When you decide to be one of the best people in your field, look around you and identify the people
who are already at the top:
• What characteristics do they have in common?
• How do they plan and organize their days?
• How do they dress?
• How do they walk, talk, and behave with other people?
• What books do they read?
• How do they spend their spare time?
• Who do they associate with?
• What courses have they taken?
• What audio programs do they listen to in their cars?
These are just a few of the questions you should ask in order to find out what successful people are
doing that you might also need to do. After all, you can’t hit a target that you can’t see.
Your selection of the right role models can have an enormous impact on your future. Dr. David
MacLelland of Harvard and author of The Achieving Society concluded that your choice of a
“reference group” can determine as much as 95 percent of your success and achievement in life. Your
reference group is made of the people who you feel are “just like me.” Your natural tendency is to
adopt the attitudes, styles of dress, opinions, and lifestyles of the people with whom you identify and
associate most of the time
FLY WITH THE EAGLES
Some years ago, one of my seminar participants told me his story. Bob Barton said he had
started off in his twenties in a large company with about thirty-two salespeople in his branch. It
was his first real job, and he was starting at the bottom. Because he was new, he hung around
with the other junior salespeople. As they say, “Birds of a feather flock together.”
After a month or two, Bob noticed that the top salespeople in the office also associated with
each other.
They did not spend time with the junior salespeople. They also spent their time
differently. When Bob got into work in the morning, the top salespeople were already there,
planning their days and working on the telephone and making appointments. Bob also noticed
that the junior salespeople would come in later, drink coffee, read the newspaper, and make
excuses for not making sales calls.
LEARN FROM THE BEST
Bob decided he was going to pattern himself after the top salespeople in the office. He looked at
the way they dressed and groomed, and he resolved to dress and groom the way they did. Each
morning, he would stand in front of his mirror and ask himself, “Do I look like one of the top
salespeople in my office?”
If the answer was “no,” he would go back and change his clothes until he felt that he looked as
good as the best people. He began to come into the office and organize his day before 8:30 A.M.
so that he was ready to make calls as soon as his customers were available to see him.
One day, Bob asked one of the top salespeople if he could recommend a book or audio
program that would help him. It turns out that top people are always willing to help other people
improve. When he got the recommendation, Bob immediately went out and got the book and sent
away for the audio program. He read the book and listened to the program and then reported
back to the top salesman. The top salesman gave him some more advice on things to read and
listen to, all of which Bob followed.
DO WHAT THE TOP PEOPLE DO
Bob asked another salesperson how he planned his day, and that salesperson showed him his
time management system. So Bob began to plan and organize his day the way the top salespeople
did it. By using these top salespeople as his role models and emulating them whenever possible,
Bob started to make more appointments, see more prospects, and make more sales. Within six
months, he was one of the top salespeople in the office as well.
By that time, the top salespeople had invited him for coffee and lunch, and he became one of
them, rather than one of the junior people. The next year, Bob went to the national sales
conference, where he met a lot of the top people from around the country. He deliberately sought
them out and asked for their advice: What books would they suggest? What audio programs
would they recommend? What seminars had they attended? What strategies did they find that
were the most effective in building their sales business?
FOLLOW THE ADVICE YOU GET
Bob did something that few people ever do: When he received advice, he followed it. He
immediately took action on the advice and then reported back to the people who had given it to
him.
Within four years, Bob became one of the top salespeople in the country. His friends and
associates were the other top salespeople in his branch and in the other branches. His income
had increased several times. He wore beautiful clothes, drove a new car, lived in a lovely home,
and had a wonderful wife. And he said that it all came about as a result of asking top people for
their input and then following that input and applying it to his sales activities.
But here’s the kicker: Over and over, the top people, the ones who had been winning the sales
awards year after year, told Bob the same thing: He was the first person who had ever come up
to them and asked them for advice. No one else had ever sought them out and asked them why
they were so successful.
