Many years ago I read a book titled How to Sell Anything to Anybody, it was by a car salesman who was noted in The Guiness Book of World Records as being the greatest salesman in the world.

Joe Girard’s accomplishment is really something, particularly in light of the fact that to his day people are reading his book and citing his ideas on relationship building an referral marketing.

However, all that aside, it was Joe Girard’s Law of 250 that has really stayed with me all theses years. It is the Law of 250 that is a lesson every marketer, in fact anyone who sells “anything to anybody” need to understand and realize the power of. It is the Law of 250 that will make or break you as a business person…and it is in this area most businesses, particularly today, fail miserably.

The Law of 250 states, and I am paraphrasing Joe Girard:

Everyone knows 250 people, on average, some more and some less. When you do business with just one person and you don’t treat them right they will tell all 250 people about the experience. If you alienate just one person a day and they tell 250 people? Inside of a year you will have enough people to fill a stadium, Joe used Tiger Stadium, all yelling “Don’t buy from so-and-so!”

Do the math!

That’s 91,250 people a year…and that’s if everyone who hears about it is quiet and doesn’t tell all the people they know! It could end up like that hair commercial! With 250 people telling the 250 people they know, and those 250 telling their 250…and so on…and so on…and so on!

Kind of like the hair commerical a while back!

Many businesses have gone out of business because of Joe Girard’s Law of 250, whether they realized it or not!

In this world, mediocrity has become the rule rather than the exception. Service and support is often outsourced and is almost an afterthought for many companies. In essence, many of these companies are putting out their own “Out of Business” sign…they are actively engaged in their own extinction….all due to the Law of 250!

It is up to you what kind of business you want to run and how long you want to be around. However, if you want to make it in the real world and not have tens of thousands of people all yelling “Don’t do business with [insert your name here]!” Be careful! Be diligent! And realize that support and service, like quality, need to be “Job #1!” Or you won’t be around long enough to see Job #2!

John P. J. Zajaros, Sr., PhD
216-712-6526
866-835-2913 (toll free)
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com

PS, My sincere thanks to Joe Girard for answering my email and reminding me of some things I had forgotten, aside from his Law of 250. The Law of 250 which has stayed with me for 35 years! I met Joe 35 years ago and he is still as amazing and charismatic now as he was 35 years ago…he also knows how to make an impact. He also took the time to answer an email! How rare is that today? One of the true masters of his craft!

I’ve written about excellence in marketing and in life many times over the years.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot more about what I can only classify as the pursuit of excellence. You see, the older I get the more I realize excellence is not only subjective, it is elusive. By subjective and elusive, I mean no one really gets there, not by a long shot. Interestingly, when we get close to what we perceive as excellence, and who actually decides whether we have achieved anything of the sort, someone moves the bar.

Excellence?

By who’s definition?

The truth of the matter is excellence, like learning, and even life itself, is a process rather than a singular idea, concept, event, and/or destination. Even the definition is, as stated above, subjective, meaning the word itself is an abstract construct, elusive, even an illusion!

Wikipedia defines excellence as follows:

“Excellence is the state or quality of excelling. Particularly in the field of business and organizations, excellence is considered to be an important value, and a goal to be pursued. Excellence is derived from the Latin word excellentia.

Significantly, the parts of the definition most important here are:

“excelling”

and

“a goal to be pursued.”

Excelling and a goal to be pursued! Thus implying a process, an action being taken, pursued.

So, how to we get there from here? Well, it’s kind of like the old one-liner…

”You can’t get there from here!”

Or can we?

Interestingly, once we acknowledge excellence as an abstract, a subjective ideal, it becomes easier to approach. Notice I said approach, not achieve! The fact is, in striving to achieve excellence…we may become excellent. Or, we may at least appear to be excellent!

You might say:

“That’s a contradiction!”

Well, in a way you are right. It’s a paradox, a conundrum, a logical postulation that evades resolution, an intricate and difficult problem (Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of conundrum).

However, in striving to achieve; in excelling, a process; pursuing, an active state of being; in working each and every day towards excellence, as elusive as it may be, we come as close as humanly possible to it. We are, in essence, progressing towards the ideal, the abstract, the subjective concept.

Ultimately, we are perceived by those around us as attaining a degree of excellence…rare in anyone’s world! The interesting thing about the pursuit of excellence? The ultimate conundrum in our progress towards the elusive abstraction? In this case, conundrum is defined as a riddle whose answer involves an unexpected twist.

We don’t have to be excellent!

People don’t expect perfection, often used synonymously with excellence. We simply have to demonstrate our willingness to pursue it. The progression towards perfection, towards excellence, is a lifelong endeavor, learning and growth as a process along the avenue of life.

What happens as we excel…a process? Pursue excellence…an elusive ideal?

We progress as human beings…we uplift ourselves, our associates, our business, our life! In fact, our life becomes excellent…our associations with it!
Do we ever get there?

I’ll let you know when I get there!

John

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com