"The prettiest Parisian patterns in advance of competi tors," he replied.
Then I suggested: "Suppose you said to a manufacturer: 'Have you any trade that would appreciate a pattern that is a positive craze in Paris right now—not yesterday but to-day?' What would the manufacturer say to that?" "Why, he'd say: 'Let's see it,' " was the answer.
"Isn't that what you want him to say?" I inquired.
9. Attention thru curiosity.—Curiosity is a strong incentive to a prospect's giving a proposition un divided attention. The opening remarks of a great many able salesmen are framed to arouse a healthy curiosity in the prospect. The exclusive-agency man referred to in the last chapter would return to the store that he had picked for his agency and, approach ing the proprietor,' would ask : "Do you remember me?" "Yes," would come the answer, "I sold you a key-ring this morning." Thereupon the salesman would remark that the key-ring business had been pretty good in that town, and holding out his hand, would display those he had bought. The proprietor would naturally want to know whether he was making a collection. "No," would be his reply, "my firm sent me here with your name as that of the representative merchant in this town. My key-ring experiment has substantiated that information." From that point he would use another strong lever to get attention. "I am here," he would continue, "to secure your opinion of our new merchandising plan, which is of particular interest to live hardware mer chants. I should appreciate your going over our proposition and telling me what you think of it." A prospect finds it very bard to refuse to listen to a salesman's story if all that is desired at the end is a candid opinion. It is needless to say that this opinion is usually favorable and is expressed by the prospect's putting his name on the dotted line.
Returning to the motive of curiosity in the securing of attention: A salesman one day stepped into the office of the general manager of a large western tele phone company. "Mr. Manager," said he, "suppos ing I were to come to you with a pencil"—drawing one from his pocket—"with which your clerk could write down numbers"—and suiting the action to the word, he wrote down several numbers of four figures each —"and after doing so, could find the total of those numbers right here at the top of the pencil. That
would be a wonderful pencil, would it not?" The manager had to admit that it would. "Well," re sumed the salesman, "I haven't a pencil that will do that, but here is a writing machine that will." And forthwith he produced from his case a typewriter with an adding attachment and proceeded with a demon stration.
10. Dramatic means of getting tions often speak louder than words in getting atten tion. A salesman selling a line of lamp chimneys, one of the strong points of which was that the chimneys were hard to break, would walk to the doorway of a store that did not carry his line and, taking one of his chimneys, would roll it, none too gently, across the un even floor until it met an obstruction and bounded back. "I'll bet you haven't a chimney in stock that you could do that with," he would then challenge the proprietor. This was rather a spectacular method of getting attention, surely, but certainly an effective one.
A variation of this method is to, first of all, attract attention directly and forcibly to an article to be sold. A new city salesman was employed by a specialty house that sold patented mouse-traps to retail dealers. The new man knew only the stereotyped forms of in troduction, and he approached every buyer with the same formula : "Good morning, Mr. Smith. I am Mr. Brown, representing the Great Northern Spe cialty Company. I have an article—" but in the ma jority of cases he got no further, because he had wholly failed to secure the busy merchant's attention. He reported his difficulty to the sales manager, who re solved to go out with him and see wherein the trouble lay.
The sales manager witnessed one of the salesman's ineffective attempts to secure a hearing, and be de termined to make the next approach himself, and let the salesman observe his methods. In the next store, the sales manager approached the buyer and without a word of introduction simply placed the mouse-trap in his hands. The article was an ingenious con trivance, and that fact, together with the unusual method of presenting the proposition, immediately secured the customer's attention. A brief statement of prices and profits was all that was necessary to close the sale. The most cynical buyer cannot avoid a feel ing of interest in any object that is placed in his hands.