Clientela

“ And every merchant will be judged of by his customers in proportion to the courteous treatment they receive from him, or from clerks in his store. The lawyer or the doctor will also acquire popularity and patronage as he exhibits courteous and kind treatment to all with whom he comes into social or business relations. ”

“ If neither the prosperity of the company nor any particular type or system furnishes an index to proper management, what then is the touchstone which indicates good or bad management?
The art of management has been defined, "as knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way." No concise definition can fully describe an art, but the relations between employers and men form without question the most important part of this art. ”

“ As an example of the tendency of the home to split up into departments I have instanced the familiar process of the disappearance of a small retail business, simply because it is familiar, and a case where we can see the tendency at work beneath our own eyes. ”

“ Merchants' clerks, porters, car-men, and the numberless beings who form the rank and file of a vast commercial centre, elbow each other as they push through the ever swinging doors in their anxiety to get their business transacted. ”

“ THE BLACK HARDWARE STORE
32 Hill Street, Farmdale
[Pg 259]
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 we affirm that brokers’ shops are strange places, and that if an authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. ”

“ Now, if I were you, I’d never leave the house without a pocketful of tickets, and I’d never come back to the house without having sold them.
“‘Vou’re the boss of a big organization,’ I told him, ‘and what you want to do is get everybody in your shop together and make them work. Sell the proposition to your employees. ”

“ Where a business serves consumers direct by means of retail stores, as for instance, the chain tea stores, the chain cigar stores, the 5c and 10c stores, the system offers one of the best means of bringing the business into close personal touch with customers. It gives customers an opportunity to examine the wares at their convenience, and at the same time it gives the local branch manager an opportunity to build up good-will for the distant proprietor. ”

“ Day after day, as I sit behind my counter, or warm my old hands by the cheerful blaze of the fire, do customers come to me to buy something or perhaps to sell some loved relic in order that they may live. ”

“ The food market, the grocery and provision dealers, the dealers in cotton goods and other fabrics, the silk merchants, the shoe and leather men, the workers in copper and brass, the goldsmiths, jewelers and dealers in precious stones each have their street or quarter, which is a great convenience to purchasers, and scattered among them are frequent cook-shops and eating places, which do not resemble our restaurants in any way, but have a large patronage. ”

“ The general advantages of the commerce, apart from the profits of the agents, are alone the proper concern of the community: as for the mere profits of the agency the only interest of the community is, that they shall be as low as possible. ”

“ To the community at large the work of pecuniary management, it appears, is less serviceable the more there is of it. The heroic role of the captain of industry is that of a deliverer from an excess of business management. It is a casting out of business men by the chief of business men. ”

“ They speak of limited commerce united with a social or observing disposition—on the part of the shopkeeper,—allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. ”

“ On the contrary, the customers, who are the substantial dependence of a tradesman's shop, are such as are gained and preserved by good usage, good pennyworths, good wares, and good choice; and a shop that has the reputation of these four, like good wine that needs no bush, needs no painting and gilding, no carved works and ornaments; [31] it requires only a diligent master and a faithful servant, and it will never want a trade. ”

“ Every newcomer becomes a customer for those already on the ground, for all that he needs for his maintenance, just as the new born babe furnishes a new customer for the dry goods store, the milk man, not to mention the doctor and sometimes the lawyer. ”

“ Now in that country there were eleven wise men whose trade it was to give advice. Instead of falling out and wrangling with one another and ruining their business, these eleven wise men had formed a copartnership and set up a sort of store, where anybody and everybody could get advice by the wholesale or retail. ”

“ But is there any understanding or practice according to which the men do deal at the merchant's shop?-I cannot say. The men that we deal with are at liberty to take their supplies either from us or from any other shop in the country. ”

“ The retail tradesman of the towns, for example—once a fairly homogeneous class throughout Europe—expands here into vast store companies, and dwindles there to be an agent or collector, seeks employment or topples outright into the abyss. ”

“ It is indeed clearly self-evident that on many accounts the man in business must give attention primarily to the service he is trying to render. The clerk in the store must devote himself mainly to his customers, to his merchandise, to his other duties, not to his salary. ”

“ Tell the florist that such things are beyond the control of any house; that the business policy of any house, big or small, is to satisfy a customer; that you can see no reason why your competitor would deliberately furnish inferior stock. Remember that the tables might turn some day in your own case and that you yourself cannot always guarantee results. In my early days on the road, I had many knockers, some ridiculing my enterprise, and others predicting my complete failure. ”

“ Wine-merchants will naturally compete every week promiscuously, sending what they consider their best samples, and leaving with the hall-porter tickets of the prices. Confectionery to be done out of the house. Fruiterers, market-men, as butchers and poulterers. The Agent's maitre-d'hotel will give a receipt to each individual for the articles he produces; and let all remember that The Agent is a VERY KEEN JUDGE, and woe betide those who serve him or his clients ill! ”

“ Any two shopkeepers, in insufficient employment, who agreed to deal at each other's shops so long as they could there purchase articles of as good a quality as elsewhere, and at as low a price, would render the nation a service. It may be said that they must previously have dealt, to the same amount, with some other dealers ”

