There are several reasons why I am including this rather complete biography as one of your options. First, my entire life has been a series of lessons about selling, which have formed my philosophies, attitudes, skills, habits, beliefs and loves. These form my firm belief in EDEBISSS, EVERY DAY EVERY BODY IS SELLING SOMEBODY SOMETHING. I believe YOU are a salesman and I can help you sell better.

Since we are just putting my complete sales training course and materials on the web, I am unable to give you a catalog of references and testimonials about my heroics on the web … THERE AREN'T ANY YET, BUT, there will be soon. So this writing tells you of some of my major accomplishments ( I’ll leave the failures for others to tell).

I hope you consider them evidence of my abilities and proof of my experiences which will help you as they have helped thousands learn, love and prosper from SELLING.

Soooooo, HERE GOES ... I was born to be a Salesman!

I learned many things in my fifty (50+) years of being a Salesman, Sales Manager, and a Sales Trainer.

It started with my Dad whom I feel was the best Salesman I’ve ever seen.  A.E. "Bud" Wilson loved everybody and everybody loved him. That’s why the name "Bud." He personified service to the customer. As a matter of fact, in his later years he did very little "selling." Everybody bought automobiles from him. He was a "Car Salesman" back then, and a real, professional before the word became politically correct.

An example of how he performed service to his customers was the fact that when a customer brought in their car for service, they would explain the problems to Dad. Dad would give the customer his demonstrator or a car off the Used Car Lot. Then he would take their car to the appropriate mechanic, explain to him what the problem was. When it was repaired, tuned, finished —whatever— he drove it for a day or so to make sure it was right. Then, he’d call the customer and say, "Come pick up your car."  That’s the way he built a following that kept him at the top of the every "quota board" I ever saw with his name on it.

There was another aspect of it that I learned from Dad and that was hard work. In those days, the 1930’s, after losing all we had, ( he had owned land, a "U" Drive-it", and a car dealership, when the bottom fall out ... the depression, that is) Dad literally spent seven (7) days a week on the job.

There were a number of other sales attributes that seeped through to me from my Dad. A few are:

1. A man is only as good as his word. When you tell a man you’re going to do something, do it, period.
2. Always look at things from the customer’s perspective and provide the service you’d want if you were the customer. Soon there will be more buying, on the part of the customer. (A person may BUY something from someone he doesn’t like, but he will NEVER be SOLD something by a person he doesn’t like! )
3. Demonstrate the product. In this case, Dad made sure the prospect or customer was given the opportunity to drive the car, to get the feel of what it was really like in action. 

Suffice it to say, my Dad was the first Sales Trainer in my life. He possessed a majority of the attributes of the Professional Salesman (you’ll find twenty five of them in the EDEBISSS SALES COURSE) and, of course, was my mentor. So, as my granddaughter said, "It’s not my fault! It’s in my blood—I was born into a selling family."

It was natural, then, that I loved the selling game.  I sold cars during the summers when I was in high school and in college to pay my own way. It was fun and it provided most of my college funds.

My Dad always said, "You’ve got to go to college, Boy." He had only an eighth grade education. He forgot to tell me I was supposed to go to college in order to "go somewhere," to prepare for a career in life. Therefore, for about three years I spent most of my time sleeping through classes—in the gymnasium—on the athletic field—at the movies—anywhere except in the classroom where I belonged.

Then along came the Korean War and I had to get serious or die. Due to the confidence in me expressed by my genius roommate, Harding Ballough, I took the Air Force Aviation Cadet aptitude test and passed it. That meant basic training at Lackland Air Force Base.

This basic training, was in fact, a start over point for me.

When I got off the train no one knew me. They didn’t know how good or bad I could really be. That’s when I said to myself, "Let’s find out."

At the end of the first week I won the "Right Guide" assignment. Seems like a little thing, but in those days it was pretty important because the Right Guide sent everyone else to KP ( Kitchen Patrol for folks who missed the military), yard patrol and various duties while he did the assigning and the drilling to make that flight the best at Lackland Air Force Base, which is exactly what we did.

As a result, I won the American Spirit Honor Medal which was given to one out of every 2500 recruits, FOR DEMONSTRATING LEADERSHIP QUALITIES. I must have sold somebody something.

Then in pilot training, I became Cadet Squadron Commander. Somehow I must have sold somebody else something. 

After that, a commission, (officer, that is) and pilot, boring holes in the sky in an F84, apologetically known as the Lead Sled which was an air-to-ground fighter-bomber aircraft, (made another sale).

From all this, I learned many of the qualities a professional salesmen ( see the EDEBISSS COURSE) must have to succeed: discipline, planning , following the plan, check lists, practice, practice, practice, to perfection … or … you know ( you die), perseverance, tenacity , taking control, the value of hard work, and yes confidence, THAT IS REAL NOT FAKED. It better be real, you have your rear end strapped to that thing, you know. Sounds a lot like selling doesn’t it … guess what, it is.

