This man was known to be unapproachable. So, instead of attempting to interview him, the elevator boy prospected to discover his characteristics. He found out exactly what qualities were most likely to please his intended employer. Then he cultivated the tone, manner, and habits of action that he felt certain would impress the difficult prospect most favorably. It took the resolute elevator boy nearly a year of continual, skillful work to make the big business man notice him and distinguish him from the other elevator boys. Six months more were required to develop the big man's attention into thorough interest. But at the end of a year and a half of faithful prospecting, the ambitious youth gained his selected, self-created opportunity to succeed. There was no stopping him after he got his start. In less than a decade he had sold his qualifications so successfully to a group of powerful financiers that he, too, had become a multi-millionaire.
This illustration of persistent effort to gain a desired chance should help to keep you from becoming discouraged about your prospects for success. Bear in mind the old, familiar motto, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Stick to your prospecting when you know you are on the right lead. It has been estimated that the busy bee inserts its proboscis into flowers 3,600,000 times to obtain a single pound of honey. But the bee is the only insect, remember, that lives on honey.
The poor salesman is apt to complain that his territory is poor. The good salesman makes any territory good. So in prospecting your field of immediate opportunities, make the best, not the worst, of your present circumstances. The star base-ball player does not refuse to play on the small-town team because it isn't good enough for him. The great Ty Cobb first made them "sit up and take notice" in a bush league. Undoubtedly he felt then that he was fit for better company, but he put in his best licks and played big-city ball on the small-town team. That was excellent prospecting for the chance he wanted with the best clubs. From the very beginning of his career, Ty Cobb has used masterly salesmanship to get across to the world true ideas of his best capabilities in his chosen field.
To-day there is no poor territory for success. Telegraph and telephone and wireless methods of communication, electric light and power, railroads and inter-urban car service, farm tractors, passenger automobiles, motor trucks, and the airplane have so revolutionized the inter-relations of men that all the former great distances of different locations and view-points have been shortened almost to nothingness. The whole world lives now in a single community of interest. The great war has taught us that each individual is close to everyone else. In your prospecting for success you are not limited by any narrow boundary of opportunities. Wherever you are, newspapers and magazines bring to your door chances for big success. If you search for prospects in everything you read you should be able to reach out all over the earth with your capability. An ambitious man I never had heard of before wrote to me at one time from South Africa to secure a selected territory for the sale of automobiles in a western city of the United States. From a distance of nearly half the circumference of the earth he got his chance to succeed.
A clerk in a Los Angeles real estate office received a letter from an acquaintance in Chicago who had spent his summer vacation in Michigan. The Chicago man wrote that the farmers of the Traverse Bay region were made rich by a bumper crop of potatoes just harvested. The Californian saw a chance for success in this bit of information. He worked out his idea and talked it over with his employers. He sold them on it. They sent him East loaded with facts about "the glorious West" and brim-full of Los Angeles peptimism. Aided by cold weather in Michigan that winter, the western real estate man eventually sold California irrigated ranches to a score of Michigan farmers who suddenly had made sufficient money to retire from potato raising, and who were old enough to be strongly attracted by the idea of owning and cultivating land in a more genial climate. Thus a sentence in a letter led straight to the success of the clerk who perceived his prospects and knew how to make the most of them.
While distances have been bridged by modern swift means of communication and transportation, every locality has opportunities for success that are peculiar to it alone. Conversely every locality is handicapped in certain ways. Therefore in your prospecting for success study the conditions in your especial field. As a salesman of yourself, you should know your "territory," its advantages and disadvantages in particular respects. Men are doing business in your town. There is no better way to gain a prospect to succeed with a house in your home community than to demonstrate to the head of the concern that you comprehend just what he is "up against" on the one hand, and on the other what "edge" he has on businesses in the same line located elsewhere. You could make no worse mistake, you could injure your own prospects no more, than by showing ignorance of local conditions, or inappreciation of the circumstances in which your prospect's business is being conducted.
