“HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE
WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM.
HE WHO CANNOT WALKS
A LONELY WAY”
I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer.
Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but
I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer
worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what
I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t
bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled
a worm or a grasshopper in front of the fish and
said: “Wouldn’t you like to have that?”
Why not use the same common sense when fishing for
people?
That is what Lloyd George, Great Britain’s Prime Minister
during World War I, did. When someone asked him
how he managed to stay in power after the other wartime
leaders - Wilson, Orlando and Clemenceau - had been
forgotten, he replied that if his staying on top might be
attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having
learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the
fish.
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd.
Of course, you are interested in what you want.
You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The
rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we
want.
So the only way cm earth to influence other people is
to talk about what they want and show them how to get
it.
Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get
somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t
want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and
don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes
may keep them from making the basketball team
or winning the hundred-yard dash.
This is a good thing to remember regardless of
whether you are dealing with children or calves or chimpanzees.
For example: one day Ralph Waldo Emerson
and his son tried to get a calf into the barn. But they
made the common mistake of thinking only of what they
wanted: Emerson pushed and his son pulled. But the
calf was doing just what they were doing; he was thinking
only of what he wanted; so he stiffened his legs and
stubbornly refused to leave the pasture. The Irish housemaid
saw their predicament. She couldn’t write essays
and books; but, on this occasion at least, she had more
horse sense, or calf sense, than Emerson had. She
thought of what the calf wanted; so she put her maternal
finger in the calf’s mouth and let the calf suck her finger
as she gently led him into the barn.
Every act you have ever performed since the day you
were born was performed because you wanted something.
How about the time you gave a large contribution
to the Red Cross? Yes, that is no exception to the rule.
You gave the Red Cross the donation because you
wanted to lend a helping hand; you wanted to do a beautiful,
unselfish, divine act. " Inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it unto me.”
If you hadn’t wanted that feeling more than you
wanted your money, you would not have made the contribution.
Of course, you might have made the contribution
because you were ashamed to refuse or because a
customer asked you to do it. But one thing is certain. You
made the contribution because you wanted something.
Harry A, Overstreet in his illuminating book Influencing
Human Behavior said; “Action springs out of what
we fundamentally desire, and the best piece of advice
which can be given to would-be persuaders,
whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics,
is: 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.”
Andrew Carnegie, the poverty-stricken Scotch lad
who started to work at two cents an hour and finally gave
away $365 million, learned early in life that the only
way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the
other person wants. He attended school only four years;
yet he learned how to handle people.
To illustrate: His sister-in-law was worried sick over
her two boys. They were at Yale, and they were so busy
with their own affairs that they neglected to write home
and paid no attention whatever to their mother’s frantic
letters.
Then Carnegie offered to wager a hundred dollars that
he could get an answer by return mail, without even
asking for it. Someone called his bet; so he wrote his
nephews a chatty letter, mentioning casually in a post-script
that he was sending each one a five-dollar bill.
He neglected, however, to enclose the money.
Back came replies by return mail thanking “Dear
Uncle Andrew” for his kind note and-you can finish
the sentence yourself.
Another example of persuading comes from Stan
Novak of Cleveland, Ohio, a participant in our course.
Stan came home from work one evening to find his
youngest son, Tim, kicking and screaming on the living
room floor. He was to start kindergarten the next day and
was protesting that he would not go. Stan’s normal reaction
would have been to banish the child to his room
and tell him he’d just better make up his mind to go. He
had no choice. But tonight, recognizing that this would
not really help Tim start kindergarten in the best frame
of mind, Stan sat down and thought, “If I were Tim, why
would I be excited about going to kindergarten?” He
and his wife made a list of all the fun things Tim would
do such as finger painting, singing songs, making new
friends. Then they put them into action. “We all started
finger-painting on the kitchen table-my wife, Lil, my
other son Bob, and myself, all having fun. Soon Tim was
peeping around the corner. Next he was begging to participate.
‘Oh, no! You have to go to kindergarten first to
learn how to finger-paint.’ With all the enthusiasm I
could muster I went through the list talking in terms he
could understand-telling him all the fun he would
have in kindergarten. The next morning, I thought I was
the first one up. I went downstairs and found Tim sitting
sound asleep in the living room chair. ‘What are you
doing here?’ I asked. ‘I’m waiting to go to kindergarten.
I don’t want to be late.’ The enthusiasm of our entire
family had aroused in Tim an eager want that no amount
of discussion or threat could have possibly accomplished.”
Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do
something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself:
“How can I make this person want to do it?”
That question will stop us from rushing into a situation
heedlessly, with futile chatter about our desires.
At one time I rented the grand ballroom of a certain
New York hotel for twenty nights in each season in order
to hold a series of lectures.
At the beginning of one season, I was suddenly informed
that I should have to pay almost three times as
much rent as formerly. This news reached me after the
tickets had been printed and distributed and all announcements
had been made.
Naturally, I didn’t want to pay the increase, but what
was the use of talking to the hotel about what I wanted?
They were interested only in what they wanted. So a
couple of days later I went to see the manager.
"I was a bit shocked when I got your letter,” I said,
“but I don’t blame you at all. If I had been in your position,
I should probably have written a similar letter myself.
Your duty as the manager of the hotel is to make all
the profit possible. If you don’t do that, you will be fired
and you ought to be fired. Now, let’s take a piece of
paper and write down the advantages and the disadvantages
that will accrue to you, if you insist on this increase
in rent.”
Then I took a letterhead and ran a line through the
center and headed one column “Advantages” and the
other column “Disadvantages.”
I wrote down under the head “Advantages” these
words: “Ballroom free.” Then I went on to say: “You
will have the advantage of having the ballroom free to
rent for dances and conventions. That is a big advantage,
for affairs like that will pay you much more than you can
get for a series of lectures. If I tie your ballroom up
for twenty nights during the course of the season, it is
sure to mean a loss of some very profitable business to
you.
“Now, let’s ‘consider the disadvantages. First, instead
of increasing your income from me, you are going to
decrease it. In fact, you are going to wipe it out because
I cannot pay the rent you are asking. I shall be forced to
hold these lectures at some other place.
“There’s another disadvantage to you also. These lectures
attract crowds of educated and cultured people to
your hotel. That is good advertising for you, isn’t it? In
fact, if you spent five thousand dollars advertising in the
newspapers, you couldn’t bring as many people to look
at your hotel as I can bring by these lectures. That is
worth a lot to a hotel, isn’t it?”
As I talked, I wrote these two “disadvantages” under
the proper heading, and handed the sheet of paper to
the manager, saying: "I wish you would carefully consider
both the advantages and disadvantages that are
going to accrue to you and then give me your final decision.”
I received a letter the next day, informing me that my
rent would be increased only 50 percent instead of 300
percent.
Mind you, I got this reduction without saying a word
about what I wanted. I talked all the time about what
the other person wanted and how he could get it.
Suppose I had done the human, natural thing; suppose
I had stormed into his office and said, “What do you
mean by raising my rent three hundred percent when
you know the tickets have been printed and the announcements
made? Three hundred percent! Ridiculous!
Absurd! I won’t pay it!”
What would have happened then? An argument would
have begun to steam and boil and sputter - and you
know how arguments end. Even if I had convinced him
that he was wrong, his pride would have made it difficult
for him to back down and give in.
Here is one of the best bits of advice ever given about
the fine art of human relationships. “If there is any one
secret of success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability
to get the other person’s point of view and see things
from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”
That is so good, I want to repeat it: "If there is any one
secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other
person's point of view and see things from that person’s
angle as well as from your own.”
That is so simple, so obvious, that anyone ought to see
the truth of it at a glance; yet 90 percent of the people
on this earth ignore it 90 percent of the time.
An example? Look at the letters that come across your
desk tomorrow morning, and you will find that most of
them violate this important canon of common sense.
Take this one, a letter written by the head of the radio
department of an advertising agency with offices scattered
across the continent. This letter was sent to the
managers of local radio stations throughout the country.
(I have set down, in brackets, my reactions to each paragraph.)
Mr. John Blank,
Blankville,
Indiana
Dear Mr. Blank:
The, company desires to retain its position in advertising
agency leadership in the radio field.
[Who cares what your company desires? I am worried
about my own problems. The bank is foreclosing the
mortage on my house, the bugs are destroying the hollyhocks,
the stock market tumbled yesterday. I missed
the eight-fifteen this morning, I wasn’t invited to the
Jones’s dance last night, the doctor tells me I have high
blood pressure and neuritis and dandruff. And then what
happens? I come down to the office this morning worried,
open my mail and here is some little whippersnapper
off in New York yapping about what his company
wants. Bah! If he only realized what sort of impression
his letter makes, he would get out of the advertising
business and start manufacturing sheep dip.]
