Book summary “How to sell anything to anybody”: summary

Introduction

You face the daily struggle of retail selling against theoretical advice that fails on the showroom floor. Traditional sales training offers abstract concepts while you need concrete methods to move merchandise and close deals. Joe Girard rose from a destitute childhood as a shoeshine boy to become recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's greatest retail salesman. He sold thirteen thousand and one retail cars in fifteen years through sheer persistence and systematic customer management.

Master retail sales through continuous relationship building, meticulous record-keeping, and treating every customer as a network of two hundred fifty potential buyers.

You will discover how to eliminate self-pity, master customer psychology, manage your time, and build a powerful referral network.

• How do you overcome decades of poverty and negative programming?
• Why does every person you meet represent two hundred fifty potential sales?
• How do you turn a casual showroom visitor into a lifelong annuity?

1. From Loser to Winner

You must take personal responsibility to overcome decades of poverty and self-pity. Wallowing in past failures destroys the ambition required to succeed in sales.

Overcoming decades of poverty and self-pity requires taking personal responsibility, eliminating negative programming, and letting intense want drive your daily persistence.

Girard spent the first thirty-five years of his life as a self-described loser. He faced family abuse, poverty, failed jobs, and legal trouble.

Girard was thrown out of high school, fired from roughly forty different jobs, lasted only ninety-seven days in the U.S. Army, and faced bankruptcy after trusting a bad real estate tip. Growing up in extreme poverty in Detroit during the Great Depression, Girard started working at age eight shining shoes in bars and later delivered newspapers. Contests with concrete physical prizes taught him the power of persistence and facing rejection without quitting. He won cases of Pepsi-Cola by signing up new newspaper subscribers, ringing doorbells across neighborhoods despite sore fingers and rejections.

The Cost of Blind Trust

Accepting unverified claims in business without checking facts can instantly destroy years of hard work. You must independently verify critical details before committing capital.

After working his way up from laborer to running a small-scale home building business originated by Abe Saperstein, Girard attempted to expand by purchasing undeveloped land. Girard bought a large tract of land in northeast Detroit without checking City Hall plans for sewers, leaving him with sixty thousand dollars in debt when customers refused to buy homes without sewage systems.

Want as the Primary Drive

Extreme want and the absolute necessity to achieve a specific goal provide the primary drive required to succeed in sales. When Girard started, his sole want was a bag of groceries to feed his starving family, which gave him the relentless energy to close his first sale. When Girard made his very first car sale to a Coca-Cola salesman, he could not even remember the man's face because he only saw a bag of groceries and his family's survival.

• First, you have to know what you want.
• Second, you have to know that you can get it if you sell the next prospect.

2. Customer Psychology and the Law of 250

Salesmen often develop hostility toward prospects. You might perceive shoppers as time-wasters and call them names.

Viewing customers as hostile enemies or The Mooch destroys sales performance, whereas recognizing them as scared human beings leads to a win-win sale.

In reality, customers are scared of parting with hard-earned money. They carry a deep distrust of salespeople. Girard frames the selling situation as The Bloodless War where both sides must win. You make money and use your time well, while the customer gets the product they needed without fear.

Girard equates facing a customer to facing his father. You seek to defeat them and win respect and love through a successful sale that makes the customer happy.

• 30 percent: the proportion of Girard's customers who are women buying cars on their own.
• 60 percent: the proportion of Girard's business that comes from repeat customers and referrals.

Girard's Law of 250

Every average person knows approximately 250 people important enough to invite to a wedding or a funeral. Girard discovered these numbers by asking an undertaker at a Catholic funeral home, a Protestant funeral director, and a wedding caterer about guest counts.

Every average person knows approximately 250 people important enough to invite to a wedding or a funeral, making every single customer interaction critically influential.

Treating a single customer poorly risks alienating a massive network of potential buyers through word-of-mouth reputation. If you turn off two people a week, you influence 5,000 people in a year. Over 14 years, that behavior alienates 70,000 people in a stadium-sized network.

3. Time Management and Prospecting Systems

Avoiding showroom gossip rings, cold-calling phone book pages, and operating a Ferris wheel of continuous record-keeping keep your pipeline full of prospective buyers.

Don't Join the Club

Salesmen must avoid hanging out with the showroom club or dope ring because socializing and gossiping waste valuable business-building time. Spending time with the boys destroys productivity and separates top producers from average quitters.

Girard sold 13 cars in his first month and 18 in his second month by avoiding the other salesmen, which eventually got him fired from his first dealership due to their resentment.

• Do not become part of the dope ring or bull ring where coworkers waste time talking about non-work subjects.
• Use spare time when starting at a new place to get to know the merchandise, study top producers, or work the telephone and direct mail.