Not only should you know as many facts as possible regarding opportunities in your chosen field; it is even more important that, by the use of your imagination you relate these facts to practical ways of turning them to account for your benefit. In order to derive the maximum of benefit from your prospecting, you must make the best use of every item of knowledge you gain. Sometimes the mere possession of particular knowledge will increase your chances to succeed. But almost invariably you can multiply the value of what you learn if you prospect in your own mind for ideas about putting the facts to the most profitable use.
Do not forget that the primary object of true salesmanship is service to the other fellow. Therefore prospect your own thoughts with the purpose of making what you know especially valuable to some one else, your intended employer for instance. In every step of the selling process you should think first of how you can serve your prospect with something that he lacks and needs.
Surprisingly few young men who go into business prospect their fields of opportunity to learn what is most wanted there. The great majority take up special professions or enter selected industries just because they wish to do chosen things. The master salesman, however, adapts himself to the circumstances and requirements of his customers, even at the sacrifice of his personal inclinations. He could not succeed if he sold only what he wanted to sell, or if he confined his salesmanship efforts to a limited number of buyers because he liked them and disliked others. In order to assure your success, you must learn to like to do what is most needed to be done, and learn to like to serve whoever lacks what you can supply. Therefore prospect your fields of opportunity to learn what capabilities are principally needed. If you would make your success as easy as possible, look about you first to determine the demand for such services as you are able to render.
Perhaps your prospecting will indicate that it is advisable for you to go a round-about way to your goal of ambition; because the direct route is beset with great difficulties. A young doctor wished to specialize in bacteriology. He realized that it would take the savings of a great many years of general medical practice to equip a complete laboratory of his own. Accordingly he discontinued the practice of his profession; though he went on with his studies. He engaged in business for five years. Thus in a comparatively short time he earned the money he needed to enable him to devote the rest of his life to bacteriological research.
Different territories or fields of opportunity have various characters, like different people. It is important to study especially the racial types you are likely to encounter. Many a man has attained success by accumulating discriminative knowledge regarding the national peculiarities of the Latin peoples, Slavs, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Magyars, etc.
The Italian has strong likes and dislikes in colors and patterns of goods. To be a good salesman in dealing with him, you should know his preferences and prejudices. If you learn what colors and patterns are most favored in the "Little Italy" of your city, you may be able to employ this bit of knowledge to help you very much in influencing your fellow-residents of Italian descent.
You are aware of the effect produced on the majority of Irishmen by the color green. But take care to learn whether the Irishmen whose political help you would like to win are from the South or the North of the Emerald Isle. They may be Orangemen, and you might "queer" your prospects by going among them wearing a green necktie.
Learn your facts with discrimination; then use them restrictively in the circumstances where they will be most effective in promoting your success.
Prospect to learn not only permanent conditions in your field of opportunity, but also any temporary conditions that might affect your chances to succeed. Mental and emotional "waves" sweep over the country and over local communities at times. Billy Sunday's revivals in various great cities brought success opportunities to particular businesses, but had injurious effects on others. You should take such factors into account when studying your prospects.
The manufacturers of that successful innovation, the "Service Flag," took advantage of the sudden demand for such an emblem. When war came, they saw into the future and perceived a new lack. But the need for Service Flags was temporary. Before the war ended they were displayed everywhere. To-day none are seen.
Now there has come into existence The American Legion, which seems certain to be a great political and social power in the United States for generations, as was the G.A.R. after the civil war. Any man who hopes for political success in the course of the next thirty or forty years must prospect the thoughts and feelings of the veterans of 1917-18.
