Part Three – How To Win People To Your Way Of Thinking | 7

7 – How To Get Cooperation
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 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 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 davs 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.”
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, James-town 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 he 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 Xray
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 skillful. 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
canceled 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 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.