Selling YOU
One of the greatest problems of life, if not, in fact, the greatest, is learning the art of harmonious negotiation with others. You cannot enjoy outstanding success in life without power, and you can never enjoy power without sufficient personality to influence other people to cooperate with you in a spirit of harmony.
My analysis of over 30,000 salespeople disclosed the fact that the most common weaknesses in sales presentation were the following:
Failure to present a motive for buying
Lack of persistence in sales presentation and in closing
Failure to qualify prospective buyers
Failure to neutralize the minds of prospective buyers
Lack of imagination
Absence of enthusiasm
There are nine basic motives by which all people are influenced and to which all people respond. These nine motives influence practically every thought and deed, and they are listed in the approximate order of their importance and greatest usefulness:
The motive of self-preservation
The motive of financial gain
The motive of love
The motive of sexuality
The motive of desire for power and fame
The motive of fear
The motive of revenge
The motive of freedom (of body and mind)
The motive of desire to create or build in thought or in material
Remember, however, that motive usually must be placed by you in the mind of the prospective buyer. Most people have little inclination to build their own motives to buy what you are selling. Only a weak-willed person will permit themself to be sold unless a sufficiently impelling motive has been tactfully but forcefully planted in his or her mind by the salesperson.
Two e-mails. Which one is better?
“I am Dr. Harper, president of the University of Chicago. I found no one in the outer office, so I took the liberty of walking in. I just dropped in to tell you about an idea that has been in my mind for some time. [Here comes the motive. Watch how he plants it in fertile soil.] First of all, I want to tell you how greatly I admire the wonderful streetcar system you have given the people of Chicago.[Neutralizing his prospect’s mind.] I believe it to be the greatest system in the country. However, it seems to me that while you have built what should be a great monument to yourself, it is not the kind of thing that people will associate with your name after you are gone. [Watch the master go back now to motive.]
“Good morning, sir. I am Dr. Harper, president of the University of Chicago. I have come to ask for a few minutes of your time. [Asking for favors to begin with, instead of offering favors; failure to neutralize the prospective buyer’s mind.] We need an extra million dollars for a new building which we intend to erect on the campus of the university, and I thought you might be interested in donating the amount. You have been successful. You have a great street railway system from which you earn big profits made possible through the patronage of the public. Now, it is only fair that you should show your appreciation of the success which the public has made possible for you by doing something for the public good.”
When an appropriate motive has been planted in the mind of the prospective buyer, it begins to work from within, as yeast works in a loaf of bread. The person who understands how to inject the germ of life into motive is a master salesperson — a master because he or she captures the prospective buyer’s own imagination and makes it work to the salesperson’s advantage.
When I say that the salesperson must neutralize the mind of the prospective purchaser before a sale can be made, I mean that a state of confidence must have been established. It is obvious that there can be no set rule for either establishing confidence or neutralizing the mind to a state of openness.
Affirmations
A positive affirmation is a short phrase that clearly states the change you want to make in yourself. If you charge that phrase with total faith and belief that you are capable of changing yourself, and if you repeat the phrase over and over to yourself until thinking that way becomes your natural habit, then you will make the change you desire.
Affirmations should always be stated as a positive. Affirm what you do want, not what you don’t want. Affirmations work best when they are short and very clear about a single desired goal. Take the time to write, rewrite, and polish your affirmation until you can express your desire in a short statement of precise and well-chosen words. Affirmations should be specific about the desired goal, but not about how to accomplish it. Your subconscious knows better than you what it can do and how it can do it.
Just saying the words will have little effect. When you affirm your desire you must do it with such faith and conviction that your subconscious becomes convinced of how important it is to you. As you affirm your desire to yourself, visualize it in your mind’s eye as big as a billboard. Make it big, powerful, and memorable.
If you seriously commit yourself to do these things, it will change the way you think and act. When you have given your subconscious a specific direction that it did not have before, it will begin to put together pieces of information and you will find that you are coming up with more and better plans and ideas to accomplish your goal. Your subconscious will do everything it can to transmute your desire into reality, and because of the enthusiasm that radiates from you, other people will want to do what they can to help you succeed.
The Subconscious Mind
Your subconscious has access to all the same information your conscious mind receives, but it doesn’t reason the way your conscious mind does. It takes everything literally. It doesn’t make value judgments. It does not filter or interpret, it simply processes information literally and stores it.
