SALES. See DRAPERY SALES.
SALES PROMOTION.---The difficulty that most business men experi ence is to increase their sales without paring too high a price for the extra turnover. It is comparatively easy to increase sales at a price, but it is difficult, in view of competition, to obtain fresh business without exceeding in cost of advertising and sales promotion the profit which will consequently result.
It is only during the last few years that sales promotion has been con sidered as a science. It covers every selling operation from the time the goods arrive in the showrooms until they reach the customer—not merely the actual purchase, but every business move that contributes to the pur chase. Most of the operations are not new, but until lately there has been comparatively little care taken that they should be welded together into one coherent and purposeful organisation.
The component parts of a selling scheme differ with every trade and with every business in that trade, and indeed with every department. The underlying idea may be the same, but the methods and operations in detail have to be reconstructed and rearranged for every purpose. It is therefore impossible to lay down any hard and fast methods that will be found applicable to various businesses. The chief thing s to realise the underlying principles and to learn to take a comprehensive view, bound up with a sincere respect for every point of detail, however minute it may appear.
One sometimes hears more or less portentous arguments as to what should be included in the selling scheme and what should not. It seems to me, however, that it is perfectly easy to arrive at a decision on this point if we remember that every time we come into contact with a customer, whether he be past, present, or prospective, we make an impression, and that impression is either good, bad, or indifferent. It either helps to sell or it raises an obstruction between you and your customer, or it fails to advance your cause; and if we will only consider how many opportunities the average business man loses in the course of a day, we shall begin to realise the importance of respecting the details of sales organisation. It follows that
every advertisement in the daily press, every poster, every label used on the package, your notepaper, your salesmen and their methods, your travellers, the following up of your inquiries, your delivery system, your methods of collecting accounts, everything which helps to build up that confidence and goodwill between yourself and the customer both of which are essential to satisfactory business—every opportunity to create au impression in the mind of your customer—requires to be considered under the heading of sales promotion.
You may be perfectly equipped and organised in every one of these details but one, and yet that one can very likely undo all the good that the others have accomplished. It is important you should realise this point, because once you create a had impression it is very difficult to remove this from a customer's mind, and impressions are sometimes made unconsciously.
It is of vital importance that all branches of sales promotion—adver tising, supervision of travellers, window and showroom display, training of selling staff, follow up of inquiries, &cf, should be co-ordinated under, and controlled by, one man, the supreme director of all business activities that promote the sale of goods—" The Master Salesman." This is a point not always recognised. In most businesses these various sections would be under the control of a partner or. director; in very large concerns they are sometimes divided and not properly controlled, with the result that the organisation, though perfectly equipped, does not work smoothly. Tor instance, the salesman in the showroom may not be in touch with the special advertisements of the firm, and so customers attracted by these advertise ments come to the showroom, and the salesman is unable to follow up the good first impression formed in the customers' minds. The result is loss of business.