Filling the Ferris Wheel

When starting out with no leads, cold calling random telephone directory pages yields valuable prospect information and builds a foundation. Even though cold calling has a high rejection rate, it is infinitely better than doing nothing or gossiping.

Girard's first prospect list consisted of four pages torn randomly from the Detroit telephone directory: two white pages and two yellow pages.

• Thumb through the phone book for a few minutes looking at street addresses or names that sound right.
• Pick up the phone and make cold calls during the late morning.
• Ask if the person is in the market for a new car or when you can reach the decision-making spouse.
• Call back at the agreed time, ask when they plan to start looking, and find out what they are currently driving.
• Write down the name, address, phone number, and collected details on a 3x5 card for your file, diary, and mailing list.

Successful selling is like operating a Ferris wheel where customers constantly cycle off after buying and new prospects cycle on through continuous record-keeping and prospecting. Maintaining meticulous records ensures you contact buyers right before they enter the market. Girard accumulated over 9,000 distinct sold customer names in his personal record files out of more than 12,000 total car and truck sales.

• Keep proper records, files, and diaries on every customer and prospect.
• Check your personal paid bills file to add everyone you buy things from to your prospect list.
• Let everyone you interact with know what you sell every time you give them money or see them.

4. Girard's Toolbox and Direct Mail

Safeguarding fireproof customer card files, distributing distinctive picture business cards, and bypassing junk mail filters with soft-sell holiday greetings secure a constant flow of repeat business.

Fireproof Customer Files

A salesperson must meticulously record and securely protect every detail known about a customer in a dedicated prospect file. Putting down everything noticed about a customer provides conversational hooks to disarm prospects.

Girard keeps duplicate customer card files: one set on his computer, and two sets in fireproof cabinets costing $500 apiece, with additional sets kept in off-premise vaults.

• Put down everything you notice about a customer or a prospect including kids, hobbies, and travels.
• Keep multiple sets of your customer card files in secure locations such as fireproof cabinets and vaults.

Getting Them to Read the Mail

To ensure direct mail gets opened and read rather than thrown away, salespeople must disguise mailings to look like personal correspondence rather than obvious advertising. Standard junk mail is immediately discarded, so Girard uses 12 different color and shape envelopes a year, never puts his business name on the outside, and sends short, soft-sell greeting cards for various holidays that express appreciation.

At football games, Girard brings a paper bag of business cards and throws out bunches of them into the cheering crowd when a touchdown is scored.

• Order distinctive calling cards featuring your own picture and information.
• Hand out your cards wherever you are, including leaving them with a slightly larger than normal tip when paying restaurant checks.
• Throw bunches of your business cards into the air during big moments at sports events.
• Ask every person you meet or talk to on the telephone the opening question: "Would you like to buy a car now, without waiting?"
• Send 12 pieces of mail a year to your customer list using different color and shape envelopes each month.
• Never put the name of your business on the outside of the mailing envelope.
• Mail soft-sell holiday and birthday greeting cards that carry a simple personal message like "I LIKE YOU".
• Avoid mailing your pieces so they arrive on the first or fifteenth of the month when household bills arrive.
• Write personal notes on the side of manufacturer flyers or postcards while waiting for appointments.

5. Hunting with Birddogs

A structured referral network expands your sales reach far beyond your own efforts. You can build a network of birddogs—satisfied customers, professionals, and service workers who send prospective buyers to you. Joe Girard pays a strict cash reward for every completed sale where the buyer presents a card with the birddog's name on the back.

A structured birddog network of people who refer buyers in exchange for a cash reward can generate a massive share of total annual sales.

Last year Joe Girard paid out $28,000 to birddogs, resulting in about 550 car sales and $150,000 in commissions. When cash rewards are legally prohibited or declined, you can use alternative incentives such as dinners or free service to maintain an active referral network. When a birddog declines a cash reward, Joe Girard contacts a restaurant management acquaintance to send the person a guest dinner card or arranges for free vehicle service at his dealership.

You should establish systematic methods to recruit and maintain these partners:

• Place a stack of your business cards and a printed reminder of your referral fee in the glove compartment of every delivered car.
• Mail birddog recruiting kits including a stack of business cards and a reward reminder to past customers.
• Pay your birddogs promptly without trying to cheat them out of money on technicalities.
• Recruit barbers by providing them with an easel card sign that reads "ASK ME ABOUT THE BEST CAR DEAL IN TOWN" and supplying them with business cards.
• Offer to host the birddog and their wife for dinner at a nice restaurant if they cannot accept cash.
• Provide a note entitling the birddog to bring their car in for a certain amount of free service.

Loan Officers and Strategic Losses

Financial loan officers who approve car loans make exceptionally productive birddogs because they interact with active car buyers and are typically underpaid. Joe Girard targets loan officers at banks, finance companies, and credit unions because they handle loan approvals and appreciate extra income. He builds relationships by taking them to expensive lunches, giving them gifts, and offering them the standard referral fee.

