How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling: Chapter 34

Benjamin Franklin’s Secret of Success and What It Did for Me by Frank Bettger

This chapter probably should have been in the beginning of the book, but I have saved it for the last, because it is, perhaps, the most important of all. It is the track I ran on.

I was born during the blizzard of 1888 in a little row house on Nassau Street, in Philadelphia. On both sides of our street there were lamp-posts about every fifty yards. As a small boy I can remember watching every evening just about dark for the lamplighter who came through the street carrying a roaring torch. He stopped at each lamppost, reached his torch high up into the lamp, and lighted it. I usually watched him until he disappeared from sight, leaving a trail of lights behind him so that people could see their way.

Many years later, when I was groping around in the dark, desperately trying to learn how to sell, I picked up a book that had a tremendous effect on my life, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s life reminded me of that lamplighter. He, too, left a trail of lights behind him so that others could see their way.

One of those lights stood out like a great beacon, an idea discovered by Franklin when he as just a small printer in Philadelphia and badly in debt. He thought of himself as a simple man of ordinary ability, but believed he could acquire the essential principles of successful living, if only he could find the right method. Having an inventive mind, he devised a method so simple, yet so practical, that anyone could use it.

Franklin chose thirteen subjects which he felt were necessary or desirable for him to acquire and try to master, and he gave a week’s strict attention to each subject successively. In this way, he was able to go through his entire list in thirteen weeks, and repeat the process four times in a year.

When he was seventy-nine years old, Benjamin Franklin wrote more about this idea than anything else that ever happened to him in his entire life – fifteen pages – for to this one thing, he felt he owed all his success and happiness. He concluded by writing: “I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit”.

When I first read these words, I turned back eagerly to the page where Franklin began to explain his plan Over the years, I have reread those pages dozens of times. It was like a legacy to me!

Well, I thought, if a genius like Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest and most practical men who ever walked this earth believed this was the most important thing he ever did, why shouldn’t I ty it? I suppose if I had ever gone to college, or even high school, I might have felt that I was too smart for such a thing as this. But I had an inferiority complex because I only went to school six years in my whole life. Then when I discovered that Franklin had only two years of schooling, and now, 150 years after his death, all the world’s greatest universities were showering honors on hm, I thought I’d be a fool not to try it! Even at that, I kept a secret of what I was doing. I was afraid people would laugh at me.

I followed his plan exactly as he told me how he used it. I just took it and applied it to selling. Of Franklin’s thirteen subjects, I chose six, then substituted seven others which I thought would be more helpful to me in my business, subjects in which I was especially weak.

Here is my list, and the order in which I used them:

1.      Enthusiasm.

2.      Order: self-organization.

3.      Think in terms of others’ interests.

4.      Questions.

5.      Key issue.

6.      Silence: listen.

7.      Sincerity: deserve confidence.

8.      Knowledge of my business.

9.      Appreciation and praise.              

10.   Smile: happiness.

11.   Remember names and faces.

12.   Service and prospecting.

13.   Closing the sale: action.

I made a 3” x 5” card, a “pocket reminder,” for each one of my subjects, with a brief summary of the principles, similar to the “pocket reminders” you have found throughout this book. The first week, I carried the card on Enthusiasm in my pocket. Ad odd moments during the day, I read these principles. Just for that one week, determined to double the amount of enthusiasm I had been putting into selling and into my life. The second week, I carried my card on Order: self-organization. And so on each week.

After I completed the first thirteen weeks, and started all over again with my first subject – Enthusiasm – I knew I was getting a better hold on myself. I began to feel an inward power that I had never known before. Each week, I gained a clearer understanding of my subject. It got down deeper inside of me. My business became more interesting. It became exciting!

At the end of one year, I had completed four courses. I found myself doing things naturally, and unconsciously, that I wouldn’t have attempted a year before. Although I fell far short of mastering any of these principles, I found this simple plan a truly magic formula. Without it, I doubt whether I could have maintained my enthusiasm … and I believe if a man can maintain enthusiasm long enough, it will produce anything!

Here is an astonishing thing to me: I seldom meet anyone who never heard of Franklin’s thirteen-week plan, but I have never met anyone who has told me he tried it! Yet, near the close of his long and amazing life, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example, and reap the benefit.”

I don’t know of anything a sales manager can do for his salesmen that will do so much to assure their success as to make it absolutely compulsory to follow this plan.

Remember, Franklin as a scientist. This plan is scientific. Reject it, and you reject one of the most practical ideas ever offered you. I know. I know what it did for me. I know it can do the same for anyone who will try it. It’s not an easy way. There is no easy way. But it is a sure way.