JOE GIRARD'S 13 RULES TO SUCCESS!

[Art Kelley]

This guy always gave good sales advise.

HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE; hang around with positive people, stay away from cry babies and complainers, because they will pull you down to their level. If something isn't going right in your life, keep it to yourself, no one wants to hear your problems, make people believe you are having a wonderful time.

ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE; keep an appointment book so that you don't have to use the words that sicken me: "I FORGOT." At the end of each day, meditate upon what you did or did not do, so you can become stronger for tomorrow. Plan your work for the next day. If you know where you are going you will get there. If you don't, you are LOST!

WORK WHEN YOU WORK; don't take long lunch hours, and only eat with people who can help your cause, not with other salespeople. Do not sneak out of work early, if you do you are a LOSER.

OBSERVE GIRARD'S NO-NOs; No smoking or chewing tobacco, no gum, no colognes, no profanity, no dirty jokes, no alcohol breath, and men do not wear earrings when you are working. Turn off cell phones - they're irritating. The biggest killer of them all is NOT BEING ON TIME.

DRESS THE PART; what kind of people are you dealing with. If you are selling to blue collar workers, don't wear $500 suits and expensive shoes, jewelry or watches (it's a big distraction). Wear it on your own time, not when you're working - clothes can turn people off.

LISTEN! People can tell if you're not listening. The longer you listen, the more obligated people will feel towards you. The more you listen, the more likely a customer is going to do business with you. Listening shows that you care. "The mouth should only be used for eating - keep your mouth shut!" Silence is Golden.

SMILE! A smile increases your face value. If people would smile more, your customers would feel better and want to do business with you, plus it's great for your health!

RETURN ALL PHONE CALLS & EMAILS; not returning calls or emails are a way to lose customers and friends. Return your calls and emails as soon as possible. If you don't, that's a good way to burn a bridge!

TELL THE TRUTH; if you get caught in a lie even once, you will always be a liar. Even if you tell the truth for the rest of your life, you won't be trusted or believed, consider yourself DEAD.

DON'T OVERCHARGE; if you do, and the customer compares your deal with somebody else, you have lost him. Take a little and leave a little; Joe only worked on a small profit, but he was heavy on volume, averaging six retail automobile sales a day. Word of mouth got around that YOU CAN'T BEAT JOE GIRARD'S PRICE.

STAND IN FRONT OF YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICES; not behind. The most important thing to do for your customer is SERVICE them, and they will do business with you over and over again. This is what made JOE #1 IN THE WORLD.

LOCK UP EVERY SALE; after you have closed the sale, ask your customers why they bought from you - if they tell you why, they are reinforcing their trust in you. Therefore no more buyers' remorse, MEANING NO MORE CANCELLATIONS.

REWARD YOURSELF; treat yourself well for all the smart work you have done; YOU DESERVE IT!

 

[Walt]

Very simple. very true.

You can't show up smelling like nicotine and Axe body spray and expect to impress anyone.

 

[Jim Pemberton]

Great post

Thank you Art

 

[cory kenyon]

It all seems to easy.

 

[Jimmy L]

I heard KOKO the KARPET KLOWN is to be a guest speaker at one of these round table meetings.

He will be handing out balloons and condoms to all the BDCC who paid for entrance.


:shock:

 

[Ron Werner]

DON'T OVERCHARGE; if you do, and the customer compares your deal with somebody else, you have lost him. Take a little and leave a little; Joe only worked on a small profit, but he was heavy on volume, averaging six retail automobile sales a day. Word of mouth got around that YOU CAN'T BEAT JOE GIRARD'S PRICE.

LOCK UP EVERY SALE; after you have closed the sale, ask your customers why they bought from you - if they tell you why, they are reinforcing their trust in you. Therefore no more buyers' remorse, MEANING NO MORE CANCELLATIONS.

Overcharge? This is still the biggest question in the industry; WHat's it worth!?
Guys say its based on your own numbers so then there is a huge variety of prices.