During my college days, I had met a special lady, Lucy, " MA LADY LU THAT IS," and it was "love at first sight," almost, anyhow. On getting out of the Air Force, I sold her on becoming my wife ( my best sales job. And, the only time I was guilty of selling an inferior product).

We were considering what I should be and do for a lifelong career. As usual, Lucy, the pragmatic one, asked the key question, which she normally does. "What do you really want to do?" We were sitting in the Crystal Burger parking lot in St. Louis, Missouri. I told her, "Well, I like to sell and I’d love to do that for a career but I don’t know of any university that offers a degree in selling." She advised, "Well, look around and see if you can find one."

Behold—the University of Florida was one of the few colleges offering a Batchelor of Science in Sales and Sales Management. So we headed south … to study selling.

Toward graduation when all the seniors were interviewing companies on campus, Lucy again had a direct influence. "Talk to IBM," she said. Keep in mind, there was no such thing--in those days--as computers. There were time equipment, accounting machines, office products such as the electric typewriter, etc.

Because Lucy was supervisor at the Data Processing Operation at the University of Florida, she knew the IBM Branch Manager, Jim Wilson (no relation) in Jacksonville, Florida. I SOLD ( there’s that word again) my way into becoming an IBM Salesman. IBM was the number one sales company in those days and it was a coveted position for any person interested in sales. It was also the best training ground a salesman, sales manager or sales trainer could hope for, anywhere.

The company, the people, the management, the products were all #1 in the industry ( we felt, any industry). I should stress here, I chose selling as my career. It was not an accident or just a job I took because I didn’t know "what else to do," as all too many in the sales field do. IT WAS BECAUSE I WANTED TO SELL. Remember, " I WAS BORN TO SELL "

SALES, HERE WE COME!

For the next fifteen (15 ) years I ate it, slept it, breathed it, and lived it ... selling, AND IBM:

• Salesman in Jacksonville, Florida.

• Special Rep for Federal Government Sales in Washington, D.C. (sold em again).

• Federal Office Program Manager for the Air Force, Treasury Department and other federal government departments and agencies (more selling, don’t you know). Then the big one, for me …

• NATIONAL SALES TRAINER for the OFFICE PRODUCTS DIVISION,  (which at that time had its headquarters in New York City, after Poughkeepsie and Kingston). That was the really big sale.

•  During those moves, all of the existing sales training materials had been lost. Due to a recession, sales training was suspended and the sales trainers and staff were sent to the field on new assignments.

"THE SALES TRAINER" AT IBM

I truly found my lifetime calling at IBM as a Sales Trainer. The Vice President of Sales of my division, Bart Stevens, selected me to head up the Sales Training Department. Because of this thing called a "recession" in 1958, no Salesmen were hired or trained.

So there I was, at age 29, selected to be the National Sales Trainer, with no training material. How would I do it?  Simple, just write and conduct a training course for the world’s finest sales force. (This time I had really sold myself into a mess.)

O.K!  See if you can sell your way out of this.

After much thought I had the answer. "Why don’t I just tell them how I did it?" What did I do to make these sales? I had read all the books, I had been successful, enough to be promoted right on up the ladder. The answers must lie within myself. And that was the basis for the Sales Training Program that I developed.

The futuristic Electric Typewriter Division was becoming the Office Products Division, going from a single product line to a multi product one. The electric typewriter, itself, was a brand new product in those days, so it was pioneering to a great extent.

Gordon Moody, the Division President, called me into his office the first month I was in New York and said, "Mac I want you to tell me how you’re going to do two things: One, how are you going to teach a single product sales force to sell a multi-product line? My response was, "Gordon, what’s a multi-product line?" He explained that there was an Anti-Trust Suit against the division because we had 83% of the electric typewriter market at the time and if the division was to continue to grow, we had to add additional products.

Our Salesmen had been taught: "Calls plus demonstrations = Sales." In order to do that more successfully they practiced demonstrating, and approach calls and used, what I call the "Sales Formula Method of Selling." This meant a straight presentation, "Push Method" of selling. The Salesman does the talking, explaining how our products are "thicker, slicker and quicker than their present product, or the competitor’s product".

Gordon explained that there was no way a salesman would be able to go to a prospect and explain that our product is easier, faster, better, and does a higher quality of work than the other electric typewriters. If that tactic didn’t work, he might then tell him about our great dictation equipment and explain that it was easier, faster, and better. Then, if he didn’t get an order, he might go to our copier, and explain that it was easier, faster, and produced higher quality copies. This method just wasn’t practical and would not get the job done.

