THE PE INVESTOR

How to Sell Anything to Anybody, by Joe Girard

Joseph M. Girardi (1928-2019), aka Joe Girard, was an American car salesman who broke the world record for the most cars sold in a year. He later became an author and motivational speaker (see Joe Girard Wikipedia profile).

Below are the key principles of the book:

1. The more people you talk to, the more sales you make.
2. Know what you want.
3. When a customer walks in, he’s a little scared: you can’t sell to a scared person.
4. The law of 250: everyone knows 250 people well enough to invite them to a wedding or funeral. Every time you turn off one prospect, your turn off 250 more.
5. Don’t join the club: use all your time to make opportunities.
6. What counts most is how smart you work, not where you work.
7. A good sale is one where the customer goes out with what he came for, at a good enough price so thatbeat he tells his friends, relatives and coworkers he bought from you.
8. Write the names and addresses on 10 pieces of direct mail and send them out every day and you will be in touch with 2,500 people every year.
9. Then you can spend your time getting people to come in and ask for you.
10. Cold calling is better than doing nothing.
11. Good selling is like planting and harvesting.
12. Ask the prospect if he knows anybody else who could be interested.
13. Getting your hand on the specifics (name, address, etc.) of real people is enormously valuable.
14. For openers, tell your friends and relatives where you work, and consider your suppliers.
15. Use a diary to remind you when to call back long-term prospects
16. The toolbox should include the telephone, files, mail, business cards and “birddogs”.
17. Satisfied customers are the best bet for future sales.
18. When you make your own file, put down everything you notice about a customer or prospect: job, kids, hobbies, travel, where he works, how many kids, when to call back.
19. There is nothing more effective than getting the customer to know you like him and care about him.
20. Personalized mail is sill the best thing that anybody can receive.
21. Hand out business cards wherever you go.
22. Wherever there are people, there are prospects, and if you let them know you are there and what you do, you are building your business.
23. Effective use of business cards is one of the cheapest business building tools.
24. If you have a phone, a mailbox, a pen and business cards, you have the most valuable tools in the world for doing business.
25. For mail, the game today is to make sure what you send gets opened and read and kept.
26. Send 12 letters a year to your customer list, each in a different color or shape envelope. Include a “birddog” recruiting kit, useful “how to” tips, newspaper clips.
27. Get your name in front of your prospects whenever you can, and get it into their homes.
28. Get people (“birddogs”) to send other people to you and pay them.
29. When you make a sale, give a stack of business cards and one explaining the birddog arrangement. Then send him a thank you card, with another stack of business cards. Put him on your mailing list, and send him a birddog recruiting kit once a year as a reminder that your offer is still good.
30. What is necessary in developing a big and effective system of birddogs is to make it worth their while.
31. If somebody is sent in to you by a birddog, phone the birddog, thank him and tell him you are putting a check in the mail. If he cannot accept money, tell him you would like to do something nice (e.g. coupon for a dinner for 2).
32. Barbers and doctors are a good source of birddogs as they do a lot of talking to their customers.
33. Banks, finance companies and credit unions are also an important source.
34. Anybody who talks to other people everyday in his work can be a birddog.
35. If you get twice as many people to come to you every day, you will sell twice as much.
36. How to increase your “kill rate” is another story.
37. Every morning, take some time to decide what you are going to do that day and do it.
38. Have your file sorted alphabetically.
39. Have another set sorted by date, so that if somebody bought from you yesterday, he goes to the back of the file.
40. Check your book to see if you have an appointment.
41. Fill your free time with something designed to get more people in.
42. At the end of every day, review that day, examining every sale you made and every sale you lost.
43. If you can’t think of a mistake you made, call up the customer you lost and ask them.
44. If someone comes in and is just looking, he has enough interest to be sold most of the time.
45. What he may really be saying is that he is scared.
46. If you try and fail, don’t charge it off to “just looking”. Analyze your performance and try to see where you failed to convert him.
47. One of the most determining factors of a sale is does the prospect like, trust and believe you.
48. The most important thing a salesman can do is get them through the door so he can face them.
49. Getting them in requires planning, and planning requires decisions about who your best prospects are and how they can be reached most efficiently and economically.
50. Phone calls may work but take a lot of time.
51. When you don’t have that kind of time, sending out a few mailing pieces is a good way of using free time.
52. Plan your work every day, and work your plan.
53. Then finish your day with a review of everything you did to see how good and realistic your plan was.
54. Small talk gets the customer over those first fears.
55. When a customer comes in with a technical fact, say “you’re right, you sure know your […]” to make him feel good and avoid being interrupted from your selling effort.
56. Honesty is the best policy, with a little flattery and even a small lie useful in some cases.
57. A salesman should look as much as possible like the people to whom he sells
58. Never wear clothes that will antagonize your customers and make them feel uneasy.