CHAPTER
The Keys to Successful Selling, Part 2
Zig
In our last presentation, we looked at some ideas and some keys that will make a difference in your sales career. John Shedd, president of Marshall Field and Company, once said, “We don’t need to be told, but we do need to be reminded.” So let me share with you the first five keys we dealt with.
We dealt with the key of positive projection. We dealt at length with the key of the assumptive attitude. We dealt with physical action. Then, enthusiasm, and the last key we dealt with was the subordinate question.
Now we’re going to look at six additional keys. The first key we’re going to look at now is key number six, which is the key of listen. Listening is such an important skill. It’s hard, if not impossible, to listen your way out of a sale. As a matter of fact, on every body’s list of desirable qualities, a good listener has to rate right there at the top.
It is important that we do learn how to listen, but there’s a couple of things about it that I want to emphasize. One is when the prospect says no, we need not to hear that. Oftentimes we don’t even want to hear it.
We also need to learn how to listen, not just with our ears, but also with our eyes. For example, the prospect is saying, “No, I wouldn’t give you that much money for one of these automobiles,” but all the time they’re gently stroking the upholstery. Their mouth is saying, “Too much money, and I won’t buy it,” but their body is saying, “Look, friend, all you have to do is convince me. I’m interested. Make it worth the money to me, and then we’ll go ahead and buy.”
One prospect might say, “No, this home is just too far out of town.” Then they walk to that back bedroom, where that big picture window is, and they look out at that gorgeous view. You need to be listening not only with your ears but also with your eyes, and as I said earlier, when the prospect says no, you definitely do not want to always hear that one.
I have a good friend, one of the most remarkable ladies I think I’ve ever met. Her name is Merley Hoke. Merley was from Great Falls, South Carolina. Merley had one of the most peculiar hearing problems I think I have ever experienced. A customer could get right down in her face and say, “No, Merley, I don’t want to buy.” Merley wouldn’t bat an eyelash. She hadn’t heard a thing. I’ve seen them whisper “Yes,” at sixty paces, and Merley picked up every syllable.
An amazing lady. She was one of the most consistent people I’ve ever seen in the world of selling. She was professional. She had memorized her handling of objections. She had memorized her closes to the degree that they were so natural you never would have even remotely suspected that they were memorized.
I’ve watched her on sales calls a number of times, and this was one of the little phrases she always used. She would make it her business to be seated directly in front of the lady. As she would start her closing move, she would invariably pick up her chair and begin to move to the other side. She would reach up, and she would put her hand on the lady’s shoulder. She always said exactly the same thing: “This is so beautiful, and you deserve to have it, and I’m going to ‘hep’ you”—that’s H-E-P—“I’m going to ‘hep’ you get it.”
You got the distinct feeling that it was Merley and this lady, and they were ganging up on that big, old cookware company up there, they have thousands of sets of cookware, and “Bless your heart, you haven’t even got one. I’m going you to help you get it.”
She always used the other person’s money, but Merley was an assistant buyer. She had moved literally, figuratively, emotionally, and every other way to the prospect’s side of the table. Learn to listen, but when the prospect says no, please understand that the reason they say N-O is that they do not K-N-O-W enough to say yes. They don’t know enough of the benefits.
This is the most important key. The next is the most misunderstood key. It is the key of persistence. A lot of people think of the persistent salesman as that individual who sits on you. “You’re going to get it sooner or later, sign here,” or “You know you want it. All your neighbors are getting it, sign here.”
That’s not persistence. That is downright foolishness. Those are the kind of salespeople who are not exactly a credit to our profession.
I really did not understand what real persistence was until a number of years ago, when I was touring Australia with World Book Encyclopedia. I was working with the managing director, a man named John Nevin, and we were speaking in all of the more cities in Australia for World Book.
On the trips, John and I had a chance to do a lot of chatting. He shared with me a story which has a tremendous impact on John’s career and has had a substantial impact on mine. He got started as a part-time salesperson, as many of us did when we first entered the world of selling.
Now this was a number of years ago, and in most instances this simply is no longer done, but John was on a sales call one evening. He called on this German couple. They’d only been in Australia about six months. Their command of the English language was very limited. They really looked more like grandparents than parents. The mother had given birth to their one and only son when she was forty-four years old. She was short and stocky. John started that sales presentation at 8:00. It was after midnight before the sale was closed. When it was, John had to have the lady along as he left the home, because there was a vicious dog, and she had to escort him. She got outside the gate and closed it. John’s reasonably tall. She was very short.
The lady reached up, put her hands on John’s shoulders, and said, “Tank you, tank you, young man, for staying until we know what these books do for our boy. Tank you, tank you.” John said it gave him a completely new understanding of the importance of what he was doing.
