The good salesman, however, works out in advance the most effective ways and means to present his proposition.  Each move in the process of selling his ideas to a prospect is carefully studied and practiced beforehand.  The effects of different words and tones and acts are exactly weighed.  When the thoroughly prepared salesman calls on a possible buyer, he has in mind a flexible program of procedure with which he is perfectly familiar and which he can adapt skillfully to various conditions that his imagination has enabled him to anticipate.  Hence the master salesman usually is able to control the situation, no matter how shrewd the prospect may be; because the salesman’s chance to plan assures him a great advantage over the unprepared or incompletely prepared other party to the sale.

[Sidenote:  Dominate The Interview with Confidence]

If you would likewise “dominate” the man to whom you want to sell your capabilities, prepare “plans of approach” to his interest before calling on him; in order to make sure of presenting your qualifications most strongly.  He can oppose your salesmanship with but comparatively weak resistance; because he has had no such opportunity as you to get all ready for this interview.  The skillful salesman is confident that he can control the selling process he begins.  When you seek a selected chance for the success you desire, you should feel similar assurance of ability to sell your services.  You will possess this feeling if you prepare your “plan of approach” as the master salesman gets ready for his interview with a prospective buyer.

[Sidenote:  The Two Entrances]

You have to make two distinct “entrances” in order to gain your desired chance to succeed.  You need to get yourself into the presence of the employer you have selected.  Then it is essential that you get the true idea of your capabilities and preparedness into his mind.  Your “approach” to his attention and interest, therefore, involves a double process.  It is important that you plan intelligently the most skillful ways and means of making the two entrances; through the physical and the mental closed doors that now shut you out from the opportunities you have prospected and desire to gain.

No master salesman would call on an important prospect before planning in his own mind how to take the successive steps of the interview expected.  Nor would a master salesman neglect to think out in advance several specific methods of getting past any physical barriers he might encounter between the outer door of the general office and the inner sanctum of the man he must meet face to face in order to close a sale.

[Sidenote:  Ordinary Way Of Getting Job]