I became a professional salesman when I was six years old and became a sales manager before I was eight.
Growing up on the West-side of Jacksonville, Florida, the son of an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy… one of three children; life wasn’t easy and nothing was ever handed to me.
Although I can’t honestly say we were extremely poor, there weren’t any of the frivolous luxuries the preppy kids enjoyed. My clothes were never the latest style…and I didn’t own anything with a recognizable brand name. If I wanted something chances are I would have to find a way to get it for myself.
A street tough kid, I learned to be a scrapper and I learned how to take care of myself. The lessons I learned on the street back then are the foundations for my success today. Since age six I have been continuously employed. Now, I can almost feel some of you raising an eyebrow here. “Maybe that damn Ziegler is beginning to start to believe his own mythology.”
Okay, let me explain. Starting when I was six years old every December I sold mistletoe to housewives for Christmas decorations. When I was still in the first grade, a bunch of older kids in the neighborhood took me deep into the woods where I climbed a tree and cut mistletoe from the branches and threw it down to them. They needed a little guy who could go way out on the limbs. Of course Mom wasn’t aware of my adventure. We took the mistletoe down to Lovett’s Grocery Store (which later grew into the national chain called Winn Dixie) and we all stood around selling mistletoe to ladies as they left the store for a dime a handful. I made $30.00 that first year in the three weeks leading up to Christmas.
The next year my parents got involved. They didn’t like the idea of me climbing sixty feet up a tree and hanging off the ends of the branches hacking mistletoe. So Dad and I went to the woods and sawed off a whole big limb full of mistletoe…maybe a hundred pounds of it. We drug it out of the forest and put it in a bucket of water in the garage. Then Mom invested in rubber bands and ribbons and she bundled it in nice decorative bunches with Christmas bows.
Now, here’s where the sales manager part started. I managed to get the entire neighborhood involved…even the ten and twelve year-olds. I assigned everyone a protected territory. I remember Lonnie Johnson had Rexall Drug Store and Johnny Bunn and Ronnie Smith were coving both entrances to Woolworths. We sold the packaged mistletoe for a quarter a bundle…the seller got a dime and I got fifteen cents. That November and December, at age eight, I made more money than my father received from the U.S. Navy.
We didn’t own a power lawn mower but I did have a shovel. Knocking on doors all over the neighborhood I charged $2.00 to edge people’s driveways and curbs. Any given Saturday was worth $20.00, which was a lot of money to an eight year-old back in the fifties. True to my sales manager mentality it wasn’t long before I was booking other kids to edge the yards…and…eventually we did get that lawn mower. By the time I was ten years old the business (seasonal) was profitable and consistent. Other kids tried to compete but I had more drive and better organization. Most of them went out of business quickly fading away. You see I wasn’t that interested in playing.
The first “Cold Calls” I ever made were to neighbors we knew. On the phone “Hey, Mr. Everoski, it’s Jimmy Ziegler. Would you like my friends and me to mow your yard and edge the driveway? It’s only five dollars.” The telephone was a lot faster and more efficient than walking door-to-door. Then an idea hit me…I started calling the phone numbers on “For Sale Signs” in front of vacant houses. Before long I was actually mowing yards for realtors. That was my first baby steps attempt at prospecting.
Throughout my life I have held more than 100 different sales positions and management positions…mostly part-time. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t have a sales job after school and another one on the weekends. I have been continuously employed by at least one employer since I was fourteen.
Throughout my teens, grades 7 through graduation and beyond, I worked at several department stores including Sears, J.C. Penney, Butler Shoes, May Cohens, and Montgomery Ward. Okay, so now I knew how to sell men’s clothing, ladies shoes, and sporting goods.
My first real professional sales position was selling radio advertising. It was all cold calls and prospecting. Of course, I was a natural, setting sales records, some of which, still stand thirty years later.
Business-to-business sales prospecting is a thousand times more difficult than prospecting sales from the public. When I started selling cars it was strange that most car sales persons stand around all day with their thumbs in a damp warm place…waiting for the one thing they have no control over…waiting for an “UP”.
Traveling coast-to-coast for the last twenty-five years, I have visited and worked with more than a thousand showrooms in more than a thousand dealerships. Without exception, the most highly paid sales people in the automobile profession aggressively prospect for their own customers. I have met many automobile Salesmen and women making incredible incomes of more than $200,000 a year by reaching out into the community and generating their own business.
The secret of all of the “Super-Successful Sales Superstars”… is that all of them prospect for new business continually filling leads into the top of the sales funnel, while at the same time, they all mange relationships with all of their previous customers.
I have often said that I can go into any city in the country and sell and deliver a car to a stranger that I had just met before the sun goes down.
You see, If I was to approach ten total strangers and was to ask each of them one question…I would sell at least one of them a car. That question has sold hundreds of cars for me…perhaps more than a thousand through the years. The question is…
“When are you going to buy your next car?”
“When are you going to buy your next car?” That is so simplistic. I often tell the story about when I was sitting in a restaurant in Dallas back in 1988 with my good friends Jeff Enright and Cameron Rigor, who at that time were managers at Westway Ford. I asked the waiter when he was going to buy his next car. He said he just bought a new car so then I asked him… “Who in this restaurant do you know that is in the market for a car?” A few minutes later he brought the manager over to the table and later on he introduced me to another waiter who was also in the market for a car. We delivered two cars the next day, one to the manager and one to the waiter. I hadn’t been in town an hour and made two sales.
If you ever bump into one of my old friends, Tom Dorsey – Ford Motor Company Dealer Development – retired…ask him if he recalls an occasion twenty years ago when he saw me sell and deliver a car to a customer I met on a Wal-Mart parking lot just up the street from the dealership where we were consulting. With one of the salesmen driving, I had gone over to Wal-Mart specifically to get a customer.
Then there was the time I was eating lunch with Kent Richards, owner of Richards Honda in Baton Rouge Louisiana and Bobby Giles, a Nissan dealer from Lafayette. The waitress was an older woman. I asked her the magic question… “When are you going to buy your next car?” to which she replied… “I just got permission from my insurance adjuster to get a new car since my other one was totaled out.”
That afternoon she took delivery of a late model Honda from Richards Honda. Kent Richards of Richards Honda still tells that story to everyone he introduces me to.
I can tell more stories and name more witnesses than you have time to read about. I have sold more cars while farting around like this… by accident…than some of your sales people sell on purpose. It is so easy to prospect. Customers are all around you…all of the time. The point is you have to ask the magic question without being embarrassed or ashamed of what you do for a living. I challenge any serious salesman (woman) to ask ten complete strangers the magic question every day.
