Of course the great majority of the shoe salespeople we see are normal civilised human beings, and are very welcome, for who knows what mega winner they may have hidden in their cases. The awkward squad are usually sellers of services we already have or will never want, but this particular young man was indeed selling shoes.

They were a brand of classic styles of which I had never heard until his arrival. Their unique selling proposition was the price, which was less than half of what I would have expected. All was going well, and I was wondering how they could be so cheap  (sorry - reasonable - we don't use that word in polite company) or put it another way, what the catch was. Would the delivery be nothing like the samples, or were they made by slaves in some god-forsaken corner of the globe? Had whoever worked out the costings got a decimal point in the wrong place? If something looks to good to be true, then it usually is, after all.

I was just coming round to uttering the magic word “order” when he mentioned that they were hand-made. This of course made them even more reasonable and me even more suspicious. He noticed the doubtful look on my face and protested that had to be hand-made because they were Goodyear welted.

Oh foolish boy! He should have kept his mouth shut. To tell someone who has attached welts to insoles and soles to welts with awl and bristle and grease of elbow that Goodyear welted is the same as handmade is to go where red rags and bulls hang out.

Instead of backing off, as the sensible salesman should, he insisted I did not know what I was talking about. It soon became clear that he had no idea what Goodyear welted meant. When I tried to describe the machine and how it was used he told me that as the machine operator held the shoe to the machine that meant the shoes were handmade.

Nobody had told the poor lad that you can't win an argument with a customer, so the discussion escalated to the point where he accused me of calling him a liar and walked out, possibly leaving both of us the poorer, although I somehow doubt it.
My problem was that I was suspicious of something which on the face of it was too good to be true. His, that he was inadequately trained. He should have known that if you argue with a customer you risk losing the business, but more important, he should have known more about his products.

I know that it is said that a good salesperson can sell anything without any great knowledge of the product, and maybe it is true when it comes to double glazing, life insurance, hair conditioners, snake oil and similar items where the buyer is not very knowledgeable. It even works when politicians are trying to sell you their policies, but
it is useless when your buyer knows more about your goods than you do.

Unfortunately these days we do have to chance their arms and buy goods on the word of the seller, because we are all buying things we don't understand.  When one of our televisions died we had great difficulty buying a new one because we could not understand what the various options were, let alone evaluate them, and six months later are still not sure if we bought the right set. We just had to rely on what the salesman told us, hoping that he was not on to an incentive for shifting a lemon.

In the same way most of our customers have to take our word when we describe the shoes we are trying to sell them, which is unfortunate, because really professional salespeople who know their stock and know their products, as well as how to deal with customers, have nearly all gone the way of the dodo.  Too many of us have come to rely on what our computers tell us and what it says on the box. I suppose it keeps the price of sales assistants down but it can't be a good thing.

Talking about the wages we pay our sales staff I was puzzled on passing our local bookshop to see they were advertising for book salespeople. The salary was £6.13 per hour which they must have thought was attractive or they would not have put it on the advertisement. It seemed remarkably low for someone who has to be acquainted with the whole gamut of English literature until I remembered I had gone into that same shop the previous week to ask if they had the new book of a popular author, advertised all over the place. Instead of saying yes as I had expected, the salesman had to consult his oracle which came up with a blank, so it was not in stock. As I went away disappointed I noticed the book I was looking for staring at me from their window.  Moral of story - pay peanuts get monkeys.

It all comes down to education, as a recent prime minister told us, and he was right. While I don't agree with the notion an earlier government had of opening shops half an hour later once a week for “training”, there is no earthly reason why a qualification in shoe retailing should not be available, some sort of diploma to attest that salespersons know what they are talking about and not just parroting a patter like the bodies in call centres.

It would surely raise the self-esteem as well as the professionalism of our staff, and might even be good for business.

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