“Our daughter, Anne, had just completed a course in U.S. history in junior high school and had become very interested in the events that had shaped our country’s growth. I asked her how she would like to visit the places she had learned about on our next vacation. She said she would love to. “Two evenings later as we sat around the dinner table, Nancy announced that if we all agreed, the summer’s vacation would be to the eastern states, that it would he a great trip for Anne and thrilling for all of us. We all concurred.” This same psychology was used by an X-ray manufacturer to sell his equipment to one of the largest hospitals in Brooklyn This hospital was building an addition and preparing to equip it with the finest X-ray department in America. Dr. L----, who was in charge of the X-ray department, was overwhelmed with sales representatives, each caroling the praises of his own company’s equipment. One manufacturer, however, was more skillful. He knew far more about handling human nature than the others did. He wrote a letter something like this: Our factory has recently completed a new line of X-ray equipment. The first shipment of these machines has just arrived at our office. They are not perfect. We know that, and we want to improve them. So we should be deeply obligated to you if you could find time to look them over and give us your ideas about how they can be made more serviceable to your profession. Knowing how occupied you are, I shall be glad to send my car for you at any hour you specify. "I was surprised to get that letter,” Dr. L ---- said as he related the incident before the class. “I was both surprised and complimented. I had never had an X-ray manufacturer seeking my advice before. It made me feel important. I was busy every night that week, but I canceled a dinner appointment in order to look over the equipment. The more I studied it, the more I discovered for myself how much I liked it. “Nobody had tried to sell it to me. I felt that the idea of buying that equipment for the hospital was my own. I sold myself on its superior qualities and ordered it installed.” Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance” stated: “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
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