  The sun had begun to shine once more. I had a feeling as if a little dicky-bird were singing in my heart. There was blue again in the sky and the wind didn't always come from the East. I had received a night letter from Betty. She was leaving Birmingham the next week and was going with the aunt to a place she had in Florida to stay there a month, and then she was coming right home! I don't think I had realized how much I missed my dear one until I found she was coming home and was feeling herself again. I had just finished reading the telegram when the Mater came downstairs, and in my joy I caught her around the waist and swung her round twice until her feet left the floor. "Mercy on us!" she exclaimed, as I set her on a chair gasping, "what has got into the boy?" "Just happiness, that's all! Betty is coming home in a month." "Gracious," said Mater, with a twinkle in her eye, "I really thought it was something important!" When I got down to the store who did I see but Larsen, still weak and very pale, but dear old Larsen back again. I suppose I'm sentimental, but I had grown to like the old chap, and it sure had been mighty hard while he was away. The doctor had said he could come down for two Of course I had paid him his salary all the time he was away, and would continue to do so, for I'd come to realize that a boss owes it to his employees to look after them if they are in hard luck, and incidentally it is good business to keep one's employees happy. I believe that happy, cheerful employees keep the cash register ringing, "Welcome, little stranger" chimes. Just as I got in, old Peter Bender, the carpenter, came in the store. He came very seldom, for, since I had stopped his credit, he could only come when he was able to pay cash. Now, before I tell you what happened, I must remind you of what had taken place some few months before when I pulled off my stunt of buying mail-order catalogs. Well, for a time it had looked as if the stunt had done good to every merchant in the town; but it wasn't very long before mail-order catalogs were in town again as thick as ever. I had had an occasional "ad" in our local paper saying, "Buy it in town if the price is right, but don't pay more than you can buy it for elsewhere. If it is anything in hardware, I will guarantee to supply it at the same price as the mail-order houses, and you can see what you are getting before you buy it." I don't think the "ad" had done us a great deal of good generally, but there were a few people, who used to buy from the mail-order houses, who had begun to buy from me. Now, I'll tell you what happened between Peter and Larsen. "Seventy-five cents," said Larsen. "A-ha!" snarled Peter, "I'll give yer sixty-three cents for it. Yer say yer can sell it as cheap as a mail-order house—and that's their price!" He put his finger on the catalog to verify his statement. "All right," said Larsen. Whereupon Bender belligerently planted sixty-three cents on the counter. "Hold hard," continued Larsen. "Gimme three cents for the money order, a cent for yer letter paper, and two cents for the stamp. That's another six cents. That's fair, you know—you must pay us what it would have cost yer." Peter looked at me. "Guess you're right," he said, and threw the other six cents on the counter. "Now," said Larsen, as he picked up the money, "you come back in three weeks. You can then have the ax." "What do yer mean?" asked old Peter, with astonishment. "You sent Chicago, that's how long you wait to get it." "Well, I want it now." "Yep, but not from a mail-order house," said Larsen. "What will I have to pay to get it at once?" "Six cents more—that's seventy-five cents. Otherwise yer can't have it fer three weeks. But yer can look at it now, if yer want ter, so yer'll see what yer will get!" "Aw, cut out the funny stuff!" said Peter, putting Larsen wrapped up the ax and passed it over to him, and, to my surprise, old Bender said: "I guess you're about right on this thing, after all. You know I never sized it up like that 'til you pointed it out to me. Here," and he tossed the catalog on the counter, "I guess I won't need this no more." Larsen had handled several customers in the past in a similar way to this, and, in nearly every case, had won a friend for us and the mail-order houses had lost a customer. You remember I had decided that I would dominate in service? Well, I got hold of Fellows of the Flaxon Advertising Company, and told him what I wanted and that I'd a hunch that if I had a little leaflet or something of that kind, telling people I wanted to give them service, and put the leaflet in all the packages that left the store, it would help out a lot. I gave him a few ideas I had on it and asked him to work up a little folder. When I received the layout of it I was tickled with it. It was so good that I ordered some at once. The beauty of the folder was that it didn't matter what you were selling or who you were selling to, it applied, because it was general, not specific. Fellows told me I ought to copyright the idea and then sell it to other stores in other towns. I told him he could do that—I was in the hardware business—not the advertising business. I give this little folder here, because I thought it was very good. WE ARE IN BUSINESS This one-minute sales talk tells how THE BLACK HARDWARE STORE A well-known business man once said that salesmanship "is selling goods, that won't come back, to customers—who will." It requires more than salesmanship to do this—it also requires buymanship and service. We realize this. We know that every purchase you make in our store must have service with it. Service—good service—is supplying your needs in the best, quickest, and most economical way. So we start by buying right. When a clever salesman offers us some job goods at a long-profit price, we just can't hear him, but, when he offers us goods that will win us satisfied friend-customers, we can easily hear his faintest whisper. We don't blindly take his word for it, either; for, while we have a lot to learn, we know how to judge values, because we know our business—we are practical. But service does not stop here. Our goods must be kept in perfect condition. Our goods must never get into a "frowsty," shop-damaged state. Careful buying helps us to get goods that command a ready sale. They are fitted exactly to our friend-customers' needs. This is why we have earned the confidence and good-will of so many people. They know they get what they need—and not just what a salesman wants to get rid of. We sometimes refuse to sell to a customer because we know that he needs something different from what we have. Sounds funny, doesn't it, to turn money away? But it pays us, because people know we consider their needs first—our welfare automatically follows. Most stores have policies. One of ours is: "No goods must be sold, unless they will be of real service to the customer." Another fixed policy is: "We must show our friend-customers by our conduct that we are glad to serve them." Here's a confession. We actually make a profit on everything we sell. Doesn't matter what you buy, we make something on the deal. We think it better to do this than to "cut" the price on some goods and add it on to others. Don't you? Just one other thing. There's no such word as "trouble" in our dictionary. We are glad to go out of our way to supply your unusual needs. This little sales talk is neatly printed for you to read; we mean every word of it. We would like to tell it to you in person if we could— Of course! So we can. We can prove it all to you by deeds! Call and look at our goods; then check up our service by this sales talk. "Get the idea?" said Fellows. "If you're a grocer, you could write, 'Yours for grocery service, John Brown,' or if a retail merchant wanted to specialize on one particular thing he could say, 'Yours for carpet cleaning service,' or anything he liked." The whole thing was so worded as to fit in with any kind of goods one might be selling. Fellows said he would look after the printing of the circulars and supply them to me at a very low price, four dollars a thousand; and he said he wouldn't charge me anything at all for working up the idea, because he was going to try to sell some of the folders to other stores in other towns. I didn't mind what he did with it, for it let me out very cheaply. He said he would let me have some in a week, so I ordered two thousand to begin with. I was going to put one in each package, and mail one to every one of our charge customers, besides sending them to a select list of "prospects." |
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