The Psychology of Salesmanship

Until the last few years the mere mention of the word “psychology” in connection with business was apt to be greeted with a shrug of the shoulders a significant raising of the eyebrows—and a change of the subject. Psychology was a subject that savored of the class room or else was thought to be somehow concerned with the soul or possibly related to the abnormal phenomena generally classified as “psychic.” The average business man was apt to impatiently resent the introduction into business of class room topics or speculation regarding the soul or of theories and tales regarding clairvoyance telepathy or general “spookiness”—for these were the things included in his concept of “psychology.”