One day an entrepreneur took his young sales manager up to a magnificent estate overlooking a beautiful river.

He then took him up on the highest peak on the property, put his arm around him and pointed down and said: "Look at that stunning home and gorgeous swimming pool! How do you like those fabulous tennis courts? Take a look at those beautiful horses in the stable. Now all I want you to do is continue to meet the high standards and goals I've set for you and someday, son ... someday all this will be mine."

This is one of my favorite stories, and it came from a close friend of mine by the name of Larry Wilson. I went to Larry when I started my public speaking career to ask for a humorous opening story. He came through with this stellar anecdote.

On several occasions we shared the stage. I was uncomfortable with that because the audience always knew he was the more gifted and polished speaker. One of the main reasons was his ability to tell stories. He always told me that content alone won't make it. You must be a storyteller to drive home your salient points.

Sadly, we lost Larry Wilson on April 6, but I will long remember Larry and his many pearls of wisdom. He was a personal friend for more than 45 years and a mentor to me. We both graduated from the University of Minnesota, although some years apart, and started our careers in sales, then built businesses and got into the speaking business.

Larry didn't set out to build an educational empire that would eventually train more than one million people from around the world. His daughter Susie said he was just trying, like so many other young men, to support his wife and eight children. He began as a teacher, but then realized he had an exceptional talent for sales.

His legacy includes accomplishments such as becoming the then-youngest lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table in the life insurance field at age 29.

His success led to requests to share his selling secrets. He realized he had a real gift, and he wanted to know why. He met with experts from around the world so he could better understand how we can learn to be better in our careers and our personal lives. And that, I believe, is Larry's greatest gift to all of us.

He started with a sales program called "Sales Sonics" -- later called "Counselor Selling" -- a program that promoted a consultative approach to selling, suggesting that successful sales did not require manipulation. That launched his ultra-successful company, Wilson Learning, in Minneapolis. His company's mission statement was "Helping people and organizations become as much as they can be." With that intent, Wilson Learning grew globally and provided training in eight languages in 20 countries. His client list included hundreds of companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Caterpillar and Dow Chemical.

After he sold Wilson Learning, he moved on to his next challenge, creating Pecos River Learning Center in Santa Fe, N.M., which emphasized growth, leadership and change management, a novel concept in the 1980s. True entrepreneurs like Larry are always thinking of new ideas. He was a true entrepreneurial visionary.

Larry embodied the characteristics that every successful entrepreneur and salesperson must possess: mental toughness, risk taker, generous, creative and innovative. He believed in developing listening skills and practicing visualization long before those were accepted principles. He showed how a "counselor approach" to meeting customer needs produced more effective results. His teaching created a new generation of salespeople who were focused on win-win problem solving.

He taught people that by overcoming fear, individuals can reach their highest levels of performance and fulfillment. Personal growth was the crucial task of a leader. And finally, developing and cultivating trust is fundamental to a successful business. Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do.

For those who did not have the opportunity to attend one of Larry's seminars, he published several books, including "Play to Win! Choosing Growth Over Fear in Work and Life" and "The One-Minute Salesperson" which he co-authored with Spencer Johnson.

Larry was an indefatigable worker. No one was ever going to outwork Larry Wilson, he once told me. And he wasn't kidding.

Mackay's Moral: Don't avoid risk and be afraid to become as much as you can be.

Humorist Erma Bombeck once wrote a column titled "If I Had My Life to Live Over." In it she offered such nuggets of wisdom as: "I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded," and "I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed."

Country singing star Tim McGraw wrote his blockbuster song "Live Like You Were Dying" shortly after the death of his father, baseball great Tug McGraw. I understand the notion that you have to live each day as if it were your last.

I was taught this at an early age by my golf coach at the University of Minnesota, Les Bolstad. He got me to focus on things like no one else ever did. When I was preparing for the NCAA Golf Championships my sophomore year, he told me to line up each putt and think of it as the last putt I would ever make.

Today I have that same focus. Before each speech or meeting, I think: This is the last speech I am ever going to make. This is the last negotiation I am ever going to enter, so it better be good.

And then I get ready to do it again!

If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?

I've thought about that more than once. Besides the routine items like spending more time with my family and on leisure activities like golf, I came up with my own list. I still have plans to work on a few of these!

-- I would have been more available whenever a friend was in trouble or was going through a tough time due to divorce, financial trouble, job loss or even DUI. I would move mountains to contact my friend right away and say, I heard about your problem ... I'm thinking about you ... and if there is anything I can do to help, let me know. And I would wish him luck.

-- I would have been a high school basketball coach because you can make a huge impression on a youth's goals, ethics, discipline, respect and outlook on life at that early age. Coaches touch and shape many lives.

