LITMIR.BIZ

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his company had introduced that very day. (It was the same policy that Carl had casually mentioned.) He wanted us to have one of the first issued. He gave us a few important facts about the coverage and ended saying, “The policy is so new, I’m going to have someone from the home office come out tomorrow and explain it. Now, in the meantime, let’s get the applications signed and on the way so he can have more information to work with.’ His enthusiasm aroused in us an eager want for this policy even though we still did not have details. When they were made available to us, they confirmed John’s initial understanding of the policy, and he not only sold each of us a policy, but later doubled our coverage.

      “Carl could have had those sales, but he made no effort to arouse in us any desire for the policies.”

      The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little competition. Owen D. Young, a noted lawyer and one of America’s great business leaders, once said: “People who can put themselves in the place of other people, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for them.”

      If out of reading this book you get just one thing – an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people’s point of view, and see things from their angle – if you get that one thing out of this book, it may easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your career.

      Looking at the other person’s point of view and arousing in him an eager want for something is not to be construed as manipulating that person so that he will do something that is only for your benefit and his detriment. Each party should gain from the negotiation. In the letters to Mr. Vermylen, both the sender and the receiver of the correspondence gained by implementing what was suggested. Both the bank and Mrs. Anderson won by her letter in that the bank obtained a valuable employee and Mrs. Anderson a suitable job. And in the example of John’s sale of insurance to Mr. Lucas, both gained through this transaction.

      Another example in which everybody gains through this principle of arousing an eager want comes from Michael E. Whidden of Warwick, Rhode Island, who is a territory salesman for the Shell Oil Company. Mike wanted to become the Number One salesperson in his district, but one service station was holding him back. It was run by an older man who could not be motivated to clean up his station. It was in such poor shape that sales were declining significantly.

      This manager would not listen to any of Mike’s pleas to upgrade the station. After many exhortations and heart-to-heart talks – all of which had no impact – Mike decided to invite the manager to visit the newest Shell station in his territory.

      The manager was so impressed by the facilities at the new station that when Mike visited him the next time, his station was cleaned up and had recorded a sales increase. This enabled Mike to reach the Number One spot in his district. All his talking and discussion hadn’t helped, but by arousing an eager want in the manager, by showing him the modern station, he had accomplished his goal, and both the manager and Mike benefited.

      Most people go through college and learn to read Virgil and master the mysteries of calculus without ever discovering how their own minds function. For instance: I once gave a course in Effective Speaking for the young college graduates who were entering the employ of the Carrier Corporation, the large air-conditioner manufacturer. One of the participants wanted to persuade the others to play basketball in their free time, and this is about what he said: “I want you to come out and play basketball. I like to play basketball, but the last few times I’ve been to the gymnasium there haven’t been enough people to get up a game. Two or three of us got to throwing the ball around the other night – and I got a black eye. I wish all of you would come down tomorrow night. I want to play basketball.”

      Did he talk about anything you want? You don’t want to go to a gymnasium that no one else goes to, do you? You don’t care about what he wants. You don’t want to get a black eye.

      Could he have shown you how to get the things you want by using the gymnasium? Surely. More pep. Keener edge to the appetite. Clearer brain. Fun. Games. Basketball.

      To repeat Professor Overstreet’s wise advice: First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

      One of the students in the author’s training course was worried about his little boy. The child was underweight and refused to eat properly. His parents used the usual method. They scolded and nagged. “Mother wants you to eat this and that.” “Father wants you to grow up to be a big man.”

      Did the boy pay any attention to these pleas? Just about as much as you pay to one fleck of sand on a sandy beach.

      No one with a trace of horse sense would expect a child three years old to react to the viewpoint of a father thirty years old. Yet that was precisely what that father had expected. It was absurd. He finally saw that. So he said to himself: “What does that boy want? How can I tie up what I want to what he wants?”

      It was easy for the father when he started thinking about it. His boy had a tricycle that he loved to ride up and down the sidewalk in front of the house in Brooklyn. A few doors down the street lived a bully – a bigger boy who would pull the little boy off his tricycle and ride it himself.

      Naturally, the little boy would run screaming to his mother, and she would have to come out and take the bully off the tricycle and put her little boy on again. This happened almost every day.

      What did the little boy want? It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to answer that one. His pride, his anger, his desire for a feeling of importance – all the strongest emotions in his makeup – goaded him to get revenge, to smash the bully in the nose. And when his father explained that the boy would be able to wallop the daylights out of the bigger kid someday if he would only eat the things his mother wanted him to eat-when his father promised him that – there was no longer any problem of dietetics. That boy would have eaten spinach, sauerkraut, salt mackerel – anything in order to be big enough to whip the bully who had humiliated him so often.

      After solving that problem, the parents tackled another: the little boy had the unholy habit of wetting his bed.

      He slept with his grandmother. In the morning, his grandmother would wake up and feel the sheet and say: “Look, Johnny, what you did again last night.”

      He would say: “No, I didn’t do it. You did it.”

      Scolding, spanking, shaming him, reiterating that the parents didn’t want him to do it – none of these things kept the bed dry. So the parents asked: “How can we make this boy want to stop wetting his bed?”

      What were his wants? First, he wanted to wear pajamas like Daddy instead of wearing a nightgown like Grandmother. Grandmother was getting fed up with his nocturnal iniquities, so she gladly offered to buy him a pair of pajamas if he would reform. Second, he wanted a bed of his own. Grandma didn’t object.

      His mother took him to a department store in Brooklyn, winked at the salesgirl, and said: “Here is a little gentleman who would like to do some shopping.”

      The salesgirl made him feel important by saying: “Young man, what can I show you?”

      He stood a couple of inches taller and said: “I want to buy a bed for myself.”

      When he was shown the one his mother wanted him to buy, she winked at the salesgirl and the boy was persuaded to buy it.

      The bed was delivered the next day; and that night, when Father came home, the little boy ran to the door shouting: “Daddy! Daddy! Come upstairs and see my bed that I bought!”

      The father, looking at the bed, obeyed Charles Schwab’s injunction: he was “hearty in his approbation and lavish in his praise.”

      “You are not going to wet this bed, are you?” the father said.

      “Oh, no, no! I am not going to wet this bed.” The boy kept his promise, for his pride was involved. That was his bed. He and he alone had bought it. And he was wearing pajamas now like a little man. He wanted to act like a man. And he did.

      Another father, K. T. Dutschmann, a telephone engineer,

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