Remember that if you make a wrong approach you may have hard work to get a hearing at all; your prospect may close his mind against you at the start, and you may not be able to get into it, no matter how earnestly you try, when, if you had approached him along the line of least resistance, you could have sailed right in. In fact, the man would have invited you in.
Do not be hasty in your judgment or make up your mind too quickly in sizing up people. Hold your decision in abeyance until you have read off the character hieroglyphics written on the face and person, and in the manner, for all these are significant, and each means something. In other words, read all the earmarks or character labels on a man, get in all the evidence you can before acting on your first quick impression, because a great deal depends on the accuracy of your judgment.
Every man’s face is a bulletin board; it is a program of the performance going on inside, and the important thing is to learn to read it not only quickly, but accurately.
The facial expression, the attitude, the manner, the language, the look of the eye, are letters of the character alphabet which spell out the man. Everything that is natural, spontaneous, unpremeditated, is indicative of certain qualities he possesses; and if the man is putting on, if he is posing, you can pierce the mask of pretense and discount it.
If you are a good reader of character, after a few minutes study you can put together the letters of the impressions you have received and spell out the sort of a man you have to deal with, for he is covered all over with tags visible to those who have learned to read them.
Some people judge character largely by a particular feature—the mouth, the chin, the eye, the nose, etc. Napoleon used to depend a great deal upon the size of a man’s nose. “Give me a man with a big nose,” he used to say when choosing men for important positions. A large nose is supposed to indicate great force of character. It is said that every one resembles in greater or less degree some particular animal. Many people base their reading of character on this animal clue. Look out for the fox face; beware of the wolf face, the bird-of-prey face, for it is believed that the man who bears a strong resemblance to some animal will also usually have many of that animal’s characteristics.
The main point for the salesman is to get the right start in approaching the buyer. If he makes a close study of human nature he will seldom if ever make a mistake in sizing up his man.