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Powerful Prospecting…secrets of generating sales
by Jim Ziegler
I got my first professional sales position when I was six
years old and became a sales manager before I was eight. Growing up on
the Westside of Jacksonville, Florida, one of three children, the son of
an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy was not exactly easy. Early on I
learned to be a scrapper and I learned how to take care of myself.
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.
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 believing 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 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 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.
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 years, I have visited and
worked with 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.
I have often said that I can go into any city in the country and sell a
car to a stranger I just met before the sun goes down. 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?”
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.
One of my old friends is Tom Dorsey with Ford Motor Company Dealer
Development. I saw Tom last year while performing an event for the
minority Ford Dealers in New Orleans and we reminisced about an occasion
fifteen years ago when he saw me sell and deliver a car to a customer I
met on a Wal-Mart parking lot across from the dealership. I had walked
over there specifically to get a customer.
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.
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:
When are you going to buy your next car?
Email Jim at:
[email protected]
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