You will have specific as well as general prospects. Hence it is essential that you supplement your study of conditions with the analysis of individuals. Study men with the greatest care, especially the one man or group of men upon whom you want to impress ideas of your capabilities. Learn all you can regarding the personal characteristics of the individual to whom you hope to sell your services or "goods." Your knowledge of his traits and peculiarities, your familiarity with his life purposes and hobbies, may assure you a chance to succeed with him that otherwise you could not get. A friend of mine is the president of a big ice company, but he is not so much interested in cooling people's food as in warming their hearts with his genuine brotherhood for all men. There isn't much prospect for anybody to sell him "a cold business proposition," even though he is a dealer in ice.
Do not, however, make a "hobby of hobbies." Only the big hobbies of your man are worth especial study. Never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. He may be sensitive about being eccentric. It is bad salesmanship to pretend an interest in another person's whims. You cannot use his hobbies to help your prospects unless you share his feelings to a considerable degree. My friend who believes and practices the doctrine that all men are brothers would be sure to detect quickly a false humanitarian bent on a selfish purpose to exploit his hobby.
As already has been emphasized, the object of the good salesman when prospecting is to discover the lacks of men who might benefit from the things he has to sell. If you are looking for your prospects with that service purpose, you have taken a long preparatory step in the process of selling your qualifications. Find the employer who needs your best ability, and your success will be assured the moment you get into his mind the true idea that you are the man he has been looking for.
Undoubtedly you know men to whom success has come because they made other men realize they fitted into particular needs. A young acquaintance of mine foresaw that a manufacturer would want an assistant within a year or two; though the executive himself was unaware that he was developing such a need. My acquaintance got a minor job under him in order to make a good impression in advance. Long before the head of the business realized that he was breaking in a confidential assistant, the young man had qualified for the position he had perceived in prospect.
Your chosen employer may not know of the lack that you have prospected in his business. He may not have the least idea that he wants you. Prospecting his needs is part of your job as a salesman of yourself.
An expert accountant sold himself into a fine position as the auditor of a great corporation by anticipating that the Company would need to have its system of book-keeping revolutionized in order to prepare for the Federal income tax. He prospected what was coming to that business; then sold the president comprehension that he lacked an expert accountant he was going to need badly before long.
One of my own experiences as an accountant illustrates the value of specific prospecting. When I was studying accountancy, I bought every authoritative publication on the subject. For one set of forty books I had to send to London. Each volume related to the peculiar accounts, terms, etc. of one business. There was a book on brewery accounting, another on commission house accounting, and so on through the list of forty businesses. To each volume I afterward owed at least one client. For instance, I got a commission to make a cost survey for a tobacco company, largely because I was able to convince the president that I knew a good deal about the tobacco business. I talked intelligently to him regarding the processes of his industry.
When you prospect an individual's personal qualities, traits, or hobbies, do not stop after learning the facts. Study out the reasons behind habits and opinions. It may help you only a little to know that your intended employer is a Republican or a Democrat; that he is conservative or radical in his social opinions. But your chances of success in dealing with him will be greatly increased if you know exactly why he belongs to one or the other political party, and the reason he is a "stand-patter" or a "progressive." Use knowledge of why's and wherefore's with the skill of a salesman bent on securing an order from a prospective buyer. But be sure you get the fundamental facts, for often "appearances are deceiving."
When you look for prospects in your selected field of service-opportunities recognize your personal responsibility for the successful development of the chances you find. Before you begin prospecting, realize that what you make of your opportunities is solely up to you. Assume all the responsibility for your own success; then you will have no excuse to blame any one else if you fail. Should things not go as you wish, say "It's my own fault," and feel that way. The true salesman never apologizes to himself. So if you have not found your prospects, or if you have not made the best use of the chances you have discovered, kick at the man who is responsible. Don't get sore on the world at large.
Perhaps what has been said thus far has over-emphasized the process of prospecting for the first chance to succeed. Maybe it suggests to you that if one can get an opening, the hardest part of the effort to assure success will have been accomplished. But a successful career in salesmanship is not built on single orders closed. The master salesman keeps on selling the same buyer and develops him into a steady customer. He continues all the while to prospect the needs of that buyer, just as thoroughly as if he were planning his first approach.
