You may not need to knock at that door, nor wait for an invitation to come in. In your case, perhaps, the door stands open, with a "Welcome" mat just outside. Yet if you do need to knock with your ideas for admittance to another man's mind, and if it ever becomes necessary for you to win a welcome, this chapter will prove valuable reading. You will be helped to gain your desired chance, and the danger of your failure will be minimized, if you know how to knock and exactly what to do to assure your welcome.
Even the master salesman can never be absolutely certain of the reception he will have from any prospect. Therefore he "goes loaded" for all imaginable contingencies. You, the salesman of yourself, should be likewise prepared with knowledge of how each and every step in the selling process may be taken most effectively. Whatever emergency arises, you must be ready to take the fullest advantage of a favorable turn, and equally ready to reduce as much as possible any disadvantage you encounter.
Knocking and Getting In
Of course it will avail you nothing if you succeed only in reaching the particular man through whom you have planned to gain success. And after you meet him it will do you no material good to size him up correctly; if you are then unable to hold his attention to your presentation of ideas. Your preliminary skillful salesmanship would all be wasted. Evidently, in order that you may continue the process of gaining your chance, it is necessary that you should know how to knock on the door of his mind in such an agreeable but compelling way that he will be forced to let his attention come out pleasantly to you and your purpose. Hence right knocking at the door of opportunity immediately follows the size-up as an essential part of the process of making success certain.
It is necessary next for you to know how to prevent a turn-down on the front porch of your prospect's mind, and how to insure the admission of your ideas to his thoughts. You can compel your prospect to open the door of his attention, but in order to get inside his mind and secure his interest in your purpose, you must win his willing invitation for your ideas to enter his thoughts and make themselves at home there.
We have seen how you can make certain of gaining your chance to reach the door of opportunity. You can size up surely your prospect's dominant characteristics and what he is thinking. Likewise you can guarantee to yourself, first the attention, and second the interest of the man you have come to see. It is necessary only that you use the methods of the master salesman to compel the opening of the door and to induce the extension of welcome to your ideas.
Our Old Acquaintance Again
Here again we meet our old acquaintance, the discriminative-restrictive method. You must discriminate between the process of knocking at the door of opportunity and the process of securing the invitation to come in. Then, in practicing these related but different steps of the selling process, it is necessary that when you knock you restrict yourself to the use of the methods that are most effective in gaining attention. Similarly you should restrict yourself to using the very different methods of securing interest, when you work to get an invitation for your ideas to come inside the other man's mind and make themselves at home there.
Process of Compelling Attention