By
having a sustained interest in other people, was one of the secrets of Theodore Roosevelt's astonishing
popularity.
Even his servants loved him. His valet, James E. Amos,
wrote a book about him entitled Theodore Roosevelt, Hero to His
Valet.
In that book Amos relates this illuminating incident: My wife
one time asked the President about a bobwhite. She had never seen one
and he described it to her fully.
Sometime later, the telephone at
our cottage rang. [Amos and his wife lived in a little cottage on the
Roosevelt estate at Oyster Bay.] My wife answered it and it was Mr.
Roosevelt himself. He had called her, he said, to tell her that there
was a bobwhite outside her window and that if she would look out she
might see it. Little things like that were so characteristic of him.
Whenever he went by our cottage, even though we were out of sight, we
would hear him call out: "Oo-oo-oo, Annie?" or "Oo-oo-oo,
James!" It was just a friendly greeting as he went by. How could
employees keep from liking a man like that? How could anyone keep
from liking him?
Roosevelt called at the White House one day when the
President and Mrs. Taft were away. His honest liking for humble
people was shown by the fact that he greeted all the old White House
servants by name, even the scullery maids. "When he saw Alice,
the kitchen maid," writes Archie Butt, "he asked her if she
still made corn bread.
Alice told him that she sometimes made it for
the servants, but no one ate it upstairs. "'They show bad
taste,' Roosevelt boomed, 'and I'll tell the President so when I see
him.'
"Alice brought a piece to him on a plate, and he went over
to the office eating it as he went and greeting gardeners and
laborers as he passed. . .
"He
addressed each person just as he had addressed them in the past.
Ike
Hoover, who had been head usher at the White House for forty years,
said with tears in his eyes: 'It is the only happy day we had in
nearly two years, and not one of us would exchange it for a
hundred-dollar bill.' "
The same concern for the seemingly
unimportant people helped sales representative Edward M. Sykes, Jr.,
of Chatham, New Jersey, retain an account.
"Many years ago,"
he reported,
"I called on customers for Johnson and Johnson in
the Massachusetts area. One account was a drug store in Hingham.
Whenever I went into this store I would always talk to the soda clerk
and sales clerk for a few minutes before talking to the owner to
obtain his order.
One day I went up to the owner of the store, and he
told me to leave as he was not interested in buying J&J products
anymore because he felt they were concentrating their activities on
food and discount stores to the detriment of the small drugstore.
I
left with my tail between my legs and drove around the town for
several hours. Finally, I decided to go back and try at least to
explain our position to the owner of the store.
"When I returned
I walked in and as usual said hello to the soda clerk and sales
clerk. When I walked up to the owner, he smiled at me and welcomed me
back. He then gave me double the usual order, I looked at him with
surprise and asked him what had happened since my visit only a few
hours earlier. He pointed to the young man at the soda fountain and
said that after I had left, the boy had come over and said that I was
one of the few salespeople that called on the store that even
bothered to say hello to him and to the others in the store. He told
the owner that if any salesperson deserved his business, it was I.
The owner agreed and remained a loyal customer.
I never forgot that
to be genuinely interested in other people is a most important
quality for a sales-person to possess - for any person, for that
matter." I have discovered from personal experience that one can
win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most
sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.
