Secrets of Closing the Sale

by Zig Ziglar

I Am a Salesman I am proud to be a salesman because more than any other man I, and millions of others like me, built America. The man who builds a better mousetrap—or a better anything—would starve to death if he waited for people to beat a pathway to his door. Regardless of how good, or how needed, the product or service might be, it has to be sold. Eli Whitney was laughed at when he showed his cotton gin. Edison had to install his electric light free of charge in an office building before anyone would even look at it. The first sewing machine was smashed to pieces by a Boston mob. People scoffed at the idea of railroads. They thought that even traveling thirty miles an hour would stop the circulation of the blood! McCormick strived for fourteen years to get people to use his reaper. Westinghouse was considered a fool for stating that he could stop a train with wind. Morse had to plead before ten Congresses before they would even look at his telegraph. The public didn’t go around demanding these things; they had to be sold! They needed thousands of salesmen, trailblazers, pioneers, people who could persuade with the same effectiveness as the inventor could invent. Salesmen took these inventions, sold the public on what these products could do, taught customers how to use them, and then taught businessmen how to make a profit from them. As a salesman I’ve done more to make America what it is today than any other person you know. I was just as vital in your great-great-gran...