Give Yourself a Raise

This is from a motivational speech I gave to group of salespeople. Management wanted a 10% increase in sales. My solution was to teach the sales staff how to increase their income by 10% while only increasing their activity by 2%.

Give Yourself a Raise
By Antonio Graceffo

Before I begin I would like to tell you a little story. It is a story about courage, a story about advancing, a story about conquering. Most importantly, it is a story about never giving up.

I don’t like to name drop, but I have a cousin named William Flugelhoffen. William, we called him Billy at home, actually we called him Little Billy, Little Billy was different than other boys. He was driven. He had a mission. He wanted to invent the best recipe for fried chicken that anyone had ever eaten. And while the other kids were out playing baseball and football, Billy was in the kitchen, cooking fried chicken.

As you could imagine Billy took some ribbing for that. The other kids made fun of him. But he said, “I have a mission. I have a dream. And I will see my dream become a reality. I will make the world’s best fried chicken. The whole world will have clogged arteries, and they will know it is from me, William Flugelhoffen.”

As an adult, Billy had the option of attending university. But he said, “No, I am not going to university. Instead, I am going to follow my dream.”

So, he took the money his parents had saved for his education and he used that money to start his business. Everyday, he got up. He put on a suit and tie, and he marched into the city. He walked into every single restaurant, and demanded, not asked, not begged, he demanded that they buy his chicken recipe from him.

“I am not going to sell it for a thousand dollars, or ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or even a million dollars.” He told them. “Because this is the greatest recipe in the world.” Instead, Billy told them, “What I am going to do is, I am going to give you the recipe for free. And in return, you are going to give me ten percent of all your chicken sales for the rest of your life.”

People thought Billy’s plan was crazy. But the second half was even more outrageous. “After I sell you my recipe, then I am going to help you go national, and then I am going to help you go global.”

The first place he walked into said, “That’s great! We have been waiting for you.”

No, actually, they said “NO!”

The next place also said “NO!” as did, the next, and the next and the next.

Undiscouraged, Billy still got up, everyday, took a shower, shaved his face, put on his suit and tie, and believed in himself. He stood in front of a mirror and did affirmations. He looked himself right in the eye and said, “I am a sexy beast!” He pumped himself up. He marched into the city, with his chest proud, a big bag of chicken in one hand and a recipe in the other. He walked into restaurants, and although he had heard “NO!” so many times, each time he walked into a restaurant he demanded that they buy his chicken recipe. Rather than showing the fatigue that constant rejection brought him, he made it sound like the first time he ever said it.

He started from scratch, and he said “I am here to make a you a lot of money. Billy knew that people are not motivated by helping others. They are most strongly motivated by helping themselves. Consequently, instead of going in and asking them to help Billy become a success, he went in and told them he was going to make them more successful. And that is the kind of talk that gets people’s attention.

But still, they said “NO!”

Finally, after eight months, all of Billy’s money was gone. He was borrowing from his parents, borrowing from his friends, and selling his possessions to get money for carfare into the city each day. People began to say to him, “Billy, maybe it’s not going to happen for you. Maybe you should just take NO and stop.”

But Billy said, “I will not stop, until in have heard NO! one-thousand times.”

Ladies and gentlemen I ask you, how many of you would have quit when you had heard nine-hundred NO’s?

More about Billy in a moment. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about sales, the greatest profession in the world.

According to recent reports, the inflation in the USA is about 3%. Government workers can look forward to about a 2-3% cost of living adjustment.

But for you, SALESPEOPLE, you can chose to give yourselves whatever size salary increase you want.

How would you like to give yourself a 10% increase in salary, but only have to increase your work by 2%?

If you are currently working fifty hours per week, a 2% increase is only going to be one extra hour per week.

Think about your weekly salary. What is 10% of that number? That is the amount you will earn for one extra hour of work.

If one additional hour of work gives you an extra ten percent of salary, then it must follow that an additional five hours gives you and extra fifty percent of salary.

