CHAPTER
The Heart of Your Sales Career
Zig
Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference. It is the part of the blanket that hangs over the bed that keeps you warm. I read something not too long ago that every merchant and every salesperson on the face of this earth should read on a regular basis:
I’m your customer who never comes back. I’m a nice customer. All merchants know me. I’m the one who never complains, no matter what kind of service I get. When I go to a store to buy something, I don’t throw my weight around. I try to be thoughtful of the other person. If I get a snooty clerk who gets upset because I want to look at several things before I make up my mind, I’m as polite as can be. I don’t believe rudeness in return is the answer. I never kick, complain, or criticize, and I wouldn’t dream of making a scene, as I’ve seen people doing in public places.
No, I’m the nice customer, but I’m also the nice customer who never comes back. That’s my little revenge for being abused and taking whatever you hand out, because I know I’m not coming back. This way it doesn’t immediately relieve my feelings, but in the long run, it’s far more satisfying than blowing my top. In fact, a nice customer like myself, multiplied by others of my kind, can ruin a business, and there are a lot of nice people just like me.
When we get pushed far enough, we go to another store, where they appreciate nice customers. He laughs best, they say, who laughs last. I laugh when I see you frantically advertising to get me back when you could have kept me in the first place with a few kind words and a smile.
Your business might be in a different town, and your situation might be different, but if your business is bad, chances are good that if you will change your attitude, the word will get around, and I’ll change from the nice customer who never comes back to the nice customer who always comes back and brings his friends.
I want to share with you what we believe is the very heart of your sales career. The first point I wish to make is the importance of honesty.
The Forum Corporation out of Boston, Massachusetts did a study of 341 salespeople: 173 of them were outstandingly successful, 168 of them were moderately successful. They came from eleven different companies in five different industries. They’d sold everything from real estate and insurance to industrial supplies and what have you. All of them had sold at least five years, so we can eliminate the rookie factor.
They discovered that the one thing that separated these salespeople may be a little surprising to you. All of them had the same basic experience. Each knew how to get prospects, each knew how to get appointments, each knew how to make presentations demonstrating features and benefits, each knew how to handle objections and close sales, and yet one group was dramatically more successful than the other.
The basic reason has to do with one word: honesty. You see, this group had trust. Their customers trusted them. What they discovered is this: People don’t buy based on what you tell them. They do not buy based on what you show them. They do buy based on what you tell them and what you show them that they believe.
Whom are they going to believe? They’re going to believe the good guys, and they’re going to believe the good gals.
The second thing they discovered about the outstanding salespeople was this: They realize that, since they did not have secretaries and administrative assistants, they had to work through everybody in the home office. So they understood that the sale is not complete, it really isn’t sold, until the product has been delivered, installed, serviced, and paid for, and the customer is satisfied.
So when they called in, the supersalespeople were just as nice to the switchboard operator as they were to the chairman of the board. They were just as kind and thoughtful and gracious to the file clerks and the shipping clerks as they were to the corporate executives. They all were working together.
Yes, the heart of your sales career starts with the word honesty.
The late Charles Roth said this: “People feel that if they utter the three magic words business is business, they have license to lie, cheat, steal, and in general, rape their fellow man. The fear that those things will happen often exist in the mind of the prospect.”
Roth pointed out that a calm, confident, positive, reassuring salesperson, working from a base of honesty and integrity, is the most effective tool for calming the fears of the prospect and get the sale.
Yes, honestly is a prerequisite for a successful career in selling.
When I am on tour, a lot of times the media will ask me, “Mr. Ziglar, is it really true that you could sell anybody anything?” That’s insane. Only a con artist can sell anybody anything. The real professional can only sell those things he or she truly believes are going to benefit the prospect more than the money they will receive will benefit the professional.
The second part of the heart of your sales career has to do with ego. Dr. H.M. Greenberg, a New Jersey psychologist, did an evaluation on 186,000 people over a period of years. He discovered that one person in five walking down the street at any given time of day could be trained to be successful in the world of selling. But he also discovered that the people who were the most successful had a most unusual kind of ego.
It’s the kind of ego that demands acceptance. When that person gets the appointment, that soothes and strokes their ego. When they make the presentation, if the reception is good, that feeds their ego. When they close the sale, that’s the prospect’s way of saying, “I like you, and I trust you.”
