Ray Kroc, Howard Schultz, Joe Girard

Reading Ray Kroc’s Grinding It Out, I was amazed at the remarkable similarity between the story of this book and Howard Schultz’s Pour Your Heart Into It. The stories are similar on the values and virtues of these men and process of growth of the companies these men built. It’s about honesty, integrity, courage to do what one believes in, courage to admit the limitation of one’s own ability and bringing into the team someone who is top class with specialized field ability. It’s about loyalty to people who are loyal to them. It’s about taking the right chances and competitiveness. I also saw lots of similar lines that appeared in Ray Kroc’s book when he talks about his salesman days at a paper cup company and Joe Girard’s book, How To Sell Anything To Anybody. Loving the product one is selling, appreciating and caring about customers and everyone who is involved in the sales and service process, and selling to customers the best possible value for him seem to be the common traits among truly excellent sales reps.

I can say this from years and years of my own experience. I have seen so many executives who could not achieve greatness, because they failed to treat people with respect, because they simply would not hire anyone who was smarter than they in any field. When I was in sales, I did well, and on my yearly performance review by peers, I was always amused to find colleagues complained because I was always putting customer’s needs first, like Kroc and Girardi did.