Joe Girard was an example of a young man with perseverance and determination. Joe began his working career as a shoeshine boy. He moved on to be a newsboy for the Detroit Free Press at nine years old, then a dishwasher, a delivery boy, stove assembler, and home building contractor. He was thrown out of high school, fired from more than forty jobs, and lasted only ninety-seven days in the U.S. Army. Some said that Joe was doomed for failure. He proved them wrong. When Joe started his job as a salesman with a Chevrolet agency in Eastpointe, Michigan, he finally found his niche. Before leaving Chevrolet, Joe sold enough cars to put him in the Guinness Book of World Records as 'the world's greatest salesman' for twelve consecutive years. Here, he shares his winning techniques in this step-by-step book, including how to: o Read a customer like a book and keep that customer for life o Convince people reluctant to buy by selling them the right way o Develop priceless information from a two-minute phone call o Make word-of-mouth your most successful tool Informative, entertaining, and inspiring, HOW TO SELL ANYTHING TO ANYBODY is a timeless classic and an indispensable tool for anyone new to the sales market.

What was most remarkable about Jim Ling among the great players of corporate games is that he invented his own. And it worked for a while. In fact, he convinced some of the smartest people on Wall Street that he had a foolproof way. It has been more that 25 years since Ling strode the scene as creator and CEO of Ling-Temco-Vought, once the 14th largest corporation on Fortune's 500 list. When the financial magic he used wore off, he was ousted from the helm. They even changed the name to plain LTV to get his name off the facade that wound up as a bankrupt steelmaker.

Without any education beyond high school in Oklahoma and electrician's training in the Navy during World War II, Ling discovered a way to create free money for a while. He called his series of acquisitions and spin-offs Project Redeployment, which made it sound like something grander than it proved to be. But while it worked, it was dazzling, even compared with Michael Milken's rediscovery of undervalued, high-yield (junk) bonds. Unlike Milken, a convicted felon, Ling was a man of integrity whose worst trouble with the law involved a minor regulatory matter. He believed in himself and his venture so thoroughly -- and wrongheadedly -- that he kept all his own and his children's money in his company's stock and was wiped out.

The trouble with financial games is that they are easier to play than focusing on sound management and products, and they are surely more fun to watch.