How to Win Friends and Influence People - Referral Marketing.pdf

heard nothing definite. I really wanted to see him and discuss my problems before the weekend, so I asked myself how I could get him to see me. “What I finally did was this. I wrote him a formal letter. I indicated in the letter that I fully understood how extremely busy he was all week, but it was important that I speak with him. I enclosed a form letter and a self-addressed envelope and asked him to please fill it out or ask his secretary to do it and return it to me. The form letter read as follows: Ms. Wolf - I will be able to see you on __________ a t__________A.M/P.M. I will give you _____minutes of my time. "I put this letter in his in-basket at 11 A.M. At 2 P.M. I checked my mailbox. There was my self-addressed envelope. He had answered my form letter himself and indicated he could see me that afternoon and could give me ten minutes of his time. I met with him, and we talked for over an hour and resolved my problems. “If I had not dramatized to him the fact that I really wanted to see him, I would probably be still waiting for an appointment.” James B. Boynton had to present a lengthy market report. His firm had just finished an exhaustive study for a leading brand of cold cream. Data were needed immediately about the competition in this market; the prospective customer was one of the biggest—and most formidable—men in the advertising business. And his first approach failed almost before he began. “The first time I went in,” Mr. Boynton explains, "I found myself sidetracked into a futile discussion of the methods used in the investigation. He argued and I argued. He told me I was wrong, and I tried to prove that I was right. "I finally won my point, to my own satisfaction - but my time was up, the interview was over, and I still hadn’t produced results. "The second time, I didn’t bother with tabulations of figures and data, I went to see this man, I dramatized my facts I. “As I entered his office, he was busy on the phone. While he finished his conversation, I opened a suitcase and dumped thirty-two jars of cold cream on top

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