Living Legends Could Zig Ziglar Sell Women’s Shoes?

WHEN I CALLED ZlG ZIGLAR’S office for the first time to arrange an appointment with him, I was transferred to his executive assistant. Laurie Magers. I asked Mrs. Magers for a time to present Ziglar with a story idea for D. 1 knew that I had better broach it in person, The idea was, to be generous, novel.

“We ask journalists to send us a letter outlining proposed interviews.” she began. “As you might imagine, we get many requests.”

“Mrs. Magers.” I responded, anxiously twirling a pen and wondering how Zig himself would handle such an immediate sales hurdle, “I’m not really asking for an interview. It’s more like a story meeting. 1 just want to meet with Mr. Ziglar to discuss the idea of an article that would feature him.”

“Mr. Bowden. that sounds like it ought to be in writing.”

“I’m afraid that if I write a letter outlining my idea.” I explained. “Mr. Ziglar will reject it immediately. The idea is unusual.” 1 slopped short of revealing it: I want to see if Zig Ziglar, the dean of the motivational sales industry, can really sell, which to my mind means shoes-women’s shoes. If he doesn’t want to sell the shoes himself, with me watching and writing it all down, I’d settle for him coaching me as I try to sell the shoes, at the Neiman Marcus in NorthPark, a venue thai demands attention to detail and a flair for the dramatic.

“Well then. Mr. Bowden, why is your idea unusual?”

Her statement sounds kind of hostile, especially as I write it now, but Mrs. Magers was warming to me. I could feel it. There must be a sales term for what was happening between us.

“It’s just something that has probably never been asked before,” I said as I closed my eyes and grinned at the sight of Zig Ziglar, hustling back from the stock room, balancing three boxes of Manolo’s in pewter, pumpkin, and kelly, aiming to sell all three to a woman who’d entered the store in quiet search of a purse.

Then, without warning, Mrs. Magers interrupted my reverie. “What if you just told me your idea over the phone?

Then I could tell you what I think?”

Boy, was she smooth. I wanted to spill the beans right then and there. But I realized that I was one false move away from everlasting rejection and on the edge of over-staying my welcome. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t. I’m going to have to call you back.”

With that, I called a few contacts, trying to find a direct connection to Ziglar. I felt dirty for trying to get around Mrs. Magers, and in the end my heart wasn’t in it. As it happened, none of my contacts knew Ziglar personally,

and to a man they told me. when they stopped laughing, that I would never pull it off. The combined implication was that a grown man should find better things to do.

“What does he need that kind of publicity for?” one friend reasoned.

Stymied in my search for a back door to Ziglar. 1 called Mrs. Viagers again.

“Hello. Jeff.” she greeted me knowingly, as though she’d been watching me sneak around behind her, get nowhere, then return shamefaced, a 3rd-grade cheater.

“Mrs. Magers,” 1 said, “what if I came over to your office and made my pitch-in person-but to you? Then, if you like the idea, you can pass it on to Mr. Ziglar. It will only take 10 minutes.”

Without hesitation, she answered, “1 guess we could do that.” 1 immediately heard her flipping pages in an appointment calendar. I imagined it 3-feet tall and heavy with the names of CEOs. “How about Monday afternoon,” she said, “between 1 and 3?”

’Til be there,” I said, “and I will not disappoint.” With that, 1 rushed off to Border’s to buy See You at the Top, Ziglar’s most famous book, a motivational workhorse with more than a 2 million copies in prim. By the time \ walked in to meet with Mrs. Magers, I would be a selling machine.



I MUST ADMIT THAT I WAS SELF-CONSCIOUS at the Borders information counter. “It’s for an interview.” I explained unasked to a pony-tailed man stationed at a computer, as if to say that I wasn’t obsessed with getting to the top, which, like everyone else, I am. He didn’t speak. Or look up. All day long he hears desperate professionals explain away their interest in Tony Robbins. “Oh, it’s not for me,” they explain, “it’s for my teenage daughter. She got a C in math.” The man wrote the title down on a slip of paper, then said, “It’s in business. C’mon.”

