An Audience of 200
Have you ever set a record in back to back years? How about setting a record in back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back years? No? Well, Joe Girard did exactly that.
I started reading his first book: How to Sell Anything to Anybody to find out! I will start off by saying that this was not a Bad Conference Read, but a sit-down-and-take-notes read. Normally, I am skeptical of guru-types writing books, but this one was fantastic!
Joe's secret to selling over 13,000 cars was simple: he had to find repeat and referral business. At least, that was the outcome. His true secret was: get people to like and trust you. In this post, I will not go over how Joe got so many people to like + trust him. Instead I will go over Joe’s why it was important to get so many people to like and trust him.
It all started when Joe asked an undertaker and caterer how many guests they expect for a funeral and wedding:
It’s a matter of experience. You look in the book where people sign their names, and you count, and after a while you see that the average number of people who come is 250…About 250 from the bride’s side and 250 from the groom’s
Girard’s rule is such: every person knows 250 people important enough to invite to the wedding or funeral. This number can be disputed, as theories like Dunbar’s Number argue that we can only have 150 stable relationships at once. Either way- we can estimate that we each know ~200 people.
The second part of Girard’s theory is that people love to talk. About themselves, their experiences, and what they have been up to recently. I do not think that this needs much explaining- everybody has the same favorite topic: themselves.
So if we accept that
everybody knows 200 people and
people like to talk about their experiences
then we can conclude that every time Joe speaks with somebody, he is reaching 200 people! No interaction stops at one person. Now imagine if you talked to 9-10 customers per week- you would reach over 100,000 potential customers every year!
Knowing this, Joe made sure that every person he talked to would have an immensely positive experience with him- predisposing 200 people to liking + trusting him! If you take this in reverse, Joe knew that if he upset one customer, he would upset another 200 customers- losing tons of business in a few minutes!
So remember- for every person you talk to, 200 are listening. Did you make 200 friends or 200 enemies with your last conversation? The walls may not have ears- but everybody and their moms do! And yes, I am about to quote my great-grandmother in my own newsletter.
Kindness costs you nothing. Except maybe a smile - Rose Marino