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• How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling

  • If I were your own brother, I would say to you what I'm going to say to you now...you haven't got much more time!

  • I don't know how old you are, but let's assume, for example, that you are about thirty-five. It's later than you think. It won't be long before you are forty. And once you pass forty, time goes so fast. I know. I am now, as I write, sixty-one years old, and I just can't believe it. It makes my head swim when I think how fast time has gone since I was forty.

    Now that you have read this book I think I know how you must feel. Exactly as I would if I were reading it for the first time. You've read so much, by now you may be confused. You don't know what to do about it.

    Well, there's one of three things you can do about it:

    First -- Nothing. If you do nothing about it, reading this book has probably been a total waste of your time.

    Second -- You can say: "Well, there are a lot of good ideas here. I'll give them all I've got. I'll do the best I can about it." If you do that--I prophesy failure.

    Third -- You can take the advice of one of the greatest minds this continent has ever produced, Benjamin Franklin. I know exactly what he would say if it were possible for you to sit down alongside of him today and ask his advice. He would tell you to take one thing at a time, and give a week's strict attention to that one thing, leaving all the others to their ordinary chance.

    Whether you are a printer, salesman, banker, or candy pushcart peddler, let's assume that you select thirteen subjects best suited to you. By concentrating on one thing at a time, you will get farther with it in one week than you otherwise would in a year. A new confidence will take hold of you. At the end of thirteen weeks, I know you will be surprised with your progress. If your friends, business associates, and your family fail to tell you they have noticed a big change come over you--then I know, by the time you repeat the second thirteen weeks, everybody will see in you a greatly different person.

  • Chapter 34 - Benjamin Franklin's Secret of Success and What It Did for Me
    (...)
    Franklin chose thirteen subjects which he felt were necessary or desirable for him to acquire and try to master, and he gave a week's strict attention to each subject successively. In this way, he was able to go through his entire list in thirteen weeks, and repeat the process four times a year. You will find an exact duplicate of Franklin's thirteen subjects on page 188, just as they appear in his autobiography.
    When he was seventy-nine years old, Benjamin Franklin wrote more about this idea than anything else that ever happened to him in his entire life--fifteen pages--for to this one thing, he felt that he owed all his success and happiness. He concluded by writing: "I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit."
    (...)
    I followed his plan exactly as he told me how he used it. I just took it and applied it to selling. Of Franklin's thirteen subjects, I chose six, then substituted seven others which I thought would be more helpful to me in my business, subjects in which I was especially weak.
    Here is my list, and the order in which I used them:
    1. Enthusiasm.
    2. Order: self-organization.
    3. Think in terms of others' interests.
    4. Questions.
    5. Key issue.
    6. Silence: listen.
    7. Sincerity: deserve confidence.
    8. Knowledge of my business.
    9. Appreciation and praise.
    10. Smile: happiness.
    11. Remember names and faces.
    12. Service and prospecting.
    13. Closing the sale: action.
    I made up a 3"x5" card, a "pocket reminder", for each one of my subjects, with a brief summary of the principles, similar to the "pocket reminders" you have found throughout this book. The first week, I carried the card on Enthusiasm in my pocket. At odd moments during the day, I read these principles. Just for that one week, I determined to double the amount of enthusiasm that I had been putting into my selling, and into my life. The second week, I carried my card on Order: self-organization. And so on each week.
    After I completed the first thirteen weeks, and started all over again with my first subject--Enthusiasm--I knew I was getting a better hold on myself. I began to feel an inward power that I had never known before. Each week, I gained a clearer understanding of my subject. It got down deeper inside of me. My business became more interesting. It became exciting!
    At the end of one year, I had completed four courses. I found myself doing things naturally, and unconsciously, that I wouldn't have attempted a year before. Although I fell far short of mastering any of these principles, I found this simple plan a truly magic formula. Without it, I doubt whether I could have maintained my enthusiasm...and I believe if a man can maintain enthusiasm long enough, it will produce anything!
    Here is the astonishing thing to me: I seldom meet anyone who never heard of Franklin's thirteen-week plan, but I have never met anyone who has told me he tried it! Yet, near the close of his long and amazing life, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example, and reap the benefit."
    I don't know of anything a sales manager can do for his salesmen that will do so much to assure their success as to make it absolutely compulsory for them to follow this plan.
    Remember, Franklin was a scientist. This plan is scientific. Reject it, and you reject one of the most practical ideas ever offered you. I know. I know what it did for me. I know it can do the same for anyone who will try it. It's not an easy way. There is no easy way. But it is a sure way.
    Franklin's Thirteen Subjects
    (just as he wrote them down, and the order in whic he used them)
    1. Temperance - Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
    2. Silence - Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
    3. Order - Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
    4. Resolution - Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
    5. Frugality - Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
    6. Industry - Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
    7. Sincerity - Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
    8. Justice - Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
    9. Moderation - Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
    10. Cleanliness - Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
    11. Tranquility - Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
    12. Chastity - Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
    13. Humility - Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

• Don't be a perfectionist: 'If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.' - Kurt Vonnegut

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