Napoleon Hill
Find this one best approach and your problem is easily solved.
No matter how much merit your goods may have, there are millions of
wrong ways in which to offer them. Your imagination will assist you in
finding the right way.
In your search for the right way in which to offer your merchandise or
your services, remember this peculiar trait of mankind:
Men will grant favors that you request for the benefit of a third person
when they would not grant them if requested for your benefit.
Compare this statement with the fact that I asked the governor of Ohio to release B_, not as a favor to me, and not as a favor to B_, but, for the benefit of 160,000 unfortunate inmates of the prisons of America. Salesmen of imagination always offer their wares in such terminology that the advantages of those wares to the prospective purchaser are obvious.
It is seldom that any man makes a purchase of merchandise or renders another a favor just to accommodate the salesman. It is a prominent trait of human nature that prompts us all to do that which advances our own interests. This is a cold, indisputable fact, claims of the idealist to the contrary notwithstanding. To be perfectly plain, men are selfish!
To understand the truth is to understand how to present your case, whether you are asking for the release of a man from prison or offering for sale some commodity. In your own imagination so plan your presentation of your case that the strongest and most impelling advantages to the buyer are made plain.
This is imagination!
I NEVER see a person trying to disclose the scarlet letter on another's breast that I do not wonder if he doesn't carry some mark of disgrace which would have ruined him had he been overtaken by justice.
A farmer moved to the city, taking with him his well trained shepherd dog. He soon found that the dog was out of place in the city, so he decided to "get rid of him." (Note the words in quotation.)
Taking the dog with him he went out into the country and rapped on the door of a farm-house. A man came hobbling to the door, on crutches. The man with the dog greeted the man in the house in these words
"You wouldn't care to buy a fine shepherd dog, that I wish to get rid
of, would you?"
The man on crutches replied,
"No!" and closed the door.
The man with the dog called at half a dozen other farm-houses, asking the same question, and received the same answer.