I have always wondered who was known to be the best salesmen, so I decided to do a little search. In researching, I found that Joseph Samuel Girard held the Guinness World Record for being the greatest salesman in the world. He sold 13,001 cars at the Chevrolet dealership between 1963 and 1978. Averaging this, Joe was selling more than two cars each day, and this number went when you take holidays and weekends into account, says the website called, How the Greatest Salesman of All Time Sold 13,001 Cars in His Career | by Toni Koraza | Better Marketing. Additionally, Joe sold 18 cars on his best day and 174 cars during his best month. To put this into perspective, Joe has sold more vehicles by himself than 90% of all other dealerships in North America (Koraza). To add onto this incredible story, Joe sold cars one at a time and not in bulk. Now, the question you might be wondering is how does Joseph Samuel Girard do this? Well, Joe would tell you that working hard and being likable are essential. One way Joe did this was by staying in touch with every customer that he had. Every year he’d have a designer make 12 personalized greeting cards. With this, he would send a Near Year’s card in January and in November he would feature something connected to Halloween to his entire list of customers. His message had two objectives, wanting the customers to open the letter without mistaking it for junk mail or other ads and he wanted the customers to see his name and feel good over a simple positive message. This made him different from his other competitors, because his customers always remember him due to his effort to keep a positive relationship with them. All in all, Joe took the approach in personal branding and the content market before anyone else even talked about it, and you can do it too.
BoweryJE22
Hi Courtney, what an interesting post! I enjoyed reading about the world’s greatest seller, Joe. His idea of personalizing cards is a great selling technique, and it even relates back to some of the concepts we’ve discussed in class. I definitely see myself trying out some of his sales techniques.
I really like this post. The fact that he sent customized greeting cards to everyone of his customers is incredible, and probably drove a lot of word of mouth marketing, as well as returning customers. This type of tactic is greatly effective because it is far less expensive to keep an old customer, rather than trying to gain a new one,
This man is the perfect example of how being personal and keeping in touch with customers even after they buy your product works out for the best in the long run. I believe that being friendly and concerned for the customer goes a long way. I know from personal experience that when I feel like I am getting special treatment, or even just acknowledged as a person and not just a customer, it makes me want to buy from that place again.
Courtney, This is a crazy statistic. It is hard to think that a single man could sell 13k cars over 15 years. He clearly knew what he was doing and was well liked by his customers. His tactic of keeping in touch with customers via holiday cards is true genius and must have lead to several repeat customers.