Paul J. Meyer

The Impossible Dream Super Salesman Turns Franchisees Into Success Disciples

PAUL J. MEYER HAD A DREAM.

He wanted to serve people. It wasn't enough to sell them a product, even a product - like life insurance - which they might desperately need. Meyer could be satisfied only by meeting his customer's deepest, most urgent yearnings - the desire for happiness, success, and self-esteem that gnaws at every human heart. He wanted to provide the ultimate consumer service.

Meyer's response to his dream, which he first enunciated back in the late '50s, was to found a franchise called Success Motivation Institute (SMI), based in Waco, Tex.

The chain now has over 3,000 franchise in all 50 states and distributors in 60 foreign countries from Japan to South Africa. Last year, systemwide sales topped $200 million. SMI sells taped motivational courses on goal setting, self-esteem, sales and time management. Franchisees are also trained to minister to their customers, fitting the right product to each, and making sure he keeps up with his program of self-improvement.

The original concept was so successful that Meyer launched a second chain called Leadership Management Inc., offering seminars and management training to corporate clients like General Electric, McDonnell Douglas, Chrysler Corp., and AT&T.

The key to Meyer's success is that each franchisee is a "product of the product." After investing $20,000 for a franchise, each franchisee spends about a third of his training period immersed in the SMI programs. By the time he's ready to go out and meet customers, he's become a living, breathing testament to the course's effectiveness.

Meyer himself is perhaps the ultimate SMI "product." Growing up dirt-poor in an immigrant family in Campbell, Calif., Meyer remade himself completely through his devotion to the self-help principles of such early motivators as Dale Carnegie and Russell Conwell.

Meyer was only 16 when he decided that he wanted to be a professional salesman.

As Lois S. Strain and Gladys W. Hudson relate in their authorized biography - The Story of Paul J. Meyer: The Million-Dollar Personal Success Plan - the post-war job market was savagely competitive, saturated with newly discharged, seasoned veterans. After moving to Georgia, where he had relatives, Meyer called on 57 insurance companies without getting a single job offer. Finally, he was hired as a salesman for a life insurance company in Columbus, Ga. Three weeks later, he was fired.

Dogged Persistence

"They said I was shy and introverted," remembers Meyer. "They said I wasn't cut out for selling."

Meyer didn't leave without a fight. He confronted his boss and declared that the reason he had kept quiet when he rode with the salesmen was that he was too busy listening. "I can't learn anything when I'm talking," he explained.

Meyer boasted that he could outsell the company's best sales reps, because they started too late in the day, quit too early, and took off too much time for coffee and lunch.

"The more I considered the situation," says Meyer, "the more argumentative I became."

It all fell on deaf ears. His boss showed Meyer the door. Rather than feeling sorry for himself, Meyer proceeded straight to his father-in-law and told him mischievously, "You'd better give me a job, or I'll have to move into your living room!"

His father-in-law gave the young man a chance. He hired him to sell insurance for the largest exclusive weekly premium company in the nation.

His first day on the job, Meyer was given a packet of information. The company superintendent then drove him about four miles to the edge of town - to the black residential area. At that time, life insurance agents sold to blacks or whites - never to both. Meyer realized that he had been relegated to the less lucrative black market.

The superintendent let Meyer out of the car, handing him some applications and a sample life insurance policy. Meyer asked meekly if the man intended to stay and help him get started. "No," he said bluntly, and drove off.

Meyer sat on a curb and read the policy. Then he stood up and looked around at the forbidding rows of identical "shot-gun" houses - so-called because they were arranged one room behind the other, providing a "straight shot" from the front door right out the back.

Paul J. Meyer's First Sale

Meyer approached the front door of the first house he saw..."A neat, mature black woman answered my knock. I took off my hat and told her my business - that this was my first house I'd called on and that I'd never sold any insurance in my life - that I'd never seen a policy before. She invited me in, we looked over the packet, and she bought a policy. My first sale! Then I asked her who else would be interested. She took me next door, where the two of us sold another policy."

Courtesy and honesty had paid off. His first month, Meyer led the agency in sales of weekly premium policies. He sold more in a year than anyone in the history of the company. His clients seemed to appreciate this deferential white youth from California who took off his hat and showed them respect.

At the end of the year, Meyer went back to visit the office of the company that fired him. He recalls, "I double-parked on First Street, rode the elevator up four floors, and handed my old boss the company bulletin telling of my sales record. I don't think he appreciated it."

