Joe Girard is regarded by many as the greatest salesperson of all time.
A true rags-to-riches tale, Girard talked his way into a job at a Chevrolet dealership where, in 1973, he sold a staggering 1,425 cars, a feat later recognized by the Guinness Book of Records. His record, though challenged by many, remained unbeaten for forty-four years.
One of Girard’s’ perfected techniques, as described in his book, How to Sell Anything to Anybody, is Girard’s Law of 250. The Law, Girard explains, is based on the idea that everyone knows 250 people in their life important enough to attend their wedding, or, more morbidly, their funeral.
The Law, unsurprisingly, also applies to other industries, namely, sales.
Girard explains:
However I feel about myself or whoever I’m with, I don’t let my feelings get in the way. This is business we’re in, an important profession. … If I see 50 people in a week, and only two of them are unhappy with the way I treat them, at the end of the year there will be about 5,000 people influenced by just those two a week.
He continues,
You don’t know who is a shop steward or a supervisor that a lot of people in a factory or office consider a big authority. You never know that some guy is the president of his lodge and he is going from you to his lodge meeting. Or think about a barber or a dentist, people who talk to a lot of people every day as part of their work.
Girard applied the Law to avoid earning a bad reputation. No one, after all, wants to buy a car from a jerk. But the Law goes the other way, too. What opportunities might we encounter in our lives if we remind ourselves of the true scale of our influence? Who might we help or serve better? What difference might we make?
Like The Rule of Five Canfield and Hansen adopted when marketing their book, The Law of 250 exemplifies the “persistence, hard work and motion” Naval Ravikant talks about in Eric Jorgensen’s book.
Indeed, we have far more influence than we give ourselves credit for.
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