Growing up, my heroes were John H. Patterson, NCR’s Founder and the Father of Modern Salesmanship; Ben Feldman, Prudential Life Insurance Company’s Legendary Sales Giant and W. Clement Stone, Founder of CNA Insurance and Success Magazine. So, is it any wonder that I should choose to follow in their footsteps!
While at Miami Dade Community College and later at FSU, I majored in vacuum-cleaner and telemarketing sales - two part time jobs which convinced me my rudder and compass were set on the right course.
I began my post-college sales career in 1967 with NCR. I was assigned the Miami Beach Sales Territory which is mostly hotels, motels and vendors supporting the hospitality industry.
I sold and installed accounting machine systems, the forerunners of computers, which were used to post general ledger and hospitality accounting applications.
On my first work day, my sales manager told me to take my new business cards, brochures and to begin cold calling in my three piece suit on South Beach in the hot Florida sun. I’ll never forget his parting motivational words: Go get’em, tiger!
Eight months and 163 city blocks later, I had 2 sales, 3 prospects, worn shoe leather, and a cynical attitude. I was getting nowhere fast and going broke getting there!
I knew there had to be a better way to gain access to decision-makers other than the ordeal I had just experienced - there just had to be!
Out of my pain and pride, I began developing a prospecting for new business formula. One that would enable me to use the mail and the phone to identify and then pre-qualify prospects before setting foot onto the hot summer pavement to thoroughly qualify every prospect before leaving the office.
My original prospecting formula, as primitive as it was, quickly reversed my failing NCR sales career. Just 5 years later, I was recruited and hired by NCR’s Number 1 Hospitality Systems competitor to fill their senior field sales management position and to make my ’sales magic’ work for them.
In 1978, upon returning to Florida, after working as National Sales Manager for this computer vendor, headquartered in NY, I opened Mr. Mailer, Inc., Central Florida’s first personalized direct mail processing center and list brokerage.
Over the next six years, we processed 18 million letters on behalf of 192 clients in the Southeast. I learned what worked and why when using direct mail to communicate effectively with B2B and industrial prospects.
During this period I fine-tuned my prospecting system and forged it into a ‘tactical prospecting machine’ which became the Power Prospecting Formula. It combined the ‘power’ of the latest office technology with proven effective techniques for systematically getting qualified B2B decision maker appointments.
In 1983, I sold the mailing company and founded my current company, Leads-Plus, Inc., and my Power Prospecting™ workshop and consulting business took flight.
Since 1983, we stayed very busy in 55 B2B industries because there was and still is a huge demand for strongly qualified prospects and an effective formula for consistently farming them.
We have hundreds of success stories, for every size sales organization selling different B2B products and services. They all share one common denominator: Power Prospecting™ has become their new business development prospecting tool.
In 1994, I wrote and self-published the Becoming the Power Prospector™ Workbook which fleshed out the complete Power Prospecting™ Formula. This 70 page tactical self-help, study guide became my workshop handout.
Recently, I decided to hangup my workshop cleats and retire my road warrior ways. Besides technology now enables me to offer my training online to a much broader professional sales audience than ever before.
My new industrial strength Power Prospecting™ eBook combines my latest proven successful techniques with smart new technologies to assist sales professionals in their quest for consistently booking qualified decision-maker appointments. You can learn more about it by Clicking on the Purchase eBook Now button in the sidebar.