By now you have heard, one of the heavy weights in the field of personal development a giant, Zig Ziglar passed away on November 28, 2012. If you are like me you have already read many of the tributes and memories, so I won’t rehash them.
Rather I want to point out the common thread that ties all of these together; Zig was a genuinely nice guy.
• He wrote 13 books
• Zig elevated the art of professional selling
• He was a Sunday School teacher
• He was an inspiration to millions
I personally have read three of his books and listened to a few of audio recordings. And while he was a great story teller at the end of his story you had a lesson. What came through everything I listened to and everything I read was this: He genuinely cared about you, his audience.
If you hang around with business people you will often hear them say something Zig said, his quotes have changed paradigms:
– “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes”.
– “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons”.
– “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will”.
And through all of it you can sense that Zig was a genuinely good guy. There are countless stories of him sitting in the front row at NSA conferences taking notes from fledgling speakers. He still felt he could learn (And he was a good audience member). Those of you that are speakers understand the importance of that.
He would write notes to people years after he met them with information that he thought would be interesting to them or to offer words of congratulations or comfort.
There are a lot of people that will tell you nice guys finish last. Don’t believe them.
