If you were to be asked, “What are your prospects for success?” you probably would answer by stating the things you expect or hope may happen. We commonly say that a certain man isn’t rich, but he has “prospects;” because he has a wealthy aunt who is very fond of him, or he is employed by a business that is growing fast, or he owns property which seems sure to increase in value, or some other good fortune is likely to befall him. The literal meaning of “prospect” is “looking forward.” So most of us have come to think of our prospects as just possible occurrences in the future, to the happening of which we may look ahead with considerable hopefulness.

“Prospects,” in salesmanship has a very different meaning. The master salesman does not regard himself as merely a “prospect_ee_,” but as a prospect_or_. He thinks of “prospecting” as the gold miner uses the word to describe his activities when he searches for valuable mineral deposits. “Prospects” do not just “happen” in the selling process of achieving success. They do not result from circumstances merely, but must be accumulated by the activity of the salesman.

“Your Prospects,” as the subject of this chapter, does not mean your fondest hopes, or confident expectations. We are studying the ways to assure your success. If your prospects depended on mere happenings, they would be highly uncertain; because what you hope and expect may occur, may never take place in fact. The master salesman does not depend on such prospects. He makes his own luck to a very large extent by skillful prospecting; as the trained prospector for gold tremendously increases his chances of discovering a rich lode by thoroughly and intelligently investigating a mining region. We are to consider now the prospects you are capable of controlling, the opportunities you can bring within reach by your own exploration of possible fields of success.

We will study particular things you can do, and exactly how to do them, to increase the number and quality of your chances to succeed. A trained prospector for gold has more chances to strike it rich than a greenhorn because he knows the indications of valuable minerals, and is skilled in the use of that knowledge. So your opportunities for success will certainly be increased if you know how to search for, to discern, and to make the right use of your prospects.

Do not think, because we have compared prospecting in mining and in selling, that the success of the salesman prospector, your success, must be largely a “gamble” anyway, as is the case with the explorer for gold. However experienced and skillful in prospecting the miner may be, he is very uncertain of discovering a bonanza. He cannot be absolutely sure there is gold in the region he explores, in paying quantities and practicable for mining. Though he has every reason to feel confident of the richness of a particular field, he may nevertheless be so unfortunate as not to discover the gold lode or profitable placer deposit. He is helpless to control the existence of the indications of success. They are predetermined by nature. By no effort of his own is he able to increase or decrease the fixed quantity and quality of the golden chances about him. He can only increase his likelihood of discovering gold. Even the most intelligent, skillful prospecting will not make a miner’s success certain.

You, the salesman prospector for opportunities to succeed, are not so limited. There are particular things you can do, and particular ways of doing them, that will assure your finding chances to make sales of the best that is in you. If you learn the scientific principles of prospecting for opportunities, if you make yourself highly skillful in looking for and digging into the success chances that surround you always, there will be nothing uncertain about your prospects to succeed. You will know surely that you have prospects, just what and where they are, and their full worth to you.

Of course, prospecting is only part of the selling process; so your knowledge and skill as a prospector will not suffice to guarantee your complete success. However, at this preliminary stage you can be certain that your search for rich chances to succeed will not be a barren quest.

The present chapter will help you to make sure of gaining for yourself such opportunities as lead to complete success in the field of your choice. We will observe and understand how the skillful salesman prospects for the purpose of increasing his sales efficiency. We will study the principles and methods of prospecting he uses successfully; for his practices, applied to your job of selling yourself, will certainly improve your chances to succeed. We will see also how your very best prospects can be created by masterly salesmanship.

At the outset comprehend that no other step in the selling process involves so much hard work as you will need to do in order to find all your possible chances of success and to make the most of them. It is necessary that you look intelligently, most earnestly, and constantly. You must expect to spend a great deal of time and energy in your quest for prospects. So it is essential to your success as a prospector that the investigation of your field of opportunity be carefully planned in order to make the most effective use of the time you spend prospecting. It is vitally important, too, that you develop sufficient physical stamina to do a tremendous amount of hard work. The gold miner has little chance to discover the bonanza he seeks if he searches only a few days or weeks, or if he lacks the strength and endurance required for making a thorough exploration of the mineral region. Similarly it may take a master salesman months of unremitting toil to prospect a sale that he then is able to close in an hour or two.