Sometimes when we sell a product for a long period of time, we grow accustomed to it. We grow accustomed to living in a nice home and wearing nice clothes, driving a nice car, having our family covered with an adequate amount of life insurance. We grow accustomed to all those things, and sometimes we take it as routine when we’re making a sales call.
John said, “You know, Zig, that opened my eyes so clearly, and I realized and promised myself that I would have that renewed commitment, that renewed enthusiasm, that renewed sense of urgency and that willingness to persist until either the sale had been closed or it was evident that they either would not buy or could not buy.”
Talking with John gave me a new perspective on the word persistence. I believe there’s a better word for it. The word is belief. If you believe in what you’re selling, you will persist. You’ll do it professionally. You’ll do it politely. You will do it as courteously and graciously as you can, but the professional who fervently believes that the prospect benefits with ownership of what they’re selling will persist.
Next is the key of the impending event. An impending event is anything that is going to happen in your industry or to your company or to your product which will have an impact or an influence on your prospects and on your customers.
For example, in our own company, for several months now we have been selling our clients on the concept that we have something new and exciting coming out. Get ready. I know you do the same thing when you have new products coming out.
When I was in the life-insurance business, when you get six months and one day past your last birthday, you are now a year older in a lot of the tables, and we used that as an impending event. Many of you are selling products or goods or services right now that will be higher in price a year from now than they are today.
As salespeople, we need to capitalize on that: “Mr. Prospect, if you buy today, if you invest today, then you will save this amount of money.” That impending event really does make a significant sales tune. We need to be tuned in to the times if we’re going to sell as much as we should be selling.
The next key is kind of unusual. It’s what we call the key of inducement. I have a pair of cufflinks that I happen to believe are the most beautiful cufflinks in the whole world. I really do. That redheaded wife of mine gave me these cufflinks for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They’re in the shape of an arrow. The arrow is in fact my, or our, emblem, and it’s pointing up, of course. See you at the top.
When I got these cufflinks—and the diamonds are not the biggest in town by any stretch of imagination, but they are very significant—I made myself a promise: “I’m not going to wear any shirt again unless it has French cuffs, so I can wear these cufflinks.”
So I went looking for some French-cuff shirts. This was a number of years ago. I’d walk in a store, and I’d say, “Do you have any French-cuff shirts?”
They’d say, “No.”
I went into a dozen different stores. “Do you have any French-cuff shirts?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you know where I can get them?”
“No, I don’t. Besides, didn’t you see I’m busy? I was talking to this other clerk here.” That wasn’t exactly what they said, but it was almost that bad.
I was speaking up in Burlington, Iowa for the Chamber of Commerce. At the Chamber of Commerce where I was speaking, there was a gentleman with a white suit of clothes on. I’ll tell you I thought that was the sharpest-looking suit of clothes I’d ever seen. I said to myself, “Self, you have to get you a suit just like that.” So I cornered the fellow and asked him where he got it.
“I got it over in Fort Madison,” he said, “at Glasgow Clothiers. There’s a fellow there named Doyle Hoyer.”
“I think I’m going to scoot over there tomorrow morning and get me one just like it.”
“I’m going over tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’d be pleased to take you.”
“That’d be wonderful,” I said.
He took me over, introduced me to Doyle, and I asked, “Doyle, do you have this white suit?”
“What size do you wear?”
“I wear a 41. I can slip on—now it will vary depending on the cut of the suit—but in most cases, I can slip on a size 41, sometimes it’s a 42, and all I have to do is cuff the trousers, and I can walk right out in it.”
“Yes, I’ve got that size.”
I slipped the suit on—perfect fit. He measured the trousers to cuff them. I said, “How long will it take me to get this suit, Doyle?”
“I thought you said you weren’t leaving until 2:00,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Man, you’re going to take this suit of clothes with you.” Then he turned to the young man standing there and said, “Take this suit of clothes up to the tailor, and tell him I want it right now.”
Then he turned to me, smiled, and said, “Now, Zig, I have something I really want to show you.”
I left there with two suits, three sport outfits, and five pair of slacks and all the good stuff that goes along with it. As we were concluding, something was said about shoes, and I said, “No, Doyle. I’m well pleased with my shoes. I don’t really need any.”
He didn’t hear a thing I said. He said, “Man, you have to look at these,” and right straight to the shoe department he went.
As it turned out, I didn’t find any shoes that I really liked that day, and I was getting ready to leave, but as an afterthought I said, “Oh, by the way, Doyle, do you have any French-cuff shirts?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said, “but I can get them for you.”
A couple of weeks later, I got a telephone call from Doyle. He said, “Zig, did you get your French-cuff shirts?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How do you like them?”
“Doyle, I just love them.” I’d only gotten a half-dozen shirts from him because I wanted to see what kind they were and how they looked and that sort of thing.