Because the subconscious mind does not distinguish between what is real and what is vividly imagined, if you convincingly plant an idea in your subconscious, it will accept the idea as though it were a fact. If you have planted the new idea strongly enough when your thoughts run in that direction your new idea will be the first thought that comes to mind. It will have become your new belief, and eventually, it will be your habit.
Remember also, unemotional words do not influence the subconscious mind. You will get no appreciable results until you learn to reach your subconscious mind with thoughts or spoken words that have been well emotionalized with belief.
If you do everything within your power to strongly, firmly, and with complete faith and conviction, plant the idea that you will be successful and achieve your desire, your subconscious will accept and store that idea. If you have planted the idea so strongly that it is the dominant idea in your subconscious, it will influence all of the other ideas and information stored there. Your subconscious will not judge if it is true or false, positive or negative, but it does respond to the power of the input (how emotionalized the thought is).
Cold reasoning has no influence whatsoever on the subconscious mind. The subconscious responds only to the impulses of thought that have been emotionalized or mixed with strong feelings. The world is controlled by emotions. Most of our activities, from birth until death, are induced by our feelings. The salesperson who can appeal to the buyer’s emotions or feelings will make ten sales for everyone made by the salesperson who appeals to buyers through their reason alone. Buyers generally make purchases because of some motives closely associated to their emotions.
The presence of these negative emotional impulses in the mind will almost always overcome the positive emotions. Any positive suggestion you try to plant in your subconscious mind, while one or more of these negative emotions is present, will be colored by the negative. When the subconscious mind broadcasts such mixed suggestions it will register a negative result in the minds of those who pick up the vibration.
Even the use of the word “try” is warned against because it gives the suggestion to the subconscious of a preconceived failure. The concept of “trying” implies an ongoing effort. You don’t want to try; you want to succeed. If you ask your subconscious to help you “try,” it may do just that. It may help you try, but it will prevent you from succeeding — because if you did succeed, then it could no longer help you “try,” which is what you asked it to do. This cautionary note about using the word “try” is just one example of the care that should be taken when formulating affirmations and using autosuggestion.
It is an axiom of contemporary motivation theory that the subconscious mind cannot distinguish between what is real and what is vividly imagined.
Your subconscious mind can best be reached and influenced when you concentrate in your conscious mind upon an idea, plan, or purpose in a spirit of intense enthusiasm. Enthusiasm will arouse your creative imagination and put it into action.
Experiment:
The team that rested showed a decrease in ability. The team that practiced showed a marked increase in ability. And the team that didn’t practice but visualized making baskets showed an increase in ability almost equal to those who had practiced daily. You can “deceive” your subconscious through autosuggestion. If you convincingly plant an idea in your subconscious, your subconscious will accept and work with the idea as though it were a fact. Thoughts do remain stored in the subconscious. They remain just as they were when they were input, and the more highly emotionalized the thoughts are when they are input, the more influence they exert on attitude and behavior.
If you choose to, you can throw off any bad influences from your past and build your own life the way you want it to be. You will become what you want to be because of the dominating thoughts that you permit to occupy your mind. How can the original seed of an idea, plan, purpose, or sales objective be planted in the mind? The answer: Any idea, plan, purpose, or goal may be placed in the mind through the repetition of visualizations of your desire. This is why you are instructed to write out a statement of your desire, purpose, goal, or sales objective, commit it to memory, and repeat it aloud, day after day, until these vibrations of sound have reached your subconscious mind.
Do not rely on miracles for the attainment of the object of your visualization. However, you can rely on the power of infinite intelligence to help direct you, through natural channels, toward its attainment.
Whatever you want you may get — if you want it with sufficient intensity and keep on wanting it, providing the object wanted is one within reason and you actually believe you will get it. There is a difference, however, between merely wishing for something and actually believing you will get it. A lack of understanding of this difference has meant failure to millions of people.
Make yourself believe that you must have the amount of money you are visualizing. Make your subconscious believe that whatever you want is already awaiting your claim, so your subconscious mind must hand over to you practical plans for acquiring the thing that is yours. When visualizing the money you intend to accumulate, see yourself rendering the service or delivering the merchandise you intend to give in return for this money.
Habits
Here we will be dealing with aspects of your character and personality that have become habits, such as your self-confidence, enthusiasm, initiative, and persistence. When you change these habits, you make profound changes that will have a major influence on everything you do and how successful you will be.
An idea or desire, to be transformed into terms of action or physical reality, must be held in the conscious mind faithfully and persistently until habit begins to give it permanent form.