The Lock up is a great idea. Gives you good feedback into how to market as well.

 

[Brian R]

Haven't I been saying this stuff all along??
Ouch, I just hurt my arm patting myself on the back.

 

[Brian R]

I was reading it again.

He missed..."love what you do" and "Be excited about it".

If you don't love what you do then it's work and your custy's will know that. And you should really think about doing something else.

I have gotten feedback from a lot of customers who will say "wow, you really love what you do."

If you love what you do then you WILL be excited about it and they will see it.
And that will get THEM excited about it.
(I'm not talking about jumping around like Billy "The gorilla retard" Mayes either.

And he says "return" all phonecalls and emails"...you have to ANSWER the phone WHEN it rings. Sometimes, if you don't, it's too late.

 

[bensurdi]

I just noticed that every single post that ODIN makes annoys me in a weird way. Does anyone else get this?

 

[DevilDog]

Seriously, there are a couple of things that are simply NOT TRUE in there.

The first one:
DON'T OVERCHARGE; if you do, and the customer compares your deal with somebody else, you have lost him. Take a little and leave a little; Joe only worked on a small profit, but he was heavy on volume, averaging six retail automobile sales a day. Word of mouth got around that YOU CAN'T BEAT JOE GIRARD'S PRICE.

What exactly is overcharging? Do you guys really want to compete on volume? That is ok if you are NOT doing the work. But there are many people NOT looking for the cheapest prices. There is a big difference between a retail sale and a service sale. A retail sale usually does NOT include much physical work. A service sale can mean a LOT of physical work.

So I guess according to this theory that I should drop my prices to the whole house for $89 guys. Bullshit.

As far as not liking what you are doing meaning that you do a bad job. That simply is not true. I know of guys in all sorts of businesses that love what they are doing and they are HORRIBLE at it. I know of guys that are not real thrilled about what they are doing but they do a great job.

I am not in love with carpet cleaning. In fact it bores the hell out of me. It is just not what I really like doing but 99.9% of my clients think I love it! It amazes me when a client would say to me "I wish I loved my work the way you love yours."

Seriously, I was amazed at that because there is not much further from the truth than that. But most of my family is in business and we learned a long time ago about customer and client service and that good customer and client service really has NOTHING to do about whether you like what you are doing or not. It is about BASIC common sense business practice.

You treat every client like your financial life depends on it. It is very easy to smile and say thank you and if you have an ounce of pride and self respect you will do a good job. You do NOT need to like what you are doing to show up on time and treat people with courtesy and respect.

There are a few guys on here that really seem to want to over complicate what business is about. Business is not about Service Monster or the latest greatest marketing idea....business is about building relationships. If you build enough good relationships and your product or service is priced right so you make a decent profit from it each and every time....you will do well.

There is a guy in my area that is honestly a bad bad bad cleaner. He drives around in a junk van. He looks like a fat slob. But his clients LOVE him and he has done pretty well for himself because he knew enough to know that if you build a solid relationship with a client....it will be hard for them to go to someone else.

 

[Art Kelley]

DON'T OVERCHARGE;So I guess according to this theory that I should drop my prices to the whole house for $89 guys. Bullshit.

Girard was a car salesman so it was easy to match or beat competitor's prices on a commodity. But it does relate to your business in that you should be consistent in your pricing with all of your own customers. You never know when they will talk to each other.

 

[Brian R]

Seriously, there are a couple of things that are simply NOT TRUE in there.

The first one:
DON'T OVERCHARGE; if you do, and the customer compares your deal with somebody else, you have lost him. Take a little and leave a little; Joe only worked on a small profit, but he was heavy on volume, averaging six retail automobile sales a day. Word of mouth got around that YOU CAN'T BEAT JOE GIRARD'S PRICE.

What exactly is overcharging? Do you guys really want to compete on volume? That is ok if you are NOT doing the work. But there are many people NOT looking for the cheapest prices. There is a big difference between a retail sale and a service sale. A retail sale usually does NOT include much physical work. A service sale can mean a LOT of physical work.

