Go-Givers Sell More
With their national bestseller The Go-Giver, Bob Burg and John David Mann took the business world by storm, showing that giving is the most fulfilling and effective path to success. That simple, profound story has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers around the world-but some have wondered how its lessons stand up to the tough challenges of everyday real-world business.
Now Burg and Mann answer that question in Go-Givers Sell More, a practical guide that makes giving the cornerstone of a powerful and effective approach to selling.
Most of us think of sales as convincing potential customers to do something they don’t really want to. This mentality sets up an adversarial relationship and makes the sales process much harder than it has to be.
As Burg and Mann demonstrate, it’s far more productive (and satisfying) when salespeople think like Go-Givers. Cultivate a trusting relationship and focus exclusively on creating value for the other person, say the authors, and great results will follow automatically.
Drawing on a wide range of examples of real-life salespeople who have prospered by giving more, Burg and Mann offer tips and strategies that anyone in sales can start applying right away.
Foreign Language Editions
Now also available in Chinese (traditional), Chinese (modern), Hungarian, Indonesian, Korean, Polish, Thai, and Vietnamese editions. (Clicking on any cover will take you to a site where you can order that edition.) Chinese edition coming soon.
Go-Givers Sell More Reviews
Excerpt from Go-Givers Sell More
If you are in sales in any form—as an account exec at a large firm, an independent rep working out of your home, a retail clerk, a professional marketing your own services—then this book is for you.
And if you’re not in sales? Then this book is for you, too. It’s for anyone and everyone who at any point in the course of everyday life finds themselves dealing with other human beings. Why? Because studying sales is really studying humanity. Understanding selling means understanding how people work.
Writing about The Go-Giver, one reviewer added this at the end of his column: “As a side note, I handed The Go-Giver to my thirteen-year-old son and made it a required read. Even if he never touches a sales job or owns his own business, I do believe he will be a much better person because of it.”
The five principles explored in this book govern success in sales; they also govern successful friendships and partnerships, marriages and families, and organizations large and small. This is because the laws that govern good salesmanship are the laws that govern good relationships. Selling is not at its core a business transaction; it is first and foremost the forging of a human connection.
If your goal is to make a living through sales, then we’d like to challenge you to set your sights higher. The idea of “making a living” has the sense of breaking even, of keeping your head above water. But you can do more than tread water—why not soar?
Most often a goal of keeping your head above water will only end up sinking you. Approaching your work with the attitude, “I hope I make enough to get by,” is deadly for sales—because attitudes are contagious. Regardless of what your particular product or service is, people are drawn to you (or not) because of how you make them feel. They don’t simply want to buy your product, they want to be uplifted, encouraged, changed in some way.
Our purpose in this little book is to help you not simply survive but thrive—through your encounters with other people, to enrich their lives on every level, and in so doing, to enrich your own life and the lives of everyone around you as well. The goal is not only to make a good living, but to create a great life.
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We may think sales is about taking advantage of others - while in fact, its about giving other people more advantage.
The truth is that sales at its best - that is at its most effective - is precisely the opposite: it is about giving.
Selling is giving: giving time, attention, counsel, education, empathy, and value.
The word sell comes from the Old English word sellan, which means - you guessed it - to give.
The truth about selling is that it's not about your product, and it's not about you - it's about the other person.
Focus on the quality of the relationship and on providing value to the other person, regardless of 'making the sale'...
Selling is not at its core a business transaction; it is first and foremost the forging of a human connection.
The goal is not only to make a good living, but to create a great life.
Regardless of what your particular product or service is people are drawn to you (or not) because of how you make them feel.
The goal is not only to make a good living, but to create a great life.
It's impossible to make a sale, because you cannot really make other people do what you want them to do.
As a salesperson you can define your job description in three words: I create value.
Four-fifths of selling is creating value.
Invest yourself consciously in everything you do, with an intention of bringing to bear your greatest abilities to the task at hand. It is to create a habit of excellence.
When you can combine both - excellence plus consistency - you create truly exceptional value.
One of the most powerful ways you can create value for people is simply to appreciate them.
When you appreciate people, you appreciate. And when you don't, you depreciate.
Whatever it is you're selling, it's a MacGuffin. It's not that your product isn't important; it is. It's just not what the sales process is all about.
It's about adding value to the other person's life.
What you do need to fall in love with is the process of helping people get what they need and want. Of creating value.
Right now, your total job is to focus on one thing and one thing only; providing value to other people. If you do that well, sales and money will find you.
The true giver knows that giving is a tide that raises all ships, and that it allows you to be a person of value to others while doing very well for yourself.
You give because it's who you are and therefore what you do.
You give without emotional attachment to the return - knowing full well that there will be return.
The essence of the Go-Giver philosophy: The more you give, the more you have.
It's especially when times are tough that Go-Giver principles shine.
By creating value for others, you make yourself so valuable to the market around you that the demand for you and your business rises even when demand everywhere else is falling.
If your goal is to make the sale, then you are dependent on the buying decisions of others. But if your goal is to create value for others, you are depended on nobody but yourself.
When you follow the Five Laws, you create your own economy.
Providing more in VALUE than you receive in payment is the trade secret of all exceptional businesses.
Your compensation is not a reflection of your goodness, worthiness, merit, or industriousness: it is an echo of impact.
Your compensation is directly proportional to how many lives you touch.
No matter what you think you're selling, what you're really offering is you.
The second law means that a big part of your job is to continually find more people to meet.
It's not that other forms of advertising and marketing are no effective; they are-but only to the degree that they emulate or reinforce the effect of word of mouth: human beings communicating the impact that an experience has had on them.
