Brian Tracy and the Psychology of Selling – Success – Achievement

A few months ago, we polled a representative sample of our readers and asked, “Please name a person you would like to see interviewed in Personal Selling Power.” To our surprise, the name Brian Tracy was at the top. The tall, 45 year old, Canadian-born MBA graduate has become one of America’s most successful sales and management teachers. His audio cassette recordings set new sales records in 1988. With over 200,000 albums sold last year, there were more executives listening to Brian Tracy than to Chrysler’s Chairman Lee Iacocca. Brian, who speaks four languages and has traveled to over 80 countries, was virtually unknown in America five years ago, until his first Nightingale-Conant recording, “The Psychology of Achievement.” In 1986 he moved his speaking, consulting and training business, Brian Tracy Learning Systems, from western Canada to Solana Beach, California, where he lives with his wife Barbara and his three children.

PSP: David Nightingale said that you are one of the most talented authors he’s ever met. What do you consider your three top talents?

Brian Tracy: I am a voracious reader and prepare extensively. For example, if I do a one-hour tape on personality styles in selling, I read ten books on the subject and twenty articles. The second would be my ability to synthesize information. I see myself as a river taking in streams of information from all sides. I channel them together, condense them, and present the essence of a subject. Just the other day someone told me that he had been through a three-day program on personality styles and didn’t learn any more than what I’d covered in sixty minutes on one of my tapes. The third thing is that I try to present the information in a fast paced, high-energy style mixed with stories and anecdotes that illustrate the major points so it becomes more enjoyable to listen to.

PSP: To what degree do stories enhance learning?

Brian Tracy: I believe that in audio-education and in selling, you need to activate both the right side and the left side of the brain. I call it the windshield wiper method. The reason my programs are so easy to listen to is because they engage both brain hemispheres continuously. But you have to balance the rhythm, because if you tell too many stories, people get frustrated; if you present too many facts, people won’t concentrate.

PSP: It seems to me that your stories help separate the different learning lessons. For example, when you teach the basics of identifying customer needs, you use your famous doctor analogy.

Brian Tracy: Yes, in medicine there is the examination phase, the diagnosis and the prescription. You find that the best doctors spend most of their time examining the patient. This is consistent with what the best salespeople do. As a result, the client develops more confidence in the prescription.

PSP: You have been in selling for a long time and you have met many successful salespeople. What do you consider to be the key characteristics for sales success?

Brian Tracy: The first key would be sensitivity. That’s an element which is very hard to teach. I have read all the material on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and found an enormous amount of evidence to suggest that it doesn’t work. I don’t think that great salespeople consciously move their bodies in a certain way. They are very sensitive to their customers and they get in step with them naturally. These people don’t focus on themselves; they actually lose themselves in their pursuit of serving their customers.

PSP: But sensitivity has optimum levels. Some salespeople are oversensitive to the point where they become petrified, while others are insensitive to the degree that they discourage clients from dealing with them. How can you regulate sensitivity to achieve optimum performance?

Brian Tracy: I think the main regulator is self-esteem. If you are really happy with yourself, if you are confident in your abilities, if you feel that you are a valuable person, then you tend to reach optimum levels of sensitivity. When you are not overly concerned with yourself, when you are not worrying whether a customer likes you, when you are not handicapped by an exaggerated need for approval, you will operate in the high performance mode.

PSP: What would be another major success characteristic?

Brian Tracy: Caring about the other person. In my talks, I really care that my audiences get information that helps them sell better. Top salespeople care about the prospect and believe in the value of their product. A lot of people say they care. However, when you look at their actions, you realize that they don’t.

PSP: Actions speak louder than words.

Brian Tracy: I once heard a saying, “You can tell your beliefs only by what you do.” Which means that your true values are always expressed in your actions. Now in selling, caring is expressed through many different actions. The most important is preparation. Let’s go back to the doctor analogy. If a doctor cares about a patient he’s going to do surgery on, then he will prepare exhaustively and examine all the charts and plan for every detail in advance. In selling, if you really care about your customer, you will thoroughly prepare yourself to serve that customer well.

