How to Sell Yourself to Others

228 Pages·29.731 MB·English

by  Elmer Wheeler

Over 250,000 copies sold
"America's No. 1 Salesman" tells how to win popularity and
achieve success in every business, social and personal situation.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2013
in
http://archive.org/details/howtosellyourselOOwhee_0
HOW
TO
YOURSELF
SELL
TO OTHERS
Elmer Wheeler
CORNERSTONE LIBRARY
New NY.
York,
Dedication: Thank you,
John D. Murphy for your million suggestions-
Reprinted 1979
Copyright © 1974 by Elmer Wheeler
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part, in any
form.
Published by Cornerstone Library
A Simon & Schuster Subsidiary of
&
Gulf Western Corporation
Simon & Schuster Building
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
This new Cornerstone Library edition is
published by arrangement with Prentice-Hall,
Inc., and is a complete and unabridged
reprint of the original hardcover edition
ISBN 346-12286-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to express his thanks to the following
copyright owners for permission to quote from their works:
To Harper and Brothers, New York, for the quotation from
Merriman Smith's "Thank You, Mr. President," in How To Get
Along With People; to the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston,
for the material from The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie;
to The Ralston Society, Cleveland, for material from How To
Sell Your Way Through Life, by Napoleon Hill; to Crown Pub-
New
lishers, York, for the material from Process of Persuasion,
by Clyde R. Miller.
And finally, to his many friends, for their generous permission
to retell their favorite stories.
FOREWORD
Sizzling Your Way Through Life
Everybody, as a child, has sat back and dreamed, built
Castles in Spain.
Everybody has dreamed of being a doctor, a lawyer, a mer-
chant chief, dreamed of being a nurse, a wife, a career woman in
real life.
What has happened to our dreams?
We
end up by being an accountant, a housewife or engaging
in some everyday occupation.
We still have our dreams—we still make them come true, and
the purpose of this book is to help you translate dreams into fact.
It will give you practical, not theoretical ways, to get along
better in life—and sell yourself.
It will help you to attain the daydreams that may have blown
up, or become nightmares.
There are 101 daily situations in our lives where the right
word at the right time will spell success for us. Situations, where
the proper technique in getting along with others will help us to
attain our Castles in Spain—help us get along better, help us to
be richer in life.
Elmer Wheeler
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. You've Something to "Sell" the World-We Are All Salesmen 11
2. Don't Make 'em Drink—Make 'em Thirsty 14
3. Don't Sell an Empty Box 17
4. Get in Step with People 22
5. Make 'em Part of the Act 26
6. What's the Other Fellow's Angle? 32
7. Marco Polo Had a Difficult Task-But Won This Way 33
8. Don't Hide under a Bushel Basket—Expose Yourself 36
9. Will Rogers' Secret 42
10. The Secret of the Hypnotist's Mysterious Power 47
11. Try This Magic Formula 52
12. How to Keep from Losing Friends 54
13. People Like to Hear "Wedding Bells" and Not
"Funeral Chimes" 58
14. How One Man Became the Personal Advisor to
Two Presidents 65
15. How to Become "Popular" with a Basic Rule 67
16. Try This Simple Formula to Overcome Shyness, Timidity,
Self-consciousness 72
17. You Can't Erase the Spoken Word 76
How
18. to Lick That "Tired Feeling" 77
19. Take a Minute to Say "Thank You" 82
20. You Can't Get Along without This Short Chapter
with a "Long" Lesson 86
21. An Easy Way to Win Many Friends and
Get Much Co-operation 90
22. The Power in Words 93
23. When You Want to Talk-Listen 95
24. Change "What Have I Got Coming?" to "What Can I Offer?" 101
vi g|t Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
25. Let the Other Fellow Argue "Your" Case 108
26. How to Be a Smart "Casting Director" 116
27. A Secret for Doubling the Power of Your Words 122
How
28. to Tell Jokes to Influence People 126
29. He Made Them Part of the Act-And Made a Million Dollars 133
30. The Technique of Traveling Together to Make Friends—
And to Keep Them 134
31. "Wise Ways" to Get Along with People You Love 141
32. Why Do Most Inventors Die Poor? 149
33. Husbands—Try a Little Tenderness 150
34. Make Your "Book of the Day" a "Best Seller" This Way 154
35. A Vice-President "In Charge of Winning Friends" Tells
Some of His "Trade Secrets" 159
36. "Pleasure Pain"—The Golden Key to Influencing Human
Behavior 161
How
37. a Sizzle Saved a Life 167
.
38. The Gentle Art of Passing the Buck 169
39. To Get Ahead Faster Put Something Extra in Your Box-
Be Underpaid 173
40. Two Little Words That Paid Off in Big Dividends 178
41. How to Help the Other Fellow to Be Right 180
42. Dreams, Needs, and Nightmares That Make Up Your
Daily Life 183
43. To Get Ahead Faster-Take Off the Brakes 189
44. Selling Yourself to Children and Selling Children on "Life" 195
45. Why You Should Learn the Art of Remembering Names 201
How Remember Names 203
46. to
47. How to Remember "Things" 207
48. How to "Dress Up" Your Personality 211
49. When to Throw This Book Out the Window 217
50. The Secret Ingredient 222
WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM
LIFE?
What success?
is
I must tell you a story*. It is an interesting story of why this, another
book on success, got started.
Several years ago a five-year-old boy asked a question that caused me
to take a year off and compile this book on how to get along with people.
Like most questions asked by children this one seemed simple enough
at first but answering it wasn't so easy, as you will shortly see.
A group of my friends were sitting around my Stone Study, in Sizzle
Ranch, at Dallas. Texas, and we were discussing successful men we know.
During a lull in the conversation, this five-year-old boy. who nobody
thought was listening, looked straight at me from his perch in front of
the fireplace and asked:
"Mr. Sizzle, what is a successful man?" (I am often called Mr. Sizzle
because of our slogan. "Don't Sell the Steak—Sell the Sizzle.")
I realized I was on the spot and suggested that in order to answer the
question properly, each guest should write down on a slip of paper his
opinion of what constitutes a successful person, after which we could
decide who had given the best answer.
A MOST AMAZING -GAME"
There were seven of us in the Stone Study, my workship that has a
large picture window overlooking the pecan trees and our Cactus
Swim
Pool.
When I opened the seven slips, quite naturally there were seven
different answers.
Someone wrote that success is attaining happiness.
Another wrote that the successful person makes plenty of money to
provide for his family and his future.
Another said that the successful person is the one who lives in such
a manner that he is respected by his fellows.
Still another said that a man could only be considered a success if
his life is of service to others.
While we were still discussing what makes a successful person, this
boy popped up with another inspiration.
"Why not look it up in the dictionary?" he asked, simply, as children
will ask.
WHAT THE DICTIONARY SAID
It seemed like a good way to settle the matter, so I got down my
Xew
Twentieth-Century Dictionary- and looked up "success."
Here is what I found:
success:—satisfactory accomplishment of something
attempted—the attainment of any object desired.
vii
viii What Do You Want from Life?
At this point Gene Flack, a high-geared promotional expert, spoke up
and said, "It seems to me that we have all been wrong. Success itself is
merely accomplishing whatever you set out to do."
My friend John D. Murphy, the magazine writer, said, "We have all
been talking about our own idea of what we think a person should
accomplish—and because we all want different things from life, success
doesn't mean the same to you as it does to me."
The real answer to the question, "Who is a succesful person?" would
be simply the one who gets what he starts after.
His goal might be large or small. He might want to make a million
dollars, or give a good speech. A boy might want to talk his dad out of
an ice-cream cone.
Someone wants to get married; another to write a book; another to
build a ship; another to get a different job, or a promotion or a date
with the beautiful stenographer—or break a bad habit.
The fact remains that if you get what you want, it would be success!
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Well this started me to thinking.
What do you want from Life?
Success is getting what you want from life. I like that definition. It
brings success down to earth.
Success is no longer some fuzzy philosophical concept, but something
concrete that you could examine and analyze.
This started a secondary discussion. "What is it," asked Clyde Phillips,
my friend who is president of the Southwestern Business University in
Houston, "that enables some men to accomplish whatever goal they set
for themselves while others fail?"
What makes some people winners in the game of Life, and others
losers? That was a good question well put.
"Could it be that there are certain traits or techniques which a man
conld use to achieve success, regardless of his goal?" quizzed Owen
Nicholls, the well-known California hotel manager.
"I think it is largely a matter of a college education," another said.
Right away then someone else quickly pointed out that some of our
most successful men have had little formal education.
IT ISN'T ENTIRELY EDUCATION
How true was this last statement, when you note that Thomas Edison
had only three months' schooling. Abraham Lincoln was almost wholly
self-educated.
Benjamin Franklin never attended school at all. The Wright Brothers
weren't scientists but bicycle mechanics by trade.
"It must be good luck," someone else spoke up. "Successful men get
all the breaks. They either many the boss's daughter or are born with
a silver spoon in their mouths."
"What about your Charles Curtis, former Vice-President of the United