But Greenberg also discovered that if this salesperson only had ego, watch out, because a lot of times they’ll stretch the truth to make the sale. He said, “Give me that individual with a good, healthy ego, but who has empathy to go along with it.”
There’s a lot of difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy simply means that you feel the way the other person feels. Empathy means that you understand how they feel, but you don’t feel that way. Because you don’t feel that way but do understand how they feel, you can back away from the problem and offer the solution. I want to emphasize this: sympathy costs sales, but empathy creates sales.
Let me give you an example. Many years ago, in 1962, I was the number-one cookware salesman in our country. I was with the Saladmaster Corporation from Dallas. I was living in Columbia, South Carolina. I was selling to everybody in sight.
One day I was over visiting with an associate, who also represented the company. We did not represent the same part of the organization. He was starving to death, and as we sat there and talked and he was singing the blues, I said, “Well, Bill, I know what your problem is.”
“Tell me quick,” he said. “I have to make sales.”
“The problem is simple. You do not believe in what you’re selling.”
Bill about blew a gasket. He said, “What are you talking about? I left a company I’d been with over five years as a manager to come with this company as a salesperson because the product is so much better.”
“Bill,” I said, “peddle that baloney to somebody else. I know and I know that you know you don’t believe in this product.” With that, I nodded toward the stove.
“You mean the fact that I’m cooking in a competitive set of cookware?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, Zig,” he said, “don’t let that enter your mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe we have the greatest set of cookware on the American market, but, Zig, I’ve had some difficulties. My wife’s been in the hospital, and when she’s in there, she’s there two weeks. You can’t half work. You worry.
“I wrecked my car, and for six weeks I had to borrow transportation. You can’t sell when you have to depend on a taxi and borrowed cars and all. Now it looks like we’re going to have to put the boys in the hospital and get their tonsils out. I don’t even have any insurance, but,” he said, “Zig, I’m going to get a set of the cookware.”
“Bill,” I said, “let me ask you. How long have you been with this company?”
“Five years.”
“What was your problem last year and the year before that and the year before that?” I said, “Bill, let me tell you exactly what happens. When you’re in a closing situation, and you get down in the short rows, and you ask the obligating question, I can see it now.
“The prospect looks to you and says, ‘Oh I don’t know, Bill. Doggonit, I always sure need to buy a good set of pots, but now is not the right time. You know, Bill, my wife’s been in the hospital a couple of weeks, and man, you can’t half work when your wife’s in the hospital and you’re worrying about it. We wrecked the car not too long ago, and for six weeks we had to depend on borrowed transportation, and you just can’t have to do things that way. And now it looks like we’re going to have to put the boys in the hospital, and we don’t even have any insurance.’
“Bill, you and I both know no prospect is ever going to give you the same things you gave me, but they are going to bring up excuses you’ve been using for years, and you’re a positive thinker. I know you’re sitting there saying to yourself, ‘Now, think positive, Bill, think positive, Bill, think positive.’ But all the time, deep in your mind, you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a set of the stuff myself.’
“Bill, if you don’t ever hear me say another thing, hear me when I say this: Selling is nothing in this world but a transference of feeling. If I can make you feel about the product I’m selling like I feel about the product I’m selling, you will buy my product. You must own a set of this cookware. If you have to mortgage your furniture, do it.”
He said, “Do you really think it’s that important?”
I said, “I know it is that important.”
To bring this story to a close, I sold him a set of the cookware. Obviously he wrote his own order, but that week, Bill made enough extra sales to completely pay for that set of cookware.
Why was that? Very simple. He knew that he had sacrificed. He knew that he had had to dig deep in order to make the purchase, and then when the prospect would start giving the objections, Bill could honestly, sincerely, and conscientiously say, “Yes, indeed, it’s fully worth whatever the price is. It’ll make a difference in your home.” You see, for a long time, sympathy had been costing Bill sales.
On the other side of the ledger, what’s empathy? A good friend of mine, Jay Martin, is the president of a company out of Memphis, Tennessee. They sell smoke and fire detectors and water purification.
Jay was telling me about working one evening with a young dealer, who made the sales presentation. When he finished and asked the obligating question, the old boy rocked back on the two hind legs of the chair, folded his arms, and in his own colloquialism manner said, “Well, son, I’m sure you heard about my wreck.” The young salesman hadn’t heard about the wreck, but he was about to.
