SECURING RE-ORDERS FROM A CUSTOMERLIST

I came across this article in a book from 1914. So if you think that using lists is something new that these "gurus" have created since the internet came about, think again. Read this for some good tidbits on using your list. Just update the thinking to today's world of the internet. One of the key points I took away from this is that you need to keep track of more than just email addresses with your customers.


By J. Harry Selz President, Selz, Schwab and Company

AVERAGE clerks or department heads are inclined to regard the cabinet of names called the "house list" solely as a piece of modern ingenuity for the expansion of business. While this is showing the proper spirit of push and progress, it is a mistake to think that so valuable a tool as a "house list" can be put to only one use. The cabinet of cards containing the names of the current, former and prospective customers, is one of the most flexible pieces of filing mechanism ever devised, and the active head of any large merchandising house can well spend hours in its company.

Suppose it possible for him to assemble in one great •hall all the men at the moment carrying live accounts with him and all who had traded with him in the past. That privilege would instantly arouse his enthusiasm. But where this list runs ten to twenty thousand individuals and firms, the assemblage would be somewhat unwieldy, so far as actual results are concerned. There might be much poise and good feeling, but small opportunity for the wholesaler to learn definite and directly helpful things about his trade.

But what are his privileges with the "house list" in the card catalog drawer? With it he can assemble his whole trade and quickly interview each customer. And customers, thus approached, consume no time in comments on the weather. These cards will tell him the fluctuations of each customer's trade, from month to month and year to year.

In these quiet card conventions with his buyers the merchant learns how much may be done with a right business system, besides adding more customers to his list. The word expansion has been as popular in business as in politics. There is something else to be done in the course of sound business progress besides expanding. To solidify your business structure is quite as essential as to expand it.

This fact is enforced with emphasis by an intelligent study of any system that really puts before the eye of the executive a complete picture of his relations with each customer on his list. There is nothing in which you can better invest two or three days' time, at intervals of three or six months, than in a direct personal study of these cards. Handle them with your own hands, read them with your own eyes and make your deductions and conclusions from your personal contact with the list.

WHEN you go through the customer list

get in mind a way to strengthen weak purchasers

and a plan for enlarging small accounts with frequent re-orders.

But what should you have in mind as you go through the "cabinet," turn one card after another and scan each customer's relations with the house? Two things: First, how to develop weak customers into sound ones; second, how to build small accounts into larger ones without increasing the tension of credit. In my opinion the first object to be held in view is quite as important as the second. It is more vital to have a trade that is absolutely sound and closely knit than to have a big trade full of weak spots that are causing work and worry. Enough weak accounts will strain the credit of the best wholesaler and will absorb more time and high-priced energy than they are worth — ten times over ! A glance at each card tells you how much your customer bought last month, how much the corresponding month of the previous year; how he has made his payments; and the whole character of his transactions.

After picking out the weak points which need to be fortified, the shrewd manager will carefully formulate the general lines of a campaign directed wholly to making stronger the customers he already has, without regard to getting new ones.

This must be done in a thoroughly systematic manner to be effective. In fact, it would be wholly impossible to make even the preliminary investigation necessary to such a campaign without having in operation a modern system, which, at least to a degree, is analytical in its operation. In this sort of campaign it should be remembered that the object is not to load your customers up with a larger line of goods, but to make them so strong that they will need more goods and can take them with less credit than under existing conditions.