Can Zig Ziglar help your team “Keep pumping” and not give up?

Are your people giving up too early? How many voicemails will your reps leave before they abandon a sales lead? Zig Ziglar was famous for his motivational talk explaining how an old farm pump and selling have so much in common. Join me as I talk about what you can be doing to build the tenacity in your team so they don’t give up too early…so they can sell even more!

Transcript

How are you working with your sales team to make sure they keep pumping and never give up? The reality of our business is there was a motivational speaker in our past that had tremendous impact on so many of us as sales professionals. And that was Zig Ziglar. He died a number of years ago, but his impact was very strong because he was considered one of the most motivating sales professionals or trainers in our industry. And as part of it, one of the talks he gave that he was famous for was talking about his farm pump story. In fact, if you go to YouTube and look up the pump story dash Zig Ziglar, you'll find it. In this recording, he talked about and drew the analogy of a farm pump to the challenges of selling. And it's interesting, and though this was recorded decades ago, frankly, the message is still so relevant today.

His idea says that if you start pumping, you start prospecting, you start calling at people, and you pump, and pump, and pump, and as you build vacuum, nothing comes out. He equated to the farm pump, you got to pump for a while. But then he said, "As soon as the water starts coming out, what do people do?" And he said, "They stop pumping, and they come around with both hands to catch the water." The whole reality of his message is how do we keep pumping so you keep a flow of new opportunities coming in at the same time you capture those opportunities so you can be more successful? It's a very effective and persuasive message. Might be an idea you want to share with your sales team. You might want to check it out. YouTube, the pump story, Zig Ziglar.