Victor Conant, energetic president of the Chicago based Nightingale-Conant Corporation, often quotes his father who, with Earl Nightingale, cofounded the company in 1956: “Advancing in a career requires a constant upgrading of your thoughts. You always have to keep looking at how you can improve yourself in life.” Today, the Nightingale-Conant Corporation is a $50 million success story. As one of the nation’s leading producers of audio-cassette programs, the company itself is a lesson in how self-improvement can lead to sales success.

When Vic Conant’s father, Lloyd Conant, died in 1986, he left a prosperous and successful company that started 30 years earlier during a historic meeting of minds between Earl Nightingale and Lloyd Conant. Earl Nightingale was one of only 100 survivors of the 1,100 aboard the sinking battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor. He later went to Chicago and began playing the role of Sky King on the radio. He also purchased an insurance agency and motivated his salespeople with short pep talks. Some of these talks were recorded and found an enthusiastic audience. From this evolved two famous recordings, The Strangest Secret and Lead the Field.

Lloyd Conant, who served as an army glider pilot in W.W.II, started his own lettershop in Chicago. A perpetual seeker of inspiration and collector of religious principles, he learned of The Strangest Secret and sent a letter to Earl Nightingale in 1956. They met, established trust in each other’s abilities and began doing business. In the early years, Earl Nightingale was the exclusive company product and Lloyd Conant was the indefatigable salesman.

Vic Conant vividly recalls how his father piped motivational messages throughout his house.

The Power Of Attitude

“My dad had a speaker in every room of the house, even the bathroom. I remember listening to Lead the Field for the first time when I was 13. I have since listened to this recording over a hundred times. It had a very powerful effect on me and my life. I guess the magic word is attitude. I believe that, over time, the ideas in the recording virtually compel you to better thoughts and better performance. For instance, when I came home from college during the summer, my dad took me out on sales calls to sell our recordings to businesses. Since I believed in the product and the impact it had on me, it was fairly easy for me to make cold calls and persuade people to buy.”

During the early days, Earl Nightingale’s inspirational messages were recorded on 7-inch records. Vic Conant carried a battery operated record player into business offices and asked for permission to play a special record with a brief sales pitch recorded by Earl Nightingale extolling the benefits of the program. Many sales managers liked the recording so much that they bought the program and the portable record player. Vic Conant remembers that if salespeople used the record player in their car, they had to tape a little rock to the arm to keep the needle from bouncing around.

The Challenges Of Selling Success

“After I graduated from college, I went back to the company and after about eight months, I got drafted. I went into the service for a couple of years and then to Vietnam for a year. When I came back, our company was heavily recruiting distributors. We really thought that we were going to be the next IBM. So many people loved Earl’s material and they would do anything to work with our company to sell these recordings. But as it turned out, it was a very difficult product to sell. It was very inexpensive, so it was very hard for the person selling it to make a living. But that was not the only problem. We were really selling success and the principles of success. So as a salesperson, you better look like and sound like you know what you’re doing. As it turned out, we found that your best prospect, a 10, would buy only from another 10, which is your top salesperson. But a top salesperson wouldn’t want to go out and sell this product himself, he’d want to get a distributorship and hire others to do the selling. So he would hire a number of 5’s who would go out and try to call on those 10’s. I have watched other companies over the years try to sell our type of material through distributorship networks and it just hasn’t worked.”

In 1970, the founders of Nightingale-Conant realized that their marketing strategy had failed. Vic Conant remembers that 22 of the company’s employees – including himself – had a chance to get new careers. That reduced the total number of employees to about 40. While Vic Conant found a job selling real estate, his father – against the advice of his friends – searched for new ways to sell motivation and success.

The Seemingly Impossible Obstacle

“Everybody told my dad, `Why don’t you quit beating your head against the wall with this audio stuff?’ It never seemed to make a profit, yet it was always promising riches. It was exciting, but unprofitable. We knew it was just a marketing problem, but we could not figure out how to solve it. But one of the great things about him was that he was faithful to his dreams. He just kept plugging. One of his idols was the founder of Xerox who was told over and over to get out of the business, yet his business became a huge success. I never heard my father ever consider stopping.”

