p>Sam Lambert and the New Way Store: A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks
CHAPTER I
SAM LAMBERT had the best clothing store in Medeena County—a corner store on the main street of Medeena opposite the Court House Square.
Medeena had four clothing stores, not counting The Blue Front, down by the Depot, with its collection of cheap watches in the window, a yellow guitar, two large accordions and a fiddle with a broken E string.
Everybody in the County knew Sam Lambert.
As a merchant and a citizen he was a whole bunch of live wires. A big-boned, free-hearted fellow—lucky enough to just escape being run for sheriff, as some thought he was too good natured, the “gang” was afraid he was not pliant enough, and Sam didn’t want to be away from the store.
Sam took great pride in his clothing business and kept pace with the most advanced ideas in the trade.
He was awake to the marvelous development of the ready-to-wear business. He carried the best and took a positive delight in each season’s new models.
He recalled the old days of “hand-me-downs,” and he had lived to see the two best tailors in Medeena take to bushelling “ready” garments, with less and less of that to be done—principally changing a button or shortening a trouser’s length.
Sam was broad-gauge in everything he did. He sold his goods at the marked price, for cash only—got a decent profit and told you so.
Why shouldn’t he? He had a sense of style. He was keenly alive to the artistry of clothes and his enthusiasm was contagious.
Sam was firmly convinced that a man has to spend money to make money in the clothing business.
He said that a part of the value you deliver to a customer consists in giving him a better opinion of himself: making him feel like a king for a day and that the best is none too good for him.
“A store”, he would tell the boys, “cannot be run on the low gear. You must keep her keyed up. Relax when the store is empty, but when you go to meet a customer put on the tension—take a brace—get spring into your step—learn to bunch your vitality and get it across. But keep your energy inside.
“Don’t bounce and don’t talk too much. Keep yourself in hand. Be quiet but alert.
“Concentrate! For the time being there is but one person in the world and that is the customer, and the most interesting thing in life is the thing he came in to see.
“You can size up your man while you are going forward to meet him. But by all means take him easy. Undue interest might embarrass him. Suppose he only wants a pair of 15c. socks; if he does, there is a test of your ability that you may not realize.
“Many a clerk who can close a Twenty dollar transaction with tact and dispatch never seems able to handle a Ten cent sale so that the customer goes out feeling pleased with himself.
“Nine men out of ten who come into the store are self-conscious. The thing to do is to make your man feel that his requirement is important simply because it is his requirement.
“A good salesman keeps his own personality in the background: he keeps the store and the sale in the background. He puts all the emphasis on service to the customer, and to do this he must mentally put himself in the customer’s place.
“Try to be as interested in the customer’s finding what he wants as if the article was for yourself; but don’t insist on his taking only the thing that appeals to you.
“Quietly dominate the sale, but leave him plenty of room for the exercise of his own taste and ideas.
“Most men, though they may not show it, are slightly on the defensive when they come into a clothing store. That is why it is so very important that there be no talking or laughing among the clerks.
“You may find it hard to realize the effect of a whisper or a titter on the part of the store’s help when a customer is present. In nearly every case the man becomes sensitive or resentful and thinks he is being ridiculed.
“Try it yourself sometime by going into a strange store in another line of business in a distant city: when you hear a laugh or a remark passed among the clerks, see if you don’t wonder if there isn’t something wrong with your clothes or feel sure that comment is being made on your appearance or behavior.
“There is another form of impatience or self-consciousness on the part of a customer who is more or less acquainted with the store. He hurries past everyone in front, headed for the part of the store where he thinks the goods he wants are kept.
“It is bad policy to step in front of him or otherwise impede his progress. If there is no one to wait on him follow quietly and be on hand when he lands at his destination.
“A clerk often wonders why customers persist in doing this.
“It is because they have an idea of the location of what they want and blindly strike out for it with a certain nervous desire to cover the intermediate ground as quickly as possible.
“Remember that while you feel perfectly at home in the store, few customers do. It is your business to put them at ease and certainly to do nothing to make them uncomfortable.
“When a man comes in for a suit of clothes he usually has some sort of a mental picture of the thing he desires. An idea, clearly defined or hazy, is in his mind as to the general color and effect of the suit he wants.
“It is something he has noticed worn by someone else—looked at in a show window, or seen in an illustration.
“In most cases it will not be the thing he finally buys. It may be a chalk-line stripe or a Shepherd’s Plaid worn by a drummer who boarded the 6.30 Lightning Express. In the glow of the lamps and the bustle and excitement of the Station platform the thing looked possible: but confronted in the store with the very style and pattern he backs away from it, though ‘it looked good on the other man.’
“Find out what he has in mind; meet it as nearly as you can and get it out of the way. Otherwise he will not concentrate on other goods. He will hold to this mental picture and measure everything you show him by it—much to your disadvantage.
“One of the worst possible things is to ask a man about what price suit he wants.
“Keep price in the background. Time enough to feel him out on that subject. No man likes to have you take the measure of his pocket-book.
“You must use your judgment in gauging him as to what to show him.
“The important thing is to get at the picture he has in mind, and the price too, if you can do so without asking him to name the figure.
“Never ask a customer how he liked the last suit you sold him. Let by-gones be by-gones. This is a new deal. Whether he was entirely satisfied is not the point now. Don’t raise dangerous questions.
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