Harvey Mackay

Hard-Won Lessons From A Hungry Fighter.

It is easy to like and remember Harvey Mackay. Long after you’ve listened to one of his speeches, and long after you’ve read his book, his sleek one-liners continue to cruise your mind. “He who burns his bridges better be a damn good swimmer.” Or, “It isn’t the people you fire who make your life miserable, it’s the people you don’t.” Or, “Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

Harvey Mackay, owner and CEO of the prosperous $35 million-a-year Mackay Envelope Corporation in Minneapolis, MN, is a supersalesman. He played a major role in persuading 28 NFL owners to bring the Super Bowl to Minneapolis in 1992, he was a catalyst in getting the $100 million Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome sports complex built in Minneapolis and he also wrote an international bestseller that made publishing history.

His book Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, was rated the number-one business book in the United States in 1988. (Translated into some 16 languages and distributed in 80 countries.) As a result, demand for Mackay – already a popular speaker at major universities like Harvard and Stanford – skyrocketed, making him one of the highest-paid speakers in the world today.

The bottom line? After he received a six-figure advance for the hardcover rights, the paperback rights were sold for a whopping $787,500. In addition, Mackay is reportedly receiving well over $2 million for the publishing rights to his second book, Beware The Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt, subtitled “Love What You Do, Do What You Love, Deliver More Than You Promise,” scheduled for release in February, 1990.

When asked how he feels about his chances for producing another bestseller, he responded with a smile, “After a hit, many people lose their intensity, their focus, or they simply stop being as hungry as they were before they wrote the big bestseller. I take pride in challenging myself. I’m a hungry fighter.”

Selling a Bestseller

Mackay believes in doing his homework. Before he even wrote his first word, he interviewed over 100 authors, publishers, agents, lawyers and booksellers. In the process he slowly realized the many obstacles to getting his book published. Harvey explained that publishers receive about 500,000 manuscripts each year, but only 50,000 books get published. That makes the odds of getting published one in ten. Once a book is published, the odds of selling the publisher’s initial press run of 10,000 books are even lower than that.

During his research, Mackay learned that selling books is the only retail business where the merchandise is sold on consignment. The standard industry expression is “gone today and here tomorrow.” Unsold books are returned to the publisher’s warehouse and then resold at deep discounts. He soon learned that creating a bestseller would be a formidable challenge. Harvey Mackay’s creative efforts for meeting this challenge and making it to The New York Times Bestseller List for over 52 weeks in a row provide a unique study in marketing, selling and midwestern chutzpah.

“I had to create both an awareness of my book and some competition for it. Fortunately, I was able to talk to a publishing expert who arranged for me to appear live at the Stanford Publishing Program. My manuscript was compulsory reading for a class and I got a unique chance to constructively change the book. At the same time, this session created an opportunity to evaluate my potential for marketing the book.”

Selling The Publisher

After this eye-opening experience, Mackay went back to the drawing board. He rewrote, polished and edited his manuscript. Then best-selling author Ken Blanchard (The One-Minute Manager) arranged a meeting with Larry Hughes, publisher of William Morrow in New York.

“Hughes has a very big and very impressive corner office on Madison Avenue. He also had a key question for me. `What’s so different about your book?’ I told him that I had visited at least 100 bookstores and studied the retail business.

“When you walk into a store, you only look at the front covers of the books on display. You see ten pictures of Iacocca, ten pictures of Trump. Then I took him to the corner window and asked, `You see the tops of these trucks? For the past 27 years, we have been painting our name, Mackay Envelope Corporation, on the tops of all our trucks which crisscross the United States. There is no significant price difference whether you have two panels or three panels painted.’

“Then I told him to use the same philosophy for selling my book. What’s wrong with turning the book around and using the back cover for selling the book? The idea was to use the headline, `You Can Judge This Book By Its Back Cover,’ and display the book twice, the first display showing the front cover, the second display showing the back cover. That way we’d double our chances for selling the book.”

