ote: Regaining Attention]

When you proffer your capabilities for purchase by a prospective
employer, do not make the mistake of continuing to present your best
selling points if you have any doubt that his attention is exclusively
yours. _Stop your selling process if his attention wanders or is
diverted_. Use the sense-hitting method to compel it to _come back_ to
you and your ideas. If some one should enter his office while you are
talking to him, or if his telephone should ring, stop short in your
presentation. (Your sudden silence, in itself, will be attention
compelling.) Do not go on with your sales presentation until the
interruption is over. Then use some sense-hitting method of making sure
that his attention is again concentrated on you and your ideas.

[Sidenote: Sense Hitting]

An acquaintance of mine who had especially fitted himself for business
correspondence, typed striking paragraphs taken from form letters he had
devised and pasted the slips of paper on stiff filing cards. He carried
with him to his interview with the president of a large corporation
about thirty-five or forty of these cards. His prospecting had indicated
that in the course of the half hour he had planned to take up with a
presentation of his capabilities this executive would be interrupted
often by telephone calls and the entrance of subordinates. The
salesman's size-up also revealed that his prospect's attention was
likely to wander to the things on his desk. From time to time when the
correspondent was presenting his ideas the president reached out his
hand and picked up a paper. Evidently he was inclined to give but
flighty attention to his caller.

[Sidenote: Striking More Than One Sense]

The salesman, however, had "come loaded" for exactly this situation. He
had worked out his selling plan in detail. As he developed idea after
idea, he used a device for regaining attention by hitting at the
prospect's senses of _sight_ and _hearing_. Just as soon as the
president's hand wandered to a paper, the salesman ruffled the cards he
held, quickly selected one, and clicked it down on the desk top before
his prospect. He had to do this perhaps a dozen times before he felt
confident he had clinched the interest of the executive. If the
salesman had used words merely, what, he said in presenting his ideas to
the prospect might have gone in one ear and out the other. But his
action of ruffling the cards struck the president's senses of si