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Partially blind, author writes about his vision for success
JOANN Jones
When Eric Schaffert of Poland was 10 years old, he cheated death. ... twice.
Schaffert had just arrived at a baseball game and was sitting on his Schwinn bike near the third-base line when a screaming line drive narrowly missed his temple and hit him squarely in the left eye.
He said his head exploded. The trauma and resulting surgery left him not only blind in his left eye but also with two different colored eyes.
“In an instant everything went black and was silent,” he wrote in his new book, “Blind Faith, Blind Ambition: A Vision for Success.”
Several years before that he had spent four weeks in a hospital after his appendix had burst. He could have died then, too, he said.
As a 10-year-old, all he wanted to do was fit in, be “just one of the guys,” he said. Having two different-colored eyes and suffering from pain made him different but fueled “a relentless need for success” that he sees as a blessing from God. That success includes eight national sales awards, one of which he received at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla.
However, he also credits his paternal grandmother, Mary Helen Stratton, for his strong faith and will to succeed.
“She had an incredible, rock-solid faith,” Schaffert said. “She saw something in me even before the accident.”
He devotes the second chapter of his book to his grandmother, whom he calls “an extraordinary person, a courageous and formidable woman who was way ahead of her time.” He dedicated the book, available at Barnes & Noble in Boardman, and Amazon.com, to her as well as to his wife, Karen.
“My grandmother drilled that absolute faith and trust in God into me, along with her strong determination,” he wrote. “‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ she said, over and over.”
“The thing you always have to know is He is always at your side, especially when you fall,” he said. “When you have faith in Him, you turn outcome over to Him.”
Schaffert, a 1969 graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School and a 1975 graduate of Youngstown State University, said his grandmother’s inspiration has been a key to his success in both his professional and personal relationships.
During his junior year in 1974 at YSU, Schaffert was holding down three positions — one as a full-time student, another as an assistant to the media services coordinator for the Youngstown Board of Education and a third position in weekend retail sales.
“I thought it would be so much easier if I could hold down one good job,” Schaffert said.
So Schaffert interviewed with G.F. Business Equipment, at the time the largest manufacturer of office equipment in the area.
“A degree was required for the job, but I apparently impressed them,” Schaffert said. “They hired me but told me I had to complete my degree, so I went to night school.”
“This really kind of launched everything from that point forward,” he added. “It laid the foundation for what would lead to success in professional sales.”
When the steel industry slowed down, Schaffert made a “leap of faith,” as he calls it, and went to work for Johnson & Johnson in pharmaceutical sales. By this time he had married Karen, and they had a son, Eric Jr., now a family physician near Chicago. Later they had another son, Kevin, now a teaching professional in Mayfield Village Racquet Club near Cleveland. All four Schafferts are YSU graduates.
“The training program at Johnson & Johnson was outstanding,” he said, “and I followed the corporate template for two to three years. It was highly structured in terms of how they wanted you to sell. But I hit the proverbial wall. The newness was gone.”
Schaffert said he experimented with his sales approach to build a genuine, authentic relationship with his clients. Despite winning national sales awards, he left Johnson & Johnson to go to work for Searle Pharmaceuticals and ultimately for Pfizer.
“My clients’ relationships are based on things we have in common — interests outside the professional realm,” he said. “I call it self-disclosure. You open up and make yourself vulnerable to your client, put a personal face on.”
“You’re not just another suit selling,” he emphasized.
Schaffert has a name for the authentic approach he uses for success. He calls it “music.”
“When you let that music come out, miracles happen,” Schaffert said.
“Music” is that which makes each person unique, each person’s authentic voice, the voice that best expresses who we are, according to Schaffert. And it is to this music that he credits his sales success.
“Clients know who you are, where your heart is,” he said. “I take the time to get to know my clients. Many of my business relationships are like extended family.”
“When I walk in the door, they know they can trust me,” he said. “They know I’m going to bring value to them and their customers. This is not a matter of vanity or pride but a way of establishing your credentials with your clients.”
For this “music” Schaffert credits his father, William, an accomplished musician and composer, whose dream was to make music his life. Yet, that wasn’t to be.
“The pursuit of his dreams ended in 1969, the year I went to college,” Schaffert wrote in his book, “when it became apparent he no longer was in a financial position to continue to chase them. That year, ironically, marked the ending of one person’s dream and the beginning of another’s.”
Schaffert said he believes it was anger from his accident that originally fueled his pursuit for success, but it took him 20 years and a cataclysmic accident to rechannel his focus and realize how blessed he really is.
A friend of his who was in his initial sales training class was on board USAir Flight 427 that crashed in September 1994 six miles east of the Pittsburgh International Airport. Everyone on board perished. Schaffert says he could have been on that flight if he hadn’t made the decision to leave a management position and go back into field sales, he said.
At his friend’s funeral, he said he watched and waited for a vice president of sales to let the man’s wife know how important her husband was to the sales team. But when that didn’t happen, Schaffert saw how not emphasizing someone’s importance can affect relationships.
“That accident changed the wiring in my brain,” Schaffert said. “Not only that I wasn’t on the flight, but that I was blessed.”
As a salesman and a Pfizer Master now, Schaffert said the masters program “is about helping the younger folks.”
“I was blessed to make it to the Pfizer Hall of Fame,” he said.
“I’ve been able to mentor seven or eight people in the last ten years.”
Now, Schaffert said, he defines success not by the number of sales awards he receives, but by giving back, and that’s why he wrote the book.
“This book is a crossover book — a practical, powerful book for success in business and also the business of life,” he said. “When I wrote it, I wrote it from the heart.”
“This book has really added another dimension to my life, and it’s been a wonderful dimension,” Schaffert said. “I want my legacy to be not just another sales award but giving back and helping others find fulfillment.”
“We’re all salespersons,” he said. “If what we’re selling isn’t a product, it’s what we believe in.”