Greatest Salespeople of All Time

I recently read an article on Inc.com that was titled “10 Greatest Salespeople of All Time.”  I thought it would be interesting but was a bit skeptical of its accuracy due to the fact that there have been billions of salespeople in human history and selecting the best ten would surely be difficult.  Unlike a list of the ’10 Greatest Basketball Players of All Time,” which can be found in various places all over the internet, there is no common system that keeps track of all the statistics and attributes of all salespeople.  That being said, I still think the list is worth reading and thinking about how these ten people with very different backgrounds and from very different time periods were able to sell products and services to their markets with incredible success.

10) John H. Patterson (Sales-training Programs, Cash Registers)
9) David Ogilvy (Cooking Stoves, Instruction Manuals)
8) Mary Kay Ash (Sales Incentives, Cosmetics)
7) Dale Carnegie (Public Speaking and Correspondence Courses)
6) Joe Girard (Automobiles)
5) Erica Feidner (Pianos)
4) Ron Popeil (Infomercials, Consumer Appliances)
3) Larry Ellison (Corporate Technology)
2) Zig Ziglar (Motivational Speaking)
1) Napoleon Barragan (Mattresses, 1-800)

Some of these people pioneered new ways of selling such as the 1-800 number for telephone sales and Infomercials so that people could be sold while watching television.  These techniques are still used today in many sales situations. Reading the brief profiles of these ten salespeople confirmed many of the tips and techniques we have learned about in class.