Prospecting supplies the food of salesmanship. The salesman thrives if his prospecting is sufficient and good. He grows thin and weak to the point of failure if it is bad, or inadequate in quantity. Every salesman should realize that prospecting furnishes the nourishment for salesmanship, but some so-called salesmen do practically nothing to ensure themselves an abundant food supply. They merely absorb the tips that come their way. Like sponges they sop up the limited quantity of selling chances they happen to get. That is not the way to feed one’s ambition with opportunities.

Comprehend that you must seek actively for your best prospects. You should not stop searching until you find what you are looking for. Myriads of men have failed because they did not make an earnest, hard effort to discover chances to succeed, or because they did not persist in the exploration of their fields of opportunity. You know that other men no more capable than you are succeeding all about you. Certainly, then, your chance exists. Seek it in your own thoughts and in the circumstances of your every-day living. Put a great deal of time and toil into your search. You cannot afford to loaf on this preliminary job.

Every moment you are awake should be used in prospecting; unless it is required for some other part of the process of assuring your success. There is no keener pleasure than the eager, continual search of a miner for gold and of a master salesman for possible big buyers. It is necessary that you feel their thrilling zest for discovery; that you develop their unflagging energy; that you be fired by their ardor for the quest. In order to be a highly successful prospector you will need especially a quality they have in common “pep.”

How eagerly the miner prospector drinks in every bit of news he hears about a new strike! How alertly the master salesman listens to casual gossip that holds a clue which may lead to a sale! But the miner and the salesman prospectors would not benefit in any degree by what they learn through their perception of prospects if they did not then act intelligently upon the clues secured. Not only should you keep your eyes and ears open for indications of opportunities to succeed, but you should be ready in advance to take instant advantage of any you may discover. What a fool a miner would be if, after finding rich prospects of gold, he were to lose his chance to someone else because he did not know how to file a mining claim! Could there be a greater failure in salesmanship than learning about a big contract to be let, and being unprepared to bid on it? Before doing any outside prospecting, be sure you know what you have in you. Make certain of your ability to take full advantage of your chances to succeed when you come upon them.

Prospects that seem at first glance to be hardly worth following may lead to other prospects. Merely because your ambitions are big, do not neglect a chance to make a little success. Investigate completely every minor prospect you find. Until you look into it thoroughly, you cannot be sure of all that a clue holds. The indication of an opportunity that seems of slight importance may possibly lead straight to the bonanza lode.

An elevator boy in an office building made up his mind to rise permanently in the world; to get out of the vocation in which he was just going up and down all the time without arriving anywhere in particular. He prospected the tenants of the building, learned all he could about them, and determined who were the biggest men. He studied the directory, asked questions, and finally selected the one big business man to whom he was resolved to sell his capabilities.

This man was known to be unapproachable. So, instead of attempting to interview him, the elevator boy prospected to discover his characteristics. He found out exactly what qualities were most likely to please his intended employer. Then he cultivated the tone, manner, and habits of action that he felt certain would impress the difficult prospect most favorably. It took the resolute elevator boy nearly a year of continual, skillful work to make the big business man notice him and distinguish him from the other elevator boys. Six months more were required to develop the big man’s attention into thorough interest. But at the end of a year and a half of faithful prospecting, the ambitious youth gained his selected, self-created opportunity to succeed. There was no stopping him after he got his start. In less than a decade he had sold his qualifications so successfully to a group of powerful financiers that he, too, had become a multi-millionaire.

This illustration of persistent effort to gain a desired chance should help to keep you from becoming discouraged about your prospects for success. Bear in mind the old, familiar motto, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Stick to your prospecting when you know you are on the right lead. It has been estimated that the busy bee inserts its proboscis into flowers 3,600,000 times to obtain a single pound of honey. But the bee is the only insect, remember, that lives on honey.