Habits are formed step-by-step through our every thought and deed. Either you control your habits or your habits will control you. If you are going to be successful, you will force yourself to build only the kind of habits that you are willing to let control you. “We first make our habits, and our habits then make us.”
Managing salespeople
‘No well-managed business would ever permit salespeople to seek customers by knocking competitors. Sales managers know that sales made by belittling competitors or competitive merchandise are not really sales, and that business obtained in this way is a liability in the long run.
Remember that people are motivated to buy or not to buy, through their feelings. Much of what they believe to be their own feelings consist of thought impulses they have unconsciously picked up from the messages sent out by the salesperson.
Concentration
Concentration is the ability to think as you wish to think, the ability to control your thoughts and direct them to a definite end, and the ability to organize your knowledge into a plan of action that is sound and workable. The principle of concentration is the way in which procrastination is overcome. It is the foundation upon which both self-confidence and self-control are predicated. Ambition and desire are the major factors that enter into the act of successful concentration. If your goal or desire is within reason and it is strong enough, the magic key of concentration will help you attain it.
Concentration develops the power of persistence and enables you to master all forms of temporary defeat. Most people never learn the real difference between temporary defeat and permanent failure, because they lack the persistence necessary to stage a comeback after they have experienced temporary defeat. Persistence is merely concentrated effort well-mixed with determination and faith in yourself.
It is your privilege — in fact it is your duty — to aim high in life. You owe it to yourself, and to the community in which you live, to set a high standard for yourself.
Those who know where they are going usually get there. They do not waste their time and energy trying to accomplish too many goals at once, nor do they bounce from one desire to the next, quickly abandoning anything that doesn’t bring immediate satisfaction. They concentrate their efforts on a definite objective, exerting all powers to attain that end. When it is accomplished they reset their sights and move on to another desire or goal.
In your search for the work for which you are best suited, bear in mind that you will most likely attain the greatest success by finding out what work you like best. It is a fact that people who have the greatest success are those who have found work into which they can throw their whole heart and soul. Search until you find out what your particular line of endeavor will be, make it the object of your definite chief aim, and then organize all of your forces and attack it with the belief that you are going to win. When you choose a definite purpose and make up your mind that you will carry out that purpose, from the very moment that you make the choice, your purpose becomes the dominating thought in your consciousness.
The subconscious mind may be likened to a magnet; when it has been charged with any definite purpose, it has a decided tendency to attract all that is necessary for the fulfillment of that purpose. Like attracts like, and you may see evidence of this law in every blade of grass and every growing tree.
The moment you set a definite purpose and go after it with a burning desire to achieve, opportunities you did not expect will be placed in your way.
The moment you choose a definite major purpose in this way, strange and wondrous things begin to happen. The ways and means of attaining that purpose will begin immediately to reveal themselves to you. The cooperation of others will become available. Your fears and doubts will begin to disappear and self-reliance will take their place.
You will attract to you people who harmonize with your own philosophy of life, whether you wish it or not. For this reason it is very important that you fill your mind with a definite chief aim that will attract to you people and circumstances that will be of help to you and not a hindrance.
The mind feeds upon that which we supply it, or that which is forced upon it, through our environment. Therefore, let us select our environment, as much as possible, with the object of supplying the mind with suitable material out of which to carry on its work. If your environment is not to your liking, change it.
Those who believe that they can achieve the object of their definite chief aim do not recognize the word impossible. Neither do they acknowledge a temporary defeat. They know they are going to succeed, and if one plan fails they quickly replace it with another plan.
HOW TO MULTIPLY YOUR BRAINPOWER
The human brain may be compared to an electric battery. It is a fact that a group of batteries will provide more energy than a single battery. It is also a fact that the amount of energy provided by each individual battery depends upon the number and capacity of the cells it contains. The brain functions in a similar fashion.
Power in great quantities can be accumulated only through the coordinated efforts of more than one mind. No matter how intelligent or well-informed you may be, no one individual, functioning independently, can ever possess great power. The reason is that power must be applied before it is effective. Individuals are limited as to the amount of power they can transmit or apply.
The human mind is a form of energy. When the minds of two people are coordinated in a spirit of harmony, the energy of each mind seems to pick up on the energy of the other mind. Two heads are not only better than one, they are better than two — because the combination is more than the sum of its parts. No two minds ever come together without creating this third invisible, intangible force will produce insights and ideas that neither of the individual minds would have come up with independently.
