Customer Reviews

How to Sell Anything to Anybody

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Read this book if you want to learn the single most important quality for success in sales - HABITS. Girard goes over how he became successful through the employment of good habits. He also shows how others waste opportunities at success. This is an old book, but one that will never lose relavence!

This is a man who had a horrible childhood who at age 37 turned his life around when it came down to the sale to mean that he would be able to buy groceries for his starving family. He has a street wise humor and wisdom, mixed with a millionaire's faith in what sells can do for everyone.

Reading this little book helped me take on a saleperson's identity in that he seemed to understand hesitations that I had that had prevented me from closing deals as a self-employed person. Also, his "birddog system," where he teaches you to easily receive referrals from others, even if you have not done business with them.

Read this book no matter how many books you have read on this subject. You will become more confident, creative and wealthy.

First, this book is misnamed. It should be called something like "How to build a great sales business." That being said, it is my only real critisism of the book.

He starts off by giving his own personal history, which is interesting reading, but not really what I am here for. He then goes into selling lessons, and for anyone that has built a sales business (and thinks of their selling as running their own business), he really lays out some good stuff. He talks about how to build a referal network, how to brand yourself in the market place, the importance of taking care of your customers and your coworkers, building and maintaing your contact lists, the importance of high activities and many other lessons.

As I sales manager, I would take out some of his chapters and give them to my sales people to read because I thought they were so good. The chapter on "Don't Join the Club" is worth the purchase price of the book if you are an inside sales person or a manager of them.

Easy read, you will knock it out in a couple hours. Highly recommend.

J. Girard lays the business out where it should be: Sales is not for the faint of heart and the only way to truly succeed is to win the customer, close the customer, then pay the customer to send you more customers. His best advice: It is better to sell more product with a smaller commission than sell less and have to max out every deal. Also that every sale is really made to 250 people (even though that is less now because people are less connected). The book was funny because the prices on the cars and services was very oudated in my copy.

I can't really recommend this book. Joe Girard comes off very much like a salesman -- the kind I run from when *I'm* buying a car. He talks about using flattery to get the customer in the door. Of course, I don't think a salesperson should antagonize anyone, but he makes it sound like the phoney kiss a-- talk that so many tranparent salespeople use. Small lies are okay, he tells us. For example, a customer calls and wants a powder blue car with options X, Y and Z. Maybe he only has options X and Y and his car is gray. Nonetheless, he says he has the car the person wants anyway, and come on down. He can talk him out of powder blue and into gray later, and the missing option probably doesn't matter a lot anyway, and he can sweet talk the prospect. That's dispicable and a con. He talks about having every brand of cigarette in his office (the book was written in the 70s) so if the customer wants to go out for a smoke, he has no excuse to leave the office and postpone the sale. He talks about keeping *liquor* in his office to loosen up the prospect (Serving liquor to people who take test drives in unfamiliar cars! What a swell guy!) He drinks along--water, of course. Don't want *him* to be "relaxed," do we? It sounds like the sort of thing Jenny Jones would do--Oh, wait, she has!

I find a lot about this book unsavory. There are some good general tips about prospecting and bird-dogging, but these are available in other selling books that I don't want to take a shower after reading.

I also have to disagree about some things he things are bad habits. It sounds like a good idea to not join the "bull pen" and yak with the other salesmen. However, to a *certain* degree that is not a bad thing to do: it builds camaraderie and steels oneself for the difficult task of selling. Of course you don't want a salesforce that stands by the water cooler all day, but it's not good to spend 110% of your time on nothing but getting new customers either, or you could become a burnout case.

And then there's Joe's teary life story. Personally I picture Leonard DiCapprio playing the role of young, dirt-stained Joe, being beaten by his father, being beaten by his employers, being beaten by his customers, being beaten by random strangers, walking hundreds of miles in snowdrifts to get to his job, uphill both ways. Sorry, I don't buy it. Not that he didn't have a hard life, and surely his father was abusive (all too common back then, unfortunately). But his tone throughout is one of utter innocence to everything going on around him. He reacts to everything, it's all done *to* him. He got fired from his first job for selling too much, because the other salesmen were jealous? Yeah... He glosses over his own failures, and they only amount to slugging a customer when he called Girard an ethnic slur. Compared to his life, Dickens had a Disneyesque childhood. The reader should remember all salesmen sell stories, and he's no exception.

Oh, one more thing: the book is redundant. It's short as it is, but the way he repeats himself, it could be half its present size. --Or maybe a magazine article.

I got this book to help me with sales but it was much more than I bargained for. At one point the book had me in tears, at other times I was laughing. Joe Girard came from the school of hard knocks and shares some personal stories that blow me away. Despite it all he rose above and became the top car salesman in the world. His style is people oriented. He is charismatic. I enjoyed this book.

Joe Girard turns his abusive childhood identity into what drives him to be successful. He proves that it is not what has happened to you. It's what you do with what has been done to you. Joe answered so many questions that I had about cold calling; mailing lists; asking for the money; and getting the support of others in a way that benefits everyone.

Even though he made the Guinness Book of Records for selling cars, this is applicable to selling seminars, coaching sessions, and other non-tangible services.

I just finished reading this book. Before finishing, I have already profited from his "birddog" system. This system teaches you how to get satisfied clients, and others to bring others to you.

When he say's, "among our kind of salesman, I am the world's greatest," at first I though he was being stuck on himself. But, I kept an open mind, took notes, both in the margins and in my notebook. And I really experienced within 2 days of reading this little book that --- He really is the greatest.

This book is about selling cars, not ANYTHING. Also, it's not very good about that. It's extremely outdated; things have changed so much since JG was on top that at some points reading this book is like a history lesson.

Also, the info, with a few exceptions is vague filler. I would have rather paid a buck for a 20 page book, which was all that was needed.

The funny thing is that the title sold me, so I guess he was doing something right there.

There were a few chapters that I was fading off, wondering what they had to do with the over-all book. I remember saying to myself, "Yeah, yeah. Get on with it." However, there were a couple chapters well worth the ticket price. I shared various portions in sales meetings and got a kick out of the responses.

This book offers a deep insight into the most amazing life achievements of a man called Joe Girard. I enjoyed the author's great sense of humour, which made the book a fun to read. His obvious passion for life and selling cars, would surely inspire anyone who is interested in improving their sales technique. A great read for anyone wanting to sell their soul. Jo Sea