A great authority on salesmanship said: “Any one can call upon a prospective buyer and go away without an order.” It is up to the salesman to get what he goes after. If he knows how to size people up readily, he will be far more likely to get what he goes after than the man who can not do this. The ability to read people at sight is a great business asset.

Marshall Field was an adept in character reading. He was always studying his employees and gauging their possibilities. Nothing escaped his keen eye. Even when those about him did not know that he was thinking of them, he was taking their measure at every opportunity. His ability to place men, to weigh and measure them, to detect almost at a glance their weak and their strong points, amounted to genius.

If General Grant had had the same ability to read politicians and to estimate men for government positions that he had for judging of military ability, he would have made a great President. Unfortunately, he was obliged to depend too much upon the advice of friends in those matters. The result was that, as President, he did not maintain the high reputation he had made as a general.

The salesman ought to make a study of his power of penetration, of his character-reading ability. He ought to make it a business to study men and the motives which actuate them.

To be an expert in reading human nature is just as valuable to a salesman as a knowledge of law is to a lawyer, or as a knowledge of medicine is to a physician. The man who can read human nature, who can “size up” a person quickly, who can arrive at an accurate estimate of character, no matter what his vocation or profession, has a great advantage over others.

The ability to read human nature is a cultivatable quality, and we have a great opportunity in this country, with its conglomerate population, to study the various types of character. It is an education in itself to form the habit of measuring, weighing, estimating the different people we meet, for in this way we are improving our own powers of observation, sharpening our perceptive faculties, improving our judgment.

The salesman who knows anything about human nature, for instance, doesn’t need to be told it won’t do to approach a big business man, the head of a great establishment, as one would approach a small dealer. He will follow a different method with each, according to their different standing and temperament.

No two mentalities are exactly alike, and you must approach each one through the avenue of the least resistance. One man you can approach through his fads. If he is passionately fond of music or crazy about golf; or if he is a connoisseur in art, in sculpture, or in any other line, this may give you a hint as to the right line of approach.

If you see by a man’s head and face that he has a strong mentality, that he is, perhaps, “from Missouri,” you must approach him through argument, through reason. You cannot approach him in the same way you would an impressionable, fat, jolly-natured man. Then the man who is selfish, domineering, imperious, who thinks he knows it all, the man to whom you never can tell anything, must be handled in quite a different manner from any of these.

Some men will take a joke, others will consider it an impertinence. One man is only convinced by logical argument; another by the judicious use of flattery. The frigid mental temperament will not respond to pleasantry; nothing but cold logic will appeal to him; the expansive, good-natured man is often reached through his fad or hobby. Sometimes you get a point of contact with your prospective customer by finding that you belong to the same lodge. Of course, it is always a good thing to find out as much as possible about a man before you call on him. Such knowledge often gives a great advantage in sizing him up properly.

If you are a good reader of character, however, you get at a glance an impression of your prospect that is fairly reliable. You can tell whether you are facing a little, weazened, dried-up soul, a man who is stingy, selfish, grasping, or whether he is a man of generous impulses, magnanimous, open-minded, kind-hearted. You can tell whether he is good-natured, jolly; whether it will do to crack a joke with him, or whether he is austere and stern; whether you can approach him in an easy, friendly manner, or whether you must keep your distance and approach him with a proper sense of his dignity and importance. Even if your prospect only assumes a stiff, stand-off demeanor you must treat him as though it were perfectly natural, otherwise he will be offended.

In sizing up a man the first thing to do is to make up your mind what kind of a heart he has. If you conclude that he has a good heart, and that he is honest and above board, even though he may be cold in appearance, and may prove a bit close-fisted, you will stand a much better chance in doing business with him than you would with a man with small shifty eyes, and the earmarks of shrewd, sharp characteristics apparent in every feature and every look.

You can read a man by his facial expression much better than you can by the bumps on his head, because the muscles of the face respond to the passing thought and reflect the idea, the emotion, every phase of the mental state. You know how quickly a joke, something funny, is expressed in the facial muscles; how quickly they respond to any mental state-disappointment, bad news, discouragement, sorrow, anger. The muscles of the face, its varying expressions, change with the thought. In other words, the facial expression indicates the condition of a man’s mind. By this you can tell whether your prospect is in a good or a bad humor, whether he is a human icicle, cold, unfeeling, or a human magnet, tender, kind, sympathetic.

Salesmen who are poor judges of human nature, who cannot size people up, often have to batter away a long time at a wrong approach when, otherwise, they could sail right into a man’s mind through the right avenue. By making head study, face study, man study, an art, you can very quickly get your line of approach. Then you will not blunder and lose time in trying to set yourself right. Many a man calls upon a prospective buyer and goes away without an order because he didn’t know how to size him up. He had never studied this important side of his business.

Remember that if you make a wrong approach you may have hard work to get a hearing at all; your prospect may close his mind against you at the start, and you may not be able to get into it, no matter how earnestly you try, when, if you had approached him along the line of least resistance, you could have sailed right in. In fact, the man would have invited you in.

Do not be hasty in your judgment or make up your mind too quickly in sizing up people. Hold your decision in abeyance until you have read off the character hieroglyphics written on the face and person, and in the manner, for all these are significant, and each means something. In other words, read all the earmarks or character labels on a man, get in all the evidence you can before acting on your first quick impression, because a great deal depends on the accuracy of your judgment.

Every man’s face is a bulletin board; it is a program of the performance going on inside, and the important thing is to learn to read it not only quickly, but accurately.

The facial expression, the attitude, the manner, the language, the look of the eye, are letters of the character alphabet which spell out the man. Everything that is natural, spontaneous, unpremeditated, is indicative of certain qualities he possesses; and if the man is putting on, if he is posing, you can pierce the mask of pretense and discount it.

If you are a good reader of character, after a few minutes study you can put together the letters of the impressions you have received and spell out the sort of a man you have to deal with, for he is covered all over with tags visible to those who have learned to read them.

Some people judge character largely by a particular feature—the mouth, the chin, the eye, the nose, etc. Napoleon used to depend a great deal upon the size of a man’s nose. “Give me a man with a big nose,” he used to say when choosing men for important positions. A large nose is supposed to indicate great force of character. It is said that every one resembles in greater or less degree some particular animal. Many people base their reading of character on this animal clue. Look out for the fox face; beware of the wolf face, the bird-of-prey face, for it is believed that the man who bears a strong resemblance to some animal will also usually have many of that animal’s characteristics.

The main point for the salesman is to get the right start in approaching the buyer. If he makes a close study of human nature he will seldom if ever make a mistake in sizing up his man.