What Every Sales Rep Could Learn from Joe Girard

Joe Girard
World's Greatest Salesman

Recently I was reading about Joe Girard and was amazed to see how he changed the history of automobile sales through his sheer dedication and love for his job. Starting as a sales person with Chevrolet, he went on to set records for making the highest number of sales in a day (18 automobiles), month (174 automobiles) and year (1425 automobiles).

It was possible for him to achieve all this by being more of a people oriented sales person instead of just being target oriented.

Sales should not only be about achieving targets. It’s about what goes into before and after making that sale. Human to human interaction is key in a successful sales cycle. Apart from indulging in personal chats with your prospects, you have at your disposal sales enablement tools that will do the task for you. There are many ways how you can apply the human-to-human interaction methodology to your sales tactics.    

As a sales manager, it is up to you to ensure that you instill this very important outlook in each of your sales rep.

Here are a few tips on what you can train your sales team (or yourself) to make the best sales.

1. Know your prospects: One of the methods that Joe applied to his sales methodologies was to know his prospects very well. Knowing your prospects gives you an insight about what products appeal to them. Recent stats show that customers are more than prepared before they approach you; however, the fact remains that if you give a genuine opinion about which products suit them better and if you do that with conviction, your opinion will always matter to them.  

2. Interact personally: Girard sent a personal card to each of his customers every month. Yes, that was a lot of work, yet he knew that this little investment would repay him ten folds in the future. Owing to the enormous increase of tools and platforms to interact with the customers, we take human-to-human interaction for granted. It is important to interact and maintain a presence on Facebook and twitter, but nothing beats a personal email to your customer on a regular basis. Tell them about some discount they’d like to know about, wish them on occasions like birthdays and anniversaries or just drop a “Hello”.

3. Forget-me-not: Do you remember what your best friend tweeted the day before? Or what was the news headline exactly a month back from now? Or what advertisement did you see on the street a week back? We are so cluttered and clamored with news feed from every corner that it’s impossible to remember little details unless they are very personal to us. We are aware that when a customer enters a store to try a new type of cheese, it’s not an instantaneous decision. It’s the top of mind awareness that prompts him to buy that specific cheese for the first time. Similarly, if you are always interacting and staying in touch with your prospects and customers, chances are you will be the first one they will contact when they decide to make the purchase.

4. Happy customer = happy references: I mentioned about personal interactions paying 10 folds in the future. Here’s how. Girard has stated a very interesting “Law of 250” in his book titled “How to sell anything to anyone." This law states that on an average, every person is friends or acquaintances with at least 250 people in his whole life. This means that when you gain a happy customer, you have just gained yourself 250 probable references. This also means losing a customer is equivalent to losing 250 more (and don’t forget their references!).  

5. Dedicate every minute to selling: If sales is your passion you will want to spend every minute of your time doing what you love. Dedicate every minute of your work time engaging in sales related activity. That could also include reading more, maintaining your daily records, regular follow-ups with prospects or finding new ways to improve your selling skills.

6. Challenge yourself to stretch the sales funnel: A sales rep stops growing the day she is able to achieve her targets without breaking into a sweat. If this happens to you, it means that it’s time you set your eyes on a higher target. Stretching the sales funnel is a very healthy approach to challenge yourself and your team to push yourselves to achieving better and bigger targets.

7. Be persistent: Girard wasn’t born in a house with established sales people. He didn’t take lessons in sales. He lost quite a few jobs, became bankrupt at a point until he found his vocation at Merollis Chevrolet. In his motivational talks, he always states that a sales person’s job requires utmost persistence. It will be a while before you learn the ropes of the trade, instill them in you and eventually master them. A common trait that you will notice among all the top sales people, is that persistence has been the most important virtue that has kept them on top of their game.   

The reason why social media sites have become so popular as a sales tool over the last several years is because people need to constantly interact and stay in touch with their peers. This gives them a sense of security and belonging in the society. This was also the secret of the great Joe Girard, “to keep in touch with people”.

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