Top Performance

by Zig Ziglar

  Then my mother said, “Well, let me remind you that I was present when you hired my son to do this work. I remember exactly what you told him you wanted him to do in your yard. Before I knocked on the door, I made it a point to get a good look at your yard. I can tell you that not only has my son done everything you hired him to do, but in my opinion he has done a really good job and thrown in some extras as well. My son did not lie to you about this, and I want you to know that my son would never lie to you on any occasion about anything.” Then my mother summed it up: “You owe my son the money, but whether you pay him or not is entirely up to you. I just wanted to make it very clear to you that my son is honest. If you don’t pay him for what he has done, we will be able to live without the money, but are you going to be able to live with the money and the knowledge that you’ve unjustly accused my son of a wrong that he did not do? I leave it up to you as to whether or not you’re going to pay him.”

  As nearly as I can recall, the lady was still adamant that I had not done what she had hired me to do, and my mother closed the conversation by saying, “That’s all right. We can get along without the money. You just let your conscience be your guide.”

  A few days later the lady stopped by the house with the money and apologized to both my mother and me.

  That was a particularly significant event in my life because my mother had stood by me, and though it was many, many years ago, I will never forget how grateful I was for the support she gave me. I believe incidents like this made a dramatic difference in my life. As managers and leaders, the support we give to our people when they are right is extremely important, and even when they are wrong, we can defend their integrity while not agreeing with some of their actions.

  Two of my mother’s favorite sayings were, “It’s not who’s right, but what’s right” and, “If you’ve got the right person, what they’re going to be doing is going to be right.” Yes, my mother was a magna cum laude graduate of the school of life. If you will use the principles we are discussing in Top Performance, which she role modeled so effectively, then you, too, will be recognized as a manager who helps employees overcome fear, doubt, and worry, and one who gets Top Performance from your people!

  PERFORMANCE PRINCIPLES

  * * *

  Without the proper education, fear, doubt, and worry will immobilize you and your associates.

  Once a need is satisfied, it is no longer a motivator. Satisfaction does not increase motivation.

  Management Assumptions + Management Attitudes = Management Behavior.

  16

  The Secret to Management Motivation

  Action often precedes the feeling.

  Anonymous

  Awareness

  Assumptions

  Analysis

  Action

  The fourth A in our Four-A Formula is Action! You are a person of action. It started this morning. You were lying in bed and that “opportunity” clock (negative folks call it an alarm clock!) went off. You reached over and shut it off, and in the process that cool air hit your elbow. And then you did what comes naturally—you quickly pulled your elbow back under the covers! Then you had a very basic decision to make: “Am I going to put all of me out there in that cold air, or am I going to keep all of me right here under these nice warm covers where I belong?” Because you are a responsible person with all the success characteristics we discussed in the first part of this book, the battle between what you want to do and what you are committed to do is won by what you are committed to do, and you roll out of bed. It’s obvious to you and to every other success-oriented person that nothing happens until you take that first step—nothing happens until you get the action habit.

  I want to share with you one phrase that I honestly believe is worth the price of this book. Now, just in case you’re thinking, Well, why didn’t you put it on the first page and leave the rest out? the answer is, “I don’t want you to just get your money’s worth. I want you to get a bargain.” The reason is partly benevolent and partly selfish. As stated earlier, I firmly believe that you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. So why do I want you to get so much from this book? Answer: The more you get, the more people you will tell about the book, which simply means the sale of more books. Now here’s that powerfully magic statement:

  Logic will not change an emotion,

  but action will!

  Or, phrased another way:

  Action often precedes the feeling!

  For example, I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but there are going to be days when you won’t want to get out of bed and go to work. I know it will surprise some of you, but there really are going to be those days. However, sometimes the best work is done by people who don’t want to do the things they have to do, but they have the old-fashioned guts, gumption, and sense of responsibility to get up and go! Who are the successful people? They are the people who do the things unsuccessful people refuse to do! They understand that every task they handle is a self-portrait of the person who performed it, and they have committed themselves to autograph every job with excellence.

  As I stated in my book See You at the Top, one year I finished second in a national organization that employed over seven thousand salespeople. Later I finished first in another national organization that had over three thousand people in sales. I can state without reservation that there were many days when I did not feel like going to work but I actually started to feel like working after I got into action. Here is a key point: Not once in that year when I was number two of seven thousand did I finish in the top twenty in sales for a single week. Not once in that time did I finish in the top twenty for a single month. Yet at the end of the year I was second in the organization. How did this happen? Simple! I disciplined myself to start every day by being in front of a prospect by no later than 9:00 A.M. The net result was some business every week, so that by the end of the year the cumulative total was enough to put me in second place.

