Self Help
During the remainder of the week he made sales to two
others. By the end of the month he had opened advertising accounts with all
but one of the merchants that he had on the list. For the ensuing month he
made no sales, for the reason that he made no calls except on this one
obstinate merchant.
Every morning when the store opened he was on hand to interview this merchant and every morning the merchant said "No." The merchant knew he was not going to buy advertising space, but this young man didn't know it. When the merchant said No the young man did not hear it, but kept right on coming.
On the last day of the month, after having told this persistent young man No for thirty consecutive times, the merchant said: "Look here, young man, you have wasted a whole month trying to sell me; now, what I would like to know is this - why have you wasted your time?"
"Wasted my time nothing," he retorted; "I have been going to school and you have been my teacher. Now I know all the arguments that a merchant can bring up for not buying, and besides that I have been drilling myself in Self-confidence."
Then the merchant said: "I will make a little confession
of my own. I, too, have been going to school, and you have been my teacher.
You have taught me a lesson in persistence that is worth money to me, and to
show you my appreciation I am going to pay my tuition fee by giving you an
order for advertising space."
NO man can become a great leader of men unless he has the milk of human kindness in his own heart, and leads by suggestion and kindness, rather than by force. And that was the way in which the Philadelphia North American's best advertising account was brought in.
Likewise, it marked the beginning of a reputation that has made that same young man a millionaire. He succeeded because he deliberately charged his own mind with sufficient Self-confidence to make that mind an irresistible force. When he sat down to make up that list of twelve names he did something that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would not have done - he selected the names of those whom he believed it would be hard to sell, because he understood that out of the resistance he would meet with in trying to sell them would come strength and Self-confidence.