The customer said, “Me and my wife were going down the road one night, and this fellow passed on the wrong side, hit us both head-on and tore our car all to pieces. Put us both in the hospital. I was in there about ten days. It left my leg a little bit stiff. I work on piece goods, so my income’s down a little bit, and that sure doesn’t help anything.
“My wife was in the hospital six weeks. She was gone so long, as a matter of fact, they phased her job out. Now there ain’t but one of us working, and when you’ve been accustomed to having two incomes, that sure knocks you for a loop.
“The insurance bill for everything we were doing was over $20,000. Now I know the insurance company’s going to pay for it, but they sure have us nervous in the meantime. Then last week, our boy came home from the Navy, and the first night back, he rounded a curve too fast, ran over a steep embankment, ran down into a service station, wrecked the car, tore up a $7000 sign. Now I know our insurance is going to pay for the car, but I don’t know if it’s going to pay for that sign. If it doesn’t, man, we’re going to be in trouble.
“Just last night, we had to put my wife’s mother in the most expensive nursing home in the county, and the only method of support outside of me is her brother, and he ain’t been heard from in seven or eight years. It ain’t worth shooting if we did know where he was. I don’t know how we’re going to handle that deal.”
Now, that’s a whole lot of trouble. If the young salesman had sympathy, he’d be saying, “Oh, that’s too bad. I know that is a tough thing, but won’t the government help you? How about the Red Cross? Won’t some of your neighbors chip in? Won’t the church do something? Can’t you get food stamps? Isn’t there something you can do?” That’s sympathy.
The young man had empathy. It meant he understood how he felt, but it meant also that he was able to back away from the problem and look at the solution. As a salesman, he acted like a pro. He looked right at the prospect, and he said, “Tell me, Mr. Prospect, in addition to those things, would there be any other reason why you could not go ahead and install this equipment in your home?”
The old boy just about had a conniption. He just hollered. He slapped his leg, and he said, “No, son. Those are all the problems.”
The young salesman simply reached out in his sample case. He picked up one of the smoke detectors, and they have what they call the physical action close. He moved over to show the prospect exactly how it would look on the wall, and he said to him, “Sir, from what you tell me, you now owe nearly $30,000, and $300 more won’t make any difference at all.”
The thing that got the sale was this. He said, “Sir, fire under any circumstances is devastating, but in your case, it would wipe you out.” Don’t miss that other significant sales lesson, which was this: He had taken the reasons, all of them, that the man had given him for why they could not buy and used them as reasons why they must buy. Almost without exception, you can take the reason they give you for not buying and use it as the reason why they should go ahead and buy.
The third part of the heart of your sales career has to do with your attitude. I will say it over and over. Business is never either good or bad out there. Business is either good or bad right here between your own two ears.
Down in the little town of Victoria, Texas, there’s an insurance salesman named Calvin Hunt. Calvin is the man who goes the extra mile, understanding that you can have everything you want in life if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
Once a year he will bring in speakers from all over America, pay them their full fees, and invite all of his clients to come in for an evening of inspiration. He lets them sit at the front of the big auditorium. Everybody else can come as they please and sit where they please, but the front-row seats are held for his clients. He uses it as a community project. It’s a marvelous way to create a tremendous amount of goodwill.
Calvin and I were talking about 1982, which was a recession year, and I said, “Calvin, how is your business?”
“You know, Zig,” he said, we have a recession going on in the minds of some people, but I decided not to join. Actually, we do 98 or 95 percent as much insurance business today as we did last year. But the average insurance salesman figures that during the recession, people are not going to be in a buying mood, so about half of them don’t really work.”
So, he said, “Here’s the way I figured it, Zig. I figured that if half the competition was gone, and we had 95 percent as much business still available, that surely I could at least double my business during the year.” Interestingly, that’s exactly what he did.
Calvin is an unusual insurance man. He sells those contracts where the premium is in excess of $100,000 a year. I haven’t talked to Calvin since 1986, so I don’t know what he’s doing at this precise moment, but I can tell you this, 1986 was the biggest year he’s ever had in the insurance business, unless this year he happens to be doing better. Positive thinking, your attitude—it is so important.
