MORE ABOUT PEOPLE

Les continues his thesis on people, this time in general.

Last month I wrote about young people this time I want to write about people in general. I have always been interested in people one reason being because of the way they look at things, very often from the wrong angle.

If you have an idea say of forming a club be it a youth club or a senior citizens club one thing will emerge a large percentage of the population will show no interest. I'm very much interested in percentages and as any salesperson will tell you 80% of sales are made to 20% of the population which means that 80% will do little or no business with you.

We never however sit down and ask why this is, it seems to me we are not prepared to take an inward look at ourselves, accept responsibility, I can see nothing wrong in criticising other people, it may well be more than justified, but I also see nothing wrong in asking ourselves some very searching questions.

I have always said that if I had a village shop I would show a respected interest in the 10 people who regularly came in to my shop but I would also be very much interested in the 90 who walk straight past it. Those 10 people will bring you of course some custom, but the 90 will bring you Prosperity assuming of course you can get them in to your shop and you won't do that if you spend too much time with these 10 people.

So how do you attract the attention of people who appear not interested? and I am not just talking of a shop or a club but anything, and the answer is to make contact with people and what better way than face to face and in the privacy of their own homes where people will be more relaxed and if you can get the message over that they are important, and convey that message sincerely, remembering that they may well not need your help, but you most certainly need theirs, then you could then be making progress.

Well if it's all that simple why aren't we all doing it? well we don't, we put an advert in the Village Pump and posters all around our villages, we will do anything so long as we don't have to knock on doors, you almost have to ask yourself why do we seem so terrified of our fellow man or woman.

How many times in the many articles I have written for our Village Pump have I have made reference to the delectable Miss Jones, better educated people than me would refer to that observation as a Euphuism, well you can call it what you want, what I am on about is quite simple, you want to take her out to dinner, well do something which should be blatantly obvious, go and ASK HER.

A slight problem arises, this word REJECTION raises its head, she might say No, a word you first heard from your mother all those years ago, No don't do this, No don't do that, if only Mother had extended her vocabulary to have included the word Yes.

So yes the word REJECTION might be a problem but not if you replace it with a word such as OPTIMISM, after all if Miss Jones declines your invitation there is of course Miss Brown, and indeed Miss Smith, no not that one!

Methwold

Les Lawrence