Joe Girard takes loan officers to high-end restaurants, occasionally gifts them a half-gallon bottle of Crown Royal whisky, and coordinates with them to beat competing dealer prices by $200 so the loan customer switches to him. Willingly selling a car at a loss or without profit can be a profitable long-term investment if the buyer is an influential community leader who generates widespread referrals. Joe Girard obtained manager approval to sell a car $50 below dealer cost to a union parts plant unit chairman, taking a personal loss on the transaction in exchange for the extensive word-of-mouth advertising the buyer generated.

You can execute these targeted strategies using specific steps:

• Identify loan officers from customer loan approvals and phone them to build a relationship.
• Take loan officers out to lunch at a high-end restaurant.
• Gift a half-gallon bottle of Crown Royal whisky as a token of appreciation.
• Collaborate with loan officers to undercut competing dealer prices by roughly $200 to capture closed sales.
• Check with your sales manager to get permission to quote a price below dealer cost for exceptionally important prospects.
• Reimburse your dealer out of your own pocket for any amount under dealer cost that you sell the vehicle for.

6. Facing the Customer and Sensory Selling

Salespeople should dress neatly and conservatively to match their working-class clientele rather than wearing overly flashy attire that intimidates buyers.

Customers working hard for their money feel scared and defensive if you look like an expensive high roller who needs to hustle them to pay an expensive tailor. Joe Girard sold cars to people whose vehicles cost an average of $15,000.

Keep your appearance approachable by following specific guidelines:

• Dress neat and clean in sport shirts and slacks rather than expensive designer suits if your customers are working people.
• Keep office walls free of controversial decorations and display sales award certificates instead.
• Keep color charts and accessory brochures out of the customer's view until a buying decision is made.
• Keep multiple brands of cigarettes and various drinks on hand to offer the customer.
• Hand out balloons and lollipops for children, and buttons that say I like you.
• Clean up the office immediately after a prospect leaves by straightening up, emptying ashtrays, and using air deodorizer.

Joe Girard kept an extra shirt in his office because he once offered to take off his colorful polka dot sport shirt for an admirer and wanted to be ready if they followed through. He also kept 100-proof water, which is liquid kept in a vodka bottle so the salesperson can drink along with the customer.

Selling the Smell

Appealing to sensory emotions, especially the distinct scent of a new product, triggers a powerful psychological desire that drives sales.

Logic has its place, but emotional triggers like touching, feeling, and smelling a brand new item create an intense urge to own it that specifications alone cannot achieve. You must sell the sizzle, not the steak. There are an estimated 100 million cars on the streets, making an ordinary car unexceptional without emotional appeal.

Encourage the customer to experience the product directly:

• Force or guide the customer into the product so they physically touch it and experience its scent.
• Keep quiet during a demonstration drive to let the customer smell, feel, and talk about what they like or worry about.
• Encourage the customer to drive the vehicle home so neighbors and family can see them behind the wheel.

After World War II, a specific liquid product was marketed to used car dealers specifically to spray in trunks and floors so older vehicles would smell like new cars.

7. Intelligence, Lockup, and Post-Sale Follow-Up

Treating the qualifying stage like military intelligence, demanding the cash lockup directly, and executing relentless post-sale follow-up transform buyers into loyal lifelong annuities.

Espionage and Intelligence

Every customer is qualified to buy, but their stated wants may not match what they need or can afford. Instead of interrogating them, act like a silent recorder, ask half-questions based on their comments about their job or hobbies, and let them talk while you study their car and body language.

Joe Girard notices a Yellowstone Park sticker or fishing tackle in a customer's car to break the ice and learn about their lifestyle and income without prying.

• Listen to what the customer says he wants and evaluate if it works for him.
• Look and listen for things that open him up to talk about his needs and ability to pay.
• Use half-questions based on his casual remarks to keep him talking.
• Read body language like face, eyes, arms, and tight legs to gauge when he is relaxing.
• Say Hi, my name is [Your Name] upon meeting a customer.
• Say And your name is... instead of asking what their name is.
• Check the odometer and service station stickers for annual mileage and maintenance care.
• Look in the front seat and glove compartment for brochures from other dealers and quotes.
• Inspect tires for wear indicating impending repair costs.
• Look in the trunk and interior for fishing gear, trailer hitches, tourist stickers, and baby seats.
• Let the customer have the stage and show off their children's pictures or fishing stories.
• Do not bring out pictures of your own kids or try to top their stories.
• Do not ask Do you have a car to trade in?
• Say Let me have your keys and we'll get an appraisal for you.
• Keep a blank order form and a credit application on your desk.
• Fill in customer information, location, job, and preferences directly onto the forms as you talk.