Your initial success should be completed by after-service. In order to continue progressing toward your goal, you must "deliver the goods" right along. You cannot keep your success growing unless you prospect unremittingly for more and better opportunities to render service. Give satisfaction in larger amount and improved quality from month to month, and year after year. If you would continue to succeed, look ahead always for more prospects and seek in each of them new chances to broaden your usefulness.
If you prospect skillfully (with art), your chances to find what you seek will be remarkably increased. So look for your prospects cheerily. Be frank and expressive in your quest. Show your sympathetic side, and thus appeal to the kinder tendencies of other people. The best way to avoid the world's coldness is by warming everybody you meet with your own cordiality. Be courteous. Especially cultivate the art of talking with people instead of at them. Use tact and judgment in dealing with your prospects.
Thousands of men are shut away from the open minds and hearts of others by doors of concealment and reserve. You need to open such doors. You can do it only by frankness on your own part, which will induce people to feel like telling you their secrets. Frank expression of your opinion, provided it has a sound foundation, will often draw out the hidden opinions of others and reveal to you prospects that you might never discover unaided. Do not, however, be dogmatic or arbitrary in saying what you think. Speak your beliefs casually. Then you will not discourage those honest differences of opinion that enlighten one's own ideas.
Rid your face of sharpness if you would be a good prospector for your best chances to succeed. Avoid "the cutting edge" in your voice and manner when you make inquiries about opportunities you seek. You are likely to be most effective in prospecting if you cultivate an easy attitude of friendliness. The master salesman does not set his jaw when prospecting. He uses curved, instead of straight line gestures to supplement his words. He suggests a "ball-bearing" disposition, not "corners."
Be a good mixer when looking for your prospects. Learn the art of companionship. The first essential is fellow feeling. Therefore do not go about with a chip on your shoulder, but with your face a-smile and your palms open to offer and to receive hand-clasps. Sympathize with the ambitions of other men, with their hopes and dreams. Remember that each part of every work of man, however substantial and enduring it now may be, was once no more than a figment of the imagination of some one's mind. So do not be altogether "practical" when prospecting. It is a mistake to neglect to prospect visions.
When the master salesman prospects, he uses very effectively a "leader" idea. You know how aggressive stores advertise leaders that draw trade in other things. Your prospecting of your various capabilities should enable you to decide which of your qualifications will make the most effective leader in the case of a certain employer. Do not expect him to perceive all your merits immediately. Concentrate his attention and interest on one or two elements of your fitness to fill his especial needs. Prospect to make sure which of your possible leaders would be most likely to influence him in your favor. Then use these selected elements of your character very prominently to open the door of your initial chance. Countless successes have been founded on well chosen leaders.
A little bake shop in Chicago competes successfully to-day with a great chain-store company that has an immense establishment directly across the street. The shop sells as its leaders home-made English tarts that no chain-store could supply. These draw buyers for groceries and other goods the chain-store sells much cheaper, but which the purchasers of tarts order with their pastry rather than cross the street and divide their marketing.
Now let us summarize "Your Prospects." They are not far away nor far ahead in time. They are in your own hands right now. You cannot fail in life if you recognize and use most effectively all the opportunities available to you at present. You suffer from no lack of chances to succeed. You only need to open your physical eyes and the eyes of your mind to see fine prospects every day. Then if you imaginatively relate your abilities to what you perceive, and plan how you can fit yourself into a chosen place of real service, you will have begun the selling process successfully. At the outset of your career it is possible for you to reduce difficult obstacles to temporary set-backs that you can get around or overcome.
There is only a narrow margin of difference between success and failure. Success is a matter of fractions and decimals, not of big units. A few thousand American soldiers and marines turned the tide of German victory at Chateau Thierry. "It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back."
If you begin the selling process by the finest prospecting, and keep on with equal effectiveness throughout all the following steps of salesmanship, you will gain so many more chances than you otherwise could get that your success in the end will be assured. The master salesman works with certainty that he will secure his quota of orders. He knows in advance that he will succeed; because he knows sure ways to sell.
