TRAINING FOR SALESMANSHIP

ELIZABETH B. BUTLER

Bureau of Social Research, New York City

Since women began to be employed in mercantile houses, the public has gradually become accustomed to inefficient service. Since their employment has been extended from a few departments to most of the departments, and since public school children and ambitious factory girls alike have competed by thousands for department-store positions, the public has gradually accepted this kind of inefficiency as characteristic of retail employes. Yet at times customers grow restive. At times the marginal increase in buying which can be stimulated by intelligent service is abruptly checked by the absence of intelligence. This is a serious matter to competing concerns. The volume of sales is influenced not only by the quality of goods and the appearance of the store, but by fractional differences in courtesy and understanding. How to acquire employes with such qualities, or how to develop such qualities in employes, has become a managerial issue.

The acuteness of this issue is illustrated in the everyday experience of the department-store customer. You go into a store with the intent, we will say, of buying a linen collar. Having discovered the counter where such articles are for sale, you make toward it and glance with an unkindly eye over the stock displayed. Such collars as hang suspended from the steel display form have eyelet decorations too obviously machine made, whereas your desire is for something less pretentious and more genuine. You attract the eye of a young person and make known your wants. “I don’t wait on collars,” she replies; “the saleslady at the end of the counter will attend to you.” Thereupon you pursue “the saleslady at the end of the counter,” who has been conversing with her friend who “waits on neckwear.” You ask her if she can wait on you, and somewhat reluctantly she returns. Signifying your taste asto collars, you casually observe the expression of disapproval with which she pulls out a box and sets it before you. She waits in silence while you look over the contents of the box. If you ask her the price, she tells you but vouchsafes no further information. Then with a desire to solve the situation rapidly, you seize the first collar that appears to you at all suitable, order half a dozen like it, look at your watch and discover that over twenty minutes have passed since you entered the store, receive your change and depart.

You have your collars, and your unreasoned feeling is that you have secured them as against the enemy. You have a sense of having been actively combating a negative opposition to something, an indifference not fundamentally hostile perhaps, but translated into hostility because of your too definite intention to purchase a specific article. You reflect that had you removed two of the much-eyeletted collars from the steel display form and handed them to the lady with the remark that you would take them, she might have viewed your interruption of her conversation with more complacency. But you required her to lift down a box. Your choice was not to her taste. Your order might perhaps have been called conservative. The result was a perceptible variation in the density of the atmospheric waves between the saleslady and yourself.

Yet on further reflection you realize that after all your saleslady cannot be held accountable for duties which she does not understand. You have wanted attention, advice, understanding service. After some difficulty you have secured a collar. The saleslady thought that you were quite capable of knowing what you wanted and choosing it for yourself. In the concrete both the saleslady and yourself have meant the same thing. Where you have differed was in your interpretation of ways of reaching the concrete. You have wanted an expert; you have met a “counterserver.”

And what but “counterservice” can we expect of the thousands of young girls drafted yearly into this occupation? Neither training nor experience is required of them. They may be and are both casual and unskilled. Saleswomen longer with the house show the newcomer where stock is kept, and ifkindly disposed, give her suggestions as to the personal peculiarities of the buyer. Some one tells her the custom of the house as regards saleschecks and other records, and with this preliminary information she sallies forth to represent her employer to his clientele. Her time is occupied by her duties so far as she understands them. She stays in the department to which she is assigned, keeps her stock dusted and in order, tries to remember what new stock comes in, and when customers are around does not converse more than necessary with her co-workers; if a customer asks for something that is in stock, she produces it and awaits decision; if a customer asks for something that is not in stock, she states the fact.

She may not be notably careless and inattentive. Floor-walkers and department managers seek constantly to eradicate careless employes, to arouse in their force a feeling of loyalty, a desire to give conscientious service. It is more difficult to set forth a notion of adequate service. When a girl is doing her best, it is not always clear how to suggest to her that her “best” might be higher in standard, that instead of merely producing an article asked for, she might be of real service to the customer in suggestions and in information about the stock, that in other words she might be an expert instead of a mere counter attendant. To quote from a recent book:[34]“For a salesperson to know what gives the article its price value, whether it is style, novelty, utility, bulk, rarity of material, to know under what circumstances it can best be used as a staple, for beauty, for use, for occasional service, for steady wear—and many points other than these—and to adapt this knowledge to each customer—is to become a specialist and to be sought after for advice as the man or woman in the private office is, not to be approached as a mere lackey to pass goods back and forth over the counter.”

