--- title: "Joe Girard: The '250 Rule' for High-Efficiency Sales" description: "A satisfied customer can bring you 250 potential customers, while a dissatisfied one can create 250 potential enemies. Joe Girard, who became a car salesman after bankruptcy, discovered this simple yet powerful rule and used it to build a successful sales career." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-07-15" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/joe-girard-the-250-rule-for-high-efficiency-sales-4aa3b473/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/joe-girard-the-250-rule-for-high-efficiency-sales-4aa3b473.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/n5NfeizsloFiIGsjY1Gsig" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B9%94%E5%90%89%E6%8B%89%E5%BE%B7-%E9%AB%98%E6%95%88%E9%94%80%E5%94%AE%E7%9A%84-250%E5%AE%9A%E5%BE%8B-4aa3b473.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/joe-girard-the-250-rule-for-high-efficiency-sales-4aa3b473/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Joe Girard: The '250 Rule' for High-Efficiency Sales > A satisfied customer can bring you 250 potential customers, while a dissatisfied one can create 250 potential enemies. Joe Girard, who became a car salesman after bankruptcy, discovered this simple yet powerful rule and used it to build a successful sales career. **Warm Tip: Click the blue text above to follow 'FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting' for more marketing and distributor internal management insights.** _A satisfied customer can bring you 250 potential customers, while a dissatisfied one can create 250 potential enemies._ Joe Girard went bankrupt at age 35 and, with no other options, became a car salesman. At the time, he visited every major car dealership in search of a job. Finally, a sales manager told him, "The other salespeople don't want more staff because that would shrink the 'pie' share. Every time I add a salesperson, it reduces their chances of selling to customers who walk into the showroom." So Girard impulsively said, "Okay, no problem. I won't sell cars to customers who walk into the showroom. I'll go find customers myself." However, on his first day, he quickly realized that finding customers on his own was much harder than he had imagined. Initially, he tore two pages from the local phone book with personal contact numbers and called the people listed. Then, remembering that businesses buy trucks, he tore out two more pages of business numbers. He spent the entire day calling but got nowhere. That evening, after the other salespeople had left, Girard was alone in the showroom. A customer walked in, and Girard sized him up, sensing an opportunity. Since everyone else was gone, he figured he wasn't breaking his promise. Girard closed the deal. With that, he was able to borrow $10 from the sales manager to buy a bag of food for his wife and children. That's how he started his career. But he knew that this aimless cold-calling approach to find potential customers was highly inefficient. He needed a method to attract customers. As he wrote in his book *How to Sell Anything to Anybody*, "The biggest advantage you can gain is finding a good way to approach and sell to customers." But random cold calls weren't an effective method. Shortly after becoming a car salesman, a close friend's mother passed away, and he went to the funeral home to pay his respects. At Catholic funeral services, distributing Mass cards is a standard procedure; these cards bear the name and photo of the deceased. Girard had seen Mass cards for years but never thought much about them. This time, however, he gave them serious thought. Printing these cards must be costly. How did the funeral planner know how many to print? He asked, and the undertaker replied, "It's just based on experience." **The Simple Yet Powerful '250 Rule'** Not long after, Girard sold a car to a customer who ran a funeral home primarily serving Protestants. After closing the deal, he asked the customer how many people typically attended a funeral. "About 250," came the reply. At that moment, an idea struck Girard: there was a practical rule here that he could apply to his own business. The rule is this: Most people have about 250 important people in their lives who would be eligible to attend their funeral. It's a simple rule, but it's incredibly effective. We can also view the '250 Rule' from this angle: every customer who does business with you represents 250 potential customers. If your service is excellent, each customer is likely to recommend another 250 people to do business with you. Conversely, if your service is poor, you'll create 250 enemies. In the long run, providing consistent, excellent service—strengthening relationships with customers, treating them fairly, and meeting their needs—will make selling much easier. For Girard, it was simply a numbers game: if you typically close deals with half the customers you meet, and you meet 100 customers a month, you'll make 50 sales a month. If you meet 200 customers a month, your sales will double, even without any other special measures. "Certainly, you can attract more customers," Girard explained, "and even if their purchase frequency and quantity remain the same, your sales will gradually climb." **Turning Satisfied Customers into Referrals** Clearly, whether you're making a big deal worth millions of dollars or a one-time sale to a community customer, the '250 Rule' works. But there's an even more important factor to this rule. A satisfied customer can refer other customers to you, greatly shortening your sales cycle. Every customer has a circle of influence, and many of them could become your customers. Turning these customers into 'referrers' means that when new