Joe Girard became the best car salesman in the world. All across the East Coast, people would travel just to see him, just to buy a car from him. People would also voluntarily wait days for an appointment with him. So how did he do this?
Often, car salesmen get a bad rep. They’re sleazy and only want to up sell you to get the most of their commission. Whilst this is likely true for most car salesmen (and salesmen in general), it was not for Joe Girard.
Early Life
As with most people we’ve covered on our surprising wealth stories segment, including Earl Crawley and now Joe Girard, they didn’t come from a privileged background.
For Joe, he was born into an Italian-American family in the 1920’s. Joe Girard was born as Joseph Samuel Girardi on 1 November 1928 to an extremely poor Sicilian immigrant family.
His father, a Sicilian immigrant, found little employment in the US, often took out his frustrations on a young Joe. His mother was very traditional- a stay at home mom so to say. As such, money was quite tight for the Girardi household.
Despite this, the Girardi household was able to send a young Joe to school. However, at the age of 15, he dropped out of school in order to start earning money to help support his family.
As a teenager, he worked several odd jobs, including a shoeshine boy, a newsboy, dishwasher, delivery boy, stove assembler, and home building contractor. Most of his work was in Syracuse, where he lived with his family, however some wasn’t.
As a young adult, Joe continued to work these odd jobs. However, in 1963, when Joe was 35, he decided to try his hand at being a car salesman. It was here where he began to make a name for himself.
On his first day, Joe sold his first car. This trend continued past his first day, and by the end of his second month, he as the dealership’s best salesman. At the end of his second month, the other salesmen complained and he was fired.
Chevrolet Dealership
After he was fired from his first salesman job, Joe decided to move to Eastpointe, Michigan. Here, he found a job as a salesman at the local Chevrolet dealership.
It was at the Chevrolet dealership where Joe took what he’d learned at the Detroit dealership he’d worked at previously and built on it. He also took the general charm that he had naturally.
The Chevrolet dealership was where Joe first started to use the name “Joe Girard” rather than his birth name “Joe Girardi”. This was mostly done in order to sell more cars- people were still wary of buying things from Italian-Americans.
Here, he broke dealership, Chevrolet and then international records. Between 1963 and 1978, he set these records, selling a grand total of 13,001 cars in a 15 year period.
1973 was by far Joe’s best year. In 1973, Joe sold a massive 1,425 cars in one year, being recognized by Guinness Book of World Records as the person who sold the most cars in one year.
Post-Chevrolet
Joe retired in 1978 from the Chevrolet dealership. It was here where Joe set to writing down all he had learned during his 15 year career.
Over the next 41 years, Joe would write six books that would revolutionize the way salesman sell to customers. These books have inspired several salesmen to become some of the best salesman in every industry.
His first book, How to Sell Yourself was published in 1977. His second book, How to Close Every Deal was published in 1989. His third book, Can’t Lose Sales Tips was published in 1993.
The success of these books made it so that Joe published his fourth book More Can’t Lose Sales Tips, also published in 1993. His fifth book, Mastering Your Way to the Top was published in 1995.
After a brief hiatus, Joe published his sixth book in 2012, this book would be his final. His book was entitled Joe Girard’s 13 Essential Rules of Selling. Audio versions of his books were published in 2003.
In between writing and publishing his books, Joe spend most of his time being a motivational speaker and often did car salesman training for large car dealerships, where he’d teach people all he knew.
Some of his largest clients included General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, and Kmart, where he would often give presentations all across the world, even at 90!
In February 2019, at 90 years old, Joe died after suffering medical complications following a fall.
Legacy
For 44 years, Joe Girard was considered the best car salesman in the world. In 1973, he was able to sell 1,425 cars in one year, a record he held until 2017, when fellow Chevrolet salesman, Ali Reda, surpassed him with 1,582 cars.
His books seemed to have had some effect- Ali Reda had read all of Joe’s books and had used slightly adapted them to fit with the “modern” age.
In 2001, Joe Girard was officially inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame for his contributions and amazing achievement in the automotive industry. It is also likely that Ali Reda will be included once he retires too.
Many of the tactics that Joe Girard pioneered in his time as a car salesman have now become an industry standard. However, the practices that made Joe particularly successful have not become an industry standard!
And that is Joe’s true legacy.
Joe wrote down almost everything he knows about being a salesman in his books. So by reading them you too could become the next Joe Girard of your industry, whatever industry that may be.
