The Ultimate Sales Machine

"Mastery is the direct result of pigheaded discipline and determination."

— Chet Holmes

Holmes was a sales consultant and trainer. Before turning thirty he worked for Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's partner, who put him in charge of nine divisions of one of his companies; according to Holmes, he doubled sales in all of them. He then founded Chet Holmes International and worked with more than sixty Fortune 500 companies, such as American Express, Wells Fargo and Xerox.

Holmes observed that many business owners learn a good idea in a course, apply it for a week and abandon it. His comparison comes from karate: a master doesn't master 4,000 moves, he repeats a handful of moves 4,000 times. That's why the book proposes few strategies and a lot of discipline in practicing them.

The twelve strategies are:

• Time management. Six priority tasks a day and each item touched only once.
• Weekly training. High standards and constant training, not isolated events.
• Effective meetings. Every impact area has a weekly meeting to improve a single topic.
• Strategic thinking. Most executives are tactical; the best combine strategy and tactics.
• Hiring superstars. By personality profile more than by experience.
• Getting the best buyers. The Dream 100 program.
• The seven musts of marketing. The channels through which you reach the buyer, from advertising and direct mail to trade shows and public relations.
• Effective presentations. That educate before they sell.
• The sales process. Clear steps, from building rapport to closing.
• Follow-up and client bonding.
• Goals. Measurable objectives by area and by person.
• Implementation. Taking every strategy into daily operations and measuring it.

The idea that connects several of them is the buyer's pyramid. At any given moment, of all your possible buyers, 3 percent are buying now, 7 percent are open to buying, 30 percent aren't thinking about it, another 30 percent think they're not interested and the remaining 30 percent are sure they're not interested. Almost all marketing chases the 3 percent, which is where everyone competes and the cost per lead is highest. Holmes proposes reaching the whole pyramid with education-based marketing: market data that shows the buyer a problem they didn't know they had. His principle is that when you sell you break rapport, and when you educate you build it.

The case that best illustrates it is the one that gave rise to the Dream 100. Holmes was selling advertising for a magazine and had a base of 2,200 possible advertisers. Analyzing it, he found that 167 of those companies bought 95 percent of the advertising in his market's four main magazines, and none advertised with him. He stopped scattering his efforts and concentrated only on those 167, with frequent, planned contacts by mail, phone and visits. The first year he landed 30 of them, the second year another 30, and advertising sales doubled every year.

The common mistake is giving up too soon. Holmes insists the ideal buyer almost never responds to the first attempt, and that the difference is made by whoever keeps knocking on the door with something valuable to offer.

How to start this process? Make your Dream 100 list: the hundred accounts, partners or channels that would most change your business. Prepare an educational piece with data on their industry that helps them even if they don't buy from you, and set a contact calendar for the next twelve months. Send the first ten this week.

As a founder it will help you focus your sales team on the buyers who move the needle, and turn sales into a measurable discipline instead of a heroic effort. And if your customer is a large company, the Dream 100 is the map for getting in.