Years ago, before there were electronic databases, sales professionals carried around their account book. Listed in most account books were the names of companies, their addresses, key contacts and phone numbers. Plus some key information about their clients and best prospects. The list was small(maybe 200-300 contacts) and relatively useful. Keeping an up-to-date book was important. It was the lifeblood of your business.

But over the years, computers changed the way sales people looked at their businesses. With contact managemnt software, sales people could keep track of five to times the number of contacts than they could manually. With a couple clicks of the mouse, you could automatically dial a customer or send them a form letter.

If you were really diligent, an industrial sales person could build up a list of 3,000 to 5,000 people with relative ease. In the back of your mind you started to think, if I could only write the same percentage of business with this list that I did with my old account book. I could retire by the time I'm 40. Fat chance.

There was a very major problem with that thought process. You can only spend so much time face to face, toes to toes, talking with your valued customers. Trying to keep track of and spend time with twice as many people became unwieldy and impossible. You started to feel like you were sprinting a marathon. You got tired. Didn't work as effectively as before. And weren't able to double your business just by working twice as hard.

The other big problem with having a bigger account list is that it costs more to market to that list. Are you really going to send a letter or brochure to the 5,000 th prospect on your list? I highly doubt it. So what should you do?

A smaller, highly qualified list is the most is important asset any sales person or business has. If a business is on your list, you should contact them every single month. Whether you send them a newsletter or give them a call. It is mandatory that you contact them every month.

And if you are finding yourself thinking, that contacting them every month would cost too much, then your list needs to be smaller. It is more important to contact less people more often than twice as many people half as much. This is one of the most overlooked strategies in building a great business.

When prospecting for new business, some of the best sales professionals operate with a list of only 20 of their best prospects. And the list never really gets any bigger. Because they know that if only 1 or 2 of the prospects out of those 20 become clients, their business will take a dramatic leap. Besides, they also know that with their current business, they will only have the time and money to market to their highly qualified prospect list of 20.

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