620 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-CREATION
differently, and I want you to let me have two thousand dollars' worth
of those securities:'
Remember that: ((You present the matter so dijJerently."
And how did this new salesman present the matter so differently?
What did this master salesman really sell that artist? Did he sell him
securities?
No! He sold him his own picture that he was painting on his own
canvas. The securities were almost incidental.
It happens that in a class attended by this new salesman early on,
I had told the story of the elderly lady who entertained me for three-
quarters of an hour by talking about that which was nearest my heart,
and it had so impressed him that he made up his mind to study his
prospective purchasers and find out what would interest them most, so
he could talk about that.
This "green" salesman earned $7,900 in commissions the first
month he was in the field, leading the next-highest man by more than
double, and the tragedy of it was that not one person out of the entire
organization of fifteen hundred salespeople took the time to find out
how and why he became the real star of the organization.
COMMENTARY
As noted earlier, throughout this revised and updated edition of Law of Success
the editors have made it a practice to suggest relevant books and audiobooks
by other authors that relate to the principles and concepts presented by Napoleon
Hill in his original manuscript. That being the case, in this section you would
expect to find one or two suggestions for books on salesmanship. But because
salesmanship is a subject that has been written about so extensively, selecting a
mere one or two examples would have proven almost impossible had it not been
for a gentleman with the unusual name of Og Mandino, and Napoleon Hill himself.
Mandino~ personal story is far too powerful to do it justice in the few lines
available here, but you should know something of his background in order to