The poor salesman is apt to complain that his territory is poor. The good salesman makes any territory good. So in prospecting your field of immediate opportunities, make the best, not the worst, of your present circumstances. The star base-ball player does not refuse to play on the small-town team because it isn’t good enough for him. The great Ty Cobb first made them “sit up and take notice” in a bush league. Undoubtedly he felt then that he was fit for better company, but he put in his best licks and played big-city ball on the small-town team. That was excellent prospecting for the chance he wanted with the best clubs. From the very beginning of his career, Ty Cobb has used masterly salesmanship to get across to the world true ideas of his best capabilities in his chosen field.

To-day there is no poor territory for success. Telegraph and telephone and wireless methods of communication, electric light and power, railroads and inter-urban car service, farm tractors, passenger automobiles, motor trucks, and the airplane have so revolutionized the inter-relations of men that all the former great distances of different locations and view-points have been shortened almost to nothingness. The whole world lives now in a single community of interest. The great war has taught us that each individual is close to everyone else. In your prospecting for success you are not limited by any narrow boundary of opportunities. Wherever you are, newspapers and magazines bring to your door chances for big success. If you search for prospects in everything you read you should be able to reach out all over the earth with your capability. An ambitious man I never had heard of before wrote to me at one time from South Africa to secure a selected territory for the sale of automobiles in a western city of the United States. From a distance of nearly half the circumference of the earth he got his chance to succeed.

A clerk in a Los Angeles real estate office received a letter from an acquaintance in Chicago who had spent his summer vacation in Michigan. The Chicago man wrote that the farmers of the Traverse Bay region were made rich by a bumper crop of potatoes just harvested. The Californian saw a chance for success in this bit of information. He worked out his idea and talked it over with his employers. He sold them on it. They sent him East loaded with facts about “the glorious West” and brim-full of Los Angeles peptimism. Aided by cold weather in Michigan that winter, the western real estate man eventually sold California irrigated ranches to a score of Michigan farmers who suddenly had made sufficient money to retire from potato raising, and who were old enough to be strongly attracted by the idea of owning and cultivating land in a more genial climate. Thus a sentence in a letter led straight to the success of the clerk who perceived his prospects and knew how to make the most of them.

While distances have been bridged by modern swift means of communication and transportation, every locality has opportunities for success that are peculiar to it alone. Conversely every locality is handicapped in certain ways. Therefore in your prospecting for success study the conditions in your especial field. As a salesman of yourself, you should know your “territory,” its advantages and disadvantages in particular respects. Men are doing business in your town. There is no better way to gain a prospect to succeed with a house in your home community than to demonstrate to the head of the concern that you comprehend just what he is “up against” on the one hand, and on the other what “edge” he has on businesses in the same line located elsewhere. You could make no worse mistake, you could injure your own prospects no more, than by showing ignorance of local conditions, or inappreciation of the circumstances in which your prospect’s business is being conducted.

Not only should you know as many facts as possible regarding opportunities in your chosen field; it is even more important that, by the use of your imagination you relate these facts to practical ways of turning them to account for your benefit. In order to derive the maximum of benefit from your prospecting, you must make the best use of every item of knowledge you gain. Sometimes the mere possession of particular knowledge will increase your chances to succeed. But almost invariably you can multiply the value of what you learn if you prospect in your own mind for ideas about putting the facts to the most profitable use.

Do not forget that the primary object of true salesmanship is service to the other fellow. Therefore prospect your own thoughts with the purpose of making what you know especially valuable to some one else, your intended employer for instance. In every step of the selling process you should think first of how you can serve your prospect with something that he lacks and needs.

Surprisingly few young men who go into business prospect their fields of opportunity to learn what is most wanted there. The great majority take up special professions or enter selected industries just because they wish to do chosen things. The master salesman, however, adapts himself to the circumstances and requirements of his customers, even at the sacrifice of his personal inclinations. He could not succeed if he sold only what he wanted to sell, or if he confined his salesmanship efforts to a limited number of buyers because he liked them and disliked others. In order to assure your success, you must learn to like to do what is most needed to be done, and learn to like to serve whoever lacks what you can supply. Therefore prospect your fields of opportunity to learn what capabilities are principally needed. If you would make your success as easy as possible, look about you first to determine the demand for such services as you are able to render.

