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Title: How to Sell Anything to Anybody by Joe Girard, Stanley H. Brown, Robert Casemore ISBN: 0-446-38532-8 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 31 October, 1986 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (12 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Joe Girard would never sell a car to me.
Comment: 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 loquor 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: meat and potatos
Comment: The book gets right down to the details that are needed to make the sale, or even more important, get the customer in the door in the first place. A great motivational and educational book to add to the library.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fun Guide
Comment: 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.
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Title: How to Close Every Sale by Joe Girard, Robert L. Shook, Robert Casemore ISBN: 0446389293 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 15 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Selling Cars: The Handbook of the Professional by Patrick Davis, Larry Clifton ISBN: 1885640668 Publisher: Insight Publishing Company Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar ISBN: 0425081028 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 1985 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Can't Lose Sales Tips Audio CD Collection by Joe Girard, Girard Joe ISBN: 0060089334 Publisher: HarperAudio Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Midlife Irish: Discovering My Family and Myself by Frank Gannon ISBN: 0446526789 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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