I told Gordon that I didn’t know how but that, I would find a way. I came across some writings by an Industrial Psychologist who had probably never sold anything in his life. He called one particular selling concept, "Need/Satisfaction".  The more I thought about this particular approach the more it became the answer.

Over the next couple of years I developed the "Need Satisfaction Approach" which was diametrically opposed to the way our Sales Force had sold in the past.

For the first year and a half, most managers in the field wanted me removed from Sales Training because "we were not doing it they way they had done it." After a period of about 18 months, the new Salesmen coming out of training and learning "Need Satisfaction" were "blowing the doors off," selling our products, while those who wouldn’t or couldn’t learn this new concept were passed over or out.

In Gordon’s words: "The key to the Division becoming even more successful and taking a quantum leap in selling a full line of Office Products, was NEED SATISFACTION selling." This Division became the lead Division in micro-computers and word processing. (Sold the company on NEED SATISFACTION SELLING ... a giga-sale.)

Sales Training, therefore, was rapidly becoming the focal point of my life. In 1962, I was promoted to the Birmingham, Alabama, office which at the time was the worst office in the southeast. By 1965, as a result of Sales Training (need satisfaction style), for the most part, and after hiring good salesmen, it became the number one branch office in the South and the national leader in Word Processing Systems sales.  Our troops were selling somebody something ... in wads.

Word Processing had been introduced in 1962 by Ken Lyons of the Marketing Services Department in headquarters when I was Sales Trainer. This was before micro-computers or anything like Word Processors were borne. It was a Work Simplification method of applying all of the Office Equipment we sold at that time to a more efficient arrangement called "Word Processing Centers." (Sound familiar? ... In 1962 ??? ... yet!)  

To make a long story short, my branch office learned how to design and install Word Processing Centers and took the leadership in the country for selling them. The Birmingham Office became the company leader both in Word Processing Centers and in Business Education Classroom sales for schools, colleges and universities. The key to both of these was the sales training method called NEED/SATISFACTION. As South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings would say "DERH WAS SOME KINDA SELLIN GOIN ON DOWN NAIR."

IBM was the best "training ground" a salesman, manager or trainer, could have. The company, the products, the people, the policies, the principles, were all #1 in the industry. I learned sales, management, and training, in the best possible environment.

During this time I was a member of the board of directors of Sales and Marketing Executives of Birmingham. Back then, SME was a "hot" sales organization. It had in it’s membership, the CEO’s of some of the fastest moving and most aggressive sales organizations in Birmingham and the State of Alabama.

We decided under the leadership of Frank Bromberg, Jr. President of Bromberg Jewelers, to put a Sales Training Program on Alabama Educational Television. This was a brand new idea.

We did this and won our Chapter the International Outstanding Chapter for SME in 1965. (We sold the S.M.E. world the NEED SATISFACTION SELLING METHOD ... not a bad sale.)  This was a Sales Training Class put on at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, where I was an Assistant Instructor. We blended an hour of classroom lectures and skill building drills with another hour of educational television. This was telecast to the entire state.

Businessmen and Sales Managers with their Salesmen, attended the course and viewed it on TV.

As had been the case with IBM Sales Training, I wrote and conducted the Sales Training assisted by several other Sales Managers from other companies. I guess you could say training was already in my blood.

These concepts had become so successful and so much a part of me, I had to "go do my own thing." I left IBM then, and for the next twenty-five (25) years I ran my own companies. At the peak there were five small companies employing about 65 employees in five different Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Kentucky towns.

For the next 25 years I owned the companies which sold products and services to the medical profession (hospitals, clinics, medical practices).

WE wrote the training methods and systems for conducting the business side of medicine. This included, computerized patient scheduling, patient accounting, insurance claims coding, processing and collecting, billing, collections—the whole bag. (Selling doctors on business systems? Are you kidding me? ... Yep!)

This era also saw me: building sales forces from scratch for an international publicly held computer service company , my own small companies, and on to conducting Sales Training for Dale Carnegie (this fine organization, today, is known more for its personal development courses than for its Sales Training which had been the foundation of the organization from the outset). Selling all kinds of stuff and training salesmen to do it. 

Dale Carnegie found that Personal Development was much more profitable, so Sales Training was pushed to the rear (not where it belongs).  After all sales training is Personal Development isn’t it …  ISN’T IT! YEP.

After selling my businesses I planned to retire. I found retirement simply isn’t in the cards for me. I GOTTA GO SELL SOMEBODY SALES TRAINING …

I have a dream that sprang from "Every Day Every Body Is Selling Somebody Something." I sincerely believe that everybody needs Sales Training.

Today I am Corporate Sales and Management Trainer for R. L. Zeigler, the #1 Meat Packer and Seller in Alabama, and strong in Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia. I am constantly refining and publishing my writings for the net, the web, the world - and hopefully for YOU!