Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/103

PUTTING IT OVER

HAVE you ever wondered why it is so easy for some men to command respectful attention while other men, who look just as good on the outside, cannot contrive to get a receptive audience from their best friends? Has it ever happened to you to make a proposal that was turned down before you had completed sketching in its outlines, only to see another man come along, make essentially the same proposal in the same quarter, and achieve instant indorsement of his idea? Have you been amazed at the ease with which this man "put it over," and righteously indignant at the favoritism of Fortune in his case?

It is true that there are men who have only to speak to "put it over;" and there are other men who talk themselves into apoplectic fits and never find a sympathetic listener. There seems to be a mystery about this. But there really isn't. A great deal of hokum has been circulated about supersalesmen who hypnotize their prospects by the magic of their tongues and the witchery of their presence. The secret of the man who puts things over does not lie in the buoyancy of his manner or the style of his oratory as a rule. It lies in the past, in his life record. It is called "prestige." The man who puts it over without an effort is not a sorcerer, or a favorite of Lady Luck. He is simply a fellow who, in the beginning, got a chance to do some little thing and did it surprisingly well. Then he did some other trifling job—and did that just a bit better than it had been done before. And little by little, day by day, month by month, and year by year, he went from each job to the next higher one, accomplishing successive tasks not merely acceptably but unusually well. So that, as the years passed, he built up a reputation for dependability plus. At the outset his ideas had no greater market value than any man’s ideas. But there came a time when men began to say of him, "He makes good." And from that time on all ears were open to his proposals. He had a reputation that challenged consideration. He could put anything over, not because he was an orator, but because he had put over nearly everything he ever attempted and men had confidence in his ability to repeat.

"Putting it over" is not a knack, or a gift. It is simply the effect of a reputation for success. It is a faculty that grows out of hard work and hard thought, translated into terms of achievement.

WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?

WHAT'S the big idea?"

Whenever a man or a number of men meet with disaster in an attempt to accomplish some startling physical feat or to demonstrate some revolutionary process of thought, there is certain to sound from the shadows of the peanut gallery that familiar query, couched in a thin, querulous tone. History contains no evidence of the assertion, but from our knowledge of the nature of