friend’s name is enough. The Shaklee Corporation, which specializes
in door-to-door sales of various home-related products, advises its
salespeople to use the “endless chain” method for finding new custom-
ers. Once a customer admits to liking a product, he or she can be pressed
for the names of friends who would also appreciate learning about it.
The individuals on that list can then be approached for sales and a list
of their friends, who can serve as sources for still other potential cus-
tomers, and so on in an endless chain.
The key to the success of this method is that each new prospect is
visited by a salesperson armed with the name of a friend “who sugges-
ted I call on you.” Turning the salesperson away under those circum-
stances is difficult; it’s almost like rejecting the friend. The Shaklee sales
manual insists that employees use this system without fail: “It would
be impossible to overestimate its value. Phoning or calling on a prospect
and being able to say that Mr. So-and-so, a friend of his, felt he would
benefit by giving you a few moments of his time is virtually as good as
a sale 50 percent made before you enter.”
The widespread use by compliance practitioners of the liking bond
between friends tells us much about the power of the liking rule to
produce assent. In fact, we find that such professionals seek to benefit
from the rule even when already formed friendships are not present
for them to employ. Under these circumstances, the professionals’
compliance strategy is quite direct: They first get us to like them.
There is a man in Detroit, Joe Girard, who specialized in using the
liking rule to sell Chevrolets. He became wealthy in the process, making
more than two hundred thousand dollars a year. With such a salary,
we might guess that he was a high-level GM executive or perhaps the
owner of a Chevrolet dealership. But no. He made his money as a
salesman on the showroom floor. At what he did, he was phenomenal.
For twelve years straight, he won the title as the “number one car
salesman”; he averaged more than five cars and trucks sold every day
he worked; and he has been called the world’s “greatest car salesman”
by the Guinness Book of World Records.
For all his success, the formula he employed was surprisingly simple.
It consisted of offering people just two things: a fair price and someone
they liked to buy from. “And that’s it,” he claimed in an interview.
“Finding the salesman they like, plus the price; put them both together,
and you get a deal.”
Fine. The Joe Girard formula tells us how vital the liking rule is to
his business, but it doesn’t tell us nearly enough. For one thing, it doesn’t
tell us why customers liked him more than some other salesperson who
offered a fair price. There is a crucial—and fascinating—general question
128 / Influence