Vicki Hitzges on how to deal with rejection in sales, how NOT to motivate your employees, and the one thing we all have in common

Hello everyone and welcome to the Better Life Better Business podcast presented by The Speakers Group. I'm Shawn Ellis, founder of The Speakers Group, and today I'm talking with Vicki Hitzkas, motivational speaker and author of Attitude Is Everything, which sold out overnight and happens to be the best-selling book on attitude from the Simple Truths series. But Vicki first came into the world of speaking as after a successful career in TV and PR. And then the legendary Zig Ziglar invited her to become one of his personal mentorees. And since then, she's been called on to motivate audiences and workforces around the world. And her real specialty is helping organizations create cultures of encouragement, which is important work, especially today. And I've had the pleasure of knowing her and working with her for many years, and, and I know you're gonna love this program today. So Vicki, welcome and thank you for being with us.

Thank you. What a nice introduction, Shawn Ellis.

Thank you. Well, you know, I'd like to tap into your expertise today on, on motivation and attitude and, and get your—

Oh, you just tap away. What would you like?

Well, I want to ask you some of the questions I think would be helpful for our listeners, issues that I know that they're facing in their lives and, and businesses. And starting out, I know you speak to a lot of sales organizations, and one thing I've about sales professionals, they have to deal with rejection every day. So what advice do you have about how to handle rejection in sales?

Oh yes, isn't that the pits? Wouldn't it be great if you could just trot your stuff out and people would go, "Yes, I want to buy that. In fact, let me give you twice as much money." Everybody has to deal with rejection and it's not just salespeople. Everybody hates rejection too. It's a huge problem. When I worked with Zig, he was so cute. He used to say when he was in sales, he had an ability to sit outside of a building and just look at it, and he could feel that the prospects were gonna say no. And so he would save a lot of time. He'd just go right to the delicatessen around the corner and drink coffee. It was a gift. Yeah, that's great. We don't like rejection. We don't like to be turned down. We have a fear of hearing no. But as Lois Creamer, the speech coach, reminded me recently, she said, "The answer is always no. It's always no unless you ask, and then you run the risk of hearing yes." Wow. Isn't that great advice?

That's great. Just a great way to turn that around. Yeah. I love it. It definitely changes the, changes your approach and outlook. Well, what would you say then, let's shift gears from sales a little bit. I mentioned the companies call you in to motivate their workforces and their employees. You create these cultures of encouragement. So if we have a manager listening who wants to go back and motivate his or her office and team. What advice would you give to that person?

Well, let me tell you what not to do. What you don't do is throw money at them. Money is a bad choice as a motivator, and a lot of companies are tempted to do that because it makes sense. If you say to your employee, hey, I want to, I want to motivate you, what, what can I do? They'll say pretty much every time, give me some, some money. But Money has problems. First of all, there's a finite supply and you can't just keep giving it away because you'll run out. So that is not a smart way to run a business. But the other problem with money is, besides you'll run out, is money doesn't work. It won't motivate. Now money will motivate in the short term. If you, Shawn Ellis, give me a big bonus or you give me a raise, I will be motivated. I will like you for that. In fact, you You feel free just even as a friend to try that.

Sure.

But pretty soon, if I work for you, I will spend the money on groceries or shoes, or I'll make a down payment on a gallon of gas or, you know, whatever. And pretty soon I'm thinking, what have you done for me lately?

Yeah.

Every study shows that there's little, if any, correlation between making money and feeling appreciated. So then the question is, well, what does motivate? And one answer to that is praise. It's free and it's an easy commodity, and the deal with praise is it has a very short half-life, and so people can always use more. I know a president of a company in Denver, and his theory is you need to always be sure that you give your kids and your coworkers 10 attaboys for every you jerk. That's his formula. 10 attaboys for every you jerk. And you get that formula turned around, you can destroy your kids and you can destroy your people. He was known for praising his people and for praising his people in tangible ways. And I'll tell you a story about him It snows a lot in Denver, and I live in Dallas. I'm sure you can tell by my accent. I practice my accent every single day. And, um, he came in one day and he went in the office early as he usually did, and he thought, oh no, the campus is going to be— we have a big several-building complex— and he thought, oh no, the parking lots, all the streets in here are gonna be snowed in. The city takes care of their streets, but the campus of their organization was gonna be all just snowed under. And when he got there, to his shock, it was all plowed up. And he looked at the end of the parking lot, and one of his employees had gotten up on his own, and he had gotten out, I live in Dallas, I don't know, whatever you call that thing that it, shoveled up, driven around and shoveled up all the snow. And he, he drove down there and he said, I want to thank you, and I want to see you in my office when you finish. And so the young man— we'll call him Bob— Bob came into his office and he said, Bob, I cannot thank you enough, but here's what I would like to do. And he reached into his pocket and he pulled out his own personal credit card And he said, it would honor me if you and your wife would take my credit card and you would go away this weekend, just the two of you, and have a good time on me. Wow. And he said he couldn't— he could not have thought what happened, because what happened was word of that spread throughout the company. And everybody already loved this guy because he made time to talk to people and to appreciate them and build them up and catch them doing things right. And, uh, people worked for him and they didn't work for him out of fear. They worked for him because they genuinely loved him. And so they went out of, out of their way to work hard for him.

