In closing a contract or settling a dispute it makes considerable
difference whether you are in the other fellow's office or in your own.
The man in whose office the transaction takes place has the decided
advantage.
If you have a disputed bill, or if you wish to make a contract for
material or merchandise use every effort to get the other man in your
office. When you go to another office you are on the aggressive, when
another man comes to your office you are on the defensive.
It is great diplomacy to get the man you deal with to come to you
instead of going to him. In proportion as you are diplomatic you will
be able to benefit.
If you meet the other man in a club, hotel or a place outside of your
office or the other man's office, then the vantage ground is even and
neither has the best of it so far as location is concerned.
Starting from an even vantage ground the advantage shifts greatly one
way or the other according to whether you go or the other man comes.
Railroad officials, bankers and great merchants realize the importance
of having the vantage ground in their favor.
The merchant, for instance, has private rooms and regular office hours
for his buyers, and he lets the manufacturers come to him.
Stop a moment and look over your own experience, and you will recall
numerous instances where it has been to your advantage to close a deal
in your own office.
There is nothing in what we have written in this series of talks that
has less theory in it than this particular chapter.
There is no point we have made more surely proven by experience.
The army that attacks the enemy in the enemy's country has the odds
against it, as all wars have proven. Men fight best at home on their
own vantage ground.
Whether you are buying or selling try to close the deal in your own
place of business.
If you have travelers on the road let it be part of their business and
duty to invite and persuade customers to call at your place of business
when they are in town.