When you look for prospects in your selected field of service-opportunities recognize your personal responsibility for the successful development of the chances you find.  Before you begin prospecting, realize that what you make of your opportunities is solely up to you.  Assume all the responsibility for your own success; then you will have no excuse to blame any one else if you fail.  Should things not go as you wish, say “It’s my own fault,” and feel that way. The true salesman never apologizes to himself. So if you have not found your prospects, or if you have not made the best use of the chances you have discovered, kick at the man who is responsible.  Don’t get sore on the world at large.

[Sidenote:  Follow-ups]

Perhaps what has been said thus far has over-emphasized the process of prospecting for the first chance to succeed.  Maybe it suggests to you that if one can get an opening, the hardest part of the effort to assure success will have been accomplished.  But a successful career in salesmanship is not built on single orders closed.  The master salesman keeps on selling the same buyer and develops him into a steady customer.  He continues all the while to prospect the needs of that buyer, just as thoroughly as if he were planning his first approach.

Your initial success should be completed by after-service. In order to continue progressing toward your goal, you must “deliver the goods” right along.  You cannot keep your success growing unless you prospect unremittingly for more and better opportunities to render service.  Give satisfaction in larger amount and improved quality from month to month, and year after year.  If you would continue to succeed, look ahead always for more prospects and seek in each of them new chances to broaden your usefulness.

[Sidenote:  The Art of Prospecting]

If you prospect skillfully (with art), your chances to find what you seek will be remarkably increased.  So look for your prospects cheerily.  Be frank and expressive in your quest.  Show your sympathetic side, and thus appeal to the kinder tendencies of other people.  The best way to avoid the world’s coldness is by warming everybody you meet with your own cordiality.  Be courteous.  Especially cultivate the art of talking with people instead of at them.  Use tact and judgment in dealing with your prospects.

Thousands of men are shut away from the open minds and hearts of others by doors of concealment and reserve.  You need to open such doors.  You can do it only by frankness on your own part, which will induce people to feel like telling you their secrets.  Frank expression of your opinion, provided it has a sound foundation, will often draw out the hidden opinions of others and reveal to you prospects that you might never discover unaided.  Do not, however, be dogmatic or arbitrary in saying what you think.  Speak your beliefs casually.  Then you will not discourage those honest differences of opinion that enlighten one’s own ideas.