 This article originally appeared in the January 1982 issue of Selling Power during Ronald Reagan’s first term in office.
Ronald Reagan has the smiling confidence of a man who has been before an audience for nearly half a century. Before he says his first word, he has begun a successful sale. His relaxed appearance, his sparkling eyes, the sincere smile and open body language show his belief in himself and his ability to sell.
What are the secrets of his repeated successes achieved – more often than not – over what seemed to be overwhelming odds?
“His greatest skill is his ability to communicate an idea or an emotion” is the way New York Times correspondent Robert Lindsey sums it up in one sentence in the book Reagan, The Man, The President.
Ronald Reagan is inspirational, dramatic and a super salesman. No matter what political views you endorse, Reagan’s selling power has proven effective for too long to be ignored by professional salespeople. In this article, we’ll examine how three separate professional and personal qualities have helped Ronald Reagan to outsell everyone.
Like many successful salespeople, Ronald Reagan uses short stories to illustrate political (selling) points. Specialists in the art of persuasion concede that the storytelling process is mysterious and little understood. Some psychologists claim that we tend to reexperience a sense of childhood wonder when listening to stories, a fact that the adult storyteller knowingly uses to sell his ideas.
House Speaker Tip O’Neil was quoted as saying, “He’s always got a disarming story. I don’t know where he gets them, but he’s always got them. He calls up: ‘Tip, you and I are political enemies only until 6 o’clock. It’s 4 o’clock; now, can we pretend it’s 6 o’clock?’ How can you dislike a guy like that?”
On the campaign circuit, he used a brilliant story to sell his audience on the need to reduce the size of the government. “There are now 2.5 million federal employees. No one knows what they all do. One congressman found out what one of them does. This man sits at a desk in Washington. Documents come to him each morning. He reads them, initials them, and passes them on to the proper agency. One day a document arrived that he wasn’t supposed to read, but he read it, initialed it, and passed it on. Twenty-four hours later it arrived back at his desk with a memo attached that said, ‘You weren’t supposed to read this. Erase your initials and initial the erasure.'”
When Reagan tells a story, his greatest strength is in the mastery of his voice. He is able to skillfully catch the right tone, and his voice sometimes breaks when he tells an emotional story of heroism.
In his inaugural address, he moved millions with these words describing Martin Treptow, a World War I soldier: “We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading ‘My Pledge,’ he had written these words: ‘America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure. I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.'”
Reagan’s previous acting experience has helped him to learn how to inject his own true emotions in each story he tells. As Constantin Stanislavsky, the world famous director, wrote in his book An Actor Prepares:
“The great actor should be full of feeling, and especially, he should feel the thing he is portraying. He must feel an emotion not only once or twice while he’s studying his part, but every time he plays it.”
This is a lesson that applies equally well to selling.
Top salespeople consistently show two personality characteristics: the capacity to be firm and the capacity to be friendly. On the surface, these attitudes may be present in every salesperson -but not in equal measure. Salespeople who are too firm may bulldoze through a sale, thus annoying customers and causing unnecessary cancellations. Salespeople who are too friendly will get along fine with the customer, but may lack the inner strength and fail to ask for the order.
Ronald Reagan expresses both qualities and knows how to use them in equal measure. On the friendly side, he’s able to be charming, pleasant and personable; on the firm side, he can show his consistency in pursuing his conservative political views.
These qualities have a persuasive effect on people from all walks of life, here and abroad. After a recent meeting with Reagan, King Hussein described the president as a warm, interested man of great integrity with a willingness to listen and work. Kaspar Weinberger commented that every foreign head of state has come away from Reagan very impressed and holding “a revised opinion of Reagan’s strength as a leader.”
He is firm in keeping his word, thus maintaining a high level of credibility. When he says that he will take certain actions in a given situation, he follows through with no “ifs,” “ands” or “buts.” He let the air traffic controllers know they would be fired if they went out on strike. They did…and they were.
In his November 1981 fight with Congress on the emergency-spending bill, he said he would order a shutdown of the government if he wasn’t satisfied with the bill. They didn’t meet his request and he shut down the government.