Let me emphasize a point here. At that point in my career, outside of Yazoo City, Mississippi and my next-door neighbor, there weren’t an awful lot of people who knew who Zig Ziglar was. Fort Madison, Iowa was nearly a thousand miles away, but he’s calling to find out if I got those shirts and if I liked those shirts.
About a month later, I was in Kansas City in the airport. I saw a young fellow with a suit of clothes on. Just loved it. (You’re going to find out how I choose some of my clothes here in a minute.) I walked over and asked him, “Do you mind sharing with me where you got that suit of clothes and what kind it is?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’d be delighted to.”
He let me see the label, and I wrote down the brand and the number and all that good stuff. I called old Doyle and said, “Doyle, do you have such-and-such a suit?”
He said, “No, I haven’t—but I can get it for you.”
A couple of weeks later, he called me and said, “Did you get your suit? I said, “I sure did.”
“How do you like it, Zig?”
“Oh, I love it, Doyle. It’s absolutely beautiful.”
About a month later I called him again. He said, “Zig, are you still at (214) 233-9191?”
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“I was just fixing to call you.”
“Yes, and I know what you’re going to tell me too.”
“You do?”
“Sure. You’re going to tell me that you just got in the most beautiful new shipment of suits you have ever had in your life. You’re going to tell me that you’re going to send a dozen of them down to me and you’re going to let me pick out exactly what I want and send the rest of them back.”
“Zig, you are a genius.”
When I start talking about common-sense sales techniques, this is one of the things I’m talking about. I am not color-blind, but I am color-ignorant. I do not know what goes with anything. I really don’t. So Doyle will send me the suit, send the shirt, send me the tie, pick out the socks, put it in a little package, and attach a little note: “Dear Zig, these go together.”
What is the key of inducement? There’s a chance that Doyle Hoyer is saving me money. He declares on his Scout’s honor that he is, and he might well be. Let me tell you what Doyle Hoyer really is saving me. It’s time.
I spend less than an hour a year choosing my clothes, because he’ll send me the clothes, I will take them down to the tailor close to my barbershop, where I have to go anyhow, and I time the trips together. It only takes a matter of minutes for me to get them. This relationship is a most unusual one.
I never will forget about five years ago, he called me to tell me about this tremendous new sports coat he had. As he started to describe it, I said, “Doyle, how much does that coat cost?”
“Zig, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m going to treat you right.”
I don’t know why I bothered to ask. He never tells me the price anymore, because he knows that over the years, he has developed a relationship of absolute trust based on his own integrity. He simply sends me the clothes. If I like them, I keep them and pay for them, and if I don’t like them, I send them back.
Why am I devoting such a tremendous amount of time to this one simple example? I think it says an awful lot. In the intervening years—neither of us have any idea of the amount, but I’ve an idea that Doyle Hoyer’s business has reaped at least a half-million dollars in sales, maybe as much as a million dollars, over all of these years.
Obviously I haven’t bought that much clothing, but Doyle tells me that as a result of this conversation in my book and in my audio presentations and seminars, people call him every day and say, “If you’ll treat me like you treat old Zig, we’re going to do some business together.”
What’s my major point? There’s no such things as a little sale. No such thing as a little sale. There are sales that grow. You know the story. From the mighty oak we started with an acorn. From a little sale, a lot of times you build a tremendous amount of business.
What’s the inducement? I believe it’s the greatest inducement of all. It is the personal interest and integrity of the salesperson who believes that he’s going to benefit by serving the needs of his prospects. It’s part of the concept: you can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.
The next key is one which I might say is the most important one. It’s the key of sincerity. I’ve had many salespeople say to me, “I called on this account, and they’d been called on a dozen different times, and as they were buying they would say, ‘You know, I don’t really know why I’m giving you the business. I turned down three other people.’” Then they would give the reason: “But you seemed so sincere in what you were saying.”
See, selling is a transference of feeling. When you can make your prospect feel about your product like you feel about your product, if it’s humanly possible, they’re going to end up buying your product. Selling is that transference of feeling.
Don’t hang your hat too much just on being sincere, because if you sincerely believe in what you’re doing, and if you’re sincerely interested in your prospect’s best interest, you’re going to learn as much as you can as a professional to use the right procedures and the right techniques to help them own something that’s going to benefit them.
One of the greatest stories I have ever heard is the story of Charles Laughton. He was a British Shakespearean actor. Charles Laughton toured our country reading the Bible. I never had the privilege of hearing him do that, but they say that he read the Bible in an incredibly beautiful, magnificent way, and brought those words to life.
He was reading in a large, rural church in a Midwestern community. When he finished, an awe, a hush fell over the audience. Some said it lasted two or three minutes. Then a little old man, he must have been about seventy-five years old, stood up and asked for permission to read the Bible.
