MANY traders fail to make any real effort to induce good-class customers to open accounts, although they may be perfectly willing to open accounts when a c-ustomer himself suggests such an arrangement. The maintenance of an account has many advantages for the trader as well as for the customer, if only because it offers great encouragement to increase the business done between them. Letters endeavouring to increase the number of accounts should of course deal with the matter from the position of a customer, and should point out the greatly increased convenience that will be felt with regard to telephone orders, orders on approval, etc.
In sending out letters such as these the greatest care must be taken in the compilation of the list of names to which they are sent, as much harm is likely to be done if the retailer has in the end to refuse to open an account for some one to whom he has himself offered that facility. Such cases will, however, be bound to occur, and a letter refusing to open an account is really no less important than the one offering to do so. However undesirable it
may be to allow credit to any particular customer, cash business from that customer-1s as valuable as from any one else, and the greatest care should be taken in refusing to open an account lest offence be given, and the whole of the customer's business lost. Sometimes the difficulty can be avoided by ask ing for a cash deposit upon which interest may perhaps be allowed. Offers such as these can be so worded as to make them seem positively advantageous to the customer from a financial point of view.
The greatest tact must be used in all such letters ; where a blunt refusal may lose valuable custom, a letter to the same effect, but written by a tactful correspondent, may strengthen the hold of the business upon the customer. Even the firmest refusal can be worded on the plea that to allow credit would prevent the firm offering the same high-class goods at the same low prices.