Chapter 2. There’ Gold In Remembering Names

The title of this chapter is a general precept to observe if you are sincerely interested in remembering names. This is not one of the four separate rules for remembering names that I am going to give you. It is a preface to these, without which you could never apply them. It is the first principle you must have to become skillful in associating people with their names.

In general, we are interested in names to the extent that we are interested in their owners. If a man means anything at all to us, we usually remember his name. Here is an imaginary incident, one in which you might well figure, which will illus­trate how naturally this law of interest works.

Suppose, while you are standing in a hotel lobby with a friend, a man comes along, and your friend introduces you. You glance at the newcomer casually, pay no attention to his name, continue your conversation. The stranger has meant nothing to you; you haven't even bothered to retain his name for an instant.

However, the next time you are in that hotel lobby, your new acquaintance approaches you with the air of an old friend and asks you to lend him ten dollars.

Are you as indifferent as you were the first time you met this fellow? Hardly. You look him over carefully, studying his features with mounting interest. Finally you say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Er . . . I don't think I got your name."

"Wheeler," he says, "Bob Wheeler."

"Wheeler," you repeat slowly. "Wheeler. I suppose you spell it the usual way—W-h-e-e-1-e-r."

"That's right. Bob Wheeler."

"Well, Mr. Wheeler," you say, as you reluctantly draw ten dollars from your wallet, "I hope we meet again some time— soon."

And as months go by, and you don't hear from Mr. Bob Wheeler, you think of him often. It's no effort at all to remem­ber his name, and as for his face, you'd recognize that if you saw it fifteen years from now in Indo-China!

His name means something to you now. It means money.

In the same way, every person you meet may mean some­thing to you. Today's casual acquaintance may lead you to tomorrow's friend, business associate, customer, employer, husband, or wife.

So before we learn the technical rules for remembering names, we must cultivate a desire to remember them. We must realize that the people we meet will mean more to us if we take an interest in them. Remembering a man's name is simply a manifestation of our interest in him as a person.

If you want to make the most of your acquaintance with other people, be name-conscious.

The quickest way to convince a man that you fully realize his importance and value his friendship is to take the trouble to learn his name and address him by it when you speak to him. This fact was discovered more than two thousand years ago, and diplomats, businessmen, and society leaders have not improved upon it yet.

A man named Cineas demonstrated it then, when his king, Pyrrhus, sent him to Rome on a delicate mission. Pyrrhus had been making war on Rome, and now wanted peace, so he chose Cineas as the wisest and most diplomatic man at court to go to discuss terms of peace with the enemy.

Under the circumstances, Cineas was not welcomed very warmly. But he was not an ordinary man. The first thing he did upon his arrival was to ask the names of all the men in the Roman senate. Before morning he knew them all by heart.

The next day, when he rose to speak, every senator in Rome was amazed—and delighted—to discover that this stranger actually knew him by name, and mentioned him personally during his address. Naturally, Cineas was very well received.

Twenty centuries after Cineas—or, to be precise, in the presidential campaign of 1933—James A. Farley used exactly the same technique in winning voters to the cause of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. Farley, in a coast-to-coast tour, met literally thousands of citizens. He learned their names and solicited their support in person. When he returned to Washington, he sent each one a letter, greeting him by his first name. "Dear John" or "Dear Mike" was the way these letters began, and they were signed "Jim." Modern commentators on that campaign make no bones about the fact that Farley's ability to remember names (about fifty thousand is his claim) was one of the deciding factors in making that election a landslide for Roosevelt.

Roosevelt himself knows the value of being able to call people by name. When I visited the White House some time ago, Russ Wood, who is assigned to the White House detail of the Secret Service, told me how good the President's memory is in this respect. When he first came to the White House he did not meet Roosevelt for several weeks and had no idea that the chief executive could distinguish him from the dozens of other attendants on duty. Imagine his surprised pleasure when the President, on passing him one day, called out genially, "Hello there, Woodie! How are you?"

Any experienced salesman will tell you that no amount of sales talk will go so far in winning over a customer as the simple act of convincing him that you remember him and take a spe­cial interest in him. Greet a customer with, "Oh, good after­noon, Mr. Er ... ah ..." and you make him feel that he is just another routine prospect, one of the thousands of un­important people you deal with day in and day out. But address him unhesitatingly by name, and you assure him immediately that you recognize him as an individual with individual needs and that he can rely on you to give him special service and consideration. Every businessman knows this well and realizes that whenever he muffs a customer's name he is jeopardizing that customer's patronage and good will.

One of my students, Louis L. Libby, a representative of Wynn Builders, Inc., gave me an illustration of the value of remembering names out of his own experience. Shortly after he took the memory course he happened to be conducting some prospective clients through one of the company's model homes at Malvern Park, Malvern, Long Island. There were three in the party, a Mr. and Mrs. Albert Lester and Mrs. Lester's mother, Mrs. Jacoby. They looked the house over, expressed interest, and said they would return later.

Mr. and Mrs. Lester did come again after several weeks, and Mr. Libby recognized them as they entered the model liv­ing room. He greeted them by name. "I'm glad to see you back again," he said. "Where's Mrs. Jacoby?" Mr. Lester looked at him with surprise, and then with admiration. "By George!" he exclaimed. "You must have talked with dozens of people since we were last here, and still you remembered our name. I'd give anything for a memory like that."

While showing them through the house again, Mr. Libby explained he had no natural gift for remembering names.

Well, the next time the Lesters visited the development they asked to see Mr. Libby, and purchased their home through him. When he told me the story, Mr. Libby said he had no doubt that he owed his commission on this sale to the fact that he won over the prospective customers by remembering their names.

The value people place on their own names is something for wonder. Consider the example of James B. Duke, who, in order to perpetuate his name, offered to endow Trinity College in Durham, North Carolina, with something over fifty million dollars if its name were changed to Duke University. This sounds like an extreme case of pride in one's name, but you will find something similar in every man. Think how flattered you would be to have a friend name his child after you. And how much extra value do you put on a gift with your name engraved or embroidered on it. Any man or woman is thrilled at the idea of having his or her name assured of permanency. Accordingly, every time you surprise someone by remember­ing his name, you evoke a similar pleasant emotion.

An executive's success is enhanced not only by remembering names of his customers but also by remembering those of his em­ployees. Many have profited by the example of Charles M. Schwab, who was paid a million dollars a year for his amazing skill in handling people. He once had eight thousand employees at the Homestead Mill and was justifiably proud of knowing each one of these by name. When he revisited the mills after many years, some of the senior foremen placed bets on how many of the old-timers Schwab could remember. There were eight hundred remaining out of the eight thousand who origi­nally worked under him, and as they filed past him to shake his hand, he called five hundred by name. He told me himself later that he could have done better if he had known he was being checked.

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