Good prospecting is just a natural process, intelligently comprehended. It is neither mysterious nor hard. It is one of the preliminary, understandable ways to make success not only sure, but easy to attain.
CHAPTER VI
Gaining Your Chance
We will assume that you have qualified yourself to succeed; that you have developed your best capabilities in knowledge, in manhood, and in sales skill; that you have completed the general preparation necessary to assure your success in marketing your particular qualifications; and that you also have learned how to find and to make the most of your prospects. After these preliminaries you are ready to take the next step in the selling process, and to begin putting your capabilities, and what you have learned from preparation and prospecting, to specific use in actual selling.
In order to succeed, you must not only be qualified for some particular service work, but you also need chances to demonstrate your capabilities and preparedness for effective service. If you stand all your life in complete readiness for success but outside the door of opportunity, you will be a failure despite your exceptional qualifications and preparations for handling chances to succeed. It is necessary that you get inside the door. We will study now the sure ways and means of entrance.
One great advantage the skillful salesman has over even the best buyer is that he can plan completely what he will do and how he will do it to accomplish his selling purpose. The prospect is unable to anticipate who will call upon him next; so it is impossible for him to avoid being taken unawares by each salesman. He can make only general and hasty preparations at the moment to deal with the particular individual who comes intent on securing his order.
The good salesman, however, works out in advance the most effective ways and means to present his proposition. Each move in the process of selling his ideas to a prospect is carefully studied and practiced beforehand. The effects of different words and tones and acts are exactly weighed. When the thoroughly prepared salesman calls on a possible buyer, he has in mind a flexible program of procedure with which he is perfectly familiar and which he can adapt skillfully to various conditions that his imagination has enabled him to anticipate. Hence the master salesman usually is able to control the situation, no matter how shrewd the prospect may be; because the salesman's chance to plan assures him a great advantage over the unprepared or incompletely prepared other party to the sale.
If you would likewise "dominate" the man to whom you want to sell your capabilities, prepare "plans of approach" to his interest before calling on him; in order to make sure of presenting your qualifications most strongly. He can oppose your salesmanship with but comparatively weak resistance; because he has had no such opportunity as you to get all ready for this interview. The skillful salesman is confident that he can control the selling process he begins. When you seek a selected chance for the success you desire, you should feel similar assurance of ability to sell your services. You will possess this feeling if you prepare your "plan of approach" as the master salesman gets ready for his interview with a prospective buyer.
You have to make two distinct "entrances" in order to gain your desired chance to succeed. You need to get yourself into the presence of the employer you have selected. Then it is essential that you get the true idea of your capabilities and preparedness into his mind. Your "approach" to his attention and interest, therefore, involves a double process. It is important that you plan intelligently the most skillful ways and means of making the two entrances; through the physical and the mental closed doors that now shut you out from the opportunities you have prospected and desire to gain.
No master salesman would call on an important prospect before planning in his own mind how to take the successive steps of the interview expected. Nor would a master salesman neglect to think out in advance several specific methods of getting past any physical barriers he might encounter between the outer door of the general office and the inner sanctum of the man he must meet face to face in order to close a sale.
But when the unskilled salesman of his own capabilities seeks a situation, he usually neglects to make careful, detailed plans to reach his prospect in the most effective way. He does not prepare to create the particular impressions that would be most apt to assure him the attention and interest of the employer upon whom he calls. Nearly always when a man out of a job answers an advertisement or follows up a clue to a possible opening for his services, he thinks the most important thing is to "get there first." The only advantage he hopes to gain over other applicants is a position at the head of the line.
