Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2015; the sales figures it cites for Bob Golomb come from Gladwell’s 2005 book, so they date from ten years before the article.
In a previous article we talked about the world’s greatest car salesman. This time we’ll look at the case of Bob Golomb, another salesman (who, as it happens, also sells cars) with an average of 20 cars sold a month, which would probably make him the second-best car salesman in the world, behind only Joe Girard, who sold cars at a rate of five a day.
Unsurprisingly, the two have some things in common when they try to explain what makes them excellent salespeople compared with the rest of the trade, so we’ll be repeating a concept that most salespeople and business owners tend to forget.
The first time I heard of Bob Golomb was after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book Blink (published in Spanish as Inteligencia intuitiva). As Gladwell explains it, Golomb’s key lies in the initial prejudices some salespeople have about their customers, which can derail the sale. Golomb is aware that these first impressions exist in sales, and so he tries not to fall for them.
When Golomb is asked about his secret for being such a great salesman, he says he has three simple rules for closing so many sales:
- Look after the customer.
- Look after the customer.
- Look after the customer.
If you buy a car from Golomb, the next day he calls you to ask whether everything went perfectly. If a customer visits and doesn’t end up buying a car, Golomb calls the next day to thank them for coming in.
Whatever the outcome of the sale, whether it closes or not, Golomb always advises keeping a pleasant face. Whether customers buy or not, it’s nothing personal.
This message is very similar to Joe Girard’s: a fair price and a customer who likes you. And once we accept that we are easily influenced, the truth is that most people don’t buy a car; they buy the salesperson.
That is why both salesmen (Joe Girard and Bob Golomb) manage to outsell the average in their trade thanks to recommendations from their customers. If a customer is happy with you, they will recommend you to their friends when they need to buy.
But Golomb’s most important advice for any salesperson is this:
Never prejudge a customer.
Golomb says he has watched most car salespeople treat some customers better than others purely because of how they look. Over time, any salesperson can fall into this bad habit. If you see someone in work overalls covered in grease, a salesperson assumes that person has less money to spend, when he could own a chain of garages. And even if he doesn’t, he should be treated well, because if you treat him well, he will end up buying a car.
He says he has also seen many customers turn up very well dressed and chequebook in hand (the kind of customer salespeople chase the moment they walk in, because it smells like a done deal) and say: “I’m here to buy a car. Give me a good price and I’ll take it right now.” Golomb says nine out of ten customers of this kind leave without buying.
He has also seen a young student looking at cars while the salespeople ignored her. Hours later she came back with her mum and dad to buy a good car, and the salespeople who had ignored her watched another salesman close the sale.
So every customer who walks through the door should be served in the same way, given our best smile and taken through the whole sales process regardless of race, age or sex, because they are all potential buyers.
Bob Golomb’s talent
Golomb says that all he tries to do is observe the customer (someone he has never seen before) to work out whether they are insecure or confident, nervous, or know what they want, and to gather all the relevant information about the customer. Once he has that information, he knows how to adapt his sales techniques to that customer.
If a customer has a tight budget for buying a car, perhaps we should focus a little more on price with them, while with other customers we only need to focus on their ego.
And, for a change, we can only achieve this by listening to customers, something Joe Girard agreed with, and something all of us who have worked in sales would agree with too.
See also: 22 commandments for being a good salesperson, by Brian Tracy
Featured image: Brian Teutsch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
