Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling

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Eleven Words That Changed My Life

Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile.

—Gary Ryan Blair

I don't remember where I found the eleven words that changed my sales career. What I do remember is the words resonated with me instantly:

When it is time to go home, make one more call.

I wrote the sentence on an index card and taped it over my desk. It was always the last thing I looked at before I hit the streets to go on my sales calls.

Those words became my mantra. On days when I was dragging my ass because I'd had it handed to me by prospects I couldn't close; when it was hot, cold, raining, or snowing; when I was tired, worn out, burned out; or when I was coming up with really “good” justifications to knock off early for the day, this mantra, “When it is time to go home, make one more call,” kept me going for one more call (and sometimes two, three, or four).

The impact of those extra calls was mind blowing. So many of my “one more calls” turned into sales. It was as if the universe was rewarding me for sticking to it. That final push paid off and kept paying off in my performance and my paycheck. Income I would never have generated if I had not developed the discipline to make one more call.

Over the years I’ve shared this mantra with the sales professionals who've worked for me, and I continue to share it with the new generation of sales ...