Have you ever stopped to analyze the mental attitude of an employer toward the half dozen, dozen, or score of men who answer his advertisement for the services of one man? He thinks, "Here are a lot of fellows out of jobs. Probably most of them are no good, or they wouldn't be out of jobs. They are competing for this place. Each sees there are plenty of others who will be glad to have it. Therefore it is likely that I can get a man without paying him much to start with, and he probably won't be very independent for a while after I hire him. I'll take my pick of the lot, and keep the names and addresses of two or three others in case he doesn't make good."
Then the employer calls in the applicants as if they were so many sheep to be sheared by sharp cross-examination. Practically every candidate enters the private office with a considerable degree of sheepishness in his feelings, whether he tries to appear at ease or not. The employer first eyes him in keen appraisal. He then proceeds briskly to clip off facts about him. The man sitting behind the desk absolutely dominates the situation. He finishes his questioning, and disposes of the applicant as he pleases.
What chance to gain the desired opportunity for service does each candidate have in such an uncontrolled process of getting a job? He has one-sixth, or one-twelfth, or one-twentieth of a chance for success; according to whether there are six or a dozen or a score of applicants. Also, practically without exception, men who come seeking a position and find that it has been filled make no further efforts to secure the opportunity for which they have applied; though the successful candidate may not make good and the position may soon be vacant again. Your own experience and observation have made familiar to you this common way of looking for jobs. You know that in such cases the employer has all the advantage. Certainly the applicants who try to gain a chance to work by this method use no salesmanship at all.
How would a "salesman" candidate for such a situation proceed? First, he would avoid the mistake of presenting himself as merely one of a crowd of competing applicants. He would make his particular personality stand out. Before calling, he would do some prospecting to discover just what capabilities were needed to fill the position advertised. Then he would plan different ways of tackling the prospective employer. When all ready, but not before, he would go to the address.
If he should find a crowd there, he would not merge with it. He would avoid stating his business immediately in the outer office, rather than identify himself with the other candidates waiting. He would have a plan to get an interview later, after the dispersal of the crowd. If he should be told then that the position had been filled, he would go right ahead with his selling program regardless of the rebuff. He would proceed to sell the boss the idea that he was an especially well fitted man for the job. He would assume that no one else could give such satisfaction.
Nevertheless the employer might feel that he had no place open for the latest candidate. In this event the applicant would demonstrate with salesmanship that he was the sort of person it is worth while for any business man to keep track of. Such a real "salesman" of his own capabilities, if put off for the time being, would be reasonably sure to get his desired chance the next time that employer might require such services as he could supply.
A young acquaintance of mine wanted to secure a chance in the office of a prominent manufacturing corporation, under a certain executive whom he regarded as the most capable business man in the city. The company had advertised for a minor clerk in the cost department, which was managed by the particular executive. My acquaintance called, and found seven other applicants waiting in the general office. He did not join them, but sent in his card to the busy head of the cost department with the penciled request, "May I see you for twenty seconds in order to make a personal inquiry?" He was promptly admitted to the private office, and then stated his purpose in calling. He was careful to be extremely brief.
"My name is James A. Ward. I believe, Mr. Blank, I am the man you want for the clerkship in your cost section. In order to save your time, may I have permission to make some inquiries of the chief clerk in that department, to learn just what qualifications are required and what the work is? Then when you talk with me, it will be unnecessary for you to explain details."
Taken unawares, the executive was not prepared to refuse the courteous request. Moreover, he was impressed with the distinctive attitude of the young man. He instructed that the candidate be taken to the cost department. There my acquaintance made an excellent impression on the cost accountant and several clerks. Thus in advance of any other applicant he secured a "stand-in" with a number of persons who might influence the judgment of their chief in selecting a new man. When he had learned the nature of the work to be done, Ward did not make the mistake of thrusting himself again into the sanctum. Instead, he wrote a note to the executive on whom he had called first.
"Dear Mr. Blank:
I know now exactly what the job in the cost department is, and that I can fill it. But I should like to think over the best ways to give you complete satisfaction, before talking with you about it. Please telephone to me at Main 4683 when it will be convenient for you to see me.
Respectfully,
James A. Ward."
