"WHAT IS THERE IN IT FOR ME?"

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7141, 31 May 1910, Page 3

"WHAT IS THERE IN IT FOR ME?"

If your propostion can't be so presented as to appeal first and foremost to the prospect's self-interest, you might lust as well drop it and hunt, for something that can. Mutual benefit is the only hinge on which a legitimate business can swing. The man who isn't more interested in his ovra. affairs than ho is in yours isn't ivorth wasting your timo on. Pall it selfishness if you choose, but humanity is built that way, and until the millennium arrives and makes man all over, we've got to take him as he is. It may sound paradoxical, but tho quickest way to loosen up a man's liberality is to appeal to his selfishness. You may talk to your prospect about your affairs and your desires until your voice box goes dry and your tongue'gets tangled in your teeth, but unless you can show him where he comes in with a good fat benefit, he will close up like a jarred clam and let you go away feeling as though yau have fallen off the tail board of an ico wagon... Self-interest is the only door through which you can get your proposition' into your prospect's confidence and what's the use of trying to break through, by any other method. All this is so obvious that men still continue to overlook it.