As I mentionned in my last post Elmer Wheeler had a job selling advertising space. After he was told that newspaper ads often bring people to stores, but those people rarely buy, he thought he would test out this statement.
Mr. Wheeler approached Erwin Huber, the director of advertising for the Baltimore News-Post. They selected twenty reporters and gave each of them five dollars with instructions to go to The May Company and buy as many of the men’s shirts being advertised as the $5.00 would purchase and the clerks would sell.
When the reporters returned from the store, fifteen of them hadn’t bought a single shirt, informing Mr. Wheeler that the clerks had made no attempt to sell them one. The five reporters who did purchase shirts purchased only one each, explaining that the clerks did not suggest a second, third, or fourth shirt.
It was evident, according to the reporters, that the clerks figured that after all a man wore only one shirt at a time, so if he bought one, why try to sell more?
Important Selling Advice
Armed with this important evidence, Mr. Wheeler then approached Mr. Wilbur May, head of The May Company store in Baltimore at the time, explained what he had done, and produced his findings.
Mr. May was most interested. He realized that he had a million-dollar establishment, with a million dollars worth of merchandise on the shelves – yet the real control of his business was in the hands of his eight hundred salesgirls. Salesgirls who were primarily interested in getting off their feet (a quick break) and finding a husband, so they could stop working permanently.
Mr. May further realized that the most the manufacturer could do was to get goods in the store, the most the store did was teach the clerks how to fill out checks properly and place ads in the papers, and that the most the newspaper was doing was bringing people to the store.
In the final analysis, the sales were consummated by the salespeople – and on what they say and do was and is the critical factor in how much was sold at the store’s counter!
Upon hearing this story, Mr. May suggested that Mr. Wheeler be commissioned by his newspaper to make a study of salespeople.
Upcoming posts will include great advertising ideas, resulting from this study.
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