“There is a difference between school and education: you can finish school but you can never finish your education”. This is one of the many quotes from Zig Ziglar, that despite its seemingly naive wording, carries enough power to change careers and lives.
I usually refer to Zig Ziglar as a mentor, despite the fact that I never got the privilege to meet him. The reason is his wisdom keeps guiding me year after year, from my professional live to my personal one.
Mentors are not available to everybody, that’s what good books and encyclopedias are for, would also say Ziglar. That could be the motto of this blog.
My absolute recommendation to start studying Zig Ziglar’s work is the audiobook version of Secrets of Closing the Sales, read by Ziglar himself. To me it works almost as a private coaching session.
Most of the wisdom shared across Ziglar’s work will not appear as groundbreaking or as the one thing that makes the difference. What Ziglar offers is a framework that helps to develop a proactive mindset.
Some of the tips I use:
- Dedicate daily some specific timing to focus on my #1 business objective. Everyday a specific moment in my calendar is booked exclusively to call clients. This helps me to ensure that by default I keep building every day on what is my strongest skills: sales
- As a salesperson, paying attention to treat any internal stakeholder as a client. Namely, I increased significantly the importance of training my team as I realized that they were likely to speak to make clients as much as I do, even if not more.
- Keep studying everyday, especially learning from the best through readings. This is one of the reason I created this blog. Discussing about the learning points helps me to make the most of my readings.