That's a great story.

Isn't that a good story?

Yeah, it's just, it's awesome. I think, you know, the easiest thing when you talk about motivating people, I think the easiest thing is to go for the money part, to just, you know, give a bonus or whatever it may be. It takes a little more thought to do something like that and to praise like you're talking about. Since you talk about cultures of encouragement, and I know you're one of the most encouraging women I know, what— I'm guessing that this kind of story is definitely part of a culture of encouragement. Any other tips or advice you'd like to share about what it is that creates a culture of encouragement, or exactly what that means when you say that?

Well, sure. I think my gift is encouragement. I love that, and I, I like, I like to encourage people. I like to encourage people. Like, when I'm invited to speak, the first thing I do when I walk into a room is I get there early, and I talk to people in the audience audience and encourage them however I can. I want to work with the meeting planner and encourage the meeting planner from the time we get on the phone to the time she or he goes, "Thank you, thank you, thank you." And I want to say words that are encouraging from the stage. I have a talk about the big idea. I always have one main thing I'm driving home, and it's people reach out to people who reach out. And that's another way of saying people like to do business with people they like. And I ran this by a real wise friend of mine named Fred Smith, real wise old, older man who's since passed on. But I said to him, Fred, I'm working on this idea, people reach out to people who reach out, what do you think about that? And he said to me, Vicki, go with that. Go with that. He said, I've always thought people should endeavor to be a river of blessing, but the problem is most people want to be a lake and accumulate, but the blessing is in the flow. He said, when water sits, it just gets stagnant and dank, but the Colorado rivers run, so they're fresh and they're alive. The Dead Sea is dead because the water comes in but it doesn't go out. And nobody wants to be a stinky old sea or a smelly old lake. So I want to teach them how to be fresh and vibrant and alive.

That's great. That's great advice. And I know, I mean, we all just flip that around. I mean, we all want, want somebody to reach out to us, whether you know, whether we admit it or not. So knowing that we're all, you know, we're all wandering around here not so different, everybody just— we know how good it feels when somebody reaches out to us.

Isn't that the truth? You know, there was a gal that I worked with at the Zig Ziglar Corporation, and she, she was delightful. She was the greenest person I ever knew. She, she came into my office once and she said Vicky, I went to Jennifer's last night and she used placemats. And I thought to myself, I could use placemats. Yeah, I mean, that just blew her away. And she would walk around the office— I'm not making this up— she would walk around the office and she would say, praise me, Praise me. Praise me. You know, we loved her so much. She was funny. She was— she was— but she wouldn't be funny. She's being real then. Yeah, we loved her so much. We would say, okay, there isn't anybody like you, Susan. Nobody, nobody walks up and says praise me. Yeah, but you know what? You're delightful. You're like a little sister I never had. You learn, you grow, you're fun to have around. You've got a cute sense of humor, you get blown away by something as simple as a placemat. And do you know, she grew so much, she ended up becoming the catering director for the entire Zig Ziglar Corporation. Wow, isn't that amazing? She was good at it. And you can hear that story and you can think, oh, choke. She walked around and said, Praise me. But here's the real truth of that, Shawn Ellis, something you were just on to. Mary Kay Ash built a multi-billion dollar corporation, and she built it off of a principle. It's in her book Mary Kay on People Management, and it is that every person that you meet, every person that you meet, has an invisible sign around their neck that says, make me feel important.

Wow. Yeah, that's awesome. I think, yeah, the world would be certainly a better place if we'd all take notice of those invisible signs. And I'm remembering that myself now too. But that certainly would create a culture of encouragement, no doubt about that.

Mm-hmm.

Well, good. Well, Vicki, this has been great. I appreciate you just taking a few minutes to share your wisdom and your spirit with us. And, and if you'd like to learn more about Vicki and how she can help you and your life and business, you can find her here on thespeakersgroup.com, of course, but you can also go to VickiHitzgus.com. That's V-I-C-K-I-H-I-T-Z-G-U-S, VickiHitzgus.com. And she's on Twitter @TheHits, the H-I-T-Z, The Hits on Twitter. But thank you again, Vicki, and thank you for listening to The Better Life Better Business Podcast, and we'll see you next time.

God gracious, thank you, Shawn. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.