Page 42 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

and I believe if I hadn’t been so desperate for money, I might have quit right
there. This prospect was very gracious, however. She seemed to feel sorry for
me. She asked me to step inside, and by degrees I recovered from my stage
fright. Then I started to talk about the frocks, and the dresses I was selling
just as though I were visiting a friend. We talked styles and colors and
fashions. I showed her the style cards, pointing out that they featured the
latest Parisian fashions, and that she had probably seen similar designs in a
current woman’s magazine. We got the magazine and compared the style
features of my frocks with those illustrated in the publication, and I soon
forgot I came to get that woman’s order, having become so absorbed in
talking about clothes. When she presently told me that she would take each
one of three numbers the manufacturer was pushing, I was not a little
surprised. My commission, $4.30, was the exact amount of the deposit
required, the balance being collected by the manufacturer C.O.D. I was
elated. I didn’t make another call that day. I hurried home, stopping at the
grocery on the way to get things for dinner, and entered the house loaded
with bags of groceries.”

Mrs. Liest was not so successful the next day, however. She made several
calls, but failed to get an order. Analyzing that day’s selling effort made her
wonder why it had seemed so easy to make her first sale. “I couldn’t help
believing that my first sale was prompted by the charity and kindness of my
first prospect,” Mrs. Liest pointed out, “and that was disappointing, but the
more I thought about it, the more inclined I was to change this view. I saw
after some time, that when I started out I didn’t make a conscious effort to get
an order. I talked dresses and dress styles. I was just one woman talking to
another woman about clothes. This touch, present in the first interview, was
lost in those that followed, and I was making a stilted, unnatural effort to
build interest. I changed my method. Now when I call to see a woman about
frocks, I talk as most women would talk about clothes. I get my selling points
over in this way, and it’s natural. I make a point to wear my sample, and the
prospect then can visualize the way it hangs and looks when being worn. I
ask the prospect to note the depth of the hems, the French seams, the latest
style features, and the washable guarantee that is sewn into each frock. In this
way I build the prospect’s interest to the buying point.”