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Tactics In Selling
by
TACTICS IN SELLING–II.
After we had finished dinner, all of the party came back to our “road club room,” the smoker.
“The house,” said the furnishing goods man, sailing on our old tack of conversation, “sometimes makes it hard for us, you know. I once had a case like this: One of my customers down in New Orleans had failed on me. I think his muhulla (failure) was forced upon him. Even a tricky merchant does not bring failure upon himself if business is good and he can help it, because, if he has ever been through one, he knows that the bust-up does him a great deal more harm than good. It makes ‘credit’ hard for him after that. But, you find lots of merchants who, when business gets dull, and they must fail, will either skin their creditors completely or else settle for as few cents on the dollar as possible.
“Well, I had a man in market, once, when I was traveling out of Philadelphia, who had ‘settled’ for 35 cents on the dollar. He had come out of his failure with enough to leave him able to go into business again, and, with anything like fair trade, discount all his bills. I knew the season was a fairly good one and felt quite sure that, for a few years anyway, my man would be good. What was lost on him was lost, and that was the end of it. The best way to play even was on the profits of future business.
“But our credit man, a most upright gentleman, wasn’t particular about taking up the account again. However, there I was on a commission basis! I knew the man would pay for his goods and that it was money in my pocket–and in the till of the house–to sell it.
“I had seen my man at the hotel the evening before and he’d said he would be around the next morning about ten o’clock. I went down to the store before that time and talked the thing over with the credit man.
“Don’t want to have anything to do with that fellow,’ he said. ‘He skinned us once and it’s only a matter of time until he’ll do it again.’
“The head man of the firm came by about that time and I talked it over with him. He had told me only the day before that he had some ‘jobs’ he was very anxious to get rid of.
“‘Now,’ said I to him, ‘I believe I have a man from New Orleans who can use a good deal of that plunder up on the sixth floor if you’re willing to sell it to him. He uses that kind of “Drek” and is now shaped up so that he’ll not wish for more than sixty day terms, and I’m sure he’d be able to pay for it. He’s just failed, you know.’
“Well, let him have it–let him have it,’ said the old man. ‘Anything to get the stuff out of the house. If he doesn’t pay for it we won’t lose much.’
“‘All right, if you both say so, I’ll go ahead and sell him.’
“This was really building a credit on ‘jobs,’ for I believed that my man would after that prove a faithful customer,–and this has been the case for many years.
“Well, when he came in, I took him up to the ‘job’ floor and sold him about five hundred dollars. This was the limit that the credit man had placed on the account. Then came the rub. I had to smooth down my customer to sixty day terms and yet keep him in a good humor. He thought a great deal of me–I had always been square with him–and he wasn’t such a bad fellow. He had merely done what many other men would have done under the same circumstances. When he had got into the hole, he was going to climb out with as many ‘rocks’ in his pocket as he could. He couldn’t pay a hundred cents and keep doing business, and it was just as much disgrace to settle for sixty cents on the dollar, which would leave him flat, as it was to settle for thirty-five. So he argued!