Posted on 11/28/2012 4:53:16 PM PST by Altura Ct.
Hilary Hinton “Zig” Ziglar, the man of a million motivational maxims who bucked up and cheered on three generations of Willy Lomans over a 40-year international speaking career, died near his home in Plano, Texas, on Wednesday after a brief battle with pneumonia. He was 86.
His son, Tom Ziglar, announced Mr. Ziglar’s death in an email to the corporate mailing list of the family’s motivational business.
A onetime cookware salesman who boasted he was “born in L.A. — Lower Alabama,” Mr. Ziglar wrote the 1975 motivational book, “See You At The Top,” but it was rejected by 30 firms before finding a backer in a small Louisiana publishing house. The book went on to sell more than a quarter of a million copies and remains in print 37 years later. In all, Mr. Ziglar “has written more than 30 sales and motivational books, 10 of which have appeared on best-seller lists and have been translated into more than 36 different languages,” according to an official biography.
“Though his time on earth has ended, he is speaking with Jesus now in his heavenly home,” read a statement on Mr. Ziglar’s corporate home page. “The angels in heaven are rejoicing, and his family is celebrating a life well-lived.”
If Mr. Ziglar, who regularly brought his daylong, star-studded motivational extravaganzas to arenas and conference centers around the District, had a mantra, it was a creed forged in his hardscrabble days of door-to-door sales: “You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.” His steady rise to the top of the motivational game, as he saw it, merely confirmed the rightness of his think-positive approach to work and to life.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Today was the first day of the rest of his life.
I learned a lot from that man - not about salesmanship or motivation, but about attitude and marriage.
wonder who will take Zig’s place...does the country even produce men of that caliber anymore.
RIP Zig-— ‘We’ll see you, at the top’.
Ziglar and Og Mandino.......the two best motivational, inspirational writers of the modern age. Period.
RIP, Mr. Ziglar. Ya done good.
I got Zig confused with the envelope salesman - just did a search. He is Harvey Mackay - still around I think doing the motivational thing.
I saw him at a Christian Coalition meeting back in 2002. See you around the big throne Zig.
“Why don’t you go to Acapulco everyday of your life?” is my favorite Zig quote, that and “Hold on John,” that was said in the same story about organizing your day and which I still say around the house.
There was also, “Money matches everything,” and “God didn’t make gold and jewels for Satan’s crowd.”
Godspeed Mister Ziglar.
“We all need a daily check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin' thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.” -- Zig Ziglar
I heard Zig speak in an auditorium. If you did, you'll never forget it. A smooth, rafter-rattling bass voice, telling nothing but the truth. R.I.P. to a great, great man.
Somewhere along the way America decided a career in sales is a dishonorable thing. And maybe it has become so. But I resent the idea that salesmen and saleswomen aren’t the NCOs, the absolutely essential middle level, in a capitalist society. A culture with no respect for an accomplished salesforce— and you don’t last long in sales if you screw your customers over— is a market-based culture that will not make it. Zig Ziglar showed an awful lot of people how to do sales, with a longterm perspective, focused on the customer and his wellbeing. If your customers do well, so will you. And you can make a helluva lot of money over the long term growing with your customers. No shame in that, despite what the idiots in Washington and Hollywood (and Arthur Miller) say.
Rest in Peace.
I owe you a lot...
Obligatory I thought he was dead!
Me too. His was one of the best books I’ve ever read for living a positive, productive life.
Read and listened to everything he did. Will be missed. He was one person I always wanted to meet in person.
Zig! Rest in peace my friend and thank you for
all you did for me.
I wasted the first 15 years of my career by not knowing
how to sell. Zig set me right.
Learn to stand on the side of the customer and when
and how to close and you’ll go far.
Remember, the most important thing you have to sell,
is yourself.
Have to go put some tapes on just to hear his voice.
Somewhere along the way America decided a career in sales is a dishonorable thing.
Zig always said Willy loman and Death of a Salesman was
the worst thing to happen to sales, he could go on
about it and he was right.
It’s what has happened to the core of this nation to
where now sales is looked down on instead of being
held up as an example of success.
Now the young are indoctrinated to believe that wealthy
people got their wealth unjustly and there is no point
in working hard. It’s become a vicious circle where the
successful are hardest hit and the poor have no incentive.
Some progress eh Zig?
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