Page 80 - 597 Business Ideas You can Start from Home - doing what you LOVE! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series)

Secret #3: Speak in Parables 49

In short, I decided to sell you with the power of a story.
And since you are now reading this book, apparently
the story-selling approach worked.

A BARTON STORY SELLS ME

One of Bruce Barton’s books was the 1927 volume What
Can a Man Believe? In it Barton tells a story that sold me
on an idea—nearly 70 years after Barton told the story!

“Some years ago a crumpled and dejected citizen came
to my office,” Barton begins. The man was a sales man-
ager with a reputation for writing effective sales letters.
But suddenly this man was out of work and depressed—
even suicidal. Barton led the man to a window.

“Look out there at those buildings,” Barton said. “All
filled with offices. Business offices. Offices of people
who have goods to sell and most of whom don’t know
how to sell them.”

Then Barton challenged the man (another Barton
tactic).

“You say you can write sales letters. This is your great
chance to prove it. Write those people a letter that will sell
them the idea that they need you to help them sell their
goods.”

The man accepted the challenge. He was soon earning
more than $25,000 a year—in the early 1920s!

That’s a powerful story. When I read it, something
awakened in me. I realized I could do what Barton
advised that man to do. Somehow Barton’s message—and
his challenge—reached across seven decades and out of
the pages of an old book to touch me.