I was browsing google's scanned books today and ran across this interesting little tidbit from the 1916 issue if 'Bulletin of Pharmacy.' Enjoy! Loran
UTILIZING DULL DAYS TO "CASH IN" ON PROSPECTS. BY E. ALLEN HELLER. Our store is not unlike many others in country towns ? there sometimes occur days when, for one reason or another, customers do not come in with their ordinary frequency. These "slow days" are always an occasion of much waste time, for while they offer an opportunity for house-cleaning and the completion of sundry small jobs, a whole forenoon may often be considered wasted because the income does not meet expenses. We decided that on those days when the customers were not coming to the store we would go out to them. This work was delegated to me, and it was understood that a quiet day was my signal to go out into the country and sell phonographs. THE PLAN. This is how we work the plan. Each clerk in the store keeps on the lookout for phonograph prospects. These prospects are reported to me on a card by the clerk who discovers the prospect, with as full particulars as the clerk knows. Here is the way in which we sometimes turn a chance remark into a sale. A man who was drinking soda at our fountain, on hearing a phonograph playing in the store, remarked to the soda clerk, "My wife is crazy for a phonograph." That is all that was said, and a little later the soda boy handed me a card, on which was written the customer's remarks together with his name and address. The second or third day afterward was a slow one. I went to the livery stable where we had arrangements for a rig, drove out to that man's house, and left a phonograph "on trial." The rest was easy. We made the sale, which added forty dollars to the income of a "slow morning."
