DON’T YOU HAVE much more faith in ideas that youdiscover for yourself than in
ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter? If so, isn’t it bad judgement to
try to ram your opinions down the throats of other people? Isn’t it wiser to make
suggestions – and let the other person think out the conclusion?
Adolph Seltz of Philadelphia, sales manager in an automobile showroom
and a student in one of my courses, suddenly found himself confronted with the
necessity of injecting enthusiasm into a discouraged and disorganised group of
automobile salespeople. Calling a sales meeting, he urged his people to tell him
exactly what they expected from him. As they talked, he wrote their ideas on the
blackboard. He then said: ‘I’ll give you all these qualities you expect from me.
Now I want you to tell me what I have a right to expect from you.’ The replies
came quick and fast: loyalty, honesty, initiative, optimism, teamwork, eight
hours a day of enthusiastic work. The meeting ended with a new courage, a new
inspiration – one salesperson volunteered to work fourteen hours a day – and Mr.
Seltz reported to me that the increase of sales was phenomenal.
‘The people had made a sort of moral bargain with me,’said Mr. Seltz, ‘and
as long as I lived up to my part in it, they were determined to live up to theirs.
Consulting them about their wishes and desires was just the shot in the arm they
needed.’
No one likes to feel that he or she is being sold something or told to do a
thing. We much prefer to feel that we are buying of our own accord or acting on
our own ideas. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our wants, our
thoughts.
Take the case of Eugene Wesson. He lost countless thousands of dollars in
commissions before he learned this truth. Mr. Wesson sold sketches for a studio
that created designs for stylists and textile manufacturers. Mr. Wesson had called
on one of the leading stylists in New York once a week, every week for three
years. ‘He never refused to see me,’ said Mr. Wesson, ‘but he never bought. He
always looked over my sketches very carefully and then said: “No, Wesson, I
guess we don’t get together today.”’
After 150 failures, Wesson realised he must be in a mental rut, so he
resolved to devote one evening a week to the study of influencing human behaviour, to help him develop new ideas and generate new enthusiasm.
He decided on this new approach. With half a dozen unfinished artists’
sketches under his arm, he rushed over to the buyer’s office. ‘I want you to do
me a little favour, if you will,’ he said. ‘Here are some uncompleted sketches.
Won’t you please tell me how we could finish them up in such a way that you
could use them?’
The buyer looked at the sketches for a while without uttering a word.
Finally he said: ‘Leave these with me for a few days, Wesson, and then come
back and see me.’
Wesson returned three days later, got his suggestions, took the sketches
back to the studio and had them finished according to the buyer’s ideas. The
result? All accepted.
After that, this buyer ordered scores of other sketches from Wesson, all
drawn according to the buyer’s ideas. ‘I realised why I had failed for years to sell
him,’ said Mr. Wesson. ‘I had urged him to buy what I thought he ought to have.
Then I changed my approach completely. I urged him to give me his ideas. This
made him feel that he was creating the designs. And he was. I didn’t have to sell
him. He bought.’
Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in
business and politics, it works in family life as well. Paul M. Davis of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, told his class how he applied this principle:
‘My family and I enjoyed one of the most interesting sightseeing vacation
trips we have ever taken. I had long dreamed of visiting such historic sites as the
Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and our
nation’s capital. Valley Forge, Jamestown and the restored colonial village of
Williamsburg were high on the list of things I wanted to see.
‘In March my wife, Nancy, mentioned that she had ideas for our summer
vacation which included a tour of the western states, visiting points of interest in
New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada. She had wanted to make this trip
for several years. But we couldn’t obviously make both trips.
‘Our daughter, Anne, had just completed a course in U.S. history in junior
high school and had become very interested in the events that had shaped our
country’s growth. I asked her how she would like to visit the places she had
learned about on our next vacation. She said she would love to.
‘Two evenings later as we sat around the dinner table, Nancy announced
that if we all agreed, the summer’s vacation would be to the eastern states, that it
would be a great trip for Anne and thrilling for all of us. We all concurred.’
This same psychology was used by an X-ray manufacturer to sell his
equipment to one of the largest hospitals in Brooklyn. This hospital was building an addition and preparing to equip it with the finest X-ray department in
America. Dr. L – , who was in charge of the X-ray department, was
overwhelmed with sales representatives, each caroling the praises of his own
company’s equipment.
One manufacturer, however, was more skilful. He knew far more about
handling human nature than the others did. He wrote a letter something like this:
Our factory has recently completed a new line of X-ray equipment.
The first shipment of these machines has just arrived at our office.
They are not perfect. We know that, and we want to improve
them. So we should be deeply obligated to you if you could find
time to look them over and give us your ideas about how they can
be made more serviceable to your profession. Knowing how
occupied you are, I shall be glad to send my car for you at any
hour you specify.
‘I was surprised to get that letter,’ Dr. L – said as he related the incident before
the class. ‘I was both surprised and complimented. I had never had an X-ray
manufacturer seeking my advice before. It made me feel important. I was busy
every night that week, but I cancelled a dinner appointment in order to look over
the equipment. The more I studied it, the more I discovered for myself how
much I liked it.
‘Nobody had tried to sell it to me. I felt that the idea of buying that
equipment for the hospital was my own. I sold myself on its superior qualities
and ordered it installed.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay ‘Self-Reliance’stated: ‘In every work of
genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty.’
Colonel Edward M. House wielded an enormous influence in national and
international affairs while Woodrow Wilson occupied the White House. Wilson
leaned upon Colonel House for secret counsel and advice more than he did upon
even members of his own cabinet.
What method did the Colonel use in influencing the President? Fortunately,
we know, for House himself revealed it to Arthur D. Howden Smith, and Smith
quoted House in an article in The Saturday Evening Post.
‘“After I got to know the President,” House said, “I learned the best way to
convert him to an idea was to plant it in his mind casually, but so as to interest
him in it – so as to get him thinking about it on his own account. The first time
this worked it was an accident. I had been visiting him at the White House and urged a policy on him which he appeared to disapprove. But several days later, at
the dinner table, I was amazed to hear him trot out my suggestion as his own.”’
Did House interrupt him and say, ‘That’s not your idea. That’s mine’? Oh,
no. Not House. He was too adroit for that. He didn’t care about credit. He
wanted results. So he let Wilson continue to feel that the idea was his. House did
even more than that. He gave Wilson public credit for these ideas.
Let’s remember that everyone we come in contact with is just as human as
Woodrow Wilson. So let’s use Colonel House’s technique.
A man up in the beautiful Canadian province of New Brunswick used this
technique on me and won my patronage. I was planning at the time to do some
fishing and canoeing in New Brunswick. So I wrote the tourist bureau for
information. Evidently my name and address were put on a mailing list, for I was
immediately overwhelmed with scores of letters and booklets and printed
testimonials from camps and guides. I was bewildered. I didn’t know which to
choose. Then one camp owner did a clever thing. He sent me the names and
telephone numbers of several New York people who had stayed at his camp and
he invited me to telephone them and discover for myself what he had to offer.
I found to my surprise that I knew one of the men on his list. I telephoned
him, found out what his experience had been, and then wired the camp the date
of my arrival.
Thank you for read this contentThe others had been trying to sell me on their service, but one let me sell
myself. That organisation won.
Twenty-five centuries ago, Lao-tse, a Chinese sage, said some things that
readers of this book might use today:
‘The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain
streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the
mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below
them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though
his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before
them, they do not count it an injury.’