Sales Confidence Isn't Born, It's Built: Lessons from 1910
In Part 1 of this series, we pulled apart Wallace Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich and found something unexpected. The book that most people file under "manifestation" is actually structured like a methodology. Half thinking, half doing. A specific, repeatable process Wattles called "the Certain Way."
That was the overview. Now we need to get practical.
Strip out the 1910 language and lay it next to how the best salespeople operate in 2026, and what you get is a four-part framework. Mental preparation before the conversation. Value creation during it. Efficient action instead of raw volume. And something he called "the impression of increase," which turns out to be the most useful closing philosophy anyone has written down.
None of this is woo. The top sellers you know already do all four. They probably can't articulate it as a system, but it's there if you watch closely.
Mental Preparation Before the Call, Not During It
Wattles spends several chapters on holding a clear mental picture of what you want. In the self-help world, this became "visualization." In the sales world, it's something more mundane and more useful... call prep.
"The more clear and definite you make your picture, then, and the more you dwell upon it... the stronger your desire will be."
Read that as a salesperson and the application is obvious. The clearer you are about what a good outcome looks like before you dial, the better you perform when the conversation starts.
This is where most reps lose before they even pick up the phone. They open the CRM, glance at a contact record, and start talking. The call itself becomes the preparation. They're figuring out what they want to say while they're saying it, which means the prospect is getting their rough draft instead of their final version.
Top performers treat the call differently. They've already thought through the likely objections. They know what questions they're going to ask and roughly what order. They've looked at the prospect's situation and formed a point of view about the problem before they bring it up.
Wattles would recognize this immediately. He wrote that "a man's way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things." The quality of your thinking before the conversation determines the quality of your performance during it.
This doesn't mean scripting every word. It means knowing what you're walking into. Having a clear picture of the value you can offer this specific person, given what you know about their situation. If you can't articulate that before the call starts, you're improvising. And improvisation in sales is another word for hoping.
The practical version is simple. Before any important conversation, answer three questions: What does this person's situation look like right now? What would a better version of their situation look like? And what's the specific thing I can show them that connects those two?
That's fifteen minutes of prep. It changes the entire call.
"Use Value" Is the Foundation of Consultative Selling
Chapter 6 of Wattles' book contains a sentence that should be printed and taped to every salesperson's monitor.
"Give every man more in use value than you take from him in cash value; then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction."
Written in 1910. Still the clearest description of consultative selling anyone has produced.
The concept is straightforward. The use value of something is what it's actually worth to the person receiving it. The cash value is what they pay. Wattles says the gap between those two should always favor the buyer. They should get more than they pay for, measured in real impact on their life or business.
For salespeople, this principle reshapes how you think about every conversation. The question stops being "how do I get this person to buy?" and becomes "how do I make this conversation worth their time, regardless of whether they buy?"
When a prospect hangs up the phone having learned something new about their own problem, having seen their situation more clearly, having gotten a perspective they didn't have before... you've delivered use value. The conversation itself was worth something. If they end up buying, the product should deliver even more value on top of that.
This also explains something that quietly kills more sales careers than bad technique... the guilt. A lot of people in sales carry around a nagging sense that they're bothering people, that cold outreach is an imposition, that asking for money makes them a taker rather than a giver. Wattles addresses this head-on. If the value you deliver exceeds the price you charge, you're not extracting from people. You're adding to their lives. The guilt is a misreading of what's actually happening in the exchange.
The practical test is honest and sometimes uncomfortable. After your last five sales conversations, could each of those prospects say they got something useful from talking to you? If a few of them couldn't, the problem isn't your closing technique. The problem is further upstream.
Efficient Action Beats High Volume
Every sales team in the world argues about this. More calls or better calls? Higher activity or higher quality? Dial 100 numbers a day or spend more time on fewer, more prepared conversations?
Wattles settled the argument in Chapter 12.
"It is really not the number of things you do, but the EFFICIENCY of each separate action that counts."
He goes further.
"Every act is, in itself, either a success or a failure. Every inefficient act is a failure... every efficient act is a success in itself."
That second quote is the one worth sitting with. Wattles isn't saying that only closed deals count as success. He's saying each individual action, each call, each email, each conversation, is either done well or done poorly. And the cumulative effect of well-done actions compounds over time.
