The Law of 250 – Success in Selling
Success leaves clues and Joe Girard left many on the art of selling and building relationships. Joe Girard knew how to sell cars. He’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the world’s greatest salesman.” He has written several books on selling.
- How to Sell Anything to Anybody
- How to Sell Yourself
- How to Close Every Sale
- Mastering Your Way to The Top
- Joe Girard’s 13 Essential Rules of Selling
JoeGirard sold 13,000+ cars at a Chevrolet dealership
between 1963 and 1978. He’s recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the
seller of the most cars in a year (1,425 in 1973). Girard later became a
successful motivational speaker and gave regular presentations for his Fortune
500 corporate clients until his passing in 2019.
One of Girard’s most valuable
success clues is “The Law of 250.”
A short time after Joe entered
the auto sales business, he went to a funeral home to pay his last respects to
a friend of his mother. At Catholic funeral homes, they give out mass cards
with the name and picture of the departed. On that particular day, he thought
to ask the undertaker a question about the cards. “How do you know how many
cards to print up?” The undertaker replied that it was a matter of experience.
“When you look at the book where people who’ve attended sign their names, after
a while I noticed that the average number of names always come out at about
250.”
On another occasion Joe and his
wife were attending a wedding, he again thought to ask the caterer the same
question. He asked, “what was the average number of guests that would attend
the wedding reception.” The answer was, “About 250 on the bride’s side and
about 250 on the grooms”.
This is where Joe Girard’s “Law
of 250” was created. The theory is that everyone knows about 250 people in
their life. That’s 250 people that they can potentially influence their
opinions and experiences.
This means that if you were to
meet 50 people in a week and unfortunately if only two of those turned away
unhappy with the way they were treated, at the end of the year those two poorly
influenced people per week would have reached 26,000 people over a year’s
time.
This equation should act as an
understanding of the fact that if we were to just to turn away one customer
unhappy or dissatisfied, that person could then potentially influence 250
people away from your product or service. That’s the type of marketing that
none of us can afford.
Think about a prior rough day
in business, that somewhere along the line you, unfortunately, reacted
incorrectly to a customer. You could have been either stressed or rushed at the
time and unfortunately, you simply said the wrong thing to that customer. That
one customer now can go on and influence 250 potential customers with money in
their pockets that no longer will come your way.
This is a business attitude
that we all need to drill into our mind to condition ourselves to be on our
upmost A-game each and every minute of each and every day. We need
to consistently remind ourselves The Law of 250 in the role of marketing our
business and brand. I actually have one client after recommending the book,
post The Law of 250 on his phone to simply remind himself of the importance of
treating all customers and potential customers with grace.
Just think of how The Law of
250 can work in a positive way. That’s marketing that will continue to spread
far and wide that will gain you loyal fans and continued business not to
mention all the great relationships you will have the pleasure of gaining over
the years.
Joe Girard was “The World’s
Greatest Salesman.” He wasn’t successful for just being great in sales. He was
successful because he simply knew the value of standing out and treating his
customer right. Success leaves clues, let’s all take the lesson of Joe Girard
and his Law of 250.