I run the largest solo practice of any kind that I know. There may be bigger ones, but in the solo consulting communities I hang out in, there isn’t another true solo at this level.

There used to be people running larger solo practices, and I used to go to them for advice, and I aspired to grow my firm as large as theirs.

I’ve outgrown them all.

I’m not telling you this to brag, but to show you how incredibly straightforward it is to sell this much:

I run my business on three proactive phone calls a day.

This usually takes me five minutes or less, because I’m leaving voicemails most of the time.

Do you know how many calls three calls a day is?

It’s 780 in a year.

When I follow my voicemails with a quick text message, with scripting that I teach all my client salespeople, about two out of three of those people get back to me (and two-thirds of them do it by text, not phone). That’s 520 return communications.

I don’t need any more than that.

You don’t need any more than that.

Especially if you have a team of salespeople, all of whom would be doing this in the system, proactively.

I do these calls first thing in the morning when I have the most energy and focus. Then I feel good for the rest of the day because I’ve done the hardest thing of the day. I’ve worked out my proactive selling muscles.

An important nuance: the calls must be proactive and not scheduled or expected. These are “I was thinking about you…what do you have coming up that I can help with” calls. These three calls are not scheduled calls on the calendar. Those are appointments, and by definition are not proactive.

Three proactive calls a day is enough to get as big as you want.

And if you want to push the gas more, up it to five calls a day, which I sometimes do.

Where’s Alex

Last week I took some of my best clients on a trip to Old Elk Distillery in Fort Collins, Colorado where we tasted through 14 barrels of bourbon, and selected our favorite one to split among the organizations that participated. We picked an 8.5-year-old bourbon, finished in sherry casks. It’s delicious, complex, layered, and nuanced. We will split up the 180 bottles or so evenly, and they’ll be custom labeled for each organization to be used as customer gifts. I’m pleased to report that three of my clients bought their own barrels! So we tasted through 14 barrels, and bought four of them! That’s good, fun work, particularly because my clients become my friends. We all signed the barrel. Also, check out the bottom of the barrel… A client wrote that there.

Would you like to discuss a workshop for your sales team or a revenue growth project? Call me directly at 847-459-6322, or simply send me an email.