PSP: Caring is preparing.

Brian Tracy: Right.

PSP: What about the ability to deal with adversity. Would you add this to the list of success characteristics?

Brian Tracy: Absolutely. Remember the Greek saying that character strength comes from a long process of dealing with adversity. Character is the result of countless hours of dealing with difficulties in a constructive way. Unfortunately, it isn’t a quick process. I have seen many salespeople do well in a good economy, but fail when business declines. The very best salespeople have built their character strength during thousands of hours of frustration. Gerhard, you have done a lot of research on the subject and I was very impressed with the work you did on disappointment. I even included that in various talks. It’s so important to know that disappointment is a test of your character and if you want to be successful, you need to deal with it constructively.

PSP: I believe that disappointment can be transformed into ambition and future success. Can we go back to your own experiences? I understand you had a rough time as a kid?

Brian Tracy: My parents were critical and destructive. We didn’t have much money, but a great thing happened to me, I became a passionate reader at the age of five.

PSP: Before you went to school?

Brian Tracy: Yes, I used to go down to the corner drug store and borrow a stack of comic books, read them all very carefully, and bring them back and get some more. Then I moved up to books. I have read thousands of books and I know that this has been largely responsible for my own growth and success.

PSP: Books can open a new world, but they also show us the white spaces in the universe of our own knowledge. I do most of my research in the Library of Congress and when I leave the building late at night, I always feel humbled because I know so little and there are tens of thousands of books I haven’t read.

Brian Tracy: I was once told by a very wise man to imagine a large piece of paper and to draw a small circle in the center. The small circle on the page represents the amount of knowledge we have and the large piece of paper represents the knowledge that exists. When we expand the circle of our own knowledge, we automatically expand the circumference of our ignorance. I guess that is why people with small circles and little knowledge are so impressed with their own intelligence.

PSP: That’s an interesting observation. It seems that the paper in your analogy doesn’t maintain it’s original size because knowledge is expanding with every moment.

Brian Tracy: Exactly. That’s why we have to be perpetual learning machines. I see myself as a big hopper with new information constantly going into the top. If you want to grow, there is no other choice. You see, every change in our life is preceded by new information. So if you expose yourself to a great amount of information, you will have a greater chance for self-improvement. It’s also an exciting journey to self-discovery. You often can read thousands of words and then suddenly stumble over one idea that will change your perspective on life and lead you on to a path of greater achievement.

PSP: Can you give me an example of how one book, one author, or one idea has led you to greater achievement?

Brian Tracy: Have you ever read anything by Ouspensky?

PSP: No.

Brian Tracy: There were two little known Russian physicians who wrote something very interesting about human psychology at the turn of the century. They believed that the key to the evolution of human beings can be found in the conservation of energy. They said that most of our energy is dissipated in the expression of negative emotions. When people get upset, angry or depressed, energy is wasted. To conserve energy, we need to plug the energy leaks. For instance, when things don’t turn out the way we expect, we can choose not to get upset and as a result encourage the flow of positive energy. Positive energy leads people to higher levels of consciousness and higher levels of achievement. This book had a very strong and positive influence on me.

PSP: Did it help you in your career?

Brian Tracy: Certainly. I think there is a universal drive in human beings to strive towards transcendence, towards being more. We can’t reach that stage until we reach the point where we are somewhat at peace with ourselves. Where we feel that we are good at what we do and feel that we are making a contribution for others. Einstein once said that we can only achieve transcendence when we reach the point where we feel totally fulfilled. Interestingly, this feeling of fulfillment is always connected with actions that help others. I was privileged to work for a brief period in Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s village in Africa. We talked with Dr. Schweitzer every day and I was deeply moved by his total commitment to helping other people in a spirit of complete selflessness. He was a great role model for millions of people.

