It is not always the man of the greatest ability, the greatest mental power, by any means, who makes the great salesman. A man may be a mental giant; he may have a Websterian brain and yet be a pigmy of a salesman. A pleasing, attractive personality is a tremendous drawing power.
It has the same advantage a sweet, beautiful girl has when you first meet her. The girl doesn’t have to try to make a good impression; her personality, her charm, her grace do this without any effort on her part. I have heard merchants say they looked forward with keen pleasure to the coming of a certain salesman because he was such a good fellow; he was so sociable, cheery and agreeable.
It is a very difficult thing to resist that magnetic charm of personality which has swayed judges and juries from justice, and has even changed the destinies of nations. We have not the heart to deny or refuse, to say “No” to the man or woman who grips us with the impalpable force of a magnetic personality.
When logic and argument fail, when genius says “impossible,” when pluck and persistency give up, when influence has done its best and quits, when all the mental qualities have tried in vain, the subtle something which we call personal magnetism steps in and without apparent effort wins.
It makes a tremendous difference whether you bring a personality to your prospect which makes a striking, pleasing first impression, or whether you bring a cold, clammy, unenthusiastic, unresponsive nature, which makes an indifferent or an unfavorable impression, one that you must endeavor to overcome with a lot of long, tedious arguments. It is the personal element which makes the chief difference between the great salesman with a big salary and the little fellow with a little salary. The little fellow may try just as hard as the big fellow, indeed he may try much harder; he may have had a better training in the technique of salesmanship, but because he lacks the warm, sympathetic, human, sociable qualities, his industry and hard work are largely neutralized.
I know a man who through the force of his personality is a colossal power in attracting business. Men follow him, are attracted to him, just as needles are attracted to a magnet. They can’t very well help dealing with him, he gets such a magnetic grip upon them. He does not need to make a very strong appeal; his personality speaks for him.
Phillips Brooks had such a personality. Strangers who passed him on the street felt his power to such a degree that they would turn and look after him. In his presence none could resist the pull of his magnetism, of his most wonderful personality. I was once a member of his Sunday School class in Trinity Church, Boston, and every one in the class instinctively felt from the first that he was in the presence of a great, a superb specimen of humanity. He had such tremendous magnetic power that when he wanted money for any charitable or philanthropic purpose, he did not have to beg for it, he merely suggested the need of it, and the closest pocketbooks would fly open. Everybody believed in Phillips Brooks because of the power of his superb character, the magnetism of his remarkable personality.
Emerson says, “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” We cannot conceal what we are, how we feel, because we radiate our atmosphere, our personality; and this is cold or warm, attractive or repellent, according to our dominant traits and qualities.
A person who is selfish, always thinking of himself and looking out for his own advantage, who is cold, unsympathetic, greedy, cannot radiate a warm, mellow atmosphere because one’s atmosphere is a composite and takes on the flavor of all of one’s qualities. If selfishness, indifference, avarice and greed are dominant in one’s nature, this is the kind of an atmosphere he will radiate and it will repel because these qualities we instinctively detest.