Lloyd Conant was frustrated but patient. He kept plugging and new ideas and solutions appeared on the scene from unexpected avenues. In 1978 a talented author, unknown and nearly broke, presented an exciting idea for an audio cassette series entitled The Psychology of Winning. His name: Dr. Denis Waitley. Excited about the new product, Lloyd Conant developed a bold direct mail marketing campaign to promote the new six-cassette album. It worked. At the same time, an important shift in the market helped the company. General Motors had begun to install audio cassette players in medium sized cars as standard equipment. The road to recovery was now well paved. In the midst of these promising developments, Vic Conant rejoined the company.

Million Dollar Turnaround

“We always kid around here about the million dollar idea. The Psychology of Winning cassette album was such an idea. We’ve sold over one million copies and grossed over $40 million with this product alone during the past 10 years. What makes it such a great success? I think one of the keys is that the program has to help you in some significant way. Many authors can make you laugh, they can present information in an enjoyable way, but when all is said and done, what counts is how many ideas you can really use. For example, I have listened to Lead the Field or The Psychology of Winning many times, but every time I listen, I am experiencing life in a different way, my problems are different and so are my opportunities. And a part of the program that appealed to me the last time, I may not even hear this time. Another idea that I didn’t even contemplate the last time may be the idea that jumps out and helps me this time. So you can listen to these programs over and over and get help every single time. It seems that as we change we listen with a different ear to the same message.”

After the legendary success with Dr. Denis Waitley’s recording, Nightingale-Conant contracted Superstars such as Dr. Wayne Dyer, Lee Iacocca, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Tom Peters, George Walther and many others. Sales soared from a modest $5 million in 1978 to $14 million in 1983 and reached $50 million in 1988. Today the company offers over 300 cassette programs from over 100 different authors covering such subject matters as achievement, management, motivation, negotiation, selling skills, speaking skills, telemarketing, time management and physical fitness. There is even a program for building your vocabulary. Lloyd Conant’s vision of a complete library of sound success tools has become reality. He knew from Earl Nightingale’s radio success that the spoken word was the ultimate visual medium. Good authors tend to stretch the listener’s imagination and open avenues to new thinking. Lloyd Conant’s ambition was to transform the listener’s mind into an exciting audio theater offering unlimited repeat performances of world class experts. He genuinely wanted to help people grow. He once told a reporter, “Some people have a brush with success and then they plateau. We try to get our people to keep on growing and never plateau. If you plateau, you’re a failure.”

Not Every Eagle Can Soar

“Not every program was a success. For example, we developed a beautiful cassette series with Chuck Yaeger. It was probably the best production we’ve ever done. We had high expectations since the author had written a best-selling book and was known nationwide. We geared up for the promotion and sent out several hundred thousand direct mail letters but we sold only a handful of albums. What we have learned from that is that our customers don’t want to listen to a recording just for pleasure, they are looking to learn something that is going to help them in the future. We tell every author that the first side of the first cassette better say something good, or we will get the product back during the thirty day trial period. We now rate an audio cassette by the idea count. Our customers want to know what ideas they can get in return for their listening investment.”

As a visitor to Nightingale-Conant headquarters on a Friday morning, I was surprised at the casual but businesslike atmosphere. David Nightingale, Earl’s son who is in charge of new product development, wore a blue T-shirt with the letters: “Customer Service Equals Success.” I soon noticed other company officers and secretaries with similar T-shirts. Vic Conant commented, “Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude.” He had an appointment with his banker and wore a dark blue suit.

The company’s three dozen telephone sales consultants are supervised and trained by a supersaleswoman named Connie Suhajda. As soon as I was introduced to her, she received a phone call from one of her regular customers. I listened to her cheerful voice taking an order for a newly released program. Connie entered the order on the computer and checked the client’s previous purchases. After confirming the order, she shifted her tone of voice, kidding the customer with a carefully honed upselling routine: “And what else are you going to order today?” After a brief moment of attentive listening, Connie continued, “I know that you have two programs of Wayne Dyer. Did you know that he has a brand new six-cassette album called Transformations? I really think it’s great. Would you like me to send you this to try out? I am sure you’ll enjoy it.” After wrapping up this quick close, Connie said with a laugh, “This little line, ‘And what else are you going to order today?’ is one of my most powerful sales secrets. It’s almost impossible not to answer with, ‘What else do you have?'”

In meeting the many enthusiastic people at Nightingale-Conant, I begin to see the effects of ongoing audio learning.