The ability to be firm and friendly helped Reagan to strike deals with legislators, to negotiate compromises with his political opponents and to maintain a consistent positive public image.
Whichever side of Ronald Reagan emerges in a selling situation, he approaches the opponent with a basic strategy: first disarm, then strike a deal.
In his dramatic victory during his campaign to get congressional sanction for the recent sale of AWACS radar planes, he held 48 private meetings with individual senators.
If the president didn’t persuade someone the first time, he called them again…and again. One senator who changed his opposing views after a private meeting with the president confessed, “I feel like I am going to need an arm transplant, it’s been twisted so much.”
The power of firm and friendly attitudes had led to the AWACS sales success. In one instance, Reagan appealed to an equally firm senator by looking him straight in the eye and saying, “How can I convince foreign leaders that I am in command if I cannot sell five airplanes?”
This last-ditch emotional appeal to patriotism did the trick. He got the last crucial vote and made the sale.
People love to buy from the sales rep who tells it like it is, simple and straightforward. Simplicity is an art and it takes hard work. The following conversation between Woodrow Wilson and a reporter provides an example.
Reporter: “How long would it take you to prepare a simple ten minute speech?”
Woodrow Wilson: “Two weeks.”
Reporter: “How long for an hour speech?”
Woodrow Wilson: “One week.”
Reporter: “How long for a two hour speech?”
Woodrow Wilson: “I’m ready now.”
Ronald Reagan is a master of simplifying communication and has an extraordinary talent for condensing ideas. The President’s simplicity comes across in the following ways:
a) Simple language
He stays clear of complex words or phrases. His audience does not need a dictionary to understand his thoughts. Like a good sales rep, he knows that life is too short to waste time with complicated language.
b) Simple “mini-memos”
As governor of California, he developed a highly successful system for handing down decisions. After hearing out his subordinates’ detailed recommendations, he would draft a concise one-page, four-paragraph summary of a problem with clear recommendations on how to solve it. His style initially drew criticism, but got better results than that of the previous governor, Pat Brown.
c) Simple persuasion techniques
In his presidential campaign, he scored points with highly persuasive statements such as: “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.” Some of his simple, but profound one-liners created tremendous impact. For example, “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen?” Or, concerning the Panama Canal, “We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we are going to keep it.”
d) Simple life philosophies
Son of a shoe salesman, Ronald Reagan exudes an air of simple virtues. On his desk in the Oval Office, he has placed a plaque saying, “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” Haynes Johnson, a Washington Post writer, commented in a recent front-page editorial, “He lacks the arrogance or insecurities of some presidents. The presidency does not awe him; he’s not uptight in the job. Those who have known him for years say he has changed hardly at all since entering the White House.”
Ronald Reagan’s knack for simplicity fools the casual observer. Critics have labeled his contagious optimism as “unrealistic cheerleading,” and have described his willingness to listen with “he waits for others to advise him what to do. He is an endorser.” But upon closer examination, many critics revise their opinion. One senator was quoted as saying, “The worry about Ronald Reagan when he came here, to judge from everything written and said about him, was whether he could last longer than 9 to 5 without his cue cards. Well, he’s certainly demolished that image.”
What Reagan critics have overlooked is that pretending to be simple or less intelligent, or plain old “playing dumb,” is part of his highly successful strategy. This is a persuasion technique that cannot coexist in an individual with an inflated self-image.
Simplicity is one of the most difficult skills leading to sales success. It’s like the old saying: “The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men.”
- There is no limit to what a person can do or where that person can go if he or she doesn’t mind who gets the credit.
- Top salespeople consistently show two personality characteristics: the capacity to be firm and the capacity to be friendly. Firmness ensures strength and consistency; friendliness leads to pleasant feelings. Both qualities need to be balanced to achieve maximum success.
- The key principle of persuasion: First disarm your opponent, then strike a deal.
- A good story, told with sincerity, will disarm, persuade and sell an audience more effectively than facts or research ever will.
- Simplicity is an art and takes hard work. Simplify your communication with others; condense your ideas. Life is too short to waste time with complicated language.
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