The Guinness Book of World Records has proclaimed Joe Girard, "The World's Greatest Salesman."
During his days as an automobile salesman, Joe for 12 straight years, sold more cars and trucks than any other salesperson. In fact, as an individual, he sold more cars than most dealers sell in total, and all of them retail.
Coming from hard and humble beginnings, Joe had been thrown out of high school, fired from over 40 jobs, and had even failed at being a petty thief!
But in 1949 things began to turn around. He met a man who "took him under his wings" teaching Joe how to be a building contractor. Joe became pretty successful and in 1961 he contracted to build a number of private homes.
Unfortunately he had accepted the word of a real estate speculator that said the area was to have a sewer system installed. Poor Joe, he went on the man's word instead of checking things out and finally found out this just wasn't true. Individual septic tanks had to be installed which meant the homes became greatly de-valued.
As a result, Joe lost his business. It was Christmas and Joe Girard had no job, no savings, and found himself in debt to the tune of $60,000.
Then the final blow came.....
On a cold day in January, June Girard tearfully told her husband there was no food in the house and the kids were begging for something to eat. On that day, Joe Girard found himself at the absolute bottom of the barrel.
It was either see his kids starve or go out and find something. After pleading and begging the manager of a car dealership to hire him; themanager finally gave in and gave Joe a small desk at the back of the showroom.
When Joe's first customer walked in that day, just before closing time, Joe thought to himself, "There's no way this guy is getting out of here without buying a car from me."
Joe Girard remembered his hungry kids at home, then \nlooked at his customer and saw......a bag of groceries!
Within a month he became so successful at selling cars that the manager fired him! He was too aggressive and the other salesmen were upset.
But Joe had found his calling and it wasn't very long before he was hired at another dealership where he worked until the day he retired in 1978.
Recalling that first sale, and telling what made him the Greatest Salesman In The World, Joe says this:
"Want. My want. That was all I knew. And that want was enough to drive me to say and do enough of the right things to sell that customer a car. I am not saying that that's all there is to it, then or now, but that is most of it."
"If you want, and know what you want, you will have most of what you need to be a successful salesman. I mean that. Nobody can be a successful salesman without wanting. Wanting something very much. And the more you want, the more you drive yourself to do what it takes to sell."
"Once I saw that first customer as a bag of groceries to bring home to my family, he was sold, whether he knew it or not."
You and I might not ever become the world's greatest in what we do, but we can become the best we can possibly be at it. It all starts, continues, and ends with 1 simple
Desire
"Air Jordan" as he is famously called, for his illustriuos performances in the slam dunk competitions, where he leaps from the free-throw line to dunk at the ring, played for Chicago Bulls for a vast majority of his career. During his first season in the NBA, Jordan averaged 28.2 points per game (ppg) on 51.5% shooting (field goal percentage).
Jordan too had his lows in his career, when he retired from NBA in 1993 and joined a minor league baseball club, after his father's death, who wanted MJ to be a Major League Baseball player. MLB was not a perfect match for MJ as NBA was, and he made a comeback to the NBA the year after.
MJ leaped on to the substitute's desk and signalled SIX, protraying the six titles that he won with the Bulls. To add to his 6 NBA championships, he also won the Most Valuable Player (MVP) title for 5 times in the NBA finals and 2 Olympic gold medals during his stupendous career that spanned for almost 18 years.