The young man sent his note into the private office and left at once. There now were nine applicants on the anxious seat in the reception room. Ward did not wish to be asked to wait his turn. He felt sure the executive would inquire of the costs manager about him, and he got away from the office quickly so that there would be an opportunity for his chosen prospective employer to receive the full effect of the good impression made in the cost department.
My acquaintance was not at all worried lest some other candidate be chosen in his absence. The measures of salesmanship he had taken made it practically certain that the executive would not employ any one else before talking to him. Ward went to his room and waited for the telephone call he was sure would come. While he sat expecting it, he used the time to think out the best ways to approach the big man with whom he wanted to work.
The salesman candidate was summoned in about an hour. None of the applicants ahead of him had come prepared with any definite plans. Therefore my acquaintance, who knew in advance just what the conditions were and who had decided exactly how he would present his particular capabilities, found it easy to secure the chance he desired. He is earning a salary of four thousand dollars a year now, and is on his way up to a five-or-six-figure job. He will get there, "as sure as shooting." A salesman like that cannot be kept down.
I asked Ward one day what he would have done if the telephone call he expected had not come. He replied that he would have gone to see the executive next morning anyhow, and that he had planned carefully how he would approach him.
"I'd have sent in a note that I was ready to report some ideas I had worked out regarding his cost-keeping as a result of the thinking I had done since learning his system. He wouldn't have refused to see me, even if he had hired some one else meanwhile. Then I'd have told him the very things that got me the job. They would have assured me a chance in his office, whether he had a place for me right then or not," Ward asserted positively. "If that plan of mine hadn't succeeded," he amended, "I'd have known he wasn't the kind of man I wanted to work for, after all. But it turned out exactly as I knew it would," my friend ended with a grin.
Can you imagine a man of such sales ability failing to get a chance almost anywhere? Yet Ward did only what any one, with a little forethought, might have done in the circumstances. Analyze the selling process he used, and you will perceive that there was nothing marvelous about it—it was all perfectly natural. Is there any good reason why you cannot employ similar methods to gain the chance you want?
Let us dig into what Ward did, and find the "essence" of his salesmanship in the ways and means he employed to assure his two "entrances," to the presence and into the mind of the executive. He was successful principally because he made the impression that he had come with a purpose of rendering real service to the other man. His plan of approach assured him the opportunity he wanted because it was designed to serve the head of the department in his need for particular capabilities. Very rarely will any one refuse a needed service. So, coming with a purpose of service, Ward made certain in advance that he would be welcomed to his opportunity. The essence of a successful plan of approach to the mind of any prospect is a carefully thought-out idea of how to supply him with exactly what he lacks.
Just as the service purpose well planned is the key to the door of a man's mind; so is it the "Open Sesame" to his presence. Plan how to bring to the attention of a prospect your real service motive in coming to him, and how at the same time you can indicate to him your capabilities; then you will be as sure as was my ingenious acquaintance that no office door will long remain closed to you. You only need to use the processes of the master salesman to gain any chance you want. You will succeed almost always in your immediate object; and if you are unsuccessful in your first or second sales attempt you will be absolutely certain to get some other good opportunity very soon.
It is not necessary to wait until the employer for whom you have chosen to work advertises a job. You should plan ways and means of gaining an entrance into his business organization, regardless of any "vacancy" he may have in mind. Plan exactly how you can serve him. Prospect for a need that he may not realize himself. Afterward work out a particular method of showing him clearly what he lacks, and that you are the man to fill the vacancy you yourself have discovered and revealed to him.
An elderly man who was down on his luck and who, on account of his grey hair, had been unable to get various kinds of work he had sought, devised a novel plan of approach that gained him a coveted chance in a big department store. He came to the main office and reached the sales manager without difficulty by appearing to be just a customer of the store. Then he whisked from under his coat a pasteboard sign on which he had printed, PORTER WANTED—TO KEEP SIDEWALK CLEAN.
