was looking for, which the salesman ex-
plained would be very hard to get, and
he proceeded to show her some models
which were as near to what she wanted
as he could imagine from the description
she gave him. In respect to tone, size
and finish one model seemed to suit her
fancy, but she demurred and -went away.
A short time afterward she came in again
and went all over the procedure without
deciding. The Fall was coming on and
she was looking around again. The sales-
man thought he would remind her that
installment sales would be restricted to
10% down and 18 months after September
1st, but this did not move her.
Finally a new model piano came from
the factory which was even nearer to the
one which she had suggested than the
one she had previously looked at. The
salesman immediately got in touch with
her and asked her to come in and look
at it. When she came in she looked it
over, liked the style, but still demurred.
Finally the announcement of the excise
tax was made and she was notified that
if she wanted the piano at the price 1
quoted on her previous visits she would
have to purchase it before October 1st.
On September 29th she appeared, made
a few remarks about never being able to
find just what she wanted, went over to
the piano and said, "I'll take this one."
It was the first one she had looked at