Cambridge Business Association
How to Close Every Sale
Book

How to Close Every Sale

Joe Girard and Robert L. Shook
Warner Books, 1989
Buy book or audiobook

Read offline

Amazon Kindle

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Author Joe Girard provides a view of traditional sales strategies. He presents every step in the sales process and offers advice about every obstacle that you are likely to encounter. While his impressive credentials and experience qualify him to speak and write about successful sales techniques, these strategies, as presented in this book, may backfire when used on today’s savvy consumers. Nearly every one of the author’s suggestions involves obvious sales one-liners, maneuvers, and psychological tricks that today’s marketing-saturated consumer is either immune to or would see right through in an instant. Although written in great detail with plenty of useful examples, this book serves best as an adjunct to other reading material on the subject. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone who has to sell a product or service and wants basic information.

Summary

Selling Yourself

Closing a sale is the most crucial part of any sales presentation, but the word "close" is a bit inaccurate, since closing a sale doesn’t just happen at the end of your presentation. Closing a sale is more complex than it seems. In fact, elements of it are actually included in every stage of your presentation. First, you must create the need for your product or service and a desire to own it. A good salesperson can sell anything. Sales techniques apply to whatever you are selling, and it all begins with the ability to sell yourself. You are key to a successful sale because people are buying your ability to present what you have to offer. Therefore, in a very real sense, they are also buying you.

Since most people don’t like "being sold," you will first have to overcome sales resistance that has been built over time by the stereotyped poor image of salespeople. This includes the idea that haggling and confrontation are involved, and people’s inherent discomfort about saying no.

Remember, in addition to selling yourself, you must also sell your product or service, and your company’s reputation. You must be a customer, too. If you are selling cosmetics...

About the Authors

Joe Girard is the author of the best sellers How to Sell Anything to Anybody, How to Sell Yourself, and other classics on sales techniques. He has been one of the world’s most successful salespeople and was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records for twelve years as "The World’s Greatest Salesman" for his record car sales at a Chevrolet dealership in Eastpointe, Michigan. He has received numerous business awards and has addressed such top corporations as General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, IBM, and many others.

Comment on this summary