In the army or
in the fire department, in the railroad service, and even in the
factory, all necessary activities are so arranged that as far as
possible the greatest achievement is secured by the smallest amount of
energy. But when the hundreds of millions of customers in the
civilized world want to satisfy their economic demands in the stores,
the whole dissolves into a flood of talk, because no one has taken the
trouble to examine scientifically the psychotechnics of selling and to
put it on a firm psychological foundation.
The idea of scientific management must be extended from the industrial
concerns to the commercial establishments. The questioning and
answering, the showing and replacing of the goods, the demonstrating
and suggesting by the salesmen, must be brought into an economic
system which saves time and energy, as has been tried with the laborer
in the factory. Wherever economic processes are carried out with
superfluous, haphazard movements, the national resources have to
suffer a loss. The single individual can never find the ideal form of
motion and the ideal process by mere instinct. A systematic
investigation is needed to determine the way to the greatest saving
of energy, and the result ought to be made a binding rule for every
apprentice. How the smallest influences grow by summation may be
illustrated by the experience of a large department store, in which
the expense for delivery of the articles sold was felt as too large an
item in the budget.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254