or ideas which annoy or disturb or displease his prospect. Just as in building confidence, each prospect must be studied individually, so must a similar study be made of the prospect's way of thinking and expressing herself. Here again the salesman adapts himself to the expectations of his prospect and expresses his appeal in terms he thinks will mean most to the prospect. To the extent to which he can correctly select the desire which the prospect has, and can appeal to these desires in words which mean most to the prospect, without bringing in anything which annoys her, he can expect to arouse a desire for the service he sells. Competing desires a fundamental problem.-As has been pointed out, people exchange their money for those goods and services which they want at that time more than anything else they can buy with their money. Thus a woman may desire to be relieved from the hard, disagreeable work of washing her clothes, but she will not pay out her money to have her clothes laundered unless she gets more satisfaction from the sum required for laundry service than from spending it for something else, say a new garment, or for some article for her family, or from saving it for some future satisfaction. In other words, the possession of a sum of money enables the owner to choose between all the many satisfactions which can be bought with it. That article, or service, will always be bought which gives the greatest satisfaction. The desire which is gratified is the effective desire, the most potent of all the buyer feels. Hence, the laundry salesman's problem requires not only that he arouse a desire for his service, but that he intensify that desire so that it looms larger and more important at the time to the prospect than any other she can imagine. He must develop the desire for his service into the effective, most potent desire. The laundry salesman is in competition with every other salesman, with every other pleasure, and with every other source of satisfaction. He must show his prospect that the satisfaction from using his service will be greater than any she can gain from any other source with the same cash expenditure. So far as women are concerned, he challenges the world to give her greater satisfaction than his service can give. Ways of making an appeal.-There are two fundamentally different ways of making a sales appeal open to the laundry salesman. In the first way, the salesman makes a direct frontal attack and tries to persuade the prospect by an appeal expressed in a sales talk. In the other way, the salesman makes an indirect attack proceeding slowly by infiltration, so that the prospect seems practically to have persuaded herself. The first is characteristic of direct selling; the second is characteristic of suggestive selling. In direct selling, the salesman tries to arouse a desire for the service he sells by a sales talk more or less long. Usually he attempts to persuade the prospect by an argument based upon reason. The customer is assumed to follow a logical method in reaching a judgment. The salesman assumes that the customer knows what she wants and must be convinced that what the salesman offers will give her the satisfaction she seeks. Thus, the woman who is considering buying an electric washing machine often can be shown that the machine will not be the economy she expects. Here a talk showing the cost of power laundry service of the degree of completeness which seems to appeal to e customer compared with the cost of operating and maintaining an electric washing machine is expected to result in a logically sound judgment and consistent decision. All arguments or appeals to reason, no matter how simple or how brief, showing why laundry service should be bought are characteristic of direct selling. In suggestive selling, the salesman usually appeals to the customer's imagination by referring often in a casual way to those satisfactions which come from buying laundry service. Thus, on a very hot day the salesman refers to the poor women who have to do their own washing and ironing. The customer imagines how pleasant it must be not to have to do such hard work on such a hot day; and therefore imagines how pleasant it would be to have her laundry done by a power plant. She may even want the satisfaction from buying that service so keenly that she will tell the salesman to call' for her bundle next week. Or the salesman may show the prospect a blanket, a pillow, or a curtain processed at his plant for a neighbor and ask her to see how clean they are, how soft the blanket or pillow, how evenly starched and ironed the curtain. He does not ask her to send her blankets, her pillows, or her curtains, but the excellent quality of his exhibits have suggested to her the desirability to have such lovely appearing articles in her home. She realizes that they can be had by having her equally fine articles laundered at that plant. If she wants hers that well finished, she knows she can get them. Buying laundry service has been suggested, not argued for, by the salesman. Conflicting desires.-As was pointed out, a salesman brings other people to want so strongly the service he sells that people are willing to buy it in preference to buying anything else. Until prospects have reached this point the desire for buying other things is likely to take the form of objections to buying laundry service. While desiring the satisfaction of laundry service, the patron does not feel sure that the satisfaction will be as full as pictured. These conflicting desires and doubts must be answered before the salesman's task is completed. He therefore needs to know the conflicting desires which his prospect feels and also the basis for the doubts about the degree of satisfaction to be experienced. Usually to do this he must know the satisfactions possible from every feature of his service. In brief, he must know everything possible about the service he sells and just what each feature in that service contributes to customer satisfaction. Summary. The problem of increasing sales in the laundry business seems to require a salesman to know 1. How to develop and maintain the confidence of his prospects and patrons; 2. How to arouse an effective desire for the service he sells; 3. How to appeal to desires connected with laundering (a) By direct selling talks; (b) By suggestion; and 4. How each feature of his service contributes to giving the customer satisfaction. Managerial problems.