Make the Sale Happen Before Lunch: 50 Cut-to-the-Chase Strategies for Getting the Business Results You Want (PAPERBACK)

RULE1 Throw out the Ball

The legendary agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar had a motto: “Make something happen before lunch.”

Many people think that, in holding to this motto, Lazar meant that his goal was to finalize a new deal every day before lunch. Something tells me, though, that even with a client list that included such luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote, Richard Nixon, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and many, many others, Lazar probably didn’t close a movie deal or land a multimillion-dollar book contract every single business day of the year. After all, there are at least 250 working days in a year. That’s a lot of books and movies to sell! So what did Lazar mean when he talked about “making something happen”?

Here’s one theory. ...