can acquire. But this is the point: _it must be acquired_. It will
not come to one without effort on his part. Fundamental principles
must be understood; ways of presenting a proposition must be
studied, various angles must be tried out; the effectiveness of
appeals must be tested; new schemes for getting attention and
arousing interest must be devised; clear, concise description and
explanation must come from continual practice; methods for getting
the prospect to order now must be developed. It is not a game of
chance; there is nothing mysterious about it--nothing impossible, it
is solely a matter of study, hard work and the intelligent
application of proved-up principles.




_Gathering_ MATERIAL And _Picking_
Out TALKING Points

PART I--PREPARING TO WRITE THE LETTER--CHAPTER 3


_Arguments--prices, styles, terms, quality or whatever they may
be--are effective only when used on the right "prospect" at the
right time. The correspondent who has some message of value to carry
gathers together a mass of "raw material"--facts, figures and
specifications on which to base his arguments--and then he selects
the particular talking points that will appeal to his prospect. By
systematic tests, the relative values of various arguments may be
determined almost to a scientific nicety. How to gather and classify
this material and how to determine what points are most effective is