I did not want to be a sales manager. I loved to sell using my system of "The Magic of Numbers and Statistics in Sales." Initially I didn't want to teach it to others because I knew they would have a hard time accepting my system.

I went out to Newark, Ohio to rebuild a small office. The office had never really taken off as there had been a lot of problems there. The previous sales manager had deemed that Newark was uncapable of making any sales.

The Newark manager's belief was so strong that the salespeople and senior management believed also that the town was incapable of profit. I was slated to shut down the office but instead I convinced senior management to let me try to salvage it.

I knew this was a last ditch effort, and all the salespeople had been infected with negative ideas. I knew I had to correct that or Newark wouldn't produce any sales.

But in my heart I knew that the people in Newark were the same as people in Columbus as the people in Dayton as the people in Cincinnati and everywhere else we had opened up offices. I knew that Newark would produce sales.

Because my system had been successful everywhere, all I needed to change in Newark was the negative thoughts.

My first action as new manager was to tell everyone they were correct. Newark was an impossible place to sell. I told them they would need to find work elsewhere. I believed it would be easier to start with a new crew then to change the attitude and belief of the current.

One young lady begged me to stay, she told me she really enjoyed her work there and she wanted to keep her job.

I warned her that I expected a lot more than the previous manager. I told her that she would be responsible for three times the amount of the previous quota.

With tears in her eyes, she said she would be willing, even excited to triple her sales, but she did not know how to do it.

I looked at her, and I could see through her eyes into her soul, that she was open to suggestions and willing to learn. I believed that she could do it if she was shown how.

I explained to her, "If you'll just follow my system I promise you'll hit your quota". So I showed her how to do it.

"Sales, " I told her, "is more than just being physically present at the workplace. You must work while you're at work. If you believe while you're dialing that the people you are calling want what you have, if you are kind, if you are sincere, this will come through perfectly on the phone and the feeling you have about the products and services will influence your contacts positively."

I also explained to her that you can keep track of your results by percentages. If for instance, you start out making one sale for every 10 prospects you talk to, that can be a number you can count on no matter what.

So if she wanted to make a certain amount of money in sales per week, that she would have to do a certain amount of presentations each week in order to get a certain amount of sales. And because she would know how many presentations she had to do per sale, she would know how many presentations she had to make each day to make a certain number of sales in a week.

She was amazed the first week when she actually hit her goal. And she had done it herself! The truth of my system became more real and more true to he as week after week she made that quota. Finally she understood that it was all up to her to do a certain amount of presentations, and that would lead to a certain number of sales, that would create an amount of income she could count on.

And then I showed her how to increase her income by increasing her ratio of sales from yes's to nos, and to increase her belief level, and her consistency.

During this time we developed a very good crew. Everyone was hitting their quotas, everything was going fine. We had a core crew of five people plus myself.

At this point I had a blended crew, some new members, and some members from the old sales team. Over time two others had come back to me and I allowed them to come back one at a time, and I taught them the new way. Everyone used the new system, quotas were being made. And then it was time for a test of my great team.

We had only been able to turn the sales people from the old crew around by changing their thoughts, because we showed them that Newark was a place you could make sales. They could see it, and when they believed it, they made sales.

One afternoon I pulled the same sheets of numbers that had been used by the previous manager out of the drawer of my desk. These shame-filled pages still held bookmarks of the unfinished area and notes that detailed that sad results of the old method of calling.

The team members from the old sales crew did not want to see the old sheets. They said they were bad sheets, they thought the numbers were just bad numbers. But I insisted. "There's nothing wrong with the numbers" I told them, "They are fine. We will make our sales with them."

To say they really didn't want to call those numbers was an understatement. Hang ups, complaints, faithless sales that could not be collected.

I explained to them, you are now a powerful crew. You are some of the finest people in this company. We have been setting records over every other office in the company.

We all worked for a very large company so it was quite an accomplishment for this sales team to have the top sales records in the company. So I looked each of them in the eye and said very firmly: "This time when you call those people, they will say yes!" All of you have nothing to fear from the old numbers, you have something new -- you have a new belief. All of you have a different attitude, you have new sales skills. Now you know you have something to offer that is good and you know that these people want it. They only told me they would "Try". I knew there was a problem, when they told me that.

