When the master salesman prospects, he uses very effectively a "leader" idea. You know how aggressive stores advertise leaders that draw trade in other things. Your prospecting of your various capabilities should enable you to decide which of your qualifications will make the most effective leader in the case of a certain employer. Do not expect him to perceive all your merits immediately. Concentrate his attention and interest on one or two elements of your fitness to fill his especial needs. Prospect to make sure which of your possible leaders would be most likely to influence him in your favor. Then use these selected elements of your character very prominently to open the door of your initial chance. Countless successes have been founded on well chosen leaders.
A little bake shop in Chicago competes successfully to-day with a great chain-store company that has an immense establishment directly across the street. The shop sells as its leaders home-made English tarts that no chain-store could supply. These draw buyers for groceries and other goods the chain-store sells much cheaper, but which the purchasers of tarts order with their pastry rather than cross the street and divide their marketing.
Summary
Now let us summarize "Your Prospects." They are not far away nor far ahead in time. They are in your own hands right now. You cannot fail in life if you recognize and use most effectively all the opportunities available to you at present. You suffer from no lack of chances to succeed. You only need to open your physical eyes and the eyes of your mind to see fine prospects every day. Then if you imaginatively relate your abilities to what you perceive, and plan how you can fit yourself into a chosen place of real service, you will have begun the selling process successfully. At the outset of your career it is possible for you to reduce difficult obstacles to temporary set-backs that you can get around or overcome.
Success A Matter Of Fractions
There is only a narrow margin of difference between success and failure. Success is a matter of fractions and decimals, not of big units. A few thousand American soldiers and marines turned the tide of German victory at Chateau Thierry. "It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back."
If you begin the selling process by the finest prospecting, and keep on with equal effectiveness throughout all the following steps of salesmanship, you will gain so many more chances than you otherwise could get that your success in the end will be assured. The master salesman works with certainty that he will secure his quota of orders. He knows in advance that he will succeed; because he knows sure ways to sell.
Good prospecting is just a natural process, intelligently comprehended. It is neither mysterious nor hard. It is one of the preliminary, understandable ways to make success not only sure, but easy to attain.