But how is this expert knowledge to be obtained? How is the salesperson to learn to recognize types of personality, to grasp what selling points make the strongest appeal to eachtype—to whom she should emphasize utility, to whom beauty, to whom durability—and by what personal qualities she may gain the attention of each type, focus attention till it becomes interest and finally clinch the decision to buy? How is she to be taught the use of her own personality as a business asset?

Nothing in the past experience of most saleswomen can give them a clue as to the “how.” Few have bought extensively, and few have an environment which would make them judges of quality. Even inborn taste must suffer through inexperience. The saleswoman cannot rely on her own judgment for the ability to give expert advice, and who is there to teach her? Her co-workers are not competent, the floor managers are not competent, the department buyers are too busy. As to understanding her customers, she is still more hopelessly without a source of instruction. She continues to do her best, and her best is ineffective.

Her work is routine, monotonous. She regards it and herself mechanically. As an unskilled laborer, she can command no more than the wages of unskilled labor. She finds herself confronted with the need of dressing and appearing “like a lady,” when her pay, which represents the worth of her service to her employer, cannot be regarded as more than a supplementary wage. Advancement is slow, and the limit to advancement appears to the majority inexorable. Low wages in themselves tend to chill and depress ambition. The girl’s mechanical attitude toward her work is intensified. Lack of training, low wages, lack of opportunity for training: these characteristics of the situation form a circle within which the saleswoman stands bound.

And not only saleswomen, but customers and merchants suffer from this state of things. Constantly annoyed by the inadequacy of their force, some merchants have already made a beginning toward stemming the tide of unsatisfactory service. Many a store now has classes to instruct newcomers for an hour or so each morning in making out saleschecks, and to inform them as to the policy of the store. In some cases regular morning talks for a half hour every day must be attended by new and old hands as well, with the idea that matters of commoninterest may be freely discussed and that ideas of loyalty may thereby be instilled. Yet while these classes tend to produce right feeling toward the work and hence are fundamentally useful, they represent only the germ of vocational training.

For that is what saleswomen need—training for their particular occupation, instruction in the definite principles of applied psychology upon which their day’s work is based. What form such instruction will ultimately take is still matter for conjecture. No one will assert that experiments now in the making are final, but simply that by their initial success they point the way to more conclusive organization. It may be of interest if a statement is made here about the training for saleswomen now offered in Boston and New York.

The Boston experiment was begun in 1905 under the auspices of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. A class was started with eight young girls who were given lectures and some practise selling in the food salesroom and handwork shop of the Union, but after their three months’ course those who found store positions had to go in as stock or cash girls. In January, 1906, when the second class was started, the coöperation of one store was secured. The Union class was allowed to sell in the store on Mondays for the experience and a small compensation, and the firm expressed a willingness to consider promising candidates for positions in their store. Yet as the school had nothing definite to offer its pupils, it failed to attract the type of girl most wanted by the stores.

It was felt that more coöperation with the stores was necessary. The plans of the course were explained to several of the merchants and the coöperation of six leading stores was obtained to the extent that the superintendents formed an advisory committee, meeting once a month with the president of the Union and the director of the class for conference. The policy, as planned with the advisory committee, was that candidates should be sent to the Union class from the stores, and admitted to the school if approved by the director. After one month in the class, candidates were promised store experience in the store which had accepted them, on Mondays, and the stores paid for this service $1 per day. They were alsoguaranteed permanent positions in these stores at the close of the course, if their work was satisfactory after one month’s probation.[35]On this basis, a class with sixteen pupils opened in October, 1906. It was found, however, that more store experience was necessary for the best results, and the time schedule was accordingly changed so that every day from 8.30 to 11. and from 4.30 to 5.30 the pupils were in school and the rest of the day in the stores. This half-time work was paid for by the stores at the rate of three dollars a week.

When the next class opened in February, there were nearly one hundred applicants, from which the school selected twenty-one, the limit of the class room. Many applicants gave up positions which they had already secured, for the sake of the training, and others for whom there was then no room, filled a waiting list. Since then, the school has been busy making history. The following statements by Mrs. Prince, director of the school, explain the most recent changes: “At first, the stores paid the girls $3 a week for half time, but since last September (1908), the girls have been given full-time wages and allowed the three hours each morning for three months of training. The stores found the graduates so efficient that they cordially made this concession, and at the same time asked if I would choose candidates from the stores. This I do now, going to the superintendents’ offices and interviewing the girls there.

“The girls chosen are usually from the bargain counter, or those who are to be promoted from cash and bundle work or those who have shown good spirit, but who have gone to work at fourteen years and lack training and right standards. Sometimes girls who have just entered the store are chosen. Wages of candidates range from $5 to $8, but at the end of the course a graduate is guaranteed $6 as a minimum wage, and her advance depends upon her own ability.