PSP: Why is so little known about you personally, yet your work is known worldwide?

Brian Tracy: I lived in Canada up until two years ago and moved to California only in November of 1986. You could be the best speaker in Canada and the world would never know about you. America is the land of opportunity and I personally believe that if what I am doing is worthy of publicity, then it will happen.

PSP: You were born in Canada?

Brian Tracy: Yes, I am the oldest of four brothers and we lived in Toronto until I was eight. Then my father tried to find new opportunities and we moved to southern California where I lived until I was sixteen. Then we moved back to Canada – Vancouver, British Columbia.

PSP: What did your parents do?

Brian Tracy: My father was a carpenter and my mother was a nurse.

PSP: Are both still living?

Brian Tracy: No, my father died in a car crash in 1976 and my mother died of a heart attack five years later.

PSP: That must have been very difficult for you.

Brian Tracy: It was.

PSP: When did you travel to Africa?

Brian Tracy: When I was 20, I went to Europe with a couple of friends. We planned a bicycle trip to Johannesburg, South Africa.

PSP: Where did you start?

Brian Tracy: From London. After a few days we realized why nobody had ever done it. We rode our bikes down to Gibraltar and bought a Landrover. Then we crossed the Sahara Desert which took about six weeks. Our vehicle broke down, we had all kinds of challenges and nearly lost our lives, but we made it across the Sahara and eventually across the entire African continent down to Johannesburg where I worked for a year and a half.

PSP: Where did you go from there?

Brian Tracy: Back to Europe for a year, then to the Far East. I traveled overland to Singapore, then north to Bangkok where I got a job selling mutual funds. I did very well and eventually recruited more than one hundred salespeople and set up offices in six countries. I actually became vice president of the company, but at one point I began to get very disappointed because the company wasn’t investing the money properly. There was nothing I could do but to quit my job. It was a very tough, but important, lesson for me.

PSP: How would you describe that lesson?

Brian Tracy: I think that the quality of integrity is probably the central quality for success. If we violate our inner conscience, if we do something that isn’t right, we will always suffer for it. Whenever we do something that isn’t true or isn’t honest, it will always come back to haunt us.

PSP: After your years of world travel, you went back to Canada?

Brian Tracy: Yes, and I didn’t do very well for a while. I remember in 1975, I made less than $15,000. I finally realized that I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. So I sat down and began to write down a series of goals and the next year I made $50,000, the next year $75,000 and then $100,000. I also enrolled in an Executive MBA program with the University of Alberta and got my degree when I was 32 years old.

PSP: How did you finance your studies?

Brian Tracy: I was working in real estate development and I put together a shopping center and made about $50,000 cash. I used that money to support myself while I got my degree.

PSP: Was public speaking one of your major goals?

Brian Tracy: Yes. When I began speaking, my goal was to become one of the top ten speakers in the United States. I started giving free talks and I believed that if I really worked at it, studied and improved my presentations, I would eventually be successful.

PSP: You seem to be happy with yourself.

Brian Tracy: I feel that I have been given a gift and the true purpose of that gift is to help other people.

PSP: How would you summarize the philosophy behind your own success?

Brian Tracy: If you learn what you have to do to be successful and then do it consistently until it becomes a habit, you can achieve anything you want in life. There are no limitations on the outside, only on the inside.

PSP: What would you hope that a person in the year 2200 will be able to find about you if he studies the life of Brian Tracy?

Brian Tracy: That’s a great question. I hope he will find that Brian Tracy was someone who showed people what they could be. He caused people to discover their inborn potential and helped them be better, happier and more productive.

PSP: Let me try an analogy. When this future person checks the 2200 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, he may look up two related words. One would be the catalytic converter which has had a positive impact on the outside environment and the other would be the “human potential converter,” the Brian Tracy effect on people’s lives on the inside.

Brian Tracy: Great. Eliminating internal pollution… spelled i-g-n-o-r-a-n-c-e.

PSP: Thank you.