What is positive thinking, and what is positive believing? Positive thinking, according to my definition, is an optimistic hope, not necessarily based on any facts, that you can move some mountains. I’ve seen positive thinkers move some mountains. I’ve also seen them get their teeth kicked in on occasion, including in the sales world, but I’d rather have a positive thinker than a negative thinker.
What is a positive believer? A positive believer is an individual who has that same optimistic hope, but this time with reasons for believing they can move those mountains.
In the world of sales, contrary to what people think, things are not anywhere close to being equal. The opportunities are, but the salesperson who goes out there to sell who doesn’t know how to prospect, who doesn’t know how to get appointments, who does not know how to make a good presentation, who does not know how to close, who does not know how to handle objections—in other words, the one who has not acquired professional skills—by no stretch of imagination does that salesperson have the same opportunity for success as the others.
Training is a significant key. Positive believing means you’ve utilized and taken advantage of the training, the books, the tapes, the seminars, the sessions, the programs your company has to offer that will make a difference. Yes, positive believers will sell more than just positive thinkers.
The next part of the heart of your sales career has to do with your reserve. There are three kinds of reserve. There’s physical reserve. It requires a lot of energy to sell.
I happen to believe that your physical condition is extraordinarily important. The average salesperson works about eight hours a day. The first seven hours of the day, they spend working for everybody else. They make the house payments with what they earn, their car payments, they take care of the insurance and food and clothing and all the other things.
The last hour, that salesperson ought to be working for themselves. The problem is, by the end of the day, too many of them, as we’d say down home, are too pooped to pop. They have run out of energy. You need to build physical reserve.
There are some basics there. You need to take care by eating the proper diet. You need to get a reasonable amount of sleep. You need to get involved in an exercise program. You need to stop putting poison in your body. You know what booze and smoking and drugs do to the body? This is not the time or the place for me to talk about those things, but I want to emphasize that when you do take care of your physical body, you will be dramatically surprised at the difference in your sales results.
Fifteen years ago, I got on a diet and exercise program. It dramatically increased my energy level, and I can work considerably longer today than I could when I was twenty-five years old. Build a physical reserve. Build a mental reserve.
One thing I can never understand is a salesperson who does not have their own cassette programs and their own cassette recorders. When you’re in your car, on your way to calls or on the way to your office or on your way to work, you should be listening. On your way home, or if you work from your car between calls, you need to be listening, and the most important time to listen is the first thing in the morning.
You obviously need to be reading and studying, but psychologists say that the first person you encounter each day has more impact on your attitude than the next five people you encounter. Choose somebody who inspires you. Start the day with an inspirational recording and listen on your way to that first call. It will make a difference. Build that mental reserve.
You also need to build a spiritual reserve. I learned something not too long ago, which, to me, was astonishing, and yet it really wasn’t. It was delightful to learn. I learned, for example, that everybody believes in God. Now, that might surprise you just a little bit when I say that, but yes, everybody does believe in God.
I was talking with the chairman of the board of a major trucking line, which has in excess of 300 terminals and offices throughout America. They conduct a lie detector test on each new employee.
One of the questions that they asked, and they’ve asked it thousands of times is this. “Do you believe there is a God?” In every single case, when the prospect said no, that needle on the polygraph just jumped off the chart. Every time they said no, the polygraph said they lied about it.
Build a spiritual reserve. It can make a difference.
The final thing we’re going to talk about is, you have to be tough. This is probably going to surprise you, but the toughest thing in the world of selling, the toughest thing, the thing I believe is the most important here, is love.
It might surprise you to hear me talking about love as part of a sales career, but I’m willing to talk about it by telling you a story. I love to play golf. Anybody who knows me knows I love to get out there and hit that little golf ball. There’s nothing I enjoy anymore than teeing that dude up and raring back and really getting after it. Boom.
I found out a long time ago that a fast game of golf and a slow game of golf both require about five hours, and when you’re gone as much as I’m gone, I’m not about to go home and kiss that redhead and my son good-bye. (I have three daughters also, but he came ten years after our last daughter was born.) I’m not about to go home and kiss that redhead and that boy good-bye and head for the golf course, but I love to play golf.
One day I came up with a brilliant idea. I bought my wife and my son a set of golf clubs. Everybody was excited about it except my wife and my son. They went along with me for about five games. End of the fifth game, the redhead said, “Honey, I just don’t like to play golf.”