prospects come in and ask who Girard is, they're already qualified as potential customers, even ready to buy. But to turn satisfied customers into referrers, Girard realized he had to take action. He had to cultivate and maintain relationships with customers. For example, a few weeks after selling a car, he would call the buyer to ask how the car was performing. "You might think this is asking for trouble," he said, "but for me, it's about finding and securing future sales opportunities." Even if the customer did have a problem, Girard wanted to know about it so he could find a solution. Additionally, Girard sent a greeting card to everyone on his customer list every month. For instance, in January, he'd send a New Year's card to each customer. He'd write "I like you" on the card and sign his name. He'd also attach a label with the name and address of the dealership he worked for. His goal was to entice customers to open the card, see the contents, and see his name and smile, rather than tossing it in the trash like junk mail. He knew these customers would eventually need a new car, and he wanted his name—Girard—to be the first thing that came to mind. **Define Your Ideal Customer Profile** To make good use of Girard's '250 Rule', the first step is to define your ideal customer profile, or if you don't have one yet, imagine what it would look like. Look at the customers who have bought from you, and you can basically identify your 'potential customers'—the businesses and individuals who might buy from you in the future. Before you start prospecting, clarify the following: What can you offer? What problems does your product or service solve? Who are your competitors? What's special about their products? What unique competitive advantages do you have? Now, describe what your most profitable customers look like today. What common characteristics do they share? List these traits one by one, and you'll find clues to your target customers and most profitable customers. You need to identify their industry, size, decision-makers, buying patterns, and more. The next step is to create an action plan. This means determining your budget, including the money and time you can invest. You also need to list the specific actions you'll take and when you'll implement them. Which direction should you work toward? Generally, you should allocate 60% of your budget to current customers, 30% to acquiring target customer leads, and 10% to brand building. Existing customers are your most likely source of new business, but every salesperson should also seek new opportunities and clients. **Implement a Customer Cultivation Plan** To uncover good sales leads, you need to implement a plan. Here are some simple action steps you should take promptly. Here are some actions you can take: 1. Create a website that is easy to navigate, up-to-date, and content-rich to encourage customer interaction. Ensure the site is clean and professional. 2. Create an email newsletter and send it regularly to everyone on your mailing list. Keep it informative, accurate, and about one page long for easy reading. 3. Speak on relevant topics at venues like investment clubs and high-tech associations. At these events, collect as many business cards as possible. If you're a speaker, provide meaningful information near the end of your talk. 4. Attend all relevant trade shows and try to schedule one-on-one meetings with potential customers. If you have a booth, ensure staff are present at all times and avoid placing barriers between you and customers. Also, collect as many business cards as possible, and offer something valuable if needed. 5. Send new information to the media every season. Tell them new stories, including new products or services, successful customer cases, new processes or methods, etc. 6. If you have a new story to tell, an innovative product to showcase, or unique expertise to share, compile it into a white paper and offer it as a free market report to your website visitors. 7. Form a local organization for a specific industry. 8. Stay in touch with old friends, colleagues, and business partners. You may have customer leads to share. 9. If local newspapers announce that certain people have been promoted to new president, vice president, or other positions at companies, congratulate them on their promotion and wish them success. Also, add them to your contact list. 10. Introduce yourself at parties, sports events, or neighborhood meetings. 11. Build relationships with businesses that offer complementary products or services. Such alliances can provide customer leads. 12. Regularly visit existing customers to seek feedback on customer service. For example, how satisfied are they with customer service? Are they getting the product or service support they need? In your first month of applying Girard's '250 Rule', you may not close big deals. But over time, as Girard's own career trajectory shows, this method of cultivating prospects will surely make you abandon cold calling. The series of relationship-building messages you send out (especially when they're valuable) will differentiate you from competitors who just send out routine product brochures. *Reprinted with permission from *Giants of Sales: What Dale Carnegie, John Patterson, Elmer Wheeler, and Joe Girard Can Teach You About Real Sales Success* by Tom Sant. Copyright 2006 by the author. Published by AMACOM, a division of the American Management Association. Translated by A Shan. The English edition is available from McGraw-Hill Education (Asia). Tom Sant is a globally renowned communication expert, founder and former CEO of Sant Corporation, and author of *Persuasive Business Proposals*.* --- **Enjoy this article? 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