INTERESTING THE INTELLECTUAL MAN
Suppose he were trying to persuade a man of the intellectual type to purchase a life insurance policy. After having gained favorable attention, his further argument might be along these lines: "Your greatest asset is in your mental power. With your intellect you can accomplish what it would take a hundred men a year to accomplish with their hands. In fact, with your intellect you can accomplish what no number of men working throughout eternity could accomplish by the mere toil of their hands. Intellectual power depends upon the ability to concentrate and the freedom and health of your intellectual faculties. Psychologists and physiologists both agree, as you well know, that there is nothing which quite so quickly upsets both your physical and your mental machinery as anxiety and worry. With this policy in force, you are fortified—you are free to concentrate upon your problems, your work, without anxiety as to the future of your wife and children. Whatever happens to you, you know that they will be provided for. Furthermore, if you should live twenty years from now, you will receive ten thousand dollars in one lump sum. That is a provision against the possible day when you may be weary and wish to rest, or it may be just the endowment
which you need in order to carry on your researches and investigations and, perhaps, find the solution to some of the intellectual problems on which you have so long been working."
INTERESTING THE FAT MAN
The fat man likes to think of himself enjoying the good things of life as to body and mind, comfort, luxury, a jovial good time with congenial friends, the exercise of executive, financial or political power, or all three. His interest, therefore, is readily aroused if you talk to him about himself in connection with these things. There are many cases, of course, in which this must be done indirectly rather than directly. The effort should be not always to talk directly about the man to himself, but to make him think about himself. It is usually not permissible to talk to the judge on the bench about himself, but it is always permissible to paint the picture in such a way that the judge, if he is a fat man, will almost inevitably think of himself in connection with the matters presented.
For example, a lawyer friend of ours often appeared with cases before a corpulent jurist. "If it is at all possible," he told us, "without dragging the thing in too obviously by the ears, I always talk about food in my summing up. If I want to get the sympathy of the judge, I try, somehow or other, to make my client appear before the imagination as suffering from want of nourishment. I can see that the judge always feels those sufferings keenly himself. In one case, where I represented a woman in a divorce case, I told, as graphically as I knew how, the excellence of her cooking. I told about how her roast chicken and her pies tasted, and I could actually see his Honor's mouth water. Of course, in addition to that, I presented a good legal case. But I have always thought it was those imaginary pies and roast chicken that got my client her decision."
INTERESTS OF THE ACTIVE MAN
The man of bone and muscle likes to think of himself in action. Muscular exercise, out-of-doors freedom, skill, agility and strength—these are the things in which he is interested.
You can also interest him in thoughts of himself using tools, building or operating machinery, traveling or, perhaps, working in his garden or amongst his fruit trees. By an easy step in analogy this man is also interested in politics and religion, freedom and reform, and in mechanical principles and construction. Notice how the letter cited at the opening of this chapter makes the man who receives it think of himself in motion, think of himself as enjoying freedom, the outdoor air, exercise, the beauties of nature. All of these things appeal to the man of bone and muscle, who is, by all odds, the most likely purchaser of a bicycle.
THE IMPRACTICAL MAN'S INTEREST