Sam Lambert and the New Way Store | Page 3

that the whole selection is placed at his disposal.
"There is no secret about it. Nothing held back. No mysterious pile of garments on a table that he cannot see.
"Note the tendency of the customer to investigate a pile of coats--lifting up the corners and looking at the patterns.
"A coat in plain view, taken off the hanger, is more obviously a thoughtful selection of a garment definitely suited for him and he is the more ready to make it his own.
"The important thing in closing a sale is to narrow down the choice as soon as you can to one or two strong possibilities, flanked by a bad one--that is, a style or a pattern that you know the customer doesn't want.
"When this point is reached it is well to move the customer away from the rest of the stock, say to some distant corner where he can stand on a rug and look in the mirror--
"Where his whole attention can be given to one suit, or at most a choice between two.
"A sale must be opened easily. The customer should never be made to feel that he is being restricted in his selection. But the moment you can form an idea of what he wants you can probably think of just the thing for him.
"If you handle him right he accepts your knowledge of the assortment, instead of demanding a complete canvass of the stock.
"It is then you may know that you have established his confidence.
"In a comparatively short time you can narrow him down to a choice where by a tactful show of firmness you can help him decide.
"In the handling of almost every sale there is a point beyond which the customer begins to flounder and show indecision.
"The weak salesman leads him on and on with no stopping point--no place to close--and the prospective sale fades to a 'just looking today' excuse.
"This is a universal fault among retail clerks.
"The test of salesmanship is in closing a sale.
"Be a closer!
"Never guy a customer or 'kid him along' for the amusement of a by-stander or a fellow clerk. This is a common practice in some clothing stores. The offender is usually a self-satisfied clerk who has had just enough success as a salesman to make him egotistical.
"He thinks he is a regular dare-devil and that by making sport of his customer he may win a reputation as the village cut-up. His favorite victim is some half-witted fellow--tho' a customer who is partly deaf may do and he is always ready for a yokel or a foreigner.
"There is no doubt," said Sam Lambert, "that the medal for the longest ears and the loudest bray in the clothing business belongs to this Smart Aleck type of clerk known as a 'kidder'.
"To say nothing of the respect he owes the customer, it is astonishing how he can presume to work his cheap little side-play on any human being, when even a dog is sensitive to ridicule and knows when he is being laughed at."
CHAPTER II.
No one questioned Sam Lambert's power as a business getter, nor the alertness of his store-keeping methods.
He was prodigal of his own energy--never spared himself. He looked after the important things and left details to others.
As with every man who is a constructive force in the world of affairs, Sam's friends and relatives shook their heads--said that he needed a balance-wheel.
This was dinned into his ears so often that he finally came to believe it. So after many Sunday afternoon business discussions, it was arranged that he was to take into the business his wife's cousin, one Lemuel Stucker, who had spent twenty years saving $9000 as general manager for a flour and feed concern.
Stucker had worked out elaborate sets of figures to prove the needed economies of management.
He was so tireless and sincere, so careful and exact, that it was with a great sense of relief that Sam turned the store over to him.
Here, at last, was a man who could lift from his shoulders the daily burden of management.
Sam's real interest in the change, as those who knew him might have guessed, was a desire for new enterprise. He had long had an eye on a fine opening for a clothing store in the neighboring town of Bridgeville, twenty miles away, and he lost no time in carrying out this project.
During the ensuing year he was so engrossed with the Bridgeville branch that Medeena rarely saw him, and Lemuel Stucker's rather discouraging reports on the state of business were attributed to Lem's conservatism and natural depression of mind.
Lem was Sam's opposite in almost every particular. A small, sallow man with a black shoe-string necktie and a look of general regret.
He spent most of his time untying knots in pieces of string, picking up bits of wrapping paper