Incidentally, when I talk about my wife, I call her the redhead. When I’m talking to her, it’s “sugar baby.” Her name is Jean.
One day after about the fifth game, she said, “Honey, I just don’t like to play golf. It’s too hot, or it’s too cold, or it’s too wet, or it’s too dry, or too something. It’s just not my game. Count me out.”
There went golf buddy number one. End of the summer, my boy said to me, “Dad, I don’t know how to tell you this, because I know how much you like to play golf, and I know you like to be with me, Dad, and I like to be with you, too, but Dad, golf’s just not my game. I’ll play football with you, I’ll go to the games with you. I’ll play catch with you. I’ll go fishing with you, but golf is just not my game, Dad.”
For the next three years, there wasn’t much golf in my life. Then one night, I was back in town in the middle of the week right here in Dallas, Texas, over on North Central Expressway, when the old driving range was still there. We’d been out to dinner. My sticks were in the trunk of the car. We rode past the driving range, and all of a sudden, my boy said, “Dad, let’s stop and hit a few.”
My boy was a smooth talker, so we stopped to hit a few. We were banging away, and after a couple of minutes, he said, “Dad, let me borrow one of your woods.” So, I handed my son the four wood. He choked up on it a little bit. He reared back. He let a string out. He busted that dude right down the middle about forty yards further than he’d ever hit a golf ball before in his life.
When he turned around, I knew I had myself my golfing buddy. The second most beautiful smile I’d ever seen on that face. The most beautiful one was two days later.
We were out at the club playing. He took that four wood. Again, he choked up. He let the string out. He pole-axed that dude right down the middle. It had a little draw on it. Hit the ground running like a scared rabbit, stopped dead center right in the middle of the fairway. Perfect position.
We got to it. He took his five iron out, and just like you see them doing on television, he kept his head down. He smooth-stroked that ball. It took off and got right over the green. It landed just as soft as a feather about forty feet from the pin. He’s hunting his bird.
That means if he sinks the putt, he’s one under par on this hole. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, it simply means he done good.
I showed the boy how to align the putt. I showed him how to stroke the ball, and when he stroked that putt, the instant he stroked it, there never was any doubt about it. It was in the cup all the way. When that ball hit the bottom of that cup, that boy jumped straight up about six feet, still beating me to the ground by five seconds.
You’re talking about excitement. I was excited. He was excited. I grabbed him, and we hugged there for about two minutes, and all of a sudden it dawned on me I had a problem. You see, I was on the green in two also. I was hunting my bird. I was only about ten feet from the cup. I knew if I missed it, my son would figure I had done it on purpose, which would have given him a cheap victory.
So I determined I was going to do the very best I could, so that if I did miss, I could honestly say to my son, “Congratulations, son. You’ve won it fair and square.”
I aligned the putt as carefully as I’d ever aligned a putt in my life. I stroked the putt, and just like it had eyes, it went straight to the bottom of the cup. Before I reached down to pick it up, I looked at my son, and I said, “Now, son, tell me the truth. Were you pulling for Dad?”
I think you know what it would have meant had I missed. He was eleven years old. He had never beaten his dad in a hole of golf. It would have meant a tremendous amount, yet quietly, without any hesitation, and very firmly, my son looked me right in the eye and said, “Dad, I always pull for you.”
Now that’s what we need more of in Dallas, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, and Buffalo, New York, and Washington, D.C. It’s what we need in every home in every county in every state in this great land of ours. It’s what we need between the parent and the child, the husband and the wife, the teacher and the student. Surprisingly enough, it’s what we need between the salesperson and the prospect.
Yes, it is, because when you are selling to someone, and they are weighing their decision, your belief in what you’re selling and the benefits it will give to them should be so strong that you’re pulling for them to buy for their own benefit.
If you can honestly and sincerely do that, then your career will catapult upwards, because it is absolutely true, as a wise man said so long ago, that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, and you can persuade through your heart. The right procedures, the right techniques, the right words, the right voice inflection can make a difference.
As we conclude, you’ll notice that we talked about honesty, ego, attitude, reserve, and toughness, and if you will simply take the first letter of each of these words, you will see that it forms an acronym for heart, because the truth is, if your heart is all right, then your career is going to be all right. That’s one of the real secrets of successful selling.