-Every laundry manager admits that his sales can be increased. His problem in this field centers about how to do it. In general, the route men are expected to bring in new business from both their present patrons and from new customers. But they are seldom given any help in handling actual selling problems. Some managers are trying sales solicitors. Evidently just how the selling will be organized has not been determined by many managers. No matter whether route men or special solicitors do the selling, most of them need instruction in the technique of meeting and talking to customers, as well as adequate information about the services they sell. Probably, on the whole, the managerial problems in this field center about, Who shall do the selling? How will it be done? When the manager begins to think about who shall do the selling, which he realizes is needed in order to get more business, he discovers that he faces questions such as Is the route man expected to sell the laundry service? Does he have the time while delivering and collecting to give sales talks? Is he selected primarily for his regularity and reliability as a collector and deliverer, or as a salesman? Is the average route man able to aggressively sell? Do the men now employed as route men bring in a satisfactory amount of new business? Does this come to them through their own selling effort or through the growth of population, higher standards of living, and a more general appreciation of superior laundry service? How can this be determined? Has a route man sold laundry service to an individual who would have sent a bundle even without being asked? Are new customers real evidence of selling by the route man? When are they not evidence of his salesmanship? When are they? Is the appearance of the average route man such as to develop in his patrons · and prospects confidence in his cleanliness and accuracy of statement? How can the manager find out? Are his manners and personality such as to make him pleasing to the majority of the customers on his route? How does the manager know? Do patrons ever comment about the pleasing manners or attractive personality - of a route man? Is he able to size up and understand his patrons so as to know how to appeal to them when trying to sell the laundry service? How can this be determined? Is he adaptable so that he can modify his speech, manner, and appeal according to the individual to whom he talks? How does a manager know whether or not his men are adaptable? Does their conduct about the office and plant indicate anything about their adaptability and selling ability? Is a route man's ability to make friends about the plant an evidence of his ability to win the confidence of his customers? Does the route man know enough about the laundry service, including processing methods and routine, to enable him to sell laundry service? How can the manager find this out? Does the route man know enough about each of his customers to know what appeals to make to each in trying to get each to send more laundry or to use a more complete service? To know how to use suggestive statements so as to eventually get more laundry from certain customers? Does the route man study each of his customers so as to decide whether or not she might be induced to send more laundry, and to learn what appeals will be the most effective? Would the employment of good salesmen as route men at a higher pay bring enough increased business to justify the increased expense? Will the employment of high grade women or men salespeople as solicitors be worth while? Does a solicitor have the opportunity required to become acquainted with a customer in order to effectively sell her? When the manager begins to think about how his route men and salesmen will actually go about selling more laundry service, he realizes that he needs to think of such questions as What should a salesman talk about first when trying to sell laundry service to an old customer? What first when talking to a prospect? Does he talk most about the quality of the work? Conveniences of laundry service? Economy of laundry service? Why are customers interested in quality? In convenience? In economy? Which topic appeals most to the average woman? Can the desires connected with laundry service given on page 111 be made the basis of direct sales talks? Of suggestive selling procedures? What will a salesman say when trying through a direct sales talk to arouse the first desire? What will he say when using suggestive methods? What will he say when appealing to each of the other desires when using direct methods; indirect methods? What are some of the common conflicting desires which the salesman must be prepared to meet? What are some of the points to be stressed when trying to overcome each of these conflicting desires? Are prepared sales talks worth while? Who is to prepare them? Will the average route man be willing to use them? Can he do it effectively? What can be done to improve the selling ability of the average route man? Can more sales be expected if the route men can not sell more effectively? Topic No. 11. Teamwork in Increasing Sales Laundry service a product of teamwork.-A laundry service is the product of a complete chain of operations which starts each week with the first step in the collection and ends only with the return of the finished laundry to each customer and the periodic bill, including the incoming check. To give satisfactory service to customers, each operation in this chain must follow the other exactly on time, and each operation must be correctly performed so that the final product is exactly right. The route man needs to call on each of his patrons at the right time, and make satisfactory contact with each. Then he needs to get back to the plant and to deliver on time to the receiving room a maximum load, each bundle of which is correctly marked. Each of the processing operations must be completed on schedule and in conformity to the plant standards. Finally, the delivery room must be given neatly tied bundles of perfectly finished goods, so the route man can get away on time to reach his customers at the usual time, delivering to each a bundle he knows will please when examined. When the route man is sure that the contents of the bundle will win the satisfaction of the patron, he can confidently suggest as he hands it over to her that next week is the time to send blankets, or curtains, or, because of the predicted hot weather, to use their satisfactory flat work ironed or finished family service. Only practically perfect teamwork of this kind will enable the route man the next week to get the increased business sought. A laundry organization is a team.-All such close adherence to schedule and to standards requires as perfected teamwork as that required to win a big league pennant. Each member in a baseball team when making a double or triple play successively catches the ball and throws it to the next man exactly on time and exactly in a certain way until the play is successfully completed. A laundry organization is but a laundry team on a big scale. The more perfectly each member of this team handles each lot of laundry and passes it on to the next man exactly on time and exactly in a certain. way, the more teamwork he helps to develop, the more satisfaction he helps to give the laundry's patrons, and the more business he helps to get. Willingness to help team mates an essential.-Team work gives certain desirable results. It requires, however, much individual effort as the price of success. Each man in a laundry team- 1. Needs to know what to do on his own job; (b) Within the other departments; and 4. Be willing to assist in every way possible. Each man needs to know his own job and know something also of the job of those with whom he works, certainly so far as he needs to know it in order to make his work fit into that of the other man. For example, both the shortstop and the second baseman must each know how to play his own position, and also know how to make those plays in which both take part, even though the two men could not successfully interchange playing positions. It makes no difference |