This agency’s national advertising accounts were the
bulwark of the network. Our subsequent clearances of
station time have kept us at the top of agencies year after
year.
[You are big and rich and right at the top, are you? So
what? I don’t give two whoops in Hades if you are as big
as General Motors and General Electric and the General
Staff of the U.S. Army all combined. If you had as much
sense as a half-witted hummingbird, you would realize
that I am interested in how big I am - not how big you
are. All this talk about your enormous success makes me
feel small and unimportant.]
We desire to service our accounts with the last word on
radio station information.
[You desire! You desire. You unmitigated ass. I’m not
interested in what you desire or what the President of
the United States desires. Let me tell you once and for
all that I am interested in what I desire - and you
haven’t said a word about that yet in this absurd letter of
yours .]
Will you, therefore, put the, company on your
preferred list for weekly station information - every single
detail that will be useful to an agency in intelligently booking
time.
[“Preferred list.” You have your nerve! You make me
feel insignificant by your big talk about your company
- and then you ask me to put you on a “preferred” list,
and you don’t even say “please” when you ask it.]
A prompt acknowledgment of this letter, giving us your
latest “doings,” will be mutually helpful.
[You fool! You mail me a cheap form letter - a letter
scattered far and wide like the autumn leaves - and you
have the gall to ask me, when I am worried about the
mortgage and the hollyhocks and my blood pressure, to
sit down and dictate a personal note acknowledging your
form letter - and you ask me to do it “promptly.” What
do you mean, “promptly”.? Don’t you know I am just as
busy as you are - or, at least, I like to think I am. And
while we are on the subject, who gave you the lordly
right to order me around? . . . You say it will be “mutually
helpful.” At last, at last, you have begun to see my
viewpoint. But you are vague about how it will be to my
advantage.]
Very truly yours,
John Doe
Manager Radio Department
P.S. The enclosed reprint from the Blankville Journal will
be of interest to you, and you may want to broadcast it over
your station.
[Finally, down here in the postscript, you mention
something that may help me solve one of my problems.
Why didn’t you begin your letter with - but what’s the
use? Any advertising man who is guilty of perpetrating
such drivel as you have sent me has something wrong
with his medulla oblongata. You don’t need a letter giving
our latest doings. What you need is a quart of iodine
in your thyroid gland.]
Now, if people who devote their lives to advertising
and who pose as experts in the art of influencing people
to buy - if they write a letter like that, what can we expect
from the butcher and baker or the auto mechanic?
Here is another letter, written by the superintendent
of a large freight terminal to a student of this course,
Edward Vermylen. What effect did this letter have on
the man to whom it was addressed? Read it and then I'll
tell you.
A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc.
28 Front St.
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201
Attention: Mr. Edward Vermylen
Gentlemen:
The operations at our outbound-rail-receiving station are
handicapped because a material percentage of the total
business is delivered us in the late afternoon. This condition
results in congestion, overtime on the part of our forces,
delays to trucks, and in some cases delays to freight. On
November 10, we received from your company a lot of 510
pieces, which reached here at 4:20 P.M.
We solicit your cooperation toward overcoming the undesirable
effects arising from late receipt of freight. May we
ask that, on days on which you ship the volume which was
received on the above date, effort be made either to get the
truck here earlier or to deliver us part of the freight during
the morning?
The advantage that would accrue to you under such an
arrangement would be that of more expeditious discharge
of your trucks and the assurance that your business would
go forward on the date of its receipt.
Very truly yours,
After reading this letter, Mr. Vermylen, sales manager
for A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc., sent it to me with the following
comment:
This letter had the reverse effect from that which was
intended. The letter begins by describing the Terminal’s
difficulties, in which we are not interested, generally speaking.
Our cooperation is then requested without any thought
as to whether it would inconvenience us, and then, finally,
in the last paragraph, the fact is mentioned that if we do
cooperate it will mean more expeditious discharge of our
trucks with the assurance that our freight will go forward on
the date of its receipt.
In other words, that in which we are most interested is
mentioned last and the whole effect is one of raising a spirit
of antagonism rather than of cooperation.
Let’s see if we can’t rewrite and improve this letter.
Let’s not waste any time talking about our problems. As
Henry Ford admonishes, let’s “get the other person’s
point of view and see things from his or her angle, as
well as from our own.”
Here is one way of revising the letter. It may not be
the best way, but isn’t it an improvement?
