See You at the Top

Are you one of the people who pooh-poohs positive thinking as a tool used only by the meek and weak?

Read on! Zig Ziglar is out to change your thoughts, your attitude and perhaps, your life.

On the slick red, white and blue dust jacket of his book See You At The Top (with sales approaching one million copies), he promised a “Check Up” from the “Neck Up” to eliminate “Stinkin Thinkin.”

Ziglar’s electrifying speeches have a reputation for drawing long standing ovations and leaving audiences spellbound. Trailing a microphone wire behind him, Zig speeds across the stage in Norfolk, VA. His rate of speech bursts up to 500 words per minute; he sqats, slowly raises his left hand, his voice begins to vibrate as it approaches a near stall. He relishes every single word of his famous punchline: You can get everything in life you want, if you help other people get what they want.

Ziglar is his own best success story. It began in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He was born one of twelve children. His father died when he was five, leaving his mother with five kids too young to work.

He became one of the most successful cookware salesmen of all time but quit knocking on doors when he realized his charisma for motivating others.

Although Zig has been interviewed by many reporters (including Morley Safer of 60 Minutes), Personal Selling Power felt a need to explore new answers to the familiar question facing salespeople in today’s economy: “What can I do to motivate myself?”

PSP: In one of your speeches, you mentioned that negative thinking is as common as the cold. Did you find a cure for negative thinking?

Ziglar: If you feed your mind with positive thoughts, if you are selective about the things that you choose to read, look at or listen to, then you are taking effective action against negative thinking. Just like with a computer, if you change the input, you will change the output.

PSP: So you are saying that there is a direct link between negative thinking and negative input and that people can become more selective about the input?

Ziglar: Absolutely. Let me give you an example. Thomas M. Hartman from Oklahoma City weighed 407 pounds when he attended a rally in January, 1978. He had just gone through a divorce; he was floating checks so he could eat from one week to the next; he held a job only because his boss was a friend, not because he was productive. In our all-day seminar, he began to think that he could do something. He got a set of my tapes, “How To Stay Motivated,” and started listening. He told me he has heard that set over 500 times. He could quote me verbatim from start to finish. Today, Tom weighs 200 pounds; he’s happily remarried; he teaches a Sunday school class every week. He graduated magna cum laude in psychology and is working toward his doctorate. He’s in business for himself.

PSP: It sounds like your positive input has helped him to lead a more successful life. What is your definition of success?

Ziglar: I believe that you’re successful when you’ve dealt with the physical, the mental and the spiritual man successfully. If I made millions and destroyed my health in the process, or if I became the best at what I do but neglect my family, I wouldn’t call that success.

PSP: One of your claims is that your attitudes in life determine ultimately how successful you become.

Ziglar: Yes. Dr. William James said the most important discovery of our time is the realization that by altering our attitudes we can alter our lives. There is also a Harvard University study which points out that 85 percent of the reason that people are hired or get ahead in their jobs is directly related to their attitudes.

PSP: A magazine entited California Living stated in an article about motivational speakers: “Speakers are superficial on the subject of motivation – like cheerleaders at a high school rally. Thin on content; heavy on performance.” How do you respond to that?

Ziglar: I think they are right on the button. A lot of people do leave without any real meat. Excitement, yes, but nothing they can chew on the next day.

As you know, the Bible is my great source because God’s plan deals with this dilemma: He never makes a promise unless He gives you a plan. This translates into the principle that motivation without direction is very frustrating. You need to have a plan in addition to the motivation. Motivation without a goal doesn’t get you anywhere. Personally, I never make a promise in a book, a speech or a recording unless I give a plan so my reader or listener can achieve that promise.

PSP: What is your theory of self-motivation? How do you develop it?

Ziglar: From time to time, in some “egghead discussions” with my intellectual friends, I’m told that all motivation is self-motivation. I respond to that in See You At The Top with a little analogy. When I build a fire in my fireplace, it will burn for a while. Then I notice that there are no flames. It has died down. I get up and take my poker and shake up those logs. All of a sudden, we’ve got bright flames. Now, all I did was just poke them which created some motion. The motion creates a partial vacuum and new air is pulled into the fireplace. With an additional supply of oxygen, the fire ignites and now we’ve got a flame. If I hadn’t done some poking, there would have been no flame.

Now this business about all motivation being self-motivation is only partially true. You can choose among many different sources to rekindle your motivation. In other words, the environment you select and the people you associate with become large contributing factors.

PSP: Positive relationships will contribute to positive motivation?

Ziglar: Certainly. One day, I heard my son saying: “The thing I like best about my Dad is that he loves Mom.” You see, positive relationships create a feeling of closeness and become a source of strength. The likelihood of motivating yourself is greatly incresed with positive relationships.

