BizWire, August 14-"Whadda 
ya say, shall we write this up?" 
 
We’ve all heard lame slap lines
like that way too often. 
Wouldn’t it be nice never to
hear them again?

Well, guess what? It just might
happen.

According to Control Plus
marketing VP Chalmers Wood,
thanks to the miracles possible
when you combine ultra-
miniturization and high-speed
computation, the old seesaw
sales pitch may go the way of
the dodo.

Introducing the "Sales Ear," a
"state  of the art listening
system" which, according  Wood, 
will, for the first time, permit
direct recording and real time
monitoring of any and all actual
showroom floor sales interactions
in their entirety, and with 
"bell-like clarity."

Yes, that's right. Now for the
first time the secret
incantations of the great
performers and the gum-mouthed
flubadubs of the low post
toasters can be layed out end to
end for mangement scrutiny.

Just what that nitwit huckster
is doing  out there to foul
himself and the great American
shopper all up, no retail sales
manager has ever really known for
sure.

"Now, with our Sales Ear system,
all the age old showroom riddles
can be solved," says Byron
Campbell, CEO of Control Plus. 

Control Plus is considered a
cutting edge leader in the fast-
growing field of real time sales
transaction monitoring systems, 
but the Sales Ear has a new
wrinkle: advanced, and now
affordable, super small
listening devices called
nanophones. These tiny multihead 
phones can be worn non-
conspicuously right on the
salesperson's jacket, shirt or
blouse, and because of digital
manipulation and the multi-head
pentagonal pick-up system, "The
reconstructed sound is human-ear
quality," according to Control
Plus’s Wood.
 
Wireless linkages carry the
signal "backstage" to ultra-
sophisticated software systems
that automatically and
instantaneously process the sale
interaction into "management
actionable," real time sales 
floor feedforwardable material.

"And to think, each rig costs
only 200 dollars," says Wood. 
"Not bad, given their
capabilities. That's around the
price territory for pagers when
they first burst on the scene."

The software itself has the
ability to screen automatically
for nearly any patterns
management wishes to pinpoint.

"Key Chops," one very promising
program, according to Wood, can
scoop "clinchers and clinkers
right out of the briar of small
talk." 

"In general, with the Sales Ear
system," says Control Plus’s
Campbell, "management will have
it all pre-digested, tabulated,
and printed out for any and all
to see. One man's failure and
another man's success. Imagine,
thousands of these little floor
plays each day; the drama of
commerce now on the record,
condensed automatically into a
compact book form; the true
tale of each salesperson's
individual selling moments...

"St. Peter himself doesn't have
anything better," says
Campbell.

"Our prospects are explosive,
positively explosive," says 
Wood. "We’ve always had the
ability to watch the dumb show, 
but what did that tell you? 
Let's face it, the sale is made
or lost in the spiel. Now we can
grab that for scrutiny."


And the system can run both
ways. Using advanced digital
screens and word/phrase modules, 
the system has a real time
interface called remote TO. This
two-way version utilizes an
inconspicuous ear piece which
allows management to actually
talk to the salesperson right in
the middle of the sales process.

"When he's got a fat one on the
hook, some dumb ox can be fed the
winning chops right over the
phone," says Campbell. "Now,
instead of watching helplessly
while the damn boob blows it- 
and, man, that happens all the 
time- with our system, the
manager can get that fat one in
the boat."

Devices like the Sales Ear are a
major part of what's called by
insiders "the electronic sales
floor" or "ESF"; a novel paradigm
that is sweeping through the
historically innovation-resistent
retail industry. 

"These are the smart weapons of
consumer selling," says Kup
Barron, president of Brand Rapids
Furniture, a Cleveland-based home
furnishing chain.

"I’m buying and buying now," says
Barron. "In a few years, no
self-respecting big-ticket
retailer in America will dare let
his people walk the floor without
one of these systems strapped
under their armpit."

Despite coming along right on the
heels of the dotcom debacle, high
tech products like Sales Ear are
really moving, according to
independent industry observers.

"Yes, I'm amazed these old
stallions are mounting this stuff
so readily," says retail
consultant Dov Gilchrest.
 
"Given how high tech made fools
of themselves recently trying to
rattle these same guys' cages with
dotcom this and dotcom that... 
those techies wre prancing around 
like they were the badest wolf in
pigville... 

"Then whammo slammo- they all fell
flatter then a brides omelette. 
You’d think after a floor show like
that, these retailers would be a
little more sceptical."

"Then again," Gilchrest adds, 
"retailers, god love them, they’re
the easiest marks of all." 

"Any way you rationalize it, the
fact remains- electronic sales
transparency and  real time
feedforward management is box office 
up and down both sides of Mall 
Street USA," says Tammy Gomes,
prominent big-ticket sales trainer
and motivator. 

"It's the winners riff today," says
Gomes. "Up tempo. Retailers have
got to know who on their staff is
really hosin’ and who’s just
frozen, and here's the 'open
sesame'."

The changes will be profound, all
agree.

"This blows taps to your old 
wall-guard approach. Never worked
in big-ticket showroom sales,
anyway, where the word is the
bird," says Gilchrest.

Gomes says she can't wait for
this revolution to hit real
showroom  floors. "Finally, the
lions won’t have to lie day after
day next to the lambs."

"Retailers, 'til now, simply
blind chopped," says Gomes. "They
tried to hack out an effective
sales force with the pathetic
help of a few numbers."

Gilchrest agrees, "All that
telemetry was nearly worthless. 
All the stats out of everybody's
IT department: sales per hour, 
credit rates, average ticket 
margin rate- you name it. They 
were always a little too late,
and a lot too little."

According to her own reseach,
Gomes says she has found about
25 percent of the time 
conventional performance numbers
were "completely misleading."

"You need the actual words," she
says. "I'm sure the eye was
enough in the mills of yore, 
where speed and quality only
required the vigilent eye of a
foreman.

"Even today, assembly lines can
be watched. The work pantomime
tells the tale," she adds. 

"If you’re Charlie Chaplin or
Lucy Arnez out there on the line, 
it shows up like a stream of
purple farts," says Gilchrest. 
"But sales is a dog's game. You
can only know it by barks and
bites."  

Customer response in field tests
has been excellent, according to
Control Plus’s executives.

"Most of the time, just a little
opening about the device during
reapproach did the trick," says
Woods.
 
"We found, actually, the rig
creates a brand new
conversational topic- a novel
cube cracker," says Campbell.
"We gave out script varients and
half a dozen stood up well- stuff
like, 'We may end up in a
training tape,' or 'Here's our 15
minutes.'" 

"Like anything else," Wood adds, 
"of course, you got to know your
customer and play the right
number."

"Getting it right- that's what
makes retail management fun. 
Finding the killers and feeding
them the real pouncers and
trouncers," says Gomes.

"The fat, greedy face of the
closer- that's the love object
in this biz. The no fear, no
second quarter closer. They‘re
the harvest moons in the showroom
night sky," says Gilchrest. His
own company, as he likes to point
out, is Closer, Closer and Closer.  

"Remember one thing: the Hollywood
ending of retail commerce always
was, still is, and always will be,
the big bad close."