This maps to what the data actually shows. Gong's research on millions of sales calls consistently finds that call quality metrics predict success better than call volume metrics. Reps who ask better discovery questions, who listen more than they talk, who address objections with specifics rather than deflection... they close at higher rates even with fewer total conversations.
The volume-first approach has an obvious appeal. It feels productive. You can count it. Your manager can see the activity in the CRM. But Wattles would call most of those calls "inefficient acts," each one a small failure regardless of the total count.
His prescription is something sales managers should have on their wall... "Do, every day, all that you can do that day, and do each act in an efficient manner."
All that you can do. Not more than you can do well. The constraint isn't "make as many calls as possible." The constraint is "make as many good calls as possible." Those are different numbers, and the second one usually produces better results.
This isn't permission to make five calls and go home. It's a demand for quality within your capacity. If you can make 40 well-prepared calls in a day, make 40. If cramming in a 41st means you're winging it, the 41st call is a failure before it starts.
The "Impression of Increase" Is the Real Close
Chapter 14 of Wattles' book might be the single most useful chapter for anyone who sells for a living. He introduces a concept called "the impression of increase," and it describes something that the best salespeople do naturally but rarely talk about.
"The key-thought of all your efforts must be to convey to their minds the impression of increase."
"People will go where they are given increase."
Translation for sales... people buy from the person who makes them feel like their situation is about to get better. Not through pressure. Not through urgency tactics. Through genuine insight that helps them see a path forward they couldn't see before.
Think about the last time you bought something significant. The final push probably wasn't a feature list or a discount. It was a moment where you could see your life or business working better with this thing in it. The salesperson, if there was one, helped you arrive at that picture. They gave you the impression of increase.
Wattles gets specific about how this works.
"Simply feel the faith, and let it work out in every transaction; let every act and tone and look express the quiet assurance that you are getting rich."
The "quiet assurance" is key. He's not describing hype. He's not talking about manufactured enthusiasm or pressure closes. He's describing the kind of calm confidence that comes from genuinely believing your offer will help this person. The prospect picks up on it. Not because you told them your product is great, but because you showed them how their specific situation improves.
This is what separates the close from the pitch. A pitch tells someone about features. A close helps someone see themselves in a better position. One is information. The other is increase.
The practical application: in every sales conversation, the prospect should be able to answer the question "what gets better for me if I do this?" If they can't answer that by the end of the conversation, you haven't given them the impression of increase, and you probably haven't earned the close.
The Framework, Assembled
Lay Wattles' principles side by side and you get a framework that looks suspiciously like what the best salespeople already do.
Before the call: Clear mental preparation. Know the prospect's situation, form a point of view, visualize a productive conversation. Don't improvise when the stakes are real.
During the call: Deliver use value. The conversation itself should be worth the prospect's time. Ask questions that help them see their problem more clearly. Share perspective they didn't have before they talked to you.
Across all your calls: Prioritize efficiency over volume. Each conversation done well. Each email thoughtful. The compound effect of consistently good actions beats the scatter of high-volume mediocrity.
At the close: Convey the impression of increase. Help the prospect see themselves in a better position. Not through hype or pressure, but through genuine insight about how their situation improves.
Four principles from a book published 116 years ago, and they still describe the operating system of every consistently successful salesperson you've met.
The Gap
Wattles nailed the what. Think clearly. Act efficiently. Give more value than you take. Help people see a better future.
The problem is the gap between reading these principles and actually executing them when a prospect throws an objection you didn't expect, or when the conversation goes sideways on the third call of a bad morning, or when you're heading into a pricing conversation and your confidence is shaky.
Knowing the framework and performing under pressure are different skills. One lives in your head. The other lives in your hands and your voice and your ability to respond in real time without freezing.
That gap has a name. It's called practice. And it's the piece Wattles never addressed. He told you what to do and why it works. He didn't tell you how to build the skill to do it consistently when it counts.
That's where Part 3 picks up... the distance between knowing the "Certain Way" and actually performing it, and why most salespeople never close that gap.
This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on The Science of Getting Rich and modern sales. Part 1 covers what the book actually says (and why most people get it wrong). Part 3 tackles the practice gap between knowing what to do and doing it under pressure.