“The girls are in the school every day from 8.30 to 11.30; then after an hour for luncheon, they go to the stores for the rest of the day, that is, from 12.30 to 5.30. My plan with theclass is to take one big subject every day: all lectures are reviewed orally and the girls write all significant points in note books.”

The subject matter of the class, planned with the view of making efficient, successful saleswomen, has emphasized five main lines of study: 1. The development of a wholesome, attractive personality. Hygiene, especially personal hygiene. This includes study of daily menus for saleswomen, ventilation, bathing, sleep, exercise, recreation. 2. The general system of stores: sales-slip practice, store directory, business arithmetic, business forms and cash accounts, lectures. 3. Qualities of stock: color, design, textiles. 4. Selling as a science: discussion of store experiences, talks on salesmanship, such as attitude to firm, customer, and fellow-employe, demonstration of selling in class, salesmanship lectures. 5. The right attitude toward the work.

The following schedule gives the present arrangement of lectures and talks in the Boston school:

The New York experiment is of more recent date, and has shaped itself differently. Its beginnings in the fall of 1908 are due chiefly to the efforts of Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, who persuaded the officers of the board of education to introduce a class in salesmanship in the public night schools, and to Miss Diana Hirschler, formerly welfare secretary in Wm. Filene’s Sons Co. of Boston, who conducted the class. The class was intended primarily for saleswomen already at work who wishedto equip themselves more thoroughly. The first night there was not a single enrolment, but as news of the course spread, the attendance reached an average of twenty-five. This in itself—this attendance night after night of girls already tired by their work during the day—is evidence of the strong appeal made by the class.

Unlike most other kinds of industrial training, salesmanship classes require neither tools nor special equipment. They do require teachers and a text book. While Miss Hirschler was teaching her classes, she began writing a text book and making plans for training other teachers so that the value of the class might be extended to more than could be enrolled for her instruction. The newly-established New York Institute of Mercantile Training engaged Miss Hirschler and adopted her plans. Classes for window trimmers and sign writers were already under way. To them were added offices and staff for a school of salesmanship. It was a moot point for a while whether classes for salespersons should actually be held in these offices, or whether the scope of the work should be extended to reach the present directors of salespersons,—the store superintendents who now in so many cases hold morning classes for sections of their force. This latter course, Miss Hirschler decided, would be the best one to follow. Whereas by the former plan she might make more efficient a handful out of the thousands of salespeople in this one city, by the latter plan she would indirectly be reaching thousands not only in New York, but in as many other American cities as had stores to coöperate with her. The essential thing, she felt, was to train teachers. At present there were few even would-be teachers. While we were waiting for them, we might use the present situation by helping to make more efficient the involuntary teachers, the men at the head of stores who now ineffectually seek to grapple with the difficulties of their selling force.

Accordingly a correspondence school was started for store superintendents. While the general outline of the text book is followed, this course is adapted individually to each student. In a number of cases Miss Hirschler has visited the stores, personally looked over the situation, and made suggestions as tothe organization of salesmanship classes, the selection of applicants, and the best methods of securing the coöperation of the salespeople. Enrolled in her course are store superintendents from New England, the South and the far West. Each one of these men is in turn reaching hundreds, sometimes thousands of salespeople.

The next step neither Miss Hirschler nor we who are the consumers can prophesy with certainty. Yet it seems reasonable to expect that in time store officials, who at best can give only a small part of their time to teaching their employes, will wish to be relieved of this task by professional teachers of salesmanship who, like other vocational teachers, give all their time to their work. By that time we shall have passed out of the period of experimentation. We shall have reached a point where we can say with definiteness what part of the student’s time should be spent in the study of textiles, what part in the study of color and design, what part in the study of applied psychology. We shall have reached a conclusion as to the relative value of lecture work and practise selling.

Selling goods may thus have become as definite and recognized a vocation as plumbing or dressmaking. Thus defined and established, this vocation which could have been taught in the beginning only by the faith and courage of private interests, may come to its own by recognition among the vocational day courses now being started in our system of public instruction.

FOOTNOTES:[34]The Art of Retail Selling, by Diana Hirschler. New York Institute of Mercantile Training, 1909.[35]Training for Saleswomen, by Lucinda W. Prince.Federation Bulletin, February, 1908.

[34]The Art of Retail Selling, by Diana Hirschler. New York Institute of Mercantile Training, 1909.

[35]Training for Saleswomen, by Lucinda W. Prince.Federation Bulletin, February, 1908.

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