sales &seminar Martin Lee on 02 May 2008 02:55 am
Lessons From the Greatest Salesman in the World
The greatest salesman in the world, Joe Girard, was in Singapore a couple of days ago to share some of his experiences with us.
Joe Girard is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful salesman, selling 13,001 cars at a Chevrolet dealership in Detroit between 1963 & 1978. All the sales were retail and non-wholesale sales of first hand vehicles.
Joe started his speech by telling us that if anyone wants to tell (sell) us a secret, we should run away. These are some of the other things that Joe shared.
- Success is the result of staying focused and taking one step at a time. By staying focused, we have time to plant our seeds. There are certain actions that will “kill” us.
- Sneaking away from work to play a little golf.
- Having a long lunch or leaving early.
- Having a sideline.
- If you are in sales, you should avoid having lunch with our work colleagues. Everyday, we should have a lunch appointment that will help us build our business. It would be even better if they were positive people.
- Always smile and listen. “I like you” is Joe’s golden mantra.
- It’s all about service. The real sale begins after the sale. The service is what differentiates the salespeople from one another. One thing that Joe did was to send his customers a thank you card and follow up with another phone call a few days later. He also sends them a referral card offering to reward his customers for giving him referrals.
- He also sends them a handwritten greeting card every month of the year. The number of cards reached more than 16,000 per month and he had to hire people to help him do it. As a result of the repeated exposure to Joe, such was his customers’ impression of Joe that when Guineess Book of World Records started to call up some of them to audit his sales, all of the buyers could recall Joe by name. Everyone in the family knew who Joe was.
- Giving out tons of his namecards is another of Joe’s strategy.
- Organise and plan your day beforehand.
The ideas all seem very simple but in my opinion, the key thing that makes Joe Girard successful is the extra mile he takes to keep in touch with all his customers and potential clients.
On another note, if you think you like to implement something similar to Joe’s greeting card strategy, this tool might be useful.
on 19 Jul 2009 at 4:07 pm 1.corey hart said …
Dear Joe
You are an inspiration to me in all my business
dealing. Thank you very much.
corey hart
on 10 Nov 2009 at 11:28 am 2.imam wahyudi said …
Dear Martin,
This is not just about greeting card.
This is about keeping focused and doing one step at a time.
Great.
Good job, Joe.
And thanks, Martin.
Regs,
Imam Wahyudi,
of Indonesia