[Sidenote:  Stop, Look, Listen]

Take nothing for granted now.  Through your personal, specific observation either confirm or disprove every item of information that has come to you from other people previous to meeting this man face to face.  Your informants may or may not have had correct conceptions of his characteristics.  It would be unwise, even unsafe, for you to rely implicitly on their judgment of him.  You need to be certain you know him as he really is; so that you can present your purpose with the confidence a skilled salesman feels when he is sure he understands the principal traits of the prospect he is addressing.  In reaching this man you have gained your first chance.  You cannot afford to risk losing it by haste. Do not advance farther in the selling process until you have made certain of the ground you are to tread. It is very bad salesmanship to begin introducing ideas and feelings to a mind and heart that are unknown to you except from hearsay.

“But,” you say, “I’m not a mind reader.  And I can’t look into another man’s heart.”

True.  Yet you should be able to read the signs of his thoughts; which he manifests in his words, tones, and acts.  And you need not see into his heart to know what it contains; since fundamentally all men are much alike at heart.  Just look clearly into your own heart at its best.  You will find there the basic emotions and feelings that civilized men have in common everywhere.

[Sidenote:  Character Analysis by Types Not Reliable]

Character analysis by “types” is unreliable.  I believe as little in phrenology as in palm-reading.  I have directed thousands of men in business.  Personal experience has proved to me that the permanent structure of a particular human body is not an invariably true index to the characteristics of the inner, or ego man who owns that body.

He has had no control over the color of his hair or eyes.  He cannot reshape the bones of his face, nor alter the bumps on his head.  To believe that such permanent structural details of the “natural” outer man determine or denote the peculiar aptitudes of the inner man is to credit the exploded doctrine of fore-ordination.

Therefore, when you have gained the chance to present your capabilities for sale to a chosen prospect with whom you believe you will have the best opportunities to succeed, and when you are swiftly shaping your presentation plans to fit his personality, don’t size up merely the factors of his make-up with which he was born.  You will be apt to mistake his true character if you have come to his office with the delusion that the blonde type of man is fundamentally different in nature from the brunette type.  Get out of your head any misconception that a man is foredoomed to practically certain failure in a particular career because he has a big nose, sloping brow, and receding chin; and that another man with a snub nose, bulging forehead, and protruding jaw is destined almost surely to succeed if he selects a certain vocation.  No “mind man” with a normal, healthy body is limited in his possibilities of success by being born with red, or black, or tow hair; or because the bones of his head happen to be shaped in a particular way.  The ego is the master, not the slave, of the body.