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 hadnt 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 Ive been to the gymnasium there havent 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 dont want to go to a gymnasium that no one else goes to, do you? You dont care about what he wants. You dont 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 Overstreets 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 authors 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.
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 didnt 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 didnt do it. You did it.
Scolding, spanking, shaming him, reiterating that the parents didnt 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 didnt 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!