Locking Them Up and Winning After the Close

Spot delivery and immediate post-sale service bridge the gap between closing the deal and retaining the customer for life.

Allowing a customer to drive a car home before financing and paperwork are fully completed creates a strong moral bond and a sense of ownership. Showing that you trust them dissolves their hesitation and stops them from shopping around.

A tuxedo rental shop owner gave Joe Girard a brand new mohair and silk suit to wear to a wedding for the price of a rental, permanently converting him into a buyer.

• Never ask Is there anything else you want to know?
• Ask What have I left out?
• Ask What didn't I tell you that you need to know to make up your mind?
• Ask What did I do wrong?
• Turn slightly, put out your hand, and ask for money directly instead of asking for a deposit.
• Accept a lower amount like $73, $60, or $50 if the customer claims they do not have the full sum.
• Take a check if cash is low, but hammer/certify it immediately.
• Find the car the customer wants or one almost the same.
• Let the customer take the car home as though it were their own before financing details are finalized.
• Ask the name of their insurance company so they are insured in the dealership car.
• Tell the customer Your word is good enough for me if they lack cash on hand.
• Quote lower prices by accepting a smaller commission per car.
• Study factory options, costs, and selling prices to gain price flexibility.
• Tell returning shoppers I got your deal beat to close them.
• Prepare a file on the buyer containing everything known about them and what they bought.
• Send out a special thank-you letter on the very same day as the sale.
• Remind the customer in the thank-you letter about the $50 birddog fee for sending in buyers.
• Call the customer a few weeks or months later during the daytime to ask how the car is running.
• Be notified by the service department immediately if a sold car has a major problem.
• Go out to pacify the customer and promise the work will be done right.
• Take the customer's side and fight for them with mechanics, dealers, and the factory.
• Provide equal quality of service to every customer regardless of how cheap of a deal they got.
• Hire high school students part-time to stuff and address mailings.
• Employ an assistant to greet waiting customers, interview and qualify them, and take them on demonstration rides.
• Never take phone calls when closing a customer.
• Send lasting plants or terrariums instead of disposable flowers to sick colleagues or partners.
• Send get-well cards to customers in the hospital to trigger word-of-mouth recommendations.
• Look at tried-and-true methods as if they can be rearranged to work better.
• Test new approaches instead of accepting that something cannot be done because it has never been done before.
• Review personal branding elements like business names to eliminate friction points with customers.
• Tell a customer with poor credit to bring in their best friend to help verify the credit application.
• Avoid putting the request bluntly out front; instead, ask the friend to look at the facts and just sign the application.
• Push the pen where the friend has to pick it up.
• Remind the friend of their shared history, such as fishing or high school together, and how the customer needs their help.

Conclusion

Systematic organization, relentless follow-up, and genuine care for the customer fit together into a unified operational philosophy that turns every human interaction into a lifelong financial annuity. You do not succeed in sales through luck or high-pressure tricks. You succeed by treating selling as a professional discipline built on daily routines, meticulous records, and absolute integrity.

1. Take total personal responsibility for your financial survival and eliminate all negative self-talk.
2. Treat every human being you meet as a potential buyer and respect the Law of 250 to protect your reputation.
3. Keep your pipeline full by avoiding idle time and prospecting continuously through the mail and the telephone.
4. Build a reliable network of birddogs and pay them instantly for every qualified referral they send to your showroom.
5. Control the sale through sensory engagement, careful qualification, and a direct request for the commitment.
6. Follow up with every buyer forever to ensure repeat business and endless word-of-mouth recommendations.

10 Key Ideas

1. Extreme want and the absolute necessity to achieve a specific goal provide the primary drive required to succeed in sales.
2. Every average person knows approximately two hundred fifty people important enough to invite to a wedding or a funeral, making every single customer interaction critically influential.
3. Avoiding showroom gossip rings, cold-calling phone book pages, and operating a Ferris wheel of continuous record-keeping keep your pipeline full of prospective buyers.
4. A salesperson must meticulously record and securely protect every detail known about a customer in a dedicated prospect file.
5. To ensure direct mail gets opened and read rather than thrown away, salespeople must disguise mailings to look like personal correspondence rather than obvious advertising.
6. A structured birddog network of people who refer buyers in exchange for a cash reward can generate a massive share of total annual sales.
7. Appealing to sensory emotions, especially the distinct scent of a new product, triggers a powerful psychological desire that drives sales.
8. Instead of interrogating customers, salespeople must act like silent recorders to gather vital intelligence regarding a buyer's needs and lifestyle.
9. Spot delivery and immediate post-sale service bridge the gap between closing the deal and retaining the customer for life.
10. Systematic organization, relentless follow-up, and genuine care for the customer fit together into a unified operational philosophy that turns every human interaction into a lifelong financial annuity.