Perhaps your prospecting will indicate that it is advisable for you to go a round-about way to your goal of ambition; because the direct route is beset with great difficulties. A young doctor wished to specialize in bacteriology. He realized that it would take the savings of a great many years of general medical practice to equip a complete laboratory of his own. Accordingly he discontinued the practice of his profession; though he went on with his studies. He engaged in business for five years. Thus in a comparatively short time he earned the money he needed to enable him to devote the rest of his life to bacteriological research.

Different territories or fields of opportunity have various characters, like different people. It is important to study especially the racial types you are likely to encounter. Many a man has attained success by accumulating discriminative knowledge regarding the national peculiarities of the Latin peoples, Slavs, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Magyars, etc.

The Italian has strong likes and dislikes in colors and patterns of goods. To be a good salesman in dealing with him, you should know his preferences and prejudices. If you learn what colors and patterns are most favored in the “Little Italy” of your city, you may be able to employ this bit of knowledge to help you very much in influencing your fellow-residents of Italian descent.

You are aware of the effect produced on the majority of Irishmen by the color green. But take care to learn whether the Irishmen whose political help you would like to win are from the South or the North of the Emerald Isle. They may be Orangemen, and you might “queer” your prospects by going among them wearing a green necktie.

Learn your facts with discrimination; then use them restrictively in the circumstances where they will be most effective in promoting your success

Prospect to learn not only permanent conditions in your field of opportunity, but also any temporary conditions that might affect your chances to succeed. Mental and emotional “waves” sweep over the country and over local communities at times. Billy Sunday’s revivals in various great cities brought success opportunities to particular businesses, but had injurious effects on others. You should take such factors into account when studying your prospects.

The manufacturers of that successful innovation, the “Service Flag,” took advantage of the sudden demand for such an emblem. When war came, they saw into the future and perceived a new lack. But the need for Service Flags was temporary. Before the war ended they were displayed everywhere. To-day none are seen.

Now there has come into existence The American Legion, which seems certain to be a great political and social power in the United States for generations, as was the G.A.R. after the civil war. Any man who hopes for political success in the course of the next thirty or forty years must prospect the thoughts and feelings of the veterans of 1917-18.

You will have specific as well as general prospects. Hence it is essential that you supplement your study of conditions with the analysis of individuals. Study men with the greatest care, especially the one man or group of men upon whom you want to impress ideas of your capabilities. Learn all you can regarding the personal characteristics of the individual to whom you hope to sell your services or “goods.” Your knowledge of his traits and peculiarities, your familiarity with his life purposes and hobbies, may assure you a chance to succeed with him that otherwise you could not get. A friend of mine is the president of a big ice company, but he is not so much interested in cooling people’s food as in warming their hearts with his genuine brotherhood for all men. There isn’t much prospect for anybody to sell him “a cold business proposition,” even though he is a dealer in ice.

Do not, however, make a “hobby of hobbies.” Only the big hobbies of your man are worth especial study. Never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. He may be sensitive about being eccentric. It is bad salesmanship to pretend an interest in another person’s whims. You cannot use his hobbies to help your prospects unless you share his feelings to a considerable degree. My friend who believes and practices the doctrine that all men are brothers would be sure to detect quickly a false humanitarian bent on a selfish purpose to exploit his hobby.

As already has been emphasized, the object of the good salesman when prospecting is to discover the lacks of men who might benefit from the things he has to sell. If you are looking for your prospects with that service purpose, you have taken a long preparatory step in the process of selling your qualifications. Find the employer who needs your best ability, and your success will be assured the moment you get into his mind the true idea that you are the man he has been looking for.

Undoubtedly you know men to whom success has come because they made other men realize they fitted into particular needs. A young acquaintance of mine foresaw that a manufacturer would want an assistant within a year or two; though the executive himself was unaware that he was developing such a need. My acquaintance got a minor job under him in order to make a good impression in advance. Long before the head of the business realized that he was breaking in a confidential assistant, the young man had qualified for the position he had perceived in prospect.

Your chosen employer may not know of the lack that you have prospected in his business. He may not have the least idea that he wants you. Prospecting his needs is part of your job as a salesman of yourself.

An expert accountant sold himself into a fine position as the auditor of a great corporation by anticipating that the Company would need to have its system of book-keeping revolutionized in order to prepare for the Federal income tax. He prospected what was coming to that business; then sold the president comprehension that he lacked an expert accountant he was going to need badly before long.

