r
attempts to influence men.

"If we should divide all customers into the two classes, professional
buyers and the general public, then, in appealing to this latter class,
special attention should be given to suggestion. In an advertisement
containing both a good suggestion and a good argument, the suggestion is
read often and the argument rarely. From infancy, we have been accustomed
to respond to suggestions so frequently that we follow this habit in
purchasing merchandise, even though we ought to make such purchases only
after due deliberation. Deliberation is a process of thought which is very
elaborate and very exhausting. The general purchaser--the housewife--does
not ordinarily rise to such an undertaking, but contents herself with a
process very closely approximating the working of pure suggestion. Even
though she begins to deliberate, the process is likely to be cut short by
the effect of a clever suggestion.

"The general public responds more readily to suggestions than to
arguments; hence, in dealing with this large group, it is usually wise to
construct the copy according to this habitual method of response of the
general public. Immediate action is more often secured by suggestion than
by arguments."

Since this is true, that person is most skillful in persuading who has
acquired the most skill in suggestion. He stimulates the imagination to
paint vivid and intensely-colored mental pictures of the gratification of
desire. Make desire strong enough, and, if you have correctly analyzed the
one to be persuaded, the rest follows.

CHAPTER IV

INDUCING DECISION AND ACTION

"I want it," said a gentleman to us, speaking of a piece of property in
which he was contemplating investment. "I want it so bad that I can't
think of much else. I lie awake nights dreaming of myself in possession of
it, and yet, somehow or other, I can't make up my mind to buy it. I have
the money and have had the money in the bank for weeks. There is nothing
else I want to do with that money half as much as I want to buy that
property, but it is an important move and, somehow or other, I just can't
make the plunge."

This gentleman's experience illustrates a psychological condition well
known to many of our readers, because they have been in substantially the
same situation--and well known to every salesman, because he has had to
meet and combat just such a situation many a time.

Desire having been created, our law of sale