"I'm after that job, sir," he explained his presence.
The sales manager waved the old man away.
"You're in the wrong place," he said curtly. "Employment office is on the top floor."
"I made the sign myself," the applicant declared, standing his ground. "The employment manager—you—no one in this store has realized, I think, how filthy your sidewalk is. If you will come down with me and look at it, I'm sure you will want to have it cleaned and will instruct that I be given the chance. It is hurting your sales, as it is now. Kept clean, as I would keep it, it would be a fine advertisement of the store's policies, and would help sales."
The old man's plan of entrance gained him his initial opportunity. He swept the sidewalk only two weeks. Then the sales manager made a place for him behind a counter, where he is serving customers with satisfaction to-day.
You will recall that in a previous chapter the ability to discriminate was stated as the distinguishing characteristic of masterly salesmanship. The ability to perceive differences, and skill in emphasizing them, will assure success in selling either ideas or goods.
The discriminative-restrictive study of anything is certain to give one a much clearer and more definite understanding of it than could be secured by a study of its likeness to something else. If, when describing two people, you compare their points of resemblance, you do not paint a clear picture of either. But if you restrict your comments to the differences in their features, you will portray a pretty definite mental image of each.
You have been given several examples of ways and means to gain an entrance into the presence and into the mind of an employer. You will note that each applicant restricted his plans of approach to methods that were entirely different from those ordinarily used in getting a job. The purpose of the salesman in every case was to bring out the difference between him and competing candidates for the situation. The selling processes described were successful because discriminative-restrictive principles of skill were employed to bring to the attention and interest of the prospect the service capabilities of the one applicant, in distinction from all others.
When you plan to gain the chance you most want, you can assure yourself of success if you will work out in your own mind how to do something effective that is different from the methods commonly used in attempts to gain opportunities, and that will impress your real service purpose in applying for your chance.
First think out clearly what the other man needs. Distinguish exactly in your thoughts between what is lacking in his organization, and what he already has. Then when planning to gain an entrance to the presence and the mind of your prospect, restrict your thoughts to ways and means of indicating and suggesting that you know precisely what service is wanted. Prepare to show him that you don't have merely a vague, indefinite idea of a job like other jobs. Plan to indicate that you are not just about the same as ordinary men who apply for positions. Be ready to make the first impression that you are a particular man with individual ideas and distinctive capability. If you can prove that, you will be certain to gain your chance through good salesmanship of the true idea of your qualifications.
When planning his approach, the master salesman combines his earlier work of preparation and his prospecting. He re-organizes in his mind all the information he previously has gained for his own benefit. Now he reviews his knowledge from the standpoint of the prospect. He plans to use what he has learned in the ways that seem to him most likely to fit the mentality, impulses, feelings, conditions, and real needs of the man he wants to influence to accept his proposition.
Having thus planned to fit his knowledge to an individual prospect, the skillful salesman arranges constructively in his own mind particular, definite points of contact with the mind of this one other man. He plans restrictively. That is, he works out only the approach ideas that are likely to fit the characteristics of the certain man on whom he intends to call. He also discards ways and means that are not especially adapted to this prospect.
Of course the master salesman purposes to make the best possible impression always; but he recognizes that words, tones, and actions which would create a favorable impression on one prospect might make an opposite impression on another. For instance, a jolly manner and expression help in gaining an entrance to the friendly consideration of a good-natured man, but would be likely to affect a cynical dyspeptic disagreeably.
The intelligence and skill used by the master professional salesman of goods in planning ways and means to gain his sales chances, can be used in the same way just as effectively by you when planning your approach to the presence and mind of any one related to your opportunities for success. Before you apply for the job you want, or before you present your qualifications for promotion or an increased salary, make in advance a discriminative selection of ideas that will be likely to prove most effective in accomplishing your purpose with your employer prospect. Then, when you interview him, restrict your presentation of your case to these discriminatively selected strong points of your particular capability.