A Sense of Mission

Meyer put together his first training program after spending several hours on the telephone one day, trying to schedule an appointment. After 50 calls, he was still batting zero. Late that evening, he sat on the steps of his house trailer, sunk in despair. Tears of frustration rolled down his cheeks. Meyer vowed that when he finally learned how to land appointments by telephone, he would write out the technique and teach it to others so they wouldn't have to experience the same frustration.

Meyer began to plan carefully everything he said to prospects on the telephone. He wrote out and tried various approaches. When one sentence worked, he marked it as a winner and used it again. Painfully, step-by-step, he developed a winning technique. The method, now refined, is taught to SMI sales forces all over the world.

Before he was 21, Meyer wrote not only an appointment-getting technique, but a potent five-point Million-Dollar Personal Success Plan, which forms the basis for SMI's goal-setting course to this day:

1) Crystallize your thinking:

Determine the specific goals you want to achieve. Dedicate yourself to attaining them with the trenchant zeal of a crusader.

2) Develop a plan for achieving your goal and a deadline for its attainment:

Plan your progress carefully: hour-by-hour, day-by-day, month-by-month. Organized activity and maintained enthusiasm are the wellsprings of your power.

3) Develop a sincere desire for the things you want in life:

A burning desire is the greatest motivator of every human action. The desire for success implants "success consciousness," which, in turn, creates a vigorous and ever-increasing "habit of success."

4) Develop supreme confidence in yourself and your abilities:

Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses; put your attention on your powers, instead of your problems.

5) Develop a dogged determination to follow through on your plan, regardless of obstacles, criticism, or circumstances:

Fuel your determination with sustained effort, controlled attention, and concentrated energy.

Motivation Is Key

Meyer became one of the most successful insurance salesmen in the country. As soon as he was put in charge of a sales department, he gave his people books and articles to read on personal development.

But all too often, he found they didn't read the material. The biggest obstacle to personal development, he decided, was breaking through the mental barrier against getting started.

So Meyer formed the habit of spending at least 10 or 15 minutes of each early morning sales meeting reading self-improvement literature to his salesmen. He'd amassed a large collection of books and articles that could help them build positive attitudes, identify their own goals or strengthen their sales skills.

Making Disciples

Meyer's passion for motivating people didn't stop with members of his own organization. Everywhere he went, he found disciples. Once, he looked out his living room window to see a bushy-haired Fuller Brush salesman pull into his driveway. Then, apparently suffering an attack of insecurity, the man stopped, backed up, and rolled into the vacant lot next door. Amused, Meyer watched the timid salesman get out of the car and tiptoe toward Meyer's house.

At the first faint knock, Meyer jerked the door open and snapped, "Are you trying to sell me something?" The poor fellow was aghast. He stammered in the affirmative. Meyer pressed on, "Is that your car over there?" When the salesman admitted it was, Meyer demanded, "Go get it. We have to rebuild your approach." Too shocked to protest, the confused man pulled the car into the driveway. Meyer asked, "Have you ever been in a Rolls-Royce?" The answer was a feeble negative.

"Let me show you how you would get out of a Rolls-Royce," Meyer announced, sliding behind the wheel of the man's car. He then stepped out, closed the door carefully, brushed an imaginary speck of dust off the rearview mirror, took a step or two, then turned around and looked back at the car with pride. Then he walked purposefully up to the house and confidently rapped on the door. "Now," said Meyer, "I'm going back into the house. I want you to knock again as if you had just climbed out of a Rolls-Royce." The man repeated the exercise until Meyer was satisfied.

Meyer then took the hapless brush salesman to a clothing store and photographed him in a handsome new suit. The next stop was a car agency, where Meyer made the man pose for a Polaroid shot standing next to a smart new car.

"Look at these pictures every day," Meyer instructed the salesman, "and believe that this is the real you. Feel successful! Act successful! Then you will be successful."

Five years later, the same Fuller Brush salesman knocked on Meyer's front door. But he looked and acted like a different man. He told Meyer that since their last meeting, he had progressed from last place to first as a Fuller Brush rep in the state of Florida and had become a regional manager. Then he hugged Meyer and thanked him for his guidance.

Strength From Adversity

At the height of Meyer's success, disaster struck. An entrepreneur who had just started an insurance company pitched a deal to Meyer, promising him exclusive marketing rights and an option to buy 10 percent of the company. Meyer jumped at the chance to head sales for a promising new company and quickly recruited 830 people in one year.