“ Consumers and dealers again became liberal buyers and their lead was soon followed by the speculative fraternity. Our office was crowded with business and a further increase in the clerical force was imperative. Long hours and hard work was the rule, while resulting profits continually mounting higher was the reward.
Our customers as a class were a fine lot of men, all of substantial means, most of them wealthy. We had no friction, we were popular with all, and other things being equal we commanded the preference from almost the entire trade. ”

“ The storekeeper and the buyer no longer haggle over the price because both will share in the returns of the business done. The cooperative movement bids fair to solve many of the problems of open and closed shop, collective bargaining, labor organization, and of relations between producer and consumer. ”

“ This is the constant multiplication of intervening agents—middle-men, factors, brokers, speculators, contractors, and distributors of every sort—between the producer and the consumer, or between the primary owner and the ultimate owner of almost everything which is the subject of ownership and trade. Those two, who are the actual persons brought chiefly into relationship by the thing in question, are put quite out of sight of one another in most of the transactions of modern industry and commerce ”

“ Of course, with the development of the market the complexity of office management increased. In modern times the business man concerns himself not only with the duties of the merchant and exchanger, but also with the organization of industry and economical procedure. ”

“ Once the merchant has opened his store or shop and purchased his goods he seeks to establish trade relations with as many individual customers as he can attract. Mercantile business is carried on in two kinds of stores, those which supply one kind of goods in wholesale or retail quantities, like groceries or dry goods, and those which maintain numerous departments for different kinds of manufactured goods. ”

“ But here is a merchant—he has regularly inducted a clerk in all the perplexities and mysteries of his business; the young man becomes acquainted with his private affairs, and by his acuteness and industry he relieves his employer of one half of his anxieties and cares. ”

“ The necessary theoretical matter is presented by means of illustrations taken from actual experiences of merchants. Reality without minute detail is the spirit of the work. Particular forms of retailing—chain stores, department stores, and so on—are not mentioned in the treatise. Location, organization, accounting, buying, sales, and pricing, the factors whose management means success or failure in any retail establishment, large or small, receive thorough treatment. ”

“ To buy “social influence”—to sell services that should in their nature be the spontaneous offerings of kindness,—frequently indeed as one had heard of this branch of commerce, what, when it came to an actual transaction, could be on the part of buyer and seller more contemptible? ”

“ We, however, who are primarily interested in the shop, are apt to forget that success, instead of hinging upon shop management, depends in many cases mainly upon other elements, namely,—the location of the company, its financial strength and ability, the efficiency of its business and sales departments, its engineering ability, the superiority of its plant and equipment, or the protection afforded either by patents, combination, location or other partial monopoly. ”

“ On work which is repeated over and over again and the volume of which is sufficient to permit it, the plan of making a contract with a competent workman to do a certain class of work and allowing him to employ his own men subject to strict limitations, is successful. ”

“ To explain the theory on which our store and society are run, I will say that the requirements for this, as for all cooperative ventures, are an adequate organization of consumers to act in their own behalf, and a first-class plant. ”

“ Any one who has the opportunity and takes the time to study the subject will see that neither good nor bad management is confined to any one system or type. He will find a few instances of good management containing all of the elements necessary for permanent prosperity for both employers and men under ordinary day work, the task system, piece work, contract work, the premium plan, the bonus system and the differential rate ”

“ The proprietor will receive you with the utmost politeness, but there is no sign of unpleasant aggressiveness in his behaviour. He views your visit both from a social and business point of view, and esteems your notice of him as a personal favour. Even though you do not buy, he always takes pleasure in showing what he has to sell. ”

“ The proprietor of the shop looks calmly on with apparently no interest in the business, but it is more than likely that some understanding with the itinerant vendor exists, and that when the purchaser has departed the shopkeeper will get a commission for the use of his premises. ”

“ Her principal work is to trot around in other stores and learn all she can about their 'specials' and prices, and get all the information possible in order to keep her employers posted on what their rivals are doing, and besides that she is expected to prowl around this store at irregular intervals, and we are not supposed to know that she isn't a legitimate customer. ”

“ Here I am—a customer of your railroad just like a man that buys a steak from a b-butcher is a customer of the butcher. If folks wouldn’t use your railroad to send stuff on you would have to go out of b-business. It looks to me like I was doing something you ought to appreciate when I ship a car of freight, and that when I come to see you about railroad b-business, that is goin’ to put m-money into your p-pocket, the least you could do and be fair would be to l-listen. I’m always mighty anxious to keep my customers feelin’ f-f-friendly toward me. ”

“ Small orders require just as much trouble in their execution as large ones; and a wholesale business is, in all respects, more satisfactory than one in which private customers are supplied, as well as the trade. ”

“ This especially respects those people, who deal in heavy goods, as wholesale grocers, salters, brasiers, iron-merchants, wine-merchants, and the like; but does not exclude the dealers in woollen manufactures, and especially in mercery goods of all sorts, the dealers in which generally manage their business in this manner. ”

“ Under this arrangement it will be seen the trader will depend upon the good-will of his customers. If he charges prices which are too high; if he misrepresents the quality of his goods; if he does not treat his employees with proper consideration in regard to hours of labour, wages, or other matters, he will run a great risk of losing the good-will of his customers, and the people of the town will have a [80] method of expressing their sentiments regarding him which will be extremely powerful; they will simply invite a new competitor to enter the field. ”