How do we do this? How do we increase our work by only two percent but increase earnings by ten percent?

The answer lies in your activity.

During the course of the day, do you ever do anything that doesn’t generate an income? Of course you do. Do you answer the phone, file paperwork, think about your family, drink coffee, fill in forms, make copies, write reports, eat lunch, go to meetings, or use the toilet?

None of those activities generate an income. But there is a certain amount of that stuff which is necessary just to stay in business. We call this overhead activity.

In truth, the only activity that generates income is getting new clients.

If we analyse the day of most sales people, working forty to fifty hours per week, we will find that they spend less than 20% of their day looking for new clients. So, if we increase that activity by 10%, we increase our income by 10%.

But your workweek will only increase by two percent.

My father told me that when he was a boy there was a machine to roll cigarettes. When you turned it once, it measured the tobacco. You turned it again, and it poured the tobacco. The next turn rolled the paper and sealed it. The final turn dropped the finished cigarette into your hand. To get the first cigarette you had to turn the handle five times. But once the first one was done, one turn equaled one cigarette.

The same goes for your work. All those first forty to fifty hours you put in are overhead, priming the pump. Every hour you put in beyond that pays off tremendously.

Let me finish telling you about my cousin William Flugelhoffen. Little Billy heard nine-hundred and ninety-nine “NO’s.” But, when he went on the one-thousandth call, the one none of us would have gone on, do you know what the restaurant owner said?

He also said “NO!”

True to his word, Billy quit when he heard “NO!” one thousand times.” Now he parks cars out in Vegas.

He quit. Not a very inspiring story. But there is another man who had a dream for fried chicken. What was his name?

Colonel sanders.

Do you know how old Colonel Sanders was when he started KFC? He was 62 years old. He started the company with his first social security check, which was only $100. To make matters worse, he was living in his car. He used the check to buy gas, so he could drive from city to city, asking restaurants to buy his chicken recipe.

Do you know how many times he heard “NO!”?

He heard “NO!” one thousand and ten times.

I am going to ask you to work like the colonel. What does a colonel do on the battlefield? Go forth, advance, and conquer.

Colonel Sanders had a much greater success than my cousin Billy Flugelhoffen, simply because the Colonel knocked on ten more doors than Billy.

What do you do now to get new clients? If you use cold calling, increase your calls by ten percent. So, if you do a hundred calls a day, increase it to a hundred and ten. Ten phone calls will probably only cost you three minutes. If you use direct mail, increase the number of letters by ten percent. Ten letters won’t cost you any extra time. If you are canvassing, knock on ten extra doors per day. If you are going to networking events, getting business cards from people, and then going back and trying to sell to them, I am going to ask you to pick up ten percent more cards.

People often ask me, “Antonio if we increase our activity by ten percent this year, will we be required to increase by ten percent again next year?”

If I can restate that question, what they are asking is, “if we achieve excellence this year, would it be ok if we achieved mediocrity next year?”

You can answer that question yourself.

People are afraid that you will keep asking, and asking for increased activity. But remember this is not just an increase in activity. This is an increase in salary. The normal way for humans is that we are lazy. But, we are also greedy. If you find that increasing your work by an hour increases your income by ten percent, then why not two hours, and twenty percent, or three hours…or more?

A friend of mine had been fretting about his weight for years. Then, he went on a diet and exercise program. In the first month he lost ten pounds.

“You must be happy.” I said.

He said, “I feel like a jerk. Why didn’t I do this a year ago?”

It is the same way when you get your first salary increase. You will look at the check and think of all the things you could have bought, for yourself or your family, if you had just worked an extra one or two hours per week.

A very great and wise philosopher once said, “Anything is possible, if you wish hard enough.”

Do you know who said that? Sometimes, my audience believes it was Thomas Edison, or Henry Ford, once, they thought I had said that. While I was flattered, the real answer is, this was said by Peter Pan.

Thus, the best prescription to success is to work like Colonel Sanders, and to think like Peter Pan.