Meet the Boss

Even though the grocery business stands near its alltime high, sales-sharp Nathan Cummings, chairman of the giant Consolidated Grocers Corp., thought there was something wrong. He felt that neither he nor the grocers were selling enough food. To find out how to boost sales, the boss of the largest U.S. food wholesaling organization packed a sample case eight weeks ago and took off on a tour of hundreds of stores in ten states. He frequently donned a cotton coat and worked for stores behind the counters, "cut the cans" (gave out free samples), watched shoppers' buying habits and gossiped with scores of customers.

This week Cummings was back in Chicago to tell his board of directors what he had learned. As a starter, Cummings would redesign most of the stores in the country by throwing out the counter. Says he: "It just keeps customers away from what they want to buy." Goods should be placed on easy-to-reach shelves. Complicated displays should be abandoned: "Too many tricky piles of cans say 'Don't touch me' when they should be saying 'Take me home.' " Stores should be painted up and lit up. A dingy little store, slipping into bankruptcy in a Chicago suburb, quadrupled its gross to $8,000 a week when it installed new lights and smart fixtures. Window displays should be cut down or eliminated; the windows should be clear so that the whole store is one big display case.

As for salesmen, Cummings thinks too many of them wander aimlessly in & out of stores, just making calls and taking orders. Cummings thought that salesmen should work harder to expand a grocer's business, and cited an example to show that it could be done. In a Jack Sprat store in Ames, Iowa, he gave a customer a taste of a can of peas, succeeded in selling her an entire case instead of only one can. He persuaded a grocer on Manhattan's Third Avenue to keep a list of daily "specials" next to the telephone so that clerks taking orders by phone could suggest extra items. Concluded Cummings: salesmen need constructive sales suggestions from the front office, instead of a flood of letters demanding "more sales."

When he gets his 1,000 salesmen well indoctrinated in his sales-generating ideas, Cummings may take to the road again. Says he: "Sitting in a La Salle Street board room and push-buttoning out quotas to vice presidents won't keep business booming."

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