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The Go-giver
What It’s About
In The Go-Giver, the book challenges the notion that business success requires being a competitive, hard-working individual committed to acquiring new clients and closing ever-larger deals.
Three Key Ideas
Value Before Payment
True worth comes from giving more in value than you take in payment, making contribution the foundation of lasting success.
Influence Through Generosity
Your influence grows by placing other people's interests first, building a network of people who actively want you to succeed.
Giving and Receiving Are One
Refusing to receive is as self-defeating as refusing to give, because the two are the same motion observed from opposite ends.
Read a Sample
A Frustrated Salesman Walks Into a Stone Mansion
Joe is in his third quarter at Clason-Hill Trust Corporation, and he's missed his number for the second quarter in a row. He has one shot left: a contract with a client his firm calls the Big Kahuna. The broker on the other side has just told him, with the casual cruelty of a man holding all the cards, that Joe's firm doesn't have enough clout or leverage. A competitor named Neil Hansen has underbid him. The week is almost over. Joe is running out of options the way a runner runs out of breath going uphill, except Joe has been holding his breath for months.
So he does what ambitious people do when they're cornered. He cold-calls a legend. Pindar, known to some as the Chairman and to others as the Old Man, is the consultant who whispers in the ears of Fortune 500 CEOs and gives keynote talks across the country. Nobody on Joe's floor seems to have his phone number except an older coworker named Gus, who keeps a Rolodex the way collectors keep first editions. Gus hands Joe the number along with a single, ominous line: do not thank me yet.
That's how the parable begins, and by the end of the book the line has earned its weight. Joe thinks he's going to borrow someone else's reputation. What he actually discovers is that the version of success he's been chasing rests on a misunderstanding so basic that he's been sprinting in the wrong direction for years. *The Go-Giver*, written by Bob Burg with John David Mann, is a short, almost suspiciously simple business parable about that misunderstanding and how to undo it. It runs under one hundred pages in print, has more than seven hundred thousand copies in circulation, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. It's a tiny book that has managed what most thick business hardcovers can't: it lodges itself for good in the working memory of the people who read it.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who feels that working harder and chasing bigger deals still isn't moving them forward.
- Anyone who wants to build genuine professional relationships instead of transactional ones.
- Anyone who struggles to ask for help or accept support from others.
- Anyone who manages a team and wants a concrete philosophy to share with them.
About the Author: Bob Burg
Bob Burg is an American author and speaker best known for his work on sales, influence, and business relationships. He spent years in sales before turning to writing and speaking, and has built a following around the idea that building trust and adding value are more effective long-term strategies than conventional hard-sell approaches.
The Go-Giver was written with John David Mann, a writer and editor with a background in business journalism. The book grew out of principles Burg had developed over his career and has sold over one million copies worldwide, appearing on the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestseller lists.