An hour later, I was deep into the meat of the book, getting a “check-up from the neck up,” “eliminating stinking thinking.” and “avoiding a hardening of the attitudes,” all Ziglar catch phrases. Then I hit the section that extolled the importance of a healthy self-esteem. “To build your self-image,” Ziglar writes, “make a list of your positive qualities on a card…. Ask your friends to list the things they like about you. and keep it handy.”

I didn’t have time to poll my friends, but 1 did jot down my better characteristics as they related to getting the shoe idea over on Mrs. Magers and then Ziglar himself. 1 pulled oui the card in the parking lot of the Zig Ziglar Corporation just before my meeting with Mrs. Magers. I read it out loud.

1. lam just the sort of writer who can pull this off.

2. I like Mrs. Magers. and 1 think she likes me.

3. I can talk people into things. I once talked a friend into driving with me to Mexico in the middle of the night.

4. Even if Ziglar tells me that he will not sell shoes and that my idea is the worst that he has ever heard, I am going to the top. 1 will see him there. Maybe then we will sell shoes together.



I might have lingered at the self-esteem card looking because 1 walked into the lobby a tew minutes late. By then Mrs. Magers was occupied. While I waited. I read testimonial letters addressed to Ziglar. They filled a thick binder. The letters were from all over the world and told tales of growth and success, but not a word about shoes. Suddenly. Mrs. Magers was at the door,

“You have 10 minutes.” she smartly established as she walked me back to a conference room. 1 was surprised that our telephone rapport had grown cold. I made quick work to stoke the embers.

“I won’t need all that,” I said, as we took our places al a gigantic conference room table, just the two of us. like a king and queen from the Middle Ages waiting on the servant to bring in the feast.

There, I laid bare my scheme.

She smiled. Even laughed. My spirits soared. Especially when Mrs, Magers made several comments that sounded to me like buy signals.

“Mr. Ziglar really loves selling,” she said, “he really does. He loves a challenge.” But the clincher, the remark I carried back to the office in cupped hands was, “You know. Jeff, Mr. Ziglar knows people over at Nordstrom.”

At that moment, 1 didn’t care whether we sold shoes at Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom or Payless. If Zig Ziglar wanted Nordstrom, I would warm up the Toll Tag.

I called two days later when I could no longer stand the silence. “Mr. Ziglar is traveling,” Mrs. Magers told me. “but he has your proposal.” I asked her if she was for it. “I think it’s very cute.” she said. Funny how that seemed like a yes al the time.

A week later, still no word. I called again. “Mr. Ziglar is thinking about it. We’ll call you.”

Then, Black Thursday, a voice mail, “Jeff, this is….” It was Mrs. Magers. I didn’t have to hear the rest. Her voice said it all, “I sure wish I wasn’t going to disappoint you but I’m afraid that after a lot of thought. Mr. Ziglar has turned down your proposal. The time involved is prohibitive. He asked me to apologize to you. It was a clever idea.”

I played the message over and over, looking for a glimmer of hope. There wasn’t any. Nevertheless. I resolved to called Mrs. Magers one last time.

“Mrs. Magers. is this forever?”

“Well. Jeff, maybe you could call back in six months or so.” Il was forever.

HAD FAILED. WHY? A GOOD SALESMAN wants to know. I went back through See You at the Top. rechecked my notes scrawled in the margins. Incredibly, on the page preceding the one that recommended I write down my positive qualities, Ziglar was practically begging me to surround myself with positive people, not folks who “dump negative garbage” on new ideas, exactly the response of the contacts I went to for inspiration-and maybe Ziglar’s unlisted phone number. Their negativity must have crept into my pitch somehow. The rot had set in early.

Possibility No. 2: After rereading portions of See You at the Top, 1 went back to Borders to buy Goals, a set of Ziglar’s motivational tapes, thinking that perhaps there were newer, better sales techniques than the ones I was using. This time I didn’t apologize to the counter help. Before I turned the first cassette over, I realized that I had set my sights for the Ziglar project way too low. I should have said to Mrs. Magers, “Tell Zig that I want to see if he and I can wipe out the entire women’s shoe department at Nordstrom- in one day-every pump, mule, and sling-back sold at full retail, even the irregulars.” That might have wetted his appetite. The bar should test the jumper. I know that now. I learned it from Zig Ziglar himself.