Getting Endorsements

The publisher was impressed with Mackay’s sales and marketing insights. Later, he was even more impressed when Mackay came back with endorsements from such diverse figures as Ted Koppel, Billy Graham, Gloria Steinem, Walter Mondale and Robert Redford. After a brief negotiation, he agreed to a six-figure advance, a $150,000 advertising and promotion budget and a 100,000-copy first printing. An extraordinarily attractive deal for a first-time author. But how did Mackay get the celebrity endorsements?

“The most important word in the English language, if you want to be a success, can’t be found in the dictionary. It’s `Rolodex.’

“I took 48 names and sent these people copies of my book with a nice cover letter. I’ve met most of these people at one time or another and worked at building the relationship. For example, Ted Koppel came one day to speak at the University of Minnesota. I picked him up at the airport. I knew about his passion for playing tennis and he happened to travel with his tennis racket that day. Naturally we talked about tennis and he asked me, `How much time do we have before the meeting?’ I told him that there were 2,000 people waiting to hear him speak. He thought that there was enough time for hitting a few balls before his speech and we headed for the tennis courts. We had a great time and then raced back to the meeting, with no time to spare. A few days later, I sent him a huge, seven foot long, twenty-five pound tennis racket with an oversized tennis ball and a small poem: `Here’s to the Star of Nightline – To help him improve his sightline. Just line up the ball and then wack it – You’ll never miss one with this racket.’ Ted Koppel sent a note back recommending that I give up poetry. He later sent this endorsement of my book, `Harvey Mackay takes you on an easy-reader ride to success in the business world.'”

Dealing With Rejection

Mackay’s contract read that the book title had to be mutually agreeable to both the author and the publisher. William Morrow wanted a different title than Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. They told Mackay that the title was too long, that it didn’t tell the reader what the book was about, and that some people might think that it was a book about skin diving. After a meeting with the publisher, Mackay’s title was voted down 11 to 1. He went back to Minneapolis to rethink his strategy.

“Well, being reasonable, I had to accept the remote possibility that 11 professionals who run one of the most successful publishing houses in America might have a better idea of what would sell in the marketplace. But I wasn’t ready to accept it yet. So I went to a local marketing research firm known for their expertise in creating and testing product names for companies like 3M, General Mills or Procter & Gamble. They took ten people who didn’t know anything about business books. They worked on the book title for six hours. During the first hour they had to read about fifty pages of my book. They did not know my title. Their task was to find a title for my business book. After a few hours, they had 800 book titles pasted on the wall of the conference room. Interestingly, one of the titles was Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, which someone picked up from a sentence in the text. Then they began to put colored stars next to the titles they liked. Swim With The Sharks… received the most gold stars. Armed with this research, I went back to the publisher and when I left, the vote was 12 to 0 in favor of Swim With The Sharks. The sales lesson? Dig your well before you are thirsty.”

Selling To The Top

In any sales campaign, timing is crucial. The promotion for a book is no different. Harvey learned from publishing experts that the window of opportunity for making the bestseller list consists of a brief, six-week time span immediately following publication. All efforts – advertising, direct mail, media appearances, print interviews, book excerpts in magazines – have to be orchestrated with the precision of a Swiss watch.

“You have to remember that there are 50,000 titles published every year. Every time a book hits the shelves, there are 49,999 titles right behind it, ready to shove it off the shelves, right into the remainder bin. We squeezed a 15-city media tour into a 10-day blur. Publicity included excerpts in the airline magazines, the Harvard Business Review and The Los Angeles Times with syndication in forty newspapers across the country. Before the launch, I realized that Waldenbooks, the largest bookselling chain in the country, had ordered only 3,000 books. B. Dalton ordered the same quantity. That meant that Sharks would go belly-up before it barely made a splash.

“I went to Stamford, Connecticut to see Harry Hoffman, chairman of Waldenbooks and one of the most powerful people in publishing and retailing today. It’s like going to Mecca, the place is kind of off-limits to authors and that was all the more reason to go. I told Mr. Hoffman that I was scheduled to go on a 35-city tour and showed him the schedule of 125 radio and TV talk shows across the nation. Once he saw my single-mindedness and commitment, his order went from 3,000 to 15,000 hardcover books. A few days later, B. Dalton did the same. The arch rival across the street had upped the ante.

