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THE PSYCHOLOGY mt 

 Mr OF SALESMANSHIP 



The growers of plants and cut flowers have reduced their art almost 

 to a science; they have developed their trade almost to a profession. But 

 what of the sales end of the business? What feature of it has been stand- 

 ardized? How much thought has been put upon cause and effect in mer- 

 chandising flowers? 



mm 



ITH all your good buying, 

 all your good system in 

 store work in every re- 

 spect, your good account- 

 ing* your advertising, and 

 your window trimming, 

 you must still recognize 

 that the whole system 

 rests on your salespeople. 

 But salesmanship ia a big 

 subject. Most flower store workers are 

 not good salespeople, because they know 

 little about the science of salesmanship. 

 It requires study to make good in sales- 

 manship. 



In salesmanship our problem is to 

 get the Customer to know the facts 

 about our goods and to feel favorably 

 towards them. Our prob- 

 lem is to get ideas about _^^_^_ 

 our stock into his mind and 

 the openings through which 

 the raw material passes, out 

 of which ideas are con- 

 structed, are the nerves that 

 pass out from the brain; 

 the principal ones being 

 nerves of sight, hear- 

 smell, taste and touch. 



By PROF. PAUL H. NEYSTROM. 



mind is not the same in all people, nor 

 is it the same for each person at differ- 

 ent times. 



Hammering It Home. 



The salesman must recognize that if 

 he is presenting ideas about his stock 

 faster than his customer can take care 

 of them, he will not be understood and 

 will lose interest. Nor must the sales- 

 man present ideas too slowly, or the 

 customer's mind will run away from 

 him and grow interested in something 

 else. If he shows too few flowers he 

 will fail to interest his customer; if 



the 

 ingi 



Appeal to Senses. 



DOING THINGS WELL. 



In selling flower^^^the 

 salesperson who under- 

 stands these elementary 

 facts attempts to give his 

 customer ideas not only 

 through the eye and ear but 

 also through the sense of 

 smell, and, if possible, 

 through the sense of touch. 



The salesman appeals to 

 the eye by showing the 

 goods and pointing out 

 what he wants to be seen. 

 He appeals to the ear by 

 telling about the goods, and 

 he appeals to the sense of 

 touch by getting the flow- 

 ers into the hands of the 

 customer, as, in the case of 

 shoes or garments, he would 

 do by getting the customer 

 to try them on. Every 

 good salesman follows this principle of 

 using several of the customer's senses, 

 whether he knows it or not. Every re- 

 tail salesman should follow this princi- 

 ple, appeal to his customer's mind by 

 presenting ideas through as many senses 

 as possible. 



Another fact of psychology is that 

 the rate at which nerve currents enter 

 the brain and from the brain into the 



There is a switch tender who regulates the 

 street car traffic at one of the busy crossings in 

 New York who has the reputation of being the 

 best man in his business. 



His is the humble calling of wig-wagging 

 with a soiled red rag on a stick, but there's 

 nothing that prevents him from making a real 

 job out of it. 



"Whatever success we, any of us, achieve in 

 hfe is due, not to any mysterious access to favor, 

 but solely to the fact that our zeal for hard, 

 conscientious work burns with an intense, ear- 

 nest, steady glow. 



Adapted from a lecture before the recent Mer- 

 chants' Short Couree Class at the University of 

 Kansas. 



he shows too many he will bewilder 

 him. 



When the nerve currents enter the 

 brain from the eye, ear or other parts 

 of the body they travel with a con- 

 siderable rate of speed, although this 

 speed varies greatly among individuals. 

 When the current comes to its appropri- 

 ate place in the brain, it strikes a blow 

 in its particular brain cell. The impres- 

 sion can be made deeper in either of 

 two ways — by putting more force in 

 the nerve current that causes it, or by 



repetition or concentrating the mind 

 with aU its power on ihe one incoming 

 idea. One other thing is necessary and 

 that is plenty of pathways or connec- 

 tions to the mark or indentation that 

 represents the idea to be recaUed. 



There are two more facts of psychol- 

 ogy that I would like to present. One 

 is ' that every idea that enters a cus- 

 tomer 's mind is accompanied by some 

 feeling, either good or bad, pleasant or 

 unpleasant, satisfactory or unsatisfac- 

 tory to the customer. The mind never 

 accepts an idea in a neutral way. It 

 accepts or rejects and classifies as good 

 or bad every impression that it re- 

 ceives. Every impression that your cus- 

 tomer receivers of you, your goods, your 



store and its equipment 

 ^__.^_ either helps or hinders you 



in making sales. 



••Watch Your Step." 



The other fact is that 

 every idea that enters the 

 customer's mind tends to 

 be expressed, not only by 

 speech, but also such things 

 as brightness of the eyes, 

 actions of the body, smiles, 

 frowns, movements of the 

 hands and of the face and 

 head. It is this expression 

 that the salesman must 

 watch to learn whether he 

 is on the right track or not, 

 whether he is showing the 

 right kind of flowers or of- 

 fering the right kind of 

 selling arguments. One 

 can not seU flowers suc- 

 cessfully without watching 

 customers' expressions. 



The customer gets ideas 

 not only about the flowers 

 the retailer tries to sell to 

 him, but also from every- 

 thing about the store. The 

 store's advertising in some 

 newspaper may reach the 

 customer before he comes 

 to the store, and he gets 

 ideas from that. They may 

 or wholly unconscious im- 

 but in so far as they reach 

 at all, either in definite or 



be partly 



pressions, 



the mind 



indefinite forms, there is certain to be 



an effect of feeling either for, or 



against, as an accompaniment of what 



he saw, heard, smelled or felt. 



Referring to the form of the adver- 

 tisement in the newspaper, it may be 

 of interest to note that oblongs are 

 generally more attractive than squares 

 and that ovals are better than circles. 

 The oblong of proportions of three in 