Selling YOU
Selling, like most other people relationships, is emotional. People don’t buy your products, your ideas, or fund your projects on reason alone. They respond emotionally to a well-thought-out, logical, persuasive, emotional appeal.
Salespeople “cannot consciously describe how they perform their own sales magic.” After studying them in action, reviewing their tapes, and testing the newfound insights in the field, they realized that these supersales-people so naturally identified with people that prospects instantly liked them, and bought their products and services. Teaching others these pacing techniques resulted in sales increases in some companies of as much as 232 percent in the span of one year.
Acquire the habit of making yourself agreeable and you profit both materially and emotionally, for you will never be as happy in any other way as you will be when you know that you are making others happy.
Here is one way that your personality will always attract, and this is by taking an honest interest in other people.
When you are dealing with others, look for common ground. Identify the subjects you are both interested in, not just those you like or are particularly knowledgeable about. When you are having a conversation with someone else, don’t just take turns talking, listen to what the other person is saying.
A salesman should talk twenty percent of the time and listen eighty percent of the time, and that twenty percent ought to be questions to get the customer talking more. The quickest way to establish rapport is to get the other guy talking about himself. The more you let me talk about myself, the better I like you,”
Good Showmanship
If you are a gardener you cannot grow plants without preparation of the soil before the seed is sown. If you are a salesperson you can’t plant the seed of desire in the prospective buyer’s mind while that mind is negative. The salesperson who understands showmanship prepares the mind of the prospective buyer as carefully and scientifically as the intelligent gardener prepares the ground. William Burnette took an ordinary sales plan, added showmanship, and turned it into a multimillion-dollar income in less than five years.
A showman is someone who appeals to people through their imagination and keeps them interested through curiosity. A good showman is quick to recognize and to capitalize on other people’s likes and dislikes at the psychological moment. Harmony with yourself. You cannot have a pleasing personality without first developing harmony and control in your own mind.
People buy personalities and ideas much more quickly than they buy merchandise. For this very reason the salesperson who is a good showman makes sales where other salespeople cannot. A good showman is one who can dramatize the commonplace events of life and give them the interesting appearance of uniqueness.
Few characteristics a salesperson should have
Posture and carriage of the body. Everyone judges others by their body language: the way they walk and the general posture of their bodies.
Alertness in physical attitude indicates an alert mind and keenness of perception.
Voice. The tone, volume, pitch, and general emotional coloring of the voice constitute important factors of a pleasing personality.
The sincerity of purpose. This quality needs little explanation, but having it is essential if you want to earn the confidence of others.
Unselfishness. Selfishness and a pleasing personality are never found together.
Facial expression. Facial expression is an accurate medium for the interpretation of your moods and thoughts. You can have a big smile, a crooked grin, or it may be as subtle as a twinkle in the eye, but you can always tell if it is sincere.
Positive thought. The vibrations of your thoughts are picked up by others. To be pleasing, you must be radiating good feelings and pleasant thoughts.
Enthusiasm. People who lack enthusiasm cannot inspire others. Enthusiasm is an essential factor in all forms of salesmanship.
The art of being a good listener. Train yourself to listen attentively when other people are speaking.
The art of forceful speech. Forceful speech is the salesperson’s greatest asset. It is an art that can only be acquired by practice. Have something to say that is worth listening to, then say it with all the enthusiasm at your command.
Personal magnetism. This is also called charisma, and it is the major asset of every great salesperson and every great leader in all walks of life. It is this factor of a pleasing personality that is the hardest to teach. Each person has some charisma to some degree. You must discover your own charismatic personality.
Charisma
A sales manager, who has trained more than thirty thousand salespeople, came to the conclusion that individuals who are most confident sexually are the most efficient salespeople. The explanation is that the personality factor known as charisma is a manifestation of sexual energy.
When employing salespeople, a good sales manager looks for charisma as the first requirement. People who lack this kind of sexual energy will never become enthusiastic nor inspire others with enthusiasm. And enthusiasm is one of the most important requisites in salesmanship, no matter what you are selling.
Master salespeople attain mastery in selling because they either consciously or unconsciously transmute charisma (sexual energy) into sales enthusiasm.
A Golden Rule exercise that is guaranteed to improve your character and your personality.
