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Selling Yourself on You
My name is Joe Girard. I grew up in the motor capital of the United
States, Detroit, Michigan, the city that put the whole world on
wheels. I suppose it was natural that I, like so many others from this
dynamic city, would become a part of the automobile business. Not
making cars, but selling them. As a matter of record I am the World's
Number-One New Car Salesman.
In case you think I hung that tag on myself, let me set you straight.
The title was given to me by the Guinness Book of World Records. I
still hold it, and I'm still in the book. As of this writing, no one
has successfully challenged me-no one has beaten my record of 1,425
new cars sold in one year alone. They were not fleet sales; all were
individual units sold at retail, belly to belly. I was audited by the
accounting firm Deloitte & Touche.
What the Guinness Book of World Records doesn't mention is that I
really sell the World's Number-One Product-which is not an automobile
at all: It's me, Joe Girard. I sell Joe Girard, I always have, I
always will, and no one can sell me better than myself.
Now, let me bowl you over. The World's Number-One Product is also you,
and no one can sell you better than yourself - when you know how.
That's what this book is all about: how to sell yourself. Read it
carefully, soak it in, commit parts of it to memory.
At the end of each chapter I'm going to tell you some things to do
now, as you read along, each day-things that will make you the World's
Number-One Salesperson of Yourself. Do those things and you'll be a
winner. I guarantee it!
Sell myself, you ask? Certainly, because we are all salespeople from
the time we can reason effectively to the end of our days. I once
heard Father Clement Kern, of Most Holy Trinity Church, now retired,
one of our city's most beloved Roman Catholic priests, say to this
effect: Even after the end of our days we'll probably be doing our
level best to sell St. Peter on ourselves.
WE'RE ALL SALESPEOPLE
The kid who is trying to talk his mother into letting him stay up an
extra hour to watch TV is selling.
The girl who hints to her boyfriend that she'd rather see a romantic
movie than a hockey game is selling. And when he tries to talk her out
of the idea and get her on the edge of the ice, he's selling.
The teenager who wants the old man's car for Saturday night is
selling.
And the guy who steps up the voltage as he says good night at his
girlfriend's door is selling.
Anybody who has ever asked the boss for a raise is selling. The mother
who talks up the virtues (if any) of broccoli to her child is selling.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you do and wherever you do
it, you're busy selling. You may not have been aware of this, but it's
true.
Who, then, is more qualified to show you how to do a better job of
selling yourself than someone who climaxed a career in selling by
being crowned the World's Number-One Salesman? But first things first.
YOU MUST BE SOLD ON YOURSELF
Before you can sell yourself successfully to others-and thus sell your
ideas, your wishes, your needs, your ambitions, your skills, your
experience, your products and services-you must be absolutely sold on
yourself: 100 percent.
You must believe in yourself, have faith in yourself and have
confidence in yourself. In short, you must be totally aware of your
own self-worth.
It was my mother, Grace Girard, who instilled in me an awareness of
self-worth, who helped teach me self-respect. God knows, she had
formidable opposition in my father.
To this day, I still remember vividly the conflicts I had with my
father. I could do nothing right. For reasons I have never been able
to understand, he spent most of his life assuring me that I would
never amount to anything. As a Sicilian kid who sold newspapers and
shined shoes in bars, I seemed to have nothing going for me but the
street smarts I was learning. I began to believe my father. My
self-respect nose-dived through my teen years until one day I found
myself staring at the prospect of reform school. Close call, but my
mother, thank the good Lord, wasn't buying what my father was selling.
Mother spent most of her life assuring me that I could be Number One.
She always stressed to me the importance of selling myself, of
thinking of myself as worthy. In her own way she was saying what my
friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale told me years later: "Joe, you are
what you believe, you are what you think you are."
It all begins with how you think about yourself. Just who are you,
anyway?
THERE IS ONLY ONE YOU
I remember my mother smiling and holding my hand and saying, "Joey,
there is no one else in the world like you." Thank God, most of us
have mothers who think about us that way. Mine was something special,
and because I had so much love for her, I believed what she told me.
And besides, I didn't have a twin brother, so who could be like me?
However, I did grow up with twin brothers in my neighborhood, Eugene
and John LoVasco, and I remember them well.
They were absolute look-alikes. I can still hear their mother telling
mine that she couldn't tell the boys apart. It was true. Everyone knew
that Eugene and John were twins, and identical twins to boot. But were
they? Years later, when I had moved away, I happened to mention them
to an FBI friend, and he told me that there is no such thing as
identical twins.
Consider this: The FBI has files of fingerprints numbering in the
millions, maybe even billions. And we've all been told that no two of
those sets of fingerprints on file are alike. No two people since the
beginning of time have had identical fingerprints. No two people yet
to be born will have fingertips or even palms that will coincide.
But that's not all. My FBI friend also told me that voiceprints can be
made of words whispered, spoken, sung or shouted, and that these are
often used in positive identification. As with fingerprints, no two
people ever had or will have exactly the same voice. The human ear
might not be able to detect a difference, but a voiceprint can.
It's an indisputable fact. No two people have identical personalities.
On the surface, so-called identical twins may look alike, so much so
that their own parents might have difficulty in telling them apart,
but if you were to try to match the right half of one's face to the
left half of the other's, they simply wouldn't go together.
There is only one you. There is no one in the entire world to equal
you, to match your fingerprints, to match your voice, to match your
features or to match your personality. You are an original in the
fullest sense of the word. You are number one. And now that you know
it, your job is to reinforce that fact in your conscious and
subconscious mind every day.
HOW TO SHOW YOU'RE NUMBER ONE
I wear a gold lapel pin that says No. 1. I'm never without it. I used
to wear it because I'm the Number-One Salesman. Even though I've
stopped selling cars and lead a whirlwind life of lecturing before
business and industry groups and on college campuses, and writing what
I've learned so that others may benefit from it, I still wear that pin
because it reaffirms my belief in myself. I'm sold on myself, and that
pin says so out loud.
You wouldn't believe the number of people who ask me, "What does your
lapel pin mean?" Strangers on planes, people with whom I share a
lecture platform or a television camera, even men and women in
elevators who usually stare straight ahead and say nothing-they all
ask me that question or a variation of it.
I tell them, "It means I'm the number one person in my life." Sound
selfish? Egotistical? Not at all. Looking Out for Number One is a book
that enjoyed a status for some time as a runaway best-seller. Some
readers regarded it as putting forth an extremely self-centered
viewpoint. Others, more charitable, saw it as a handbook on
enlightened self-interest. I believe that each of those reactions
missed the point. The message I came away with was this: If you don't
believe you're number one, no one else will. What you must look out
for is that belief.
Now, you do this: Go to your nearest good-sized jewelry store or the
jewelry department of any large retail establishment. There you will
find that you can buy yourself a similar Number-One symbol. Most
jewelers have it. I've even seen it in mail-order catalogs. The symbol
might be a pin like mine, or it might be a necklace, a bracelet, a
charm or a ring. Wherever you wear it and whenever you do, it will
flash in the sun or glisten in the light of the room. It will throw a
spark back to your eye and remind you constantly that you are number
one. It's part of what's called psyching yourself up, selling yourself
on you.
Copyright © 1979, 2003 by Joe Girard
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