One of my own experiences as an accountant illustrates the value of specific prospecting. When I was studying accountancy, I bought every authoritative publication on the subject. For one set of forty books I had to send to London. Each volume related to the peculiar accounts, terms, etc. of one business. There was a book on brewery accounting, another on commission house accounting, and so on through the list of forty businesses. To each volume I afterward owed at least one client. For instance, I got a commission to make a cost survey for a tobacco company, largely because I was able to convince the president that I knew a good deal about the tobacco business. I talked intelligently to him regarding the processes of his industry.

When you prospect an individual’s personal qualities, traits, or hobbies, do not stop after learning the facts. Study out the reasons behind habits and opinions. It may help you only a little to know that your intended employer is a Republican or a Democrat; that he is conservative or radical in his social opinions. But your chances of success in dealing with him will be greatly increased if you know exactly why he belongs to one or the other political party, and the reason he is a “stand-patter” or a “progressive.” Use knowledge of why’s and wherefore’s with the skill of a salesman bent on securing an order from a prospective buyer. But be sure you get the fundamental facts, for often “appearances are deceiving.”

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.

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.

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.

Rid your face of sharpness if you would be a good prospector for your best chances to succeed. Avoid “the cutting edge” in your voice and manner when you make inquiries about opportunities you seek. You are likely to be most effective in prospecting if you cultivate an easy attitude of friendliness. The master salesman does not set his jaw when prospecting. He uses curved, instead of straight line gestures to supplement his words. He suggests a “ball-bearing” disposition, not “corners.”

Be a good mixer when looking for your prospects. Learn the art of companionship. The first essential is fellow feeling. Therefore do not go about with a chip on your shoulder, but with your face a-smile and your palms open to offer and to receive hand-clasps. Sympathize with the ambitions of other men, with their hopes and dreams. Remember that each part of every work of man, however substantial and enduring it now may be, was once no more than a figment of the imagination of some one’s mind. So do not be altogether “practical” when prospecting. It is a mistake to neglect to prospect visions.

When the master salesman prospects, he uses very effectively a “leader” idea. You know how aggressive stores advertise leaders that draw trade in other things. Your prospecting of your various capabilities should enable you to decide which of your qualifications will make the most effective leader in the case of a certain employer. Do not expect him to perceive all your merits immediately. Concentrate his attention and interest on one or two elements of your fitness to fill his especial needs. Prospect to make sure which of your possible leaders would be most likely to influence him in your favor. Then use these selected elements of your character very prominently to open the door of your initial chance. Countless successes have been founded on well chosen leaders.

A little bake shop in Chicago competes successfully to-day with a great chain-store company that has an immense establishment directly across the street. The shop sells as its leaders home-made English tarts that no chain-store could supply. These draw buyers for groceries and other goods the chain-store sells much cheaper, but which the purchasers of tarts order with their pastry rather than cross the street and divide their marketing.

Now let us summarize “Your Prospects.” They are not far away nor far ahead in time. They are in your own hands right now. You cannot fail in life if you recognize and use most effectively all the opportunities available to you at present. You suffer from no lack of chances to succeed. You only need to open your physical eyes and the eyes of your mind to see fine prospects every day. Then if you imaginatively relate your abilities to what you perceive, and plan how you can fit yourself into a chosen place of real service, you will have begun the selling process successfully. At the outset of your career it is possible for you to reduce difficult obstacles to temporary set-backs that you can get around or overcome.

There is only a narrow margin of difference between success and failure. Success is a matter of fractions and decimals, not of big units. A few thousand American soldiers and marines turned the tide of German victory at Chateau Thierry. “It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

If you begin the selling process by the finest prospecting, and keep on with equal effectiveness throughout all the following steps of salesmanship, you will gain so many more chances than you otherwise could get that your success in the end will be assured. The master salesman works with certainty that he will secure his quota of orders. He knows in advance that he will succeed; because he knows sure ways to sell.

Good prospecting is just a natural process, intelligently comprehended. It is neither mysterious nor hard. It is one of the preliminary, understandable ways to make success not only sure, but easy to attain.