The 100 Call Method to Selling Success

by John Carroll

Recently I received a good question via email through our web site.

John,

Out of a 5 or 6 day work week how many hours would you recommend prospecting on the telephone for a new business? I usually start out with good intentions and last for a couple of hours and then just get tired. Any suggestions?

Matt

(It turns out that Matt is starting anew in a sales career after many successful years of account management. During those years, he did little, if any, prospecting and cold calling, primarily because he had responsibility for handling a major account which generated high revenues for his company. Now he is "starting over," this time selling advertising specialty items in a business he owns.)

Matt,

First, let me explain a deeply held belief about starting a career in selling. A fast start is essential to success. It makes all the difference in your results in the months and years that follow. There’s no substitution for the value of this fast start. The old adage, "Well begun is half done," holds true here.

The bullpen

There are many ways to accomplish this. I spoke with a client recently who is a very successful business owner. He explained how he started his sales career by making cold calls all day each and every Monday. I had mentioned the word "bullpen" in our conversation. He told me his earliest experience of a bullpen was in the round robin use of a single phone among three sales reps.

Here’s how it worked: One person would dial the phone and make the cold call while the other two were listening and preparing for their next calls. At the end of each cold call, the caller passed the handset while depressing the switch hook without replacing it in the telephone’s cradle. According to my client, this continued for a full eight-hour day each Monday.

The purpose of these calls was to set up appointments for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, leaving Friday for proposal preparation and other follow up activities. This method puts what is for most people the most unpleasant activity in selling in its rightful priority and out of the way first, giving the sales professional the rest of the week to look forward to and enjoy. If you’ll do this enough weeks straight, you’ll soon have little if any time to be prospecting, because you’ll be very busy selling and following referrals instead.

This method worked for this particular client. I believe his overall success is due largely to this early selling experience. I’d recommend it as one alternative for those who find themselves in a group setting. The peer support (and peer pressure) to make the contacts and set the appointments can be all you need for a great start to a successful career in sales.

Fast Track to Sales Success

The 100-Call Method

What worked for me? Upon the personal recommendation of Brian Tracy, I made a list of target prospects and called, keeping score of dials, reaches, appointments set, presentations made and sales completed until I made 100 face-to-face presentations. I recommend to you, as Brian did to me, that you do this in as short a time as possible and don’t rest until you reach the goal.

By the time you reach 100 presentations, you will have made most of the mistakes you’re likely to make. You will have learned what works and what doesn’t work about your approach and corrected the major areas of concern in your selling. Incidentally, this is what I consider the true "whatever it takes" element in selling. I did it and it worked for me. I have also found, as it has been written, that when you’re willing to do whatever it takes, you rarely have to do everything that it takes to reach your objective.

Let’s also mention here that Brian made his advice to a few of us very specific. He said, "To the degree that you use this 100-call method, you will find success. To the degree that you try to find a better way, you will find setbacks and failure in your sales career." Since I was still in my first full year of professional selling, I assumed that I had much to learn, so I took him at his word.

This goes down in my working career as the single best bit of advice I’ve ever followed. I watched others with more gray hair, better contacts and greater business prowess, many of whom had better ideas about how to sell this same product/service. We started our respective businesses at about the same time, selling the same services, using the same tangible products with identical sales materials.

I also bought thousands of dollars in the products we were selling from many of those same peers for pennies on the dollar. They had decided, one by one, that this particular business wasn’t a viable opportunity for them after all. They cited many "reasons" for their decision to leave the business. Those reasons included the product itself, the openness of target prospects and many other obstacles. The major barrier they chose to overlook was their own unwillingness to go out and sell.

Power partners

I have also found that sole practitioners benefit greatly from having a power partner, one who is going through the same process, to communicate with as an accountability system. The two agree on their selling activities for the coming week and report back each week on their actual versus target activity levels. This also works well when you retain a sales coach who holds you accountable for commitments to activity levels and encourages you through the rough spots and roller coaster ride of an entrepreneur. Either of these can make a huge difference in your results.

I hope this answers your question.

Regards,

John

John Carroll is President/CEO of Unlimited Performance, a Mt. Pleasant, SC, firm focused on organizational and individual performance improvement. Brian Tracy International, a worldwide network of consultants, has recognized him for sales excellence. Contact him at 1-800-672-4277 toll-free, email at jcarroll@uperform.com, fax at (843) 881-6746 and find him on the Web at www.uperform.com.