Big, bald and boisterous, Willard Scott gets away with saying the most outrageous things. How does he do it? With genuine love for everyone’s foibles, including his own, Willard finds down home fun in a world that seems to have gone high-tech haywire. He pats senior citizens on the back for making it through another year, and extols the virtues of neighborliness on a national scale.

He’s the guy next door who just borrowed your lawn mower and stops mowing the lawn long enough to tell you the joke about his Uncle Charlie. It goes like this: "My Uncle Charlie is 100 years old. He’s a retired army colonel and he still drives his own car, still lives in his own apartment and takes care of himself. Uncle Charlie has a great sense of humor. A stockbroker recently tried to sell Uncle Charlie some municipal bonds that would mature in 20 years. Uncle Charlie looked at him and said, `Hell, at my age I don’t even buy green bananas.’ "

As one might imagine, Willard is a big success on the speaking circuit. At a recent IMRA National Convention, Willard was introduced as one of the 10 most huggable persons, a title bestowed by the International Hug Center. In 1975 he also was named humanitarian-in-residence by the National Society of Fundraisers. In 1983, to raise $1,000 for the USO, he made broadcasting history by appearing on the Today Show dressed as Carmen Miranda. He performed an original music number with two guitarists and later walked on platform shoes to the weather map where he proceeded to do the morning’s weather report.

Beginning his career in 1950 as a page at WRC, Willard began reporting the weather 10 years ago on NBC. In the last 10 years he has visited all 50 states and over 700 cities. A tireless worker for public service, Willard was named Washingtonian of the year by Washingtonian magazine. For 20 consecutive years he has played the role of Santa Claus at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree.

He holds degrees from American University in both philosophy and religion. Somewhere along the way, Willard seems to have decided that it’s better to have fun, be happy and not take yourself too seriously. He claims that he has had more failures than 10 average people and that his successes have all been a matter of pure luck. He finds joy in the simple messages he sends out for 75th anniversaries and 100th birthdays.

"We’re really all salesmen," says Willard in the rich, bass voice that has become his trademark. Although he has achieved a remarkable level of success, he claims that every project he has consciously worked for has failed.

"It seems that everything that has ever worked for me has happened by accident," he candidly admits. "I’ve produced more program ideas we call them pilots than the Air Force Academy. Finally we called my production company Hindenburg Productions because everything that I have ever planned has been a total disaster. And anything that I have sort of fallen into has worked out incredibly well. I am a basic klutz.

"The best thing that ever happened to me on the Today Show was strictly by accident. About eight years ago somebody sent me a letter that read, "Dear Willard, my uncle so-and-so will have a birthday. Would you mention it on television?" Well, I’m an old radio guy and we always were looking for a gimmick. I came along in radio when you had 40 or 50 different stations in a market and you had to compete. So I carried that through on TV.

"When I got this letter, I said, `That is a great idea. Nobody is doing it.’ So I plugged the birthday and thus began the greatest part of my career. I am now the largest single clearing house in the United States for centenarians. I get 60 to 80 requests a day for people who are 100 or over. It’s the fastest growing group in America. There are 40,000 centenarians in this country now. By the end of this decade there will be 100,000 people who are 100 or older. That is going to present an incredible challenge for our society. It’s a whole new society that we live in. There was a time when grandma was passed around from sister to brother but today families are so spread out. Plus we have fewer children being born on the other end that are going to be paying the taxes and it’s pretty obvious to see that there’s an incredible economic factor here to take care of us. Because many of us will make it, and will need care."

In typical Willard Scott fashion, sandwiched between the jokes on testosterone, his weight, large corporations, how cheap his audience is, his hairpiece and a hundred other topics, the serious and far-reaching subject that will affect us all creeps through. It seems that Willard’s selling style has more method than madness. It’s a subtle blend of catch ’em off guard, tickle ’em a whole lot, smile for the cameras, and then wham, here’s what I really came to talk about. That’s how personality selling works.

"I’ve been with NBC now for over 50 years," Willard continues. "I started as a page in 1950 in Washington and was a staff announcer by the time I was 19. I was one of the youngest staff announcers at NBC. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve worked for the same company for 50 years. GE was the parent company of NBC years ago. So we’ve really come full circle and nobody has seen the light yet!"

Back at the podium, Willard is off on another round of jokes that poke fun more at him than anyone else. "My wife, Mary, and I have been married 31 successful years. We’re very proud of that. We’ve had our fights and all that but Mary and I think we have found the secret to keep a happy marriage for 31 years. If anyone cares I’ll share with you just this one piece of philosophy. We never, hardly ever, see each other anymore." In fact, in his book Willard Scott’s The Joys of Living (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan/New York, 1982), he devotes a loving chapter to his wife in which he writes: "We realized that after we had invested all these years together… we really were two peas in a pod. And the pod was a mighty nice place to be."

When asked about the secret to living to a ripe old age Willard answers: "Of all the older people I’ve talked to, and I’ve talked to an awful lot of them, people always want to know what’s their secret of longevity? Well outside of heredity and that more of them seem to come from cold climates the only one correlating factor that I’ve been able to come up with is the ability to adjust to hang in there." It seems like a simple formula but that’s deceptive. Willard’s own solution to hanging in there seems to be based in his philosophy of doing for others.

"You know," he explains, "there are people you and I work with everyday, and even for some of us it’s true, that have some kind of little problem. If we can find a way to help alleviate these problems it would help make us more content in the process."

Perhaps that’s a good rule to bring along to sales calls. Find a way to help with the little problems and hang in there.