So I guess according to this theory that I should drop my prices to the whole house for $89 guys. Bullshit.

As far as not liking what you are doing meaning that you do a bad job. That simply is not true. I know of guys in all sorts of businesses that love what they are doing and they are HORRIBLE at it. I know of guys that are not real thrilled about what they are doing but they do a great job.

I am not in love with carpet cleaning. In fact it bores the hell out of me. It is just not what I really like doing but 99.9% of my clients think I love it! It amazes me when a client would say to me "I wish I loved my work the way you love yours."

Seriously, I was amazed at that because there is not much further from the truth than that. But most of my family is in business and we learned a long time ago about customer and client service and that good customer and client service really has NOTHING to do about whether you like what you are doing or not. It is about BASIC common sense business practice.

You treat every client like your financial life depends on it. It is very easy to smile and say thank you and if you have an ounce of pride and self respect you will do a good job. You do NOT need to like what you are doing to show up on time and treat people with courtesy and respect.

There are a few guys on here that really seem to want to over complicate what business is about. Business is not about Service Monster or the latest greatest marketing idea....business is about building relationships. If you build enough good relationships and your product or service is priced right so you make a decent profit from it each and every time....you will do well.

There is a guy in my area that is honestly a bad bad bad cleaner. He drives around in a junk van. He looks like a fat slob. But his clients LOVE him and he has done pretty well for himself because he knew enough to know that if you build a solid relationship with a client....it will be hard for them to go to someone else.

God, where do I start?
I agree with the first one...I wouldn't drop my prices either.

The "liking what you do" part is just so your life doesn't suck. If you spend your whole life doing what you DON'T like...what kind of life is that? It does help to love what you do as far as getting more out of your business.
If you like what you do, you will be more into your business than if you don't like it. Just common sense.


Little things help make your business better or easier...programs like Service Monster make your day to day tasks easier and it helps you in the long run by tracking things better.


your right, business is NOT about the latest and greatest marketing idea OR about that Service Monster program...I never said it was.
But a system in place with things that work for you and not against you again, makes your business and life better.

Marketing helps you find those people to build relationships. Service Monster helps you keep track of them.
I like what I do so much that it's the little things that excite me.
And if I find something that excites me because it works so well...I want to tell people about it.
If it doesn't work so well and pisses me off...I want to tell people about it.

 

[DevilDog]

I am all for systems...I am building them back into my business. It is just that you do not need Service Monster to have systems in your business....it is so easily done and doesn't take much time to do it yourself.

If you really hate what you are doing then, yes, that is bad. I have been there and done that. I do NOT really enjoy cleaning. But I am damn good at it and when I am focused I do quite well.

But I have learned to not let it consume me. I know when to take time off and when it gets to be around five in the evening...I am mostly done.

This idea that you need to love what you are doing to be really good at it is just completely false. I know of many guys that really love cleaning (or they lie to themselves and say they do) and they are awful cleaners who run shit businesses.

If you asked 1000 cleaners if they could make the same amount of money doing something that they liked rather than cleaning they almost all would say yes. The reason most guys stay in cleaning is that they like the money they can make, not because they really like it.

I know of many guys that LOVE their occupations....but they cannot make much doing it. So it really depends.

 

[Art Kelley]

If you asked 1000 cleaners if they could make the same amount of money doing something that they liked rather than cleaning they almost all would say yes.

You can pull these statistics from out your bright blue sky but the fact is all jobs are work when you get down to it. The brain surgeon, the cake maker, the record producer, the chicken farmer all have to get up every day and earn a living and it's not all glamorous. This job is as good and interesting as any. You just have to get over the public perception of us as retarded monkees. I would say most of us are here because we want to be.

 

[Brian R]

Never said you have to love something to be good at it.
I am not really keen on masturbating, but I can do it like a champion.
Would much rather have a girl involved.



And you don't need Service Monster either...but Some kind of system is needed to grow your business.

Are we even argueing anymore?