Sales were phenomenal. But one Monday morning, Meyer arrived at the office, took out his key, and opened the door. The large building was empty. Over the weekend, eight vans had moved everything to Alabama. Not a desk, not a single file cabinet remained. Meyer's partner had been quietly siphoning off company funds. Meyer eventually learned that the Insurance Commissioner of Florida had asked the company to put up additional assets to cover their policies. Rather than comply, Meyer's partner loaded up all the Florida assets and equipment (about $1 million worth) and moved everything to Alabama, where the company was based.

When the law closed in on the larcenous partner, several company officers were indicted on more than 50 counts; there was at least one suicide and several stress-related deaths among the company directors, within 12 months.

Meyer's lawyer told him he could easily walk away from the situation. He was neither an officer of the company nor a director - he just sold insurance. But Meyer felt responsible for the people he had recruited.

Meyer had $1 million in personal assets - first mortgages, buildings, AT&T bonds - all very liquid.

He sold everything and paid the company's liabilities. Then he found jobs for everyone on the sales force for whom he felt responsible and helped sell the company.

By the time the legal mess was over, Meyer was broke. At age 27, he had been a millionaire, with a yacht and a Cadillac. Now, at 29, he was worse than bankrupt - $89,000 in debt and nothing to drive but a broken-down Chevy.

Meyer began carrying this quotation from Shakespeare's Othello:

"Who steals my purse steals trash...But he that filches from me my good name...Robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed."

"You may not have any money left," an older friend observed to him at the time, "but you have something of far greater worth - integrity."

Meyer knew he had done right. But as he, himself, was always fond of pointing out, "Real confidence in yourself is always demonstrated by action."

Offers soon began pouring in from insurance companies promising lucrative contracts and sales deals. He seized an opportunity that came up to build a new life insurance company from scratch. Soon, he'd raised $500,000 and was named the Board of Directors for the proposed venture, which was to be called Eastern States Life Insurance Co.

When he applied for a Florida charter, Meyer and his partner Bill Armor were invited to a hotel room in Daytona Beach to meet with a representative of a state official. They were asked for a $25,000 under-the-table payoff, ostensibly to hire an attorney as a consultant. Meyer answered, "If I have to start a company by cheating, God knows where I'll end. You have just closed a chapter of my life." Meyer returned the $500,000 to his investors.

As so often happens in life, defeat freed Meyer to pursue his true goals. During the darkest days, Meyer met frequently with his pastor, Dr. William Hinson. Hinson observed that, despite Meyer's obvious success as a salesman, selling was really little more than a second love for him. What seemed to make Meyer happiest was teaching success principles to others. Why couldn't he find a way to do that for a living?

Meyer knew instantly that his minister was right and began laying plans. He immediately realized that he stood little chance of achieving his goal without specialized knowledge of the communications industry. Hinson introduced Meyer to Jarrell McCracken, who owned a fast-growing company in Waco, Tex., called Word Inc., which published and marketed religious recordings.

Meyer worked for Word for two years, building the company's national sales organization, while he learned the mechanics of the communications business. Training the sales force was a perfect way for Meyer to hone his goal-setting and motivational teaching techniques.

Meyer's techniques worked better than he'd ever imagined. During his time at Word, Meyer increased sales more than 1,000 percent; and Meyer's personal income rose to well over $100,000 in his last year there.

By 1960, Meyer was ready. He launched. Success Motivation Institute Inc. in a garage. The first products were 33 rpm records, featuring condensations of personal development classics like Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World, James Allen's As a Man Thinketh, and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

The first 500 records were sold to Zig Ziglar, now a nationally known motivational speaker.

Meyer knew he'd touched a nerve. People wanted - needed - help to develop their potential. In 1963, he put together the company's first full motivation and goal-setting program called Your Personal Success Planner. It discussed self-image, communication, motivation, and goal setting. Scripts of the narration were supplied to allow listeners to read and take notes. As a marketing ploy, Meyer included a portable, battery-operated record player for use in automobiles. That early program has since evolved into SMI's best-selling Dynamics of Personal Goal Setting course.

Meyer's format of mixing printed and recorded presentations was revolutionary at the time. It proved so effective that SMI's teaching format has remained virtually unchanged since the company began. The only change has been a switch from records to cassettes.

The multisensory bombardment gave listeners the impression that they had a live teacher speaking into their ear and monitoring their progress daily, offering students a crucial motivational kick in the pants.

Meyer is now negotiating to expand his program into Eastern

Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. While 200 copycat companies have tried and failed, according to Meyer, SMI still survives as a unique testament to the power and persistence of one man's dream.

As Meyer wrote back in the days of his first insurance job: "Opportunities never come to those who wait.... They are captured by those who dare to attack."

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