Advertising assumes that the same appeal will similarity influence many thousands of persons and salesmanship assumes that people are not all alike in the motives that prompt them to spend their money. Even though the motives are all alike, circumstances are different. Each prospect must be treated as separate problem, the salesman varying his presentations to appeal to different buying motives as each situation seems to demand. He knows that one prospect responds to an appeal to his pride, another will do anything for his only daughter-parental affection.
The salesman, therefore, need no confine himself to the appeals likely to move the typical man, as the advertiser must usually do, but may vary his methods widely to reach each individual prospect, no matter how far this person may differ from the average or normal. This one prospect may be a queer one, not at all typical of the mass of prospect, but the salesman must study him and learn in what respects his reactions are different, to the end that he may use those appeals most likely to motivate him, regardless of the ranking of those appeals as they would effect people.
To a considerable degree, motivation research is more useful to the advertiser than to the individual salesman. In consumer research we are concerned with those motivational aspects which are related to thousands or millions of people.
But we still insist that every man resides in his own area of individuality. He may be over than 90 % average or typical, but the others is what the salesman is looking for. When he has found it, he can make a friend by helping to nourish that man’s inner, personal aspirations. The two can share that small are where the prospect is really himself, such a congenial meeting of minds promotes an atmosphere conducive to a sale.
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