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

RULE 10 No Contact Base Is Big Enough

After a failed attempt in the mid-1980s to turn myself into a computer software entrepreneur, I faced a daunting challenge: How do I move from having absolutely no business scheduled to having some billable business this week? This was quite a challenge, because everything I had ever learned (or trained anyone) about selling told me that I was looking at bankruptcy.

I didn’t just need a big training date — I needed a big training date that started immediately, because I had let my prospecting lapse for months. Understand: My sales cycle was approximately eight weeks. That is to say, it took me an average of two months to turn a new contact into a customer. I now had absolutely nothing — zero — on the calendar, ...