4. The card and the might be well to digress here for a moment to discuss two small but important items. Altho the practice is quite common, it is not well to hand a man a business card when en deavoring to get his attention. The prospect cannot look at the salesman and At his card at the same time. The salesman should tell the prospect who he is and what his business is, and thus take the opportunity to impress the prospect with his personality and to secure undivided attention.
Then, there is the much discussed question of whether the salesman should offer to shake hands with the prospect when introducing himself. Some sales men always do this ; others, never. There is a middle course. Good judgment should dictate to the sales man, in each individual case, whether or not he should offer to shake hands. The custom in the particular territory will largely govern. Handshaking is not the usual thing in New York or Chicago. In the South and West, however, the salesman would run the danger of appearing cold by not offering to shake hands. Then, too, buyers, purchasing agents and others who see a great many salesmen sometimes have an aversion to shaking miscellaneous assortments of hands during the day. Whenever the salesman does shake hands he should see to it that his act is hearty, red-blooded and sincere.
5. The psychology of the sniall favor.—Some salesmen believe that getting the prospect to do them one or two small favors early in the interview will tend to put the interview on a right footing. Their idea is that one man always enjoys helping another and feels friendly toward the man for whom he has done a service and who has expressed his appreciation. For this reason they make it a point, soon after they have introduced themselves, to borrow a pencil m. a pen from the prospect; ask if they may have a glass of water ; request permission to lower a shade so as to re move a glare from their eyes; or, better still, let their actions subtly indicate that the glare is annoying and so get the prospect to suggest the lowering. Or the salesman may look about him with just the least suggestion of helplessness for a spot for his equipment until the prospect hastens to arrange a place.
IV. F. Lockwood, sales manager of the Toledo Scale Company, in an article in Printers' Ink, gives a view of this subject from a different angle: There is an interesting analogy between some of the well known laws of physics and some of the not so well-known mental habits and conditions, that bears interestingly upon the work of the salesman.
Most of us know that familiar law in physics which says that bodies at rest have a tendency to remain at rest, while those in motion have a tendency to continue in motion. A body- in motion tends always to continue its motion in the same direction. One of the interesting new things that we have discovered about the mind is that it follows the same law. The mind, if set in a certain direction and given a certain kind of a start, tends very strongly to continue in that same direc tion, unless something heads it off and sets it in anotheY direc tion. Once start the mind along certain lines and it is far more difficult to stop it and turn it back in another direction than it originally was to start it.
And there is another respect in which the mind follows one of the laws relating to matter. It is difficult to start it off at full speed. Take a trolley-car for example. Now a trol ley-car can never be started off at full speed. If some super human power tried to do so, it would result in all the passen gers being jammed, probably breaking a few arms, legs and many windows. Every trolley-car, every train of cars, every train of thought must be started slowly. So, if you tried to start your prospect off at full speed in the direction that you desire him to go, or in other words, if you tried to stampede him into giving an order, you would probably wreck your chances every time.
Now then, since it is unvvise to try to start your pros pect at full speed, what are you going to do? Why, the obvious thing is to start him very slowly doing the things that you ask him to do. Start him very slowly doing trifling things to which he will not attach the slightest importance, but which you know are getting him into the right atti tude to do, later on, the big thing you are going to ask. Alake all requests that possibly can be made, such as asking for a pencil or a bit of paper, or if you may sit down, or if you may lay your hat in a certain place--it doesn't make any difference what the request is ; if it is something he will grant readily, you have gained a point. You have his mind moving in the right direction. You have started him into doing your will in a trifle. That has been easy, because he places no importance upon the trifle. But it will, in conse quence of this, be much easier for you to get him to do your will in a larger matter a little bit later on.