Law Of Attraction

I have shaken hands with many thousands of people during my public career, but I do not recall having ever done so with anyone who understood the art of doing it as well as this old lady did.

The moment she touched my hand I could feel myself "slipping," and I knew that whatever it was that she had come after she would go away with it, and that I would aid and abet her all I could toward this end. In other words, that penetrating smile and that warm hand-shake had disarmed me and made me a "willing victim."

At a single stroke this old lady had shorn me of that false shell into which I crawl when salesmen come around selling, or trying to sell, that which I do not want. To go back to an expression, which you found quite frequently in previous lessons of this course, this gentle visitor had "neutralized" my mind and made me want to listen.

Ah, but here is the stumbling point at which most salespeople fall and break their necks, figuratively speaking, for it is as useless to try to sell a man something until you have first made him want to listen, as it would be to command the earth to stop rotating.

Note well how this old lady used a smile and a handshake as the tools with which to pry open the window that led to my heart; but the most important part of the transaction is yet to be related. Slowly and deliberately, as if she had all the time there was in the universe (which she did have, as far as I was concerned at that moment) the old lady began to crystallize the first step of her victory into reality by saying:

"I just came here to tell you (what seemed to me to be a long pause) that I think you are doing the most wonderful work of any man in the world today."

Every word was emphasized by a gentle, though firm, squeeze of my hand, and she was looking through my eyes and into my heart as she spoke. After I regained consciousness (for it became a standing joke among my assistants at the office that I fainted dead away) I reached down and unlocked the little secret latch that fastened the gate and said:

"Come right in, dear lady, - come right into my private office," and with a gallant bow that would have done credit to the cavaliers of olden times, I bade her come in and "sit awhile."