chapter16.1

Don't you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter?

If so, isn't it bad judgment 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 disorganized group of automobile salespeople.

Calling a sales meeting, he urged his people to tell him exactly what they expected from him.

As he 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, "so long 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 some-thing 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 realized he must be in a mental rut, so he resolved to devote one evening a week to the study of influencing human behavior, 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 favor, 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 realized 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."

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self-Reliance" stated: "In every work of genius we recognize 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.

The others had been trying to sell me on their service, but one let me sell myself.

That organization 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."

Principle 7—Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.