How to Replicate Joe Girard
Naturally, there is no way to replicate 100% what Joe Girard did. Every person is different, even if those differences are slight. As such, you can’t exactly match what Joe Girard did.
And you probably wouldn’t want to in all honesty! Why settle for selling only 1,425 Chevrolet cars a year when you can sell 1,750 Lamborghinis or Ferraris or Porsches.
You can read all of Joe’s books, there are six which you can read. Ali Reda- the man who has recently broken Joe’s record, too has written his own book, which is available on Amazon (just as Joe’s books are).
By using what you have learned from those books and what you already know about your industry and customer, you too can replicate the success of Joe Girard. And perhaps one day, we will cover you for your amazing success!
What Can You Learn From Joe Girard?
Joe Girard left us with a lot to learn about. Mostly, this was about business, however, it could also be adapted to personal finance too!
Go Beyond the Product
When Joe Girard was selling cars, he wouldn’t sell it as a car, per se. He wouldn’t be pushy and list all of the reasons why people needed his brand new (and expensive) cars.
Instead, he would sell feelings and he would sell himself.
He would sell the cars based on the love that people needed. Or he would sell the security that the new car would bring. He would do this to almost play with his customer’s emotions, but not in manipulative or greedy way.
He would also sell himself as much as he’d the car. For him, h as much trying to sell someone else the car as much as he was selling the car to himself.
When Joe was selling a car, he would take genuine interest in his customers. Most of his days were spent talking to a few clients, often having hour-long conversations about their personal lives. Not just meaningless small talk.
Try to be “Regular”
This is a good life lesson, not just a good business lesson. When you look at people like Warren Buffett, and really any other rich person, they all try to act normal. They wear normal clothes, they drive normal cars and live in normal houses.
This is what Joe tried to do as well.
Unlike most other salesmen, Joe didn’t wear a fancy suit. Instead, he wore normal clothes- jeans and a t-shirt. He thought that by looking like the people he was selling to, he would look more human, and would be easier to approach.
He also had a poor background, so fully understood the problems that blue collar workers faced. He used this to speak to them about their issues and sympathize with them.
All of this helped him to sell more cars to them. He understood what his customers felt and used that to sell to them.
Understand the Customer
Understanding your customer is something every great businessman or woman does. This is something that Gary Dahl did, this is something that Rachel Zietz has done, this is something that Mo Bridges has done.
Joe saw what most other salesmen were doing. He could’ve decided to do what everyone else was doing, but instead he decided to try and understand the customer.
He found that they didn’t want a pushy salesman who dressed in an expensive suit and was too flashy to be “real”. He found that they wanted someone who made them feel special without making them feel as though its fake.
As soon as customers arrived, he was there to great them. If they arrived because their car needed a service, he would immediately have several mechanics take the car and begin work on it. He would then turn to them and say “leave it to me”.
If they arrived because they wanted to buy a new car, he would great them in the parking lot. He would then spend half an hour talking to them about their life. He would then sell them the car before having more of a conversation.
Be Good to Your Employees
If you run your own business, it may be tempting to treat your employees like mindless drones or worker bees. Any student of history will probably remember the Gilded Age- an age when employers forced their employees in to long shifts for low pay.
However, Joe Girard didn’t do that too much. Instead, Joe understood that happy employees sold more cars, Joe understood that happy employees took less days off (which helped them to sell more cars)!
Joe also did other seemingly small gestures with his employees. During the summer, he would invite every one of his employees and their families around to his house for a massive barbecue!
Joe also did things like taking his employees to dinner on the third Wednesday of each month (regardless of the economic climate!), letting them go home early and making sure to tell them how much they meant to him.
This all made working for Joe much easier. His employees actually lived to work for him, he was that great a boss! Because of this, they performed better, they had more happy customers, more repeat customers and ultimately more car sales!
Be Good to Your Customers
Beyond just being good to his employees, Joe was also good to his customers. This went just beyond the regular salesman “make them feel special” game, and actually made it feel as though he cared for them.
Every month, every one of his customers would receive a handwritten greeting card, addressing them personally. These greeting card didn’t have some sleazy “You owe me $X”, nor were they an amazing sales pitch.
The greeting card simply read “I like you”. And people truly liked them! People would put them on the fridge or even collect them! Because every month they’d be different- Joe hired a designer to design a new card every month!
Has the story of Joe Girard inspired you to do better? Tell me in the comments below!