Mr. Edward Vermylen
% A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc.
28 Front St.
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201
Dear Mr. Vermylen:
Your company has been one of our good customers for
fourteen years. Naturally, we are very grateful for your patronage
and are eager to give you the speedy, efficient service
you deserve. However, we regret to say that it isn’t
possible for us to do that when your trucks bring us a large
shipment late in the afternoon, as they did on November
10. Why? Because many other customers make late afternoon
deliveries also. Naturally, that causes congestion. That
means your trucks are held up unavoidably at the pier and
sometimes even your freight is delayed.
That’s bad, but it can be avoided. If you make your deliveries
at the pier in the morning when possible, your trucks
will be able to keep moving, your freight will get immediate
attention, and our workers will get home early at night to
enjoy a dinner of the delicious macaroni and noodles that
you manufacture.
Regardless of when your shipments arrive, we shall always
cheerfully do all in our power to serve you promptly.
You are busy. Please don’t trouble to answer this note.
Yours truly,
J. B., supt.
Barbara Anderson, who worked in a bank in New
York, desired to move to Phoenix, Arizona, because of
the health of her son. Using the principles she had
learned in our course, she wrote the following letter to
twelve banks in Phoenix:
Dear Sir:
My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to
a rapidly growing bank like yours.
In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers
Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment
as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all
phases of banking including depositor relations, credits,
loans and administration.
I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can
contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix
the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity
to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals.
Sincerely,
Barbara L. Anderson
Do you think Mrs. Anderson received any response
from that letter? Eleven of the twelve banks invited her
to be interviewed, and she had a choice of which bank’s
offer to accept. Why? Mrs. Anderson did not state what
she wanted, but wrote in the letter how she could help
them, and focused on their wants, not her own.
Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements
today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why?
Because they are always thinking only of what they
want. They don’t realize that neither you nor I want to
buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But
both of us are eternally interested in solving our problems.
And if salespeople can show us how their services
or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they
won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to
feel that they are buying - not being sold.
Yet many salespeople spend a lifetime in selling without
seeing things from the customer’s angle. For example,
for many years I lived in Forest Hills, a little
community of private homes in the center of Greater
New York. One day as I was rushing to the station, I
chanced to meet a real-estate operator who had bought
and sold property in that area for many years. He knew
Forest Hills well, so I hurriedly asked him whether or
not my stucco house was built with metal lath or hollow
tile. He said he didn’t know and told me what I already
knew - that I could find out by calling the Forest Hills
Garden Association. The following morning, I received
a letter from him. Did he give me the information I
wanted? He could have gotten it in sixty seconds by a
telephone call. But he didn’t. He told me again that I
could get it by telephoning, and then asked me to let
him handle my insurance.
He was not interested in helping me. He was interested
only in helping himself.
J. Howard Lucas of Birmingham, Alabama, tells how
two salespeople from the same company handled the
same type of situation, He reported:
“Several years ago I was on the management team of
a small company. Headquartered near us was the district
office of a large insurance company. Their agents were
assigned territories, and our company was assigned to
two agents, whom I shall refer to as Carl and John.
“One morning, Carl dropped by our office and casually
mentioned that his company had just introduced a
new life insurance policy for executives and thought we
might be interested later on and he would get back to us
when he had more information on it.
“The same day, John saw us on the sidewalk while
returning from a coffee break, and he shouted: ‘Hey
Luke, hold up, I have some great news for you fellows.’
He hurried over and very excitedly told us about an executive
life insurance policy 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 starting 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,
a student of this course, couldn’t get his three-year
old daughter to eat breakfast food. The usual scolding,
pleading, coaxing methods had all ended in futility. So
the parents asked themselves: “How can we make her
want to do it?”
The little girl loved to imitate her mother, to feel big
and grown up; so one morning they put her on a chair
and let her make the breakfast food. At just the psychological
moment, Father drifted into the kitchen while
she was stirring the cereal and she said: “Oh, look,
Daddy, I am making the cereal this morning.”
She ate two helpings of the cereal without any coaxing,
because she was interested in it. She had achieved
a feeling of importance; she had found in making the
cereal an avenue of self-expression.
William Winter once remarked that "self-expression is
the dominant necessity of human nature.” Why can’t we
adapt this same psychology to business dealings? When we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think
it is ours, why not let them cook and stir the idea themselves.
They will then regard it as their own; they will
like it and maybe eat a couple of helpings of it.
Remember: “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."
