vivid mental picture of the man he wants to interest; he knows that
man's process of thinking, the thing that appeals to him, the
arguments that will reach right down to his pocket-book.

A man who sells automatic scales to grocers keeps before him the
image of a small dealer in his home town. The merchant had fallen
into the rut, the dust was getting thicker on his dingy counters and
trade was slipping away to more modern stores.

"Mother used to send me on errands to that store when I was a boy,"
relates the correspondent, "and I had been in touch with it for
twenty years. I knew the local conditions; the growth of competition
that was grinding out the dealer's life.

"I determined to sell him and every week he received a letter from
the house--he did not know of my connection with it--and each letter
dealt with some particular problem that I knew he had to face. I
kept this up for six months without calling forth a response of any
kind; but after the twenty-sixth letter had gone out, the manager
came in one day with an order--and the cash accompanied it. The
dealer admitted that it was the first time he had ever bought
anything of the kind by mail. But I knew _his_ problems, and I
connected them up with our scales in such a way that he _had_ to
buy.

"Those twenty-six letters form the basis for all my selling
arguments, for in every town in the country there are merchants in
this same rut, facing the same competition, and they can be reached
only by connecting their problems with our scales."