The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-15

The ordinary citizen who goes in to
 buy necktie stands little chance
 against this system, which If successfully
 carried out ought to make the store-
 keeper a millionaire.
 These suggestions are but few of the
 wrinkles introduced into business as tho result of investigation into the best ways or selling goods. The old plan of hay-
 ing several selesmen step forward has now gone out of use in every business from shoes to books. The old method of forming a flying wedge and falling on the defenceless customer has been su- perceded by what is known as the call system, in which the salesmen rotate in
 taking a customer.
 "The great advantage of this system. !" said the proprietor of book store on
 Fifth avenue, '1ies in the fact that A salesman has to take a customer wheth- CT he wants him or not. Customers who were not well dressed and might not be
 expected to spend much money if they bought anything at all, customers who
 were known to be difficult and others who were not as desirable as they might be had hard time in getting atten- tion.
 Now every salesman. has to take his turn. This is all part of the attempt to make the men appear just as much interested in waiting on a customer who wants only a magazine as in one who has come to look over our old rare stock. "There are men, of course, who have their particular customers, and we have
 some women here who have been looking after the same persons for years That is allowed to continue, and there is no
 injustice in it to any of the salesmen, as there is hardly one of them of either
 sex, with the exception of those who have
 just gone into the business, that has, not some special customer
 Just how closely the line Is drawn nowadays may be understood from an occurrence reported in one of the branches of a haberdashery business It
 was known that the salesmen were ex- pected to remain In the store after closing
 time. They were waiting about wonder ing what was going to happen when the
 manager stepped into the middle of the group.
 T heard several things today" he said, quite by accident which I think will be of interest to all of us. I heard one
 of you. for instance, say to a customer
 who had given his order, got the package back and was putting his change in his
 pocket, Is that all you want? There was good business sense at the back of the idea That was all right But the way in which 1t was said made
 that man reach out suddenly for his package and sneak out of the store as
 if he had no right to be here. There was
 something in the tone of that salesman n
 which made the customer feel as if he who wanted so little as a pair of gar
 ters had no right to enxer this place. And
 he never will again. Another one of you asked a man.
 when he had selected what he wanted. Is
 there nothing more that you want to
 see? Of course there was nothing more
 We don't deal in nothing here. But
 there was something. And this sales man might have gone so far as to sug-
 gest various things that a man might have wanted who was going away over Sunday.
 "Then I heard salesman ask a cus- toner what kind of belt he would like to have. That Is fatal error. He may not take what you offer him. but you
 whatever he buys here is authoritative.
 Nine men out of ten want to be told
 what is the right thing
 In the business of selling suits to wo- men the progress in salesmanship is just as great as in the art of turing the men into buying. In the ready made clothing stores there is great competition. and a man has to be well up in the art as 1t is practised nowadays in order to earn the reputation of being good salesman.
 A salesman in ready made clothing store who appears with a tape measure nowadays would be in danger of losing his job that night. They are expected to