The equation also works the other way. I’ve been active in the war against drugs for a long time. I strongly believe that a person is inclined to use dope in direct proportion to the number of times it is offered to him.

PSP: And to the frustrations that he is carrying around without knowing how to deal with them.

Ziglar: Yes, he might also say no 17 times, but then that one day he’s had a bad day and feels frustrated and exasperated, and is unable to recognize the danger and is bound to suffer in the long run.

PSP: Do you feel that the exclusive focus on the positive side of life can lead to a new set of problems?

Ziglar: There is always a possibility. I do believe, though, that if you were to take 200 cases, you’d find 95 times that the positive response is going to be the right approach.

PSP: You are familiar with Sam Cooper. He attended one of your seminars in 1976. According to a magazine report, he was moved as never before about his own potential for greatness. Two years later he was a millionaire. By 1979, Esquire Magazine reports, he grossed over $10 million in the motivational business. But in 1980, the Memphis Call Bulletin described Cooper’s massive financial setbacks and his failure to fulfill his commitments to hundreds of subscribers to his Positive Living Magazine. Isn’t that an example of how excessive optimism can lead to an unrealistic appraisal of one’s true abilities?

Ziglar: Well, there is no question about it in that case. First of all, Sam Cooper did not use sound business judgement and every time you violate that law, you’re going to ultimately end up in trouble.

PSP: So, in other words, the positive input and the positive attitude must be supplemented with a sound business plan and professional skills.

Ziglar: Absolutely. Let me sum it up this way. Positive thinking is an optimistic hope, not necessarily based on any facts. Positive believing is the same as optimistic hope, but this time based on a sound reason. Here is an example. It would be positive thinking if I could whip Larry Holmes. It would be an idiotic action if I tried to do it.

PSP: I’ve heard many sales managers express doubts about the value of a motivational seminar. They say: “Our people get fired up for a while and they are totally enthusiastic, but two days later, they’re back in the same old groove – nothing changed.”

Ziglar: Well, let me refer to it indirectly. Another reporter once asked in a different way the same question. He said, “The charge is that motivation is not permanent. How do you repond to that?” And I said, “Absolutely right!” It is not permanent. Neither is bathing. But if you bathe every day, you’re going to smell good. In my seminars, I explain that 15 minutes a day of motivation from a good audio cassette or a book can make a tremendous difference in your life and give you a motivational lift every day.

PSP: You’ve said once that life is simple but not easy, and that too many people are looking for quick and easy solutions.

Ziglar: Right.

PSP: The answers that you give in your speeches and on your cassette tapes, are they simple and easy to apply?

Ziglar: Simple and easy to understand. But I’ll never tell you life is easy. There are a lot of days when you don’t feel like doing your job. But I firmly believe that the best work is often done by people who don’t feel like doing it. You know, the mother wakes up at 2:00am with her baby crying; she’s had a tough night and a tough day, but she’s gonna get up because of love and responsibility.

PSP: You recommend that salespeople should listen to your tapes 16 times to completely absorb the full message.

Ziglar: Let me explain why I suggest they listen so many times. There are several university studies revealing that two weeks after you’ve learned anything new, unless it’s reinforced, you only remember about 4 percent of it. That’s the first reason. The second reason is that while we are listening, we may experience a certain mood and our minds will seek out messages that relate to that particular mood. On another day, let’s say you just made a sale, you’ll be in a different mood and a whole new range of messages of the same recording will become clear in your mind. So by listening 16 times, the odds are that you will have absorbed the entire content.

PSP: Let’s say I’ve listened 16 times to your tapes on motivation, do I know then how to motivate myself?

Ziglar: Yes.

PSP: Do I master the skills sufficiently so that I become independent of your cassette?

Ziglar: Only if you’ve been practicing the things we’ve been advocating. It’s like driving a car. You don’t learn to drive a car by watching.

PSP: Can I graduate in self-motivation, ever?

Ziglar: Boy, that’s a tough one. Nobody has ever asked me that before? I don’t think so, and I don’t think I’ve graduated because I constantly read and constantly study. I think you could draw an analogy with eating. You can’t graduate in eating. You need to continue to make choices about your input. The same is true with self-motivation. You need to continue to make choices about what level of self-manipulation you want to maintain.

PSP: You seem to have an unusual ability to create persuasive analogies to illustrate your point. In your book See You At The Top, you’ve used over 800 analogies, one-liners and power phrases. How did you develop this technique?

Ziglar: Well, one of the things I did when I first got interested in motivation was to buy a yearly datebook, and on the top of every page, there was a power phrase, a one-liner. This was long before the days of cassette recordings. I wrote them on 3×5 cards and put them up on the visor of my car. And I’d be riding down the highway and think about them. Over the years, I committed to memory serveral hundred of them.

PSP: Many salespeople have a tough time in this recession economy. What thoughts can you offer to approach these tough challenges more positively?