  As you well know, big jobs are accomplished by taking lots of small steps. Question: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! How do you lose thirty-seven pounds? By losing 1.9 ounces every day for ten months. How do you effectively lead your people to greater accomplishments and move steadily up the ladder of success? By steadily, on a daily basis, giving your job a “best effort.” The only way to coast is downhill, isn’t it?

  You’ve Heard It Before—Take One Step at a Time

  My sister-in-law, Eurie Abernathy, has had multiple sclerosis (MS) for many years. In 1985 she spent several days with us over the Christmas holidays. It was her first visit in our new two-story home. Because of the MS, I assumed she could not make it up the stairs to the second floor, so I was surprised when I returned home one day and found her and the Redhead seated in our bedroom enjoying a chat. After a few minutes, Eurie decided to go back downstairs. As a precaution, I walked in front of her so that if she should start to fall I could catch her. As we made our way downstairs, I expressed surprise that she had been able to go up the stairs, which were relatively steep. She quickly responded with a simple but profound statement: “Yes, I can do anything I want to do, as long as I take it one step at a time.” The opportunity for greatness, according to the late sales trainer Charlie Cullen, does not come cascading down like Niagara Falls. Rather, it comes slowly, one drop at a time!

  Here is your challenge: Make a list of your ten most important action steps to success. Not what someone else must do to succeed, not what someone else thinks you should do to succeed, but what you know you must do every day! I fully understand that you do more than ten things daily, but what are the ten most important activities that translate to success for you?

  10 Action Steps to Success

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  _____________________________

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  At the time I set the sales records I spoke of, I was selling cookware. I was conducting demonstration parties, cooking with the heavy-duty waterless cookware I was encouraging people to buy. Many times it would be midnight before the kitchen was cleaned and everyone was gone, but number one on my list was to be face-to-face with a prospect at 9:00 A.M. the next day. Regardless of the fact that the baby kept us up until 3:30; despite the fact that the car had a flat tire or wouldn’t start; regardless of any excuses, I was to be face-to-face with a live prospect at 9:00 A.M. every morning! When we set our goals and break them into bite-size pieces, there is no limit to what will be accomplished. A commitment to start each day at the same time and in the same way is really a commitment to finish, because starting is obviously the first step in arriving. The Chinese were right: A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.

  What’s Holding You Back?

  It is an established fact that the largest and most powerful locomotive in the world can be held in place by a one-inch block of wood. Placed in front of the eight drive wheels of the locomotive, the block will hold it completely motionless. Yet that same locomotive, with a full head of steam, can crash through a steel-reinforced concrete wall that is five feet thick. That is what getting the action habit can do for us! This next example by William Moulton Marston is from the world of sports, but it certainly applies to us in the world of business.

  Hitting the Ball

  I asked Babe Ruth what was the most exciting moment of his career, and he told me it was during the third game of his last World Series in Chicago. He was in a batting slump, his team was behind, and two strikes had been called on him. The crowd turned against the Babe and began to boo. Ruth’s desire to win rose to meet this emergency and he flashed into action. He pointed to a distant spot in the outfield and yelled back at the howling fans, “I’ll knock it out there for you!”

  Babe smashed the next ball to that precise spot. It was a home run, the longest hit ever made in Wrigley Field. I asked him what he thought about when the ball was pitched.

  “What’d I think about?” he snorted. “Why, what I always think about—just hittin’ the ball!”

  There’s your champion, the man who keeps his attention riveted upon his present act and who responds positively to every crisis or desire with all there is in him. With the outcome of a World Series and his own contract for next year hanging in the balance, Ruth thought about hitting the ball. And because he wanted to win more than he ever had before, he hit the ball hard.

  The next time you find yourself in a jam, with a string of mistakes behind you and everything hanging on your next move, forget both past and future. Remember Babe Ruth and think about just one thing—hitting the ball.

  Let yourself go—give everything you have to your desire to win before the crisis passes. It will be the best performance you ever produced because of the emotional steam behind it. Every crisis offers you extra desired power.

