The unskillful closer, instead of changing his previous sales tactics, nearly always devotes his final efforts to making the prospect see more clearly the pictures already laid before his mind.  He tries to impress the prospect with a re-hash of perception, by emphasizing more strongly than before the favorable points brought out clearly at earlier stages.  Of course it is important that at the close of the sale the prospect have all these points in view, but it is not good salesmanship to emphasize only the appeal to his perceptive faculties.  The guest who has had a good dinner does not need to be told just afterward what he has eaten, or reminded of the courses by having them brought in again.

[Sidenote:  Logic and Reason Won’t Win]

As it is a mistake to serve at the close of a sale only a re-hash of favorable points; so is it bad salesmanship to rely on a dessert of “logic and reason” for the finishing touch. Logic and reason provoke antagonism.  They are ineffective in bringing about either a favorable conclusion of mind or action on such a decision.

If you have presented your capabilities fully to a prospective employer, do not wind up by marshalling reasons why he should engage you.  Avoid the use of the “major premise, minor premise, argument, and logical conclusion.” You cannot debate yourself into a job, for the judge is made antagonistic by your method, which puts him on the defensive.  It is human nature to resist a decision that logic tries to force.  No man arrives at his conclusions of mind by putting himself through a reasoning process.  A normal person does not need to reason about things he knows. He knows without reasoning. He attempts to use logic only when he is uncertain what to think.  If logic is used by the salesman to convince the other man, it will be ineffective because it is an unnatural means that the prospect almost never employs to convince himself, and of which he is suspicious.

[Sidenote:  Why Reasoning is Futile]

A major premise is but an assumption unless it is already known.  If it is known, why should it be proved?  Since the correctness of the conclusion depends entirely upon the validity of the premise, it is evidently absurd to attempt to prove a truth from the basis of an admitted assumption.  The reasoning process that starts from a truth already known, and arrives at a truth that must similarly have been known, is utterly useless and a waste of time.  Hence, if you use the reasoning process you will either fail to convince your prospect by starting from a premise that he does not know, or you will irritate and unfavorably impress him by seeming to reflect on his intelligence when you prove to him something he already knows.  That is the wrong way to bring your man to a “Yes” decision.