Find at least one person each day in whom you see some good quality that is worthy of praise — and praise them for it. Remember that this praise must not be in the nature of cheap, insincere flattery; it must be genuine. Speak your words of praise with such earnestness that they will impress those to whom you speak. Then watch what happens. You will have rendered those whom you praise a benefit of great value to them, and you will have gone just one more step in the direction of developing the habit of looking for and finding the good qualities in others. I cannot overemphasize the far-reaching effects of this habit of praising, openly and enthusiastically, the good qualities in others, for this habit will soon reward you with a feeling of self-respect and manifestation of gratitude from others that will modify your entire personality. Here, again, the law of attraction enters, and those whom you praise will see, in you, the qualities that you see in them. Your success in the application of this formula will be in exact proportion to your faith in its soundness.
Enthusiasm
When you are enthusiastic over the goods you are selling, the services you are offering, or the speech you are delivering, your state of mind becomes obvious to all who hear you, by the tone of your voice. Whether you have ever thought of it in this way or not, it is the tone in which you make a statement, more than it is the statement itself, that carries conviction or fails to convince. No mere combination of words can ever take the place of a deep belief in a statement that is expressed with burning enthusiasm. Words are just sounds unless they are colored with feeling that comes from enthusiasm.
When you act enthusiastically, you are using the power of suggestion and autosuggestion. In so doing, the salesperson who regularly and repeatedly acts enthusiastic by speaking to others in an enthusiastic and sincere manner soon finds that he or she has developed genuine enthusiasm.
You must exercise your voice the same way you do your other muscles. If it is going to be strong and reliable, you must work out, you must practice, you must rehearse, and you must test yourself.
The only way for you to really know how your voice sounds to others is to record yourself. You will likely be surprised by how different it sounds when you hear it played back. Analyze the recording to find where and how you could make improvements. Note the tone, the pitch, and the rhythm look to others is to work in front of a mirror, or better yet, video-record yourself. The impression you make on others depends on how well you project your personality, how passionately you make your points, and how comfortable you look doing it. Record your presentation, play it back, make notes about everything that you want to change, with special attention paid to your facial expressions and your hand gestures. Looking like you don’t know what to do with your hands is a sure indicator that you are inexperienced as a speaker.
If your thoughts and your actions and your words harmonize, you are bound to influence others.
It is not so much what you say as it is the tone and the manner in which you say it that makes a lasting impression.
There is but one thing in the world that gives us real and enduring power, and that is character. Reputation, bear in mind, is not character. Reputation is that which people are believed to be; character is that which people are. Character is something that you cannot beg or steal or buy. You can get it only by building it; you can build it by your own thoughts and deeds, and in no other way.
Rendering services to others instead of you:
If I ask you to render a service that will benefit me, without bringing you some corresponding advantage, you will not be enthusiastic about granting that favor. But if I ask you to render a service that will benefit a third person, and if that service is of such a nature that it is likely to reflect credit on you, the chances are that you will render the service willingly.
People will grant favors that you request for the benefit of a third person when they would not grant them if requested for your benefit. I had asked the governor to release Mr. Storke not as a favor to me, and not as a favor to Mr. Storke, but for the benefit of the 160,000 unfortunate inmates of the prisons of America.
Self-Control
Self-control serves as the balance wheel of enthusiasm. Lack of self-control is the average salesperson’s most damaging weakness. The point I wish to clearly establish in this lesson is that thought, whether accurate or inaccurate, is the most highly organized functioning power of your mind, and that you are but the sum total of your dominating or most prominent thoughts. If you would be a master salesperson of goods or of your personal services, you must exercise sufficient self-control to shut out all adverse arguments and suggestions. Many salespeople have so little self-control that they hear the prospective purchaser say no, even before it is said. They have so little self-control that they actually suggest to themselves that their prospective purchaser will say no when asked to purchase their wares. The person with self-control not only makes the self-suggestion that the prospective purchaser will say yes, but if the desired yes is not forthcoming, they stay on the job until the opposition breaks down. The master salesperson, whether engaged in selling merchandise or personal services or sermons or public addresses, understands how to control their own thoughts. Instead of being a person who accepts, with meek submission, the suggestions of others, the master salesperson is one who persuades others to accept his or her suggestions. The master salesperson becomes a dominating personality. A master salesperson is one who takes the offensive, and never the defensive, side of an argument if an argument arises.
Whenever I use the term salesperson, I mean all people who try to persuade or convince others by logic or by appeal to self-interest. We are all salespeople, or at least we should be, no matter what form of service we are rendering or what sort of goods we are offering. The ability to negotiate with other people without friction and argument is the outstanding quality of all successful people. Observe those nearest you and notice how few there are who understand this art of tactful negotiation. Observe, also, how successful are the few who understand
this art, despite the fact that they may have less education than those with whom they negotiate. It is a knack that can be cultivated.
