So you can develop: (1) the use; (2) the degree of activity; (3) the quality, of any element in your present salesman equipment.
For example, it is generally recognized that suitable clothes help to create a good impression. Therefore you should use to the highest degree of activity and of quality what you know about the effect of dress in helping to create a good impression. But, to particularize, do you (use your knowledge) polish your shoes, even if it is no more than flicking off the dust with your handkerchief, every chance (highest degree of activity) you get when they need it? And when you polish your shoes in the morning preparatory to starting your day's work, do you just give them "a lick and a promise," or do you "make 'em shine?" (Highest degree of quality.)
Animal Training
The "stupid" pig can be taught to do as phenomenal tricks as the "intelligent" dog. It is possible to train a pig so that he will appear to be able to discriminate among colors, to tell time, even to perform simple operations in arithmetic. At the circus or vaudeville we sit in wonder while the "educated" stupid pig, alertly afraid of the trainer's whip, performs stunts of seeming intelligence. Under the stimulus of fear he acts like a quick-thinking dog. In truth he has been changed by training, from the pig characteristic of utter stupidity to the dog characteristic of rudimentary intelligence. But in nature and form he remains just a pig. If you should see him among other pigs in a pen, you never would mistake the "educated" pig for a fat puppy.
In the trained pig the use of his pig mind is developed to an unusual degree of activity and of quality to save himself from punishment and to gain the tidbits that reward his performance of tricks. The purpose of the trainer is accomplished by changing and developing the mind functioning of the pig. No trainer would attempt to change the nature of a pig—to develop a pig into an elephant, a different creature. Only characteristics can be changed or developed.
Plant Development
Luther Burbank has accomplished with plants even more extraordinary changes and developments in characteristics than have been achieved by the most expert trainers of animals. He could not make a carrot into a calla; but he did take the dwarf natural calla plant and develop it into a splendid lily that bears flowers measuring a foot across the petal. He also multiplied the characteristic colors of the natural calla and has evolved great blossoms of a score of shades, from pure white to jet black.
The noted plant wizard developed, too, the naturally small, hard, dry, sour prune and transformed it into a juicy, sweet fruit that is bigger and more delicious than our common plum.
He also succeeded in altering radically an element of the natural walnut, which had a characteristic covering skin of bitter tannin over the meat inside the nut shell. For countless centuries walnut trees had been in the habit of covering the meat of their nuts with this tannin skin. Luther Burbank trained selected walnut trees to give up this fixed bad habit, and to produce nuts the meats of which were not enveloped in bitter coverings.
Man Making