It was granted, and as he started to read, it was obvious instantly to everyone there, including the great Charles Laughton, that this man had a limited education, that he did not have the diction or the elocution, and he mispronounced some of the words. But it was even more obvious to everyone there, and especially to Charles Laughton, that if this had been a Bible reading contest, Charles Laughton would have in fact finished a very distant second.
When it was all over, somebody came to the great English actor and asked, “How do you feel?”
Laughton, with a rather wry smile, said, “Well, I knew the script, and I knew it well, but this old man knew the author.”
You can learn your presentation. You can learn every word, every dialogue. You can learn every facet of demonstrating your product, and if you’re a professional, that’s what you’re going to do. But, my friend, a lot of people still miss success by about ten inches, because that’s the distance from the head to the heart.
A high jumper broke a world’s record. Somebody said, “How did you do it?”
He said, “I threw my heart over the bar, and the rest of me followed.”
When you communicate the information you have in your head with the feeling you have in your heart, you will persuade more people to take action. What am I saying? That the salesperson is the most important part of the sales process.
The eleventh key that I want to share with you has to do with the narrative story or narrative event. It really is an effective way to help you remember the keys that we’ve been talking about.
A number of years ago, we were living in Columbia, South Carolina. On a Saturday morning, I walked into the den and said to my son, who was four years old, “Son, would you like to go to the grocery store?” He said, “Sure, Daddy,” and he hopped up, and he put on his little boots, and we hopped in the car and drove down to the grocery store.
As we walked in the store, I got the basket and turned to the right to start getting the food. My son had seen a display of rubber balls straight ahead. He made a beeline for it. He got one of those balls, ran back over, popped that ball right in the basket, and stood there grinning from ear to ear.
I’ve never talked to my son at any length about this, but I’ve an idea that when I said to him, “Son, would you like to go to the grocery store?” the reason he said, “Sure, Dad,” was that in that little active four-year-old mind, he was already thinking, “If I get my Daddy down at that store, I’m going to get me something. Don’t know what it is, but I’m going to get me something.”
He was already using the key of positive projection. The instant we walked in, he assumed that he’d better take some physical action, which he did with a considerable amount of enthusiasm. That boy used four keys on me in about four seconds flat.
I reached into the basket, I took that ball out, and I said, “Son, you already have a dozen balls. You don’t need another one,” and I handed it to him. “Now take it back.”
My boy looked up at me and said, “Daddy, can I just hold the ball?”
What would you have done? The boy is only four years old. He doesn’t want to buy the ball. He’s only asked me a very simple subordinate question. What kind of daddy would I have been to say, “No, boy, you can’t even hold the ball. Now take it back”? I wasn’t about to do that, so I said, “OK, son. You can hold it a few minutes, but don’t get any ideas. You are not going to buy that ball.”
He didn’t want to buy it. He just wanted to hold it. We walked around a few minutes, and we went past the display of rubber balls. I reached into my son’s arms, took the ball out, put it back in the display, and said, “Son, you’ve held it long enough. You’re going to fool around, drop it, get it dirty, and then Dad will have to buy it, and you just don’t need another ball.”
With that, I turned and walked away. Well, my boy was not listening when I said no, because he went right back to the display, snatched that ball back out, ran back to the basket, popped it right back in, and again stood there grinning.
You have to confess that he was one persistent little salesman. I’m kind of persistent myself, so I reached back into the basket, took it out, and as I headed for the display saying, “Son, I’ve told you for the last time now, you cannot have this ball,” and when I started to walk back to the display, I looked down and there he stood, all thirty-nine pounds of him.
At that time, he talked with a slight lisp. He looked up at me, and he said, “Daddy, I wish you’d buy me that ball. I’ll give you a ’tiss.” That was an impending event, I’ll tell you.
You talk about an inducement. What else could a four-year-old boy give his daddy? Sincere—in my lifetime, I have never dealt with a more sincere salesperson before or since.
Anyhow, for a long time thereafter, in the Ziglar household, we had thirteen rubber balls. I also must share this with you.
I’ve said I’ve never seen where a woman had given birth to a salesperson. That’s not quite true because on February 1, 1965, in Columbia, South Carolina, the local paper carried a small headline: “Birth of a Salesman Announced. Mr. and Mrs. Zig Ziglar announced the birth of a salesman, John Thomas Ziglar, born February 1, 9:04 p.m., Providence Hospital, Columbia, South Carolina.”
Now don’t you misunderstand. I am not trying to influence my boy’s career. He can sell anything he wants to. That’s up to him.
If you’ll buy these ideas and use these keys, you too can sell more of what you’re selling, and you will have a more successful career.