-- I would have written down all my goals when I was young, like my friend Lou Holtz, who wrote down 125 goals. Once he accomplished them, he tore them up and wrote down more goals.

-- I would have loved to be a Mr. Fix It. All my life I've been challenged in this area. For example, when my wife, Carol Ann, was pregnant with our first child, I came home from work and the light in the kitchen was not working. I called an electrician who came out and told me, "I've been an electrician for 28 years, and this is the first time I've had to make a house call to change a lightbulb."

-- I would have become tech savvy early on and been quicker to embrace the power of social media.

-- I would have studied abroad. My parents were right when they told me that travel is a great teacher. I did take off on a three-month European trip with two of my buddies and we visited 16 countries. It was a tremendous learning experience, and I wish I had done more of it at a young age.

-- I would have earned an MBA and taken business law classes. I'm a firm believer in continuous education, but other than getting my undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and attending an executive program at Stanford University's graduate school of business, I never took additional formal business education.

-- I would have skied the Bugaboo Mountains in Canada, and run with the bulls in Pamplona to feed my sense of adventure.

-- I would have challenged myself by running more marathons and starting earlier than age 56.

-- My wife is an art historian, and I wish I had taken some courses so I could converse at her level. She is also a wine connoisseur, and I wish I had learned to appreciate fine wines.

-- I would have interviewed my parents and grandparents and learned more about our family history and genealogy. I treasure the lessons I learned from my father, but there is so much more information I wish I had gathered.

Mackay's Moral: Carpe diem! Seize the day!

Why is it that the general counsel of a company is always a lawyer and the head of engineering is always an engineer, yet the top sales manager isn't always a sales person? Sales is the engine that drives a company. No sales means no company.

I recently discussed this quandary with my friend Tom Hopkins, who is a sales management rock star. More than 4 million people have attended Tom's lively sales seminars. He leads 30 seminars each year throughout the United States and many foreign countries. More than 35,000 corporations and millions of professional salespeople use his sales training materials daily. He's also the author of 17 books, including the sales classic, "How to Master the Art of Selling."

Tom hit hard on these areas of improvement for sales managers:

Preplan sales meetings. Too many sales managers just show up and go through the motions. Tom led the country's top Coldwell Banker real estate office, and he always had an agenda to pass out so sales reps knew exactly what would be covered. And he always had some exciting new things because, "You have to really sell salespeople on selling each and every meeting."

Catch people doing something right and praise them. At every sales meeting Tom recognized people who were doing something right. He would try to praise 25 percent of the attendees at every meeting.

Serve as a role model. "Sales managers need to be a shining example of what they want their salespeople to be like," Tom said. "They need to be truly respected as human beings -- the way they live, their honesty, integrity and work ethic. Sales managers need to work harder on themselves than they do on the job of management to become the type of person that their salespeople want to become."

Emphasize time management. Tom said: "Sales managers need to work harder on time planning and organization than most people do. We all have 86,400 seconds in a day. No one has any more or any less. The most successful sales managers are eloquent time planners."

Strive to motivate and train people. Tom told me that the biggest mistake sales managers make is not making their salespeople productive fast enough. He stressed the need for up-to-date training and having a top-notch library in the office.

For example, Tom said when he was in management, he would give a favorite sales book to each new hire with a two-week assignment to highlight the best ideas on each page. On the last page he wrote that he would treat the person to a nice lunch. Then after two weeks, he would call the salesperson into his office and ask if he finished the book. If he said, "Oh, yeah. I finished it all," and didn't mention the lunch, then Tom knew his new hire had a character flaw.

I also use books for training, asking reps to share their insights with the rest of the staff. And when we send our salespeople to conventions, their assignment is to come back and teach everyone about the concepts at our next sales meeting.

Fire unproductive sales reps. "A good sales manager can't be afraid to change their people if they can't change their people," Tom said. "If you can't change a person after a 90-day period to where they get their attitude back and are productive, then you have to make a change. Too many sales managers just don't want to rock the boat."

I always say, it's not the people you fire who make your life miserable; it's the people you don't fire who make your life miserable.

Tom added: "If you are not periodically bringing in good, highly enthusiastic new people as needed, your office will plateau as to productivity, which is not what any company wants."

Be proactive. Tom told me that following a recession, too many companies wait until things are much better before they really get active and go out and take advantage of the market. The top companies start gearing up their sales activities before the cycle turns, so they're ahead of the competition.

Tom said: "When the economy is coming back, the story salespeople should be telling their customers is that all indicators by major economists are showing that your market is not only picking up, but it's getting hot. And we want your company to be ahead of your competition."

Mackay's Moral: A great sales manager sells his staff on the importance of managing their sales skills.