“Meanwhile, Crown bookstores had not ordered a single book. I called the CEO on the phone and told him about the marketing plan, the big orders from B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and he agreed to take 5,000.”

Selling At Every Level

At this point, Mackay was ready to sell his book through media appearances. Authors with an engaging media personality can move mountains of books. It is estimated that after Mackay appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show (with up to 16 million viewers), well over 35,000 consumers headed for the bookstores to buy Swim With The Sharks. Before the dizzying media tour began, Harvey launched a double-punch sales campaign that no author before him ever had conceived.

“From my experience in the envelope business, I knew a little about direct mail advertising. We developed a special mailing to 5,000 bookstore managers in advance of the inventory shipment of my book. The envelope was manufactured by our company, it had a nice little gold seal and a bright red shark. The letter outlined the sales strategy, it contained the endorsements and excerpts from the book and other selling information. I had the publisher’s salespeople add a touch of class to the mailing with personalized notes. Then I made a stop at Ingram Books in Nashville, TN. Ingram is the country’s largest book wholesaler. Instead of calling dozens of different publishers, bookstore managers can get any book in print within 48 hours from Ingram. They carry over 150,000 titles. After meeting with the president, I met with their telephone salespeople who are in touch with those 5,000 bookstores across the country. I gave each one a copy of my book and a golden shark pin. They found out that I was a human being and I found out that these people seldom see an author. So when any of the 5,000 bookstores call them up and order 27 Iacoccas and 40 Trumps, they may say, `Oh, incidentally, we’ve got Swim With The Sharks…do you want to try 30 of those?’

“The selling lesson? Little things mean a lot. Not true. Little things mean everything!”

The Big Payoff

Harvey’s book made it to the bestseller list within the first two weeks of publication. His strategy of doing his homework paid off. William Morrow knew that they had a hit on their hands and organized an auction to sell the paperback rights to Harvey’s new book.

“One day the president of William Morrow called to tell me about the auction. I asked, `How many bidders will be there?’ He said, `About six.’ I said, `I’d like to meet them before they bid.’ He replied, `You can’t do that, it’s never been done before.’ I told him, `You didn’t read my book. I don’t want those people buying from a computer printout. I want them to see me in the flesh. I want them to see commitment. I want them to hopefully see excellence and perhaps they will think twice about it.’ So the day before the auction, six publishers, one at a time, came over to Morrow’s impressive offices and we sat down with each for about 45 minutes, one on one. Within a matter of days, we sold the paperback rights for $787,500 to Fawcett. This was one of the largest paperback sales of a business book. They had a first printing of one million paperback copies. Within weeks it catapulted to number one on the New York Times Bestseller List.”

The International Sale

Months in advance of the U.S. hardcover publication and against his publisher’s advice, Mackay hopped on a plane to visit the largest international meeting place for booksellers, the Frankfurt, Germany, Book Fair.

He met with publishers from many foreign countries and within 48 hours he helped sell the rights to translate his book into some 16 different languages with distribution to 80 different countries. In the words of Joseph Campbell, Harvey “followed his bliss,” he ignored conventional wisdom and persistently followed his intuition. While most people can think of a hundred different things they would do once they’re successful, Mackay habitually thinks of a hundred different action steps that lead to success.

“When you are on talk shows, they stick the microphone in front of you and ask, `Tell me, what is the one thing you did to make your book a success?’ There isn’t enough time to go into the details. I did a hundred little things right – the title, the subtitle, the graphics, the endorsements, the rewriting, the direct mail, the personal visits, the hundreds of phone calls, the research, my Rolodex, thousands of golden shark pins, thousands of books sent free to the key people of Fortune 500 companies, the media blitz, the sales strategy, all on top of the small job of writing a good book in the first place.”

Mackay knew that all the money and effort in the world can’t promote a bad book. He was so convinced that his book would make it that he even persuaded his publisher to offer a complete money-back guarantee to every consumer. Of the 600,000 hardcover copies sold, fewer than a dozen were returned by the buyers for their money back.

The sales lesson: “Believe in yourself, even when nobody else does.”