Ziglar: A good friend of mine, Calvin Hunt in Victoria, Texas, said, “You know, Zig, it’s an absolute fact that when we are in an economic slump, 50 percent of all salespeople literally slow down rather than speed up their efforts. They are not motivated to do something. They lose that enthusiasm.

“Now,” he continued, “when that happens, it simply means that if business is down 20 percent, but 50 percent of the salespeople are not nearly as active, your own personal prospect list is considerably higher than if there was no recession.”

PSP: And the winners still keep winning.

Ziglar: Absolutely. It’s their discipline, their commitment to maintain a high level of motivation, and their sense of direction that gets them to the top.

PSP: Thank you.

My First Sale – Zig Ziglar

It was on a hot August afternoon in 1947. It happened on Adelia Drive in Columbia, South Carolina. I’d been knocking on doors all afternoon and nobody would let me in. I made a solemn vow that if I didn’t at least get into a house by the time I got to Devine Street, I was going to quit. I’d been working 10 days, and had not sold anything.

I knocked on the door of Mrs. B. C. Dickert and she said, “Well you know, it sounds interesting, but my sister-in-law, Mrs. O. J. Freeman, lives next door, and I know she’ll be interested. Why don’t you go talk to her and if she looks at it, just call me over.”

So I literally ran next door – that was the first word of encouragement I’d heard all day – and I talked to Mrs. Freeman. She said, “Well, I’d want my husband to see it.”

So, I said, “Well, I’ll come back tonight.” So I got back that night and they invited Mrs. Dickert over. I finished the presentation and I can tell you that it was set number 541; that it cost $61.45; I can tell you that the down payment was $16.45; I can tell you that when I sold the Freemans, I was so enamoured and excited that I just flat forgot that Mrs. Dickert even lived. I just ignored her. And finally Mr. Freeman said, “Mr. Ziglar, I believe that if you were to talk to Mrs. Dickert, she might buy a set.”

And so, with considerable sales technique and skill, I said, “What about it, Mrs. Dickert?”

She said, “Well, I don’t have my checkbook, even.”

And again, with considerable diplomacy, I said, “Well shoot, you live just next door. Go get it!” And she went next door, so I made two sales that night.

We lived in a little upstairs apartment and I didn’t hit more than two steps on the way up that night. That redhead knew that something had happened. I tell you, we were elated! We jumped up and down and laughed and celebrated by buying two quarts of ice cream.

Zig’s Three Keys To Sales Success

Zig Ziglar offers many excellent selling tips in his seminars like:

Have an absolute and total belief that what you’re selling is worth more than the price you ask for it. Your belief in your product should be so great that you ought to be using it.

Mentally prepare yourself, review your product knowledge before every call. Try to write down your presentation and you’ll discover that you are using too many words, that you drift away from the point, or that you are not specific enough. Writing will remind you that you’ve forgotten something and help you generate better selling ideas.

Use emotion and logic in your presentation. Logic makes people think; emotion makes them act. For example, in selling cookware, we would take the logical approach and explain that according to the USDA, the average shrinkage of a 4 pound roast in the oven or in the ordinary pot was one pound, seven ounces. Cooking it in our method, you lost five ounces. Logically, you could say: “If you had a cook that stole one pound of your roast every time she cooked one, you’d fire her. No hesitation! Here, you’ve got this beat-up old pot that’s been stealing from you for 20 years. I think it’s time you fired it. Fire that old pot and get a new one. And it’s not going to steal from you!” That logically would make sense.

Then, we would say from a practical point of view, we are what we eat. If the food that you put in your body is short on nutrition, then eventually you are going to pay for it. Sometimes I’d say, “Our set of cookware will help your baby grow up with a better chance at good health.”

We combined the logic on the dollar and the emotion on the good health for better results. You need to balance these keys. If you use all logic, you end up with the best-educated prospect in town. If you use all emotion, you make the sale, but tomorrow you’ll have the buyer’s remorse and a cancelled order.

Facts and Figures

Full Name: Hilary Hinton Ziglar

Born: November 6, 1926 in Tennille, Alabama

Education: Yazoo City High School, Millsaps College, Jackson, MS, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

Married: Jean Abernathy, November 26, 1946

Children: Suzanne, Cindy, Julie, John Thomas

Religion: Baptist

Height: 5’10”

Weight: 170 lbs

Custom Tailor: Doyle Hoyer, Glasgow Clothing, Fort Madison, Iowa

Favorite Exercise: Jogging

Favorite Recreational Sport: Golf

Favorite Spectator Sport: Football

Favorite Movie: The Sound Of Music

Favorite Reading: The Bible, other inspirational books

Favorite Restaurant: Farfello, Dallas

Favorite Desserts: Lemon custard and peppermint ice cream

Favorite Vacation Place: San Antonio, Texas