Zig Ziglar says that selling is a transference of feeling. He is right. The more enthusiastic we are about our products and services then the more sales we will make. Let’s learn how enthusiasm can transform your sales career with sales
training expert Mark Bowser
Take Action Sales Editor
When excitement is created, creativity will always follow. Chip McGregor tells a true story about Larry Walters. Larry was a man who had a big dream. Larry’s dream was to fly. He wanted to soar like an eagle with the ground zooming below him. In an attempt to fulfill his dream, Larry joined the Air Force after graduating from high school. But he was washed out of pilot candidacy because of poor eyesight. His dream appeared to be crushed.
After leaving the service, Larry had to live his dream through others. He would sit in his lawn chair in his backyard and watch the jets soar above him. Oh, how he wanted to fly.
Then one day while dreaming about flying, Larry got an idea. He excitedly went down to the local Army-Navy surplus store and bought a tank of helium and 45 heavy-duty weather balloons.
Larry strapped the balloons to his lawn chair and inflated them with the helium. He had anchored the chair to the bumper of his car as so it would not float away.
Larry packed some food and grabbed his BB gun. His idea was to float around for a while and then pop a balloon or two using the BB gun to bring himself softly and slowly back to earth.
He was ready to fulfill his dream. Seated in his captain’s “lawn” chair he cut the chord anchoring him to the car. Instead of floating up slowly, the chair and Larry shot up like the space shuttle jumping off the launch pad. One hundred, two hundred, five hundred feet he rose into the air. But the chair didn’t stop there. Up, up, up he went until he leveled off at eleven thousand feet.
Larry didn’t know what to do. He feared popping the balloons with the BB gun because he thought it might unstable the chair and toss him out tumbling to earth. This was a thought he hadn’t worried about when he was anchored safely and securely to his car bumper.
Things then got worse, much worse. The wind carried Larry and his homemade flying machine over towards Los Angeles International Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower explaining that they had just passed a guy in a lawn chair with a gun in his lap. Can you imagine the airline passengers’ faces as they saw Larry out their window. They must have thought they were in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
As it began to get dark outside, the wind shifted and carried Larry out to sea. Finally a Navy helicopter came and rescued Larry. At last, Larry planted two feet on solid ground again where he was promptly arrested and hauled off to jail.
So, you might be saying, “Where’s the sales lesson here?” The sales lesson is enthusiasm. When enthusiasm is created, the creative juices will begin to flow within our brains. This is when the breakthroughs will happen, breakthroughs which can lead us to our dreams. As bizarre as this story is, we have to admit that Larry lived his dream. He flew with the birds (as well as airline jets).
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