Imagination
Riches, when they come in huge quantities, are never the result of hard work alone. Riches come, if they come at all, in response to definite demands based on the application of definite principles — and not by chance or luck. Generally speaking, an idea is a thought that prompts you to action because it appeals to your imagination. All master salespeople know that ideas can be sold where merchandise cannot.
First comes the thought; then organization of that thought into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination. You will never have a definite purpose in life, you will never have self-confidence, you will never have initiative and leadership unless you first create these qualities in your imagination and see yourself in possession of them. The imagination is both interpretative and creative in nature. It can examine facts, concepts, and ideas, and it can create new combinations and plans out of these.
Imagination brings the highest price of any ability. It always has a market and it has no limitations as to value. Business depressions do not destroy the market for imagination. In fact, bad times increase the demand for imagination. The world stands in need of men and women who will use their imagination.
You know that any idea you firmly fix in your subconscious mind, by repeated affirmation, automatically becomes a plan or blueprint that an unseen power uses in directing your efforts toward the attainment of the objective named in the plan. Just remember that it is your business to succeed, and this creed, if mastered and applied, will go a long way toward helping you.
Self-Confidence
In no other field of endeavor does self-confidence or the lack of it, play such an important part as in the field of sales, and one does not need to be a character analyst to determine, on the first meeting, whether a salesperson possesses this quality. If you have it, the signs of its influence are written all over you. You inspire customers with confidence in you and in the goods you are selling the moment you speak.
If you want to get more, be sure to demand more of yourself. Notice that this demand is to be made on yourself.
Select any two people of these two types and study them, and the reason why one advances and the other stands still will be quite obvious to you. You will find that those who advance believe in themselves, and they back their belief with such dynamic, aggressive action that others can recognize it in them. You will also notice that this self-confidence is contagious; it is impelling; it is persuasive; it attracts others.
If you think you are beaten, you are; If you think you dare not, you don’t; If you like to win, but you think you can’t, It is almost certain you won’t. If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost, For out of the world we find Success begins with a fellow’s will — It’s all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are — You’ve got to think high to rise. You’ve got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize. Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man, But soon or late the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can.
Leadership
All great leaders are masters of sales. And all master salespeople are great leaders. They understand the art of persuasion; they understand how to set up, in the minds of their followers, motives that will induce favorable, willing cooperation.
If you are a successful leader you are also an efficient salesperson. You have a pleasing personality, you are optimistic and enthusiastic, and you know how to transmit your enthusiasm and optimism to your followers. You get people to do things because they wish to do them for you. You are a self-starter, with self-confidence, who is not content to wait and see what happens. You are the one who takes the initiative and makes things happen. Initiative means doing things without being told to do them. It means selecting a definite aim, then developing the plan needed to achieve that aim.
If you are a leader who changes your mind often, you will soon lose the confidence of those you are leading. A natural tendency of human nature is a willingness to follow the person with great self-confidence. If you are not sure of yourself, how can you expect others to be sure of you? No one will want to follow you if you are not sure of yourself.
I have met and interviewed many of the most able industrial leaders of America. Not one of them ever seemed to be overworked, because in every case they knew when and how to delegate responsibility to others. A person who can “get things done” is much more profitable to a business than the one who actually does the work.
If you are a real leader, you not only have self-reliance and courage, but you impart these qualities to your subordinates.
An efficient leader is not necessarily the person who appears to be the busiest, but the one who can efficiently direct and keep large numbers of other people busy.
Any statement that a person repeats over and over again for the purpose of inducing others to believe it, that person will also come to believe.
People will readily, willingly, and voluntarily follow someone who shows by their actions that he or she is a person of the initiative.
Persistence
I would like to call your attention to a principle that I believe to be the factor, more than any other, which determines whether one succeeds or fails in any calling. The principal may be described as “the faith and persistence to accept defeat as being nothing more than an experience from which something of value may be learned.” Most people give up or let their ambition be killed when serious obstacles are met.
Every failure will teach you a lesson that you need to learn if you will keep your eyes and ears open and be willing to be taught. Every adversity is usually a blessing in disguise. Without reverses and temporary defeat, you would never know just how good you are.
One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when you are overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.
Before success comes in anyone’s life, that person is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a person, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of people do. More than five hundred of the most successful people this country has ever known told me their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping you just when success is almost within reach. Failures are just practicing shots.