So we started dialing. I did everything I could keep the room cheery, I made a pot of gourmet coffee, the aroma would fill the room. I brought in some doughnuts, I tried to make a few jokes. However at five o'clock we did not even have one sale.

I had never left at the end of the work day without having made at least $700 in sales. .I had made a promise to my supervisor to never leave at the end of the day without at least $700 in sales. But all day my team had been calling, and the day was winding down. Normally we did $1200 or more per day in sales. I wasn't worried yet, even though we had made no progress.Certainly my people together could sell at least $700 in sales in only one hour if they put their skills to work.

I asked everyone to stop calling for a moment. The room was dark with fear and negative thoughts, the legacy that had been part of their office life from the old manager. These non productive negativities had taken them hostage again. I knew that the miasma was not coming from the numbers, they weren't bad luck. But it seemed very much like the bad stuff was attached to those numbers. Everything had been fine before we started on those sheets.

I explained to them that their success came from themselves and their frame of mind. It had nothing to do with management. All I had simply done was point out what was inside themselves, and what their own abilities were. If they could look inside themselves now, they would see that they still had the ability, and they could still make this a very successful day.

We tried on again. They started to whine, they started to talk negatively. I knew I was losing my crew. By 8:30 I had had enough. We only had 30 minutes left and we had no sales.

STOP! I told them. I shared with them that I had made a promise never to turn in less than 700 dollars for one days sales to my supervisor and I vehemently insisted to keep that promise with whatever time we had left. I listened to all the bad talk all day long, now they had to listen to me.

I know that you are the best crew I have ever had, and probably one of the best I will ever have. But you have let me down.Now that is fine, because I have let people down also. But mostly I am concerned that you have let yourselves down. You have let this poison of negative thought infect you, and I have to show you that it is only yourself stopping you. It is not the people we are dialing.

They knew I was angry when I asked them to give me the very worst sheet of numbers in the room. They agreed with little delay on a specific sheet on numbers. I took it, and I announced that we would make that $700 today if I had to do it all myself. I told them to get the drivers ready to deliver product and pick up checks. I warned them that we were going to be very busy in a short while.

I selected two of my sales people to write down orders as they heard me make them, because I knew I would not have time to write down these sales, so they would have to listen closely as I worked on the phone. In order to make $700 in less than half an hour I'd have to make 20 sales in about 20 minutes.There was no time for a no. For my plan to work, veryone had to say yes. But I knew, that if I had the belief, no one could say no to me. I knew that if I was sincere, if I believed I was doing the right thing, If I believed I was doing something good for someone, it would work, and no one would say no.

I picked up the phone and I started dialing, I sold the first person I talked to, I sold the second person I talked to, I sold the third person I talked to. No one could say no to me. My concentration was higher than it had ever been. I had to prove to my crew, that this poison in their mind was at their control. That they could get rid of it if they chose to do so.

When the time clock told us the working day was over and I was down to what my people told me were the "worst of the worst" numbers, I made the seven hundred dollars of quota I told them I would make. The drivers who had been made ready successfull delivered product and collected the checks. My sales team was floored. They had seen it with their own eyes.Now they knew I would never, ever accept "bad numbers" as an excuse for lack of sales.

That was just the beginning. Now they knew that success was up to them. My sales team outsold other offices with 3 to 4 times the numbers of sales staff. The local district gave us what they considered the worst sales territory, and we turned that around to have our highest sales figures ever.

They knew they could do it, and we still outsold many of the offices with 12-15 phones and 20-25 salespersons.Although my 5 people had to share 3 phones, and we were calling an area no one else wanted, my people knew that did not matter.

The rest of the company averaged 5 sales out of each 100 contacts. But in our sales room, at least half of everyone we talked to became a sale. The sales team I had trained was doing better even than I had done as an individual sales person, and I had sold approximately one out of every three, which was a very respectable number and made me a top salesperson. The sales were unbelievably high. But my sales team knew it was true, because they were doing it.