Money is not a measure of goodness or worthiness. It is a measure of impact. You want more income? Have more impact.
Making sales is a concept. Touching lives is a reality. Sales is not about concepts; it's about people.
With each new person you meet, you are asking yourself: What are the prospects of my touching this person's life?
Being great at sale does not take exceptional verbal ability or an extroverted personality.
This point here is...to touch as many lives as possible. The sales and referrals that result are simply a by-product: the thunder to that lightning, the effect to that cause.
The ability to create rapport with another is one of the more fundamental skills of being human. it makes life richer.
The simplest way to establish rapport is to smile. Not too sophisticated, we know, but it's the single most powerful path to rapport ever invented.
The secret to making your phone weightless: access your genuine curiosity about the person you're talking with.
Your attention is like a flashlight: it shines wherever you point it.
If you focus on your curiosity and genuine interest in the other person, you won't have time to be nervous, self-conscious, manipulative, awkward, self-critical, or anything else.
We define emotional maturity as the ability to keep your focus on others' feeling even as you acknowledge and honor your own.
Other people say what they say and do what they do. What we say and do is up to us.
The difference between responding and reacting. When you react, you are letting external circumstances call the shots. When you respond, you are choosing your actions and feelings.
The essence of professionalism, it has been said, is showing up for work even when you don't feel like it.
When you act in a caring way despite the fact that you don't feel especially caring at the moment, you will soon find yourself having those caring feelings after all.
What could possibly cause your impact to reach out beyond the people you know to touch the lives of those you have never ever met? Your influence.
The Law of Influence raises the effect of the Law of Compensation to a higher order of magnitude, multiplying your personal impact through the spreading medium of your influence.
Genuine influence accrues to those who become known as the sort of person who is committed to helping other people get what they want.
Give me a place to stand, and I can move the World - Archimedes.
How far can you push the rope?
Pushing is telling people what you want; pulling is finding out what they want.
The influence created by pushing does not carry far. The influence created through pulling is LIMITLESS.
Rather than aspire to be kings, they seek to be kingmakers.
The golden rule of business: All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like and trust.
Where do great customers come from? From the gravitational pull of our influence, which is our capacity to engender those know, like, and trust feelings in others.
Every single individual is the hub of his or her own sphere of influence - and that sphere's potential is immense.
It's not who you know, it's who knows you and who knows about you, even if they haven't actually met you.
How do you find your greatest customers? You don't. They find you.
The secret to the perfect sales pitch is to have no pitch.
Your first priority in any encounter should be to add value to the other person's life, that is, to enrich or enhance their life in some way.
Great salespeople live by the same code as the physician's Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm.
Not everyone wants to buy your MacGuffin - in fact, not everyone wants to hear about your MacGuffin.
The Go-Giver salesperson's three-foot rule: Anyone within three feet is worth getting to know better.
The Go-Giver sales process focuses on the connection, which happens more through listening than through talking.
The best way to listen productively is to ask great questions.
Before they can be open to your opportunity or products, they first have to be open to you.
In order for your sales business to thrive, someone needs to say yes to your MacGuffin. But it doesn't need to be this person. So relax, enjoy the conversation-and walk out of there with a new friend.
The most important questions prospects ask are the very ones most salespeople miss - because people never ask them out loud.
There is only one language in which you can answer them: action. This is why follow-through is everything...
The essence of follow-through is this; in the hours, days, and weeks after meeting and talking with your new acquaintance, continue looking for ways to add value to their life.
One of the greatest ways of creating value for people is by connecting them to other people.
Follow through with a strong heart and a light touch.
Nothing against fishing, but we think the sales process is a lot more like farming. You prepare the soil, you plant seeds; you water, weed, nurture, and cultivate. In other words, follow through. Not every seed takes root; it may be only one seed in ten, one in twenty.
All these gestures serve the same end and convey the same message: that you have put their interests first.
Which connections will bear fruit, and when? It depends; different relationships and situations take different amounts of time.
Gi-Givers don't pitch - but they serve.
Why conversations drive to the question of what genuinely matters. Why conversations are where real connections are made.
You can't say the wrong thing to the right person, and you can't say the right thing to the wrong person.
Remember that you cannot make a sale. Only they can do that. What you can do is create value. It's your serve.
Emotional clarity is your understanding that there is a difference between your economic need (which is real) and your emotional need for this person to be the solution to that economic need.
Emotional discipline is your ability to hold onto that clarity and consistently choose your responses to each situation, rather than reacting impulsively.
There is a word for this combination of clarity and disciple: POSTURE
The question before you is not whether you need this person to be interested in your MacGuffin; the question is, do they need your MacGuffen? It's not about you: it's about them.
Believing in yourself is the true success-because nothing can take that away.
Good competition pushes and stretches the limits of what's possible. In a very real sense, your competition is your best friend.
When you take the high road and build up your competition, you create a rising tide that raises all the ships in the harbor - and that reflects quite well on you.
Anyone can learn the dynamics of being great at sales, just as anything can learn what it means to be a good friend.
instead of stepping out of who you are, step into who you truly are.
The truth is, authentic is not something you become; it's something you already are.
The secret to being effective when you present is to stay present.
Presenting is no longer about giving information (if it ever really was). It's about giving meaning.
The critical skill in your business is...your capacity to be authentic-to make a connection.
Stories don't necessarily sell. What they do is connect.
What is the single most valuable thing I could possibly offer them?
Great salespeople never try to convince anyone of anything.
Listen to learn.
Confidence and genuine enthusiasm are not missiles that work only when they are launched at others; they are lights that glow from within.
The ultimate benefit of genuine listening: you honor the other person.
