The Ultimate Success Formula

I explained the cold hard facts of selling to a writer yesterday. She wanted to know how one could find 5 or 6 qualified people to talk to about her books each day.

Here's what I told her:

If you work by phone, you're going to have to talk to 75 qualified prospects per week (that would be bookstore owners, librarians, etc.). From these 75 calls, you should be able to set up about 15 face-to-face appointments, of which will produce a minimum of three sales. Okay, that's 3 people per day you'll be seeing (Monday to Friday).

Now, when you're out on your calls, you need to be cold calling 3 businesses who have some connection to what you write about - schools, gift shops, gas stations, set up a mall table or table at a local festival, any libraries or bookstores in the area you haven't already called, some restaurants carry books with local twists and even used bookstores will often have a new book section.

If you're doing any other kind of passive contacting, like mail, email, internet sites, even cold calling by telephone, your appointments or sales ratios are going to drop to 1-2%. Example, if you cold call by telephone (you don't have a legitimate connection with the person) expect 1-2 appointments from every 100 calls. Thus, you're looking at least 700 phone calls per week to get your 15 appointments. Frankly, you're better off to drive into a busy part of a city and talk to business people on a cold call basis. When I did this for my business text, Bare Knuckle MBA, I landed an interview about 50% of the time.

Note: the prospects for the most part will be buying multiple items.

Hope that answers your question.


Her response? It was something to the effect that she couldn't do what I was suggesting, that she'd just have to plug along and do her own thing.

My response? I emailed 188 previously contacted prospects today.


Here's what you really need to know about selling anything. It's called:

The Ultimate Success Formula.

1. Know your outcome
2. Take massive action
3. Notice what's working and what's not.
4. Change your approach.

"If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in your life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviours and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve. You need to set and live by these standards no matter what happens in your life. Even if it all goes wrong, even if it rains on your parade, even if the stock market crashes, even if your lover leaves you, even if no one gives you the support you need, you still must stay committed to your decision that you will live your life at the highest levels.

- Anthony Robbins



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