  Personal Conviction: Positive Thinking and Positive Believing

  When we talk about being people of action, we recognize that action takes courage. Gerhard Gschwandtner of Fredericksburg, Virginia, publishes an excellent sales publication called Selling Power, which I highly recommend. One of my favorite parts of Gerhard’s format is the interview with action-oriented people. In one issue, Mo Siegel was the “interviewee.” Mo Siegel is the founder and former owner of Celestial Seasonings, the herbal tea company that captured a major portion of the multimillion-dollar tea industry. He based his organization on a value system he equates with the four legs on a stool. The first leg is love of product. Mo Siegel surrounded himself with people who really loved herbal tea and believed it to be valuable to the consumer. The second leg of the stool was love of customer (which, in the case of Celestial Seasonings, was distributors). Celestial Seasonings put the customer first in quality-control decisions. The third leg of the stool was love of art and beauty, which led Mo Siegel to develop one of the most detailed (and expensive) packaging programs in retail sales. The fourth leg of the stool was dignity of the individual. Celestial Seasonings treated everyone (including employees) with the dignity every human being deserves. Any time a serious question arose within the organization, Mo Siegel said the solution would lie within the answers to two more questions: (1) Is the customer happy? and (2) Are we making the best possible product?

  The answer to that second question led him to commission blind taste tests in which his product consistently beat the major black teas or nonherbal teas that have the major share of the market. Despite overwhelming evidence that Celestial Seasonings had a superior product, Mo Siegel refused to use the concept in an advertising campaign. His personal convictions led him to spend his time and resources in serving the customer better. He stated, “I decided I did not want to make a fortune by bad-mouthing anybody!”

  With the current trend in advertising doing exactly that, Mo Siegel’s decision was one requiring courage and integrity. Siegel went on to say that “an organization values what it dedicates its time and resources to.” In his case it is obvious that he values integrity. He also stated that the reason he was able to grow so big so quickly was his commitment to training. He said that managers need a minimum of thirty hours of training per year, and salespeople need even more. I might add that I agree with him that training is tremendously important, because it helps change a person from a “positive thinker” to a “positive believer.”

  Here’s the difference: Positive thinking is the optimistic hope—not necessarily based on any facts—that you can move mountains or accomplish other seemingly impossible tasks. I’ve seen positive thinking and positive thinkers accomplish some incredible things. I’ve also seen some people get into serious trouble because all they had was positive thinking and enthusiasm. They had no foundations, no skills, no training. Consequently, they let their enthusiasm carry them away and they ended up in serious difficulties. (Someone has said that positive thinking and enthusiasm are like running in the dark—it might get you there, but you might get killed along the way!) Add training to that positive thinking and enthusiasm and you turn on the lights for your trip to the top—which means you will arrive alive.

  Positive believing is the same optimistic hope as positive thinking, but it is based on solid reasons for believing you can move mountains or accomplish other seemingly impossible tasks. I’ve seen positive believers accomplish far more than positive thinkers. Positive believers have even more enthusiasm than positive thinkers, even when things are not going well at the moment.

  A good training program—which is obviously what Mo Siegel was talking about—gives the members of his organization solid reasons for believing they can accomplish much with their lives. They believe in their company, they believe in their product, and training enables them to believe in their ability to communicate that belief to others who will, in turn, take action by buying.

  Positive thinking is always important, and it certainly will enable you to accomplish more than negative thinking will—but positive believing will enable you to do infinitely more than just positive thinking will. That’s why in Top Performance we give so many steps, procedures, and actions to follow so that, as a leader and as a manager, you move more and more into the positive-believing realm.

  Organizational charts help make positive believers out of positive thinkers. Once again Krish Dhanam has made what could have been dry reading interesting and extremely informational. Let’s hear Krish’s thoughts on this.

  Teamwork and Process Improvement

  A typical organizational chart (Figure A) shows that most organizations have processes that are designed so that customers end up supporting the entire organization. This includes both the internal and external customers in an organizatio
n. Top Performing organizations have found ways to invert this structure as shown in (Figure B).

  Figure A

  Teamwork and process improvement are the two pillars upon which an inverted organization can stand. When an organization decides that its primary reason for existence is the service of both its internal and external customers, it is ready to support itself on the pillars of teamwork and process improvement.

  Figure B

  Teamwork

  The strength of a team can be impacted at any stage by anyone who has a positive or a negative influence on the outcome of the team’s goals. Traditional teams have mandated performance by arbitrary standards that depend more on an organization’s belief in what the individual is capable of doing than an assessment of capabilities of each member of the team. This leads to a belief that a work group is actually a team. In a bowling league, if one person bowls 300 and the others are just spares (for the pun of it)—the 300 bowler can carry the team. This is not a team. This is a work group where one performer is the workhorse with the tautest harness on his or her shoulders, and the rest of the players just go along for the ride. To create a foundation of Top Performers on your team, it is important to make sure they know they are vital pillars in the organization.

  Mr. Ziglar always makes sure his staff knows how vital they are. The following point he makes about teamwork is an excellent example of how he goes about it: