Jeffrey Fox wrote a number of excellent books on business. The first one and perhaps one of the best is How to become a rainmaker. The book is strategy after strategy to make yourself into a top notch salesman. To keep yourself doing what’s important he offered a system. Fulfill the system and you’ll always “never run out of prospects, your pipeline will always be full, you will never have a slow period, and you will always be making rain”. Pure gold. Here are the points:

1. Get a lead, a referral or an introduction to a decision maker
2. Get an appointment to meet with a decision maker.
3. Meet the decision maker face to face.
4. Getting a commitment to close or an action leading to a close.

Work to get 4 points/day. Any way. Example: Get 2 leads or referrals and get 1 appointment (1 + 1 + 2 = 4).

If you’re selling, it’s a great book. Get it. Read it. Study it. Implement it.

If you’re doing IE (idea extraction) this point system is not aligned with what you’re doing. However, we can adjust it this way. First, if you can do IE full time and second, if you only have an hour or two a day.

IE version if you have the whole day

1. Get a lead, a referral to a decision maker in your niche
2. Speak to the prospect
3. Do IE with the prospect
4. Find a deep pain

IE version if you have an hour a day

1. Get 20 leads to call
2. Make calls until you speak with a decision maker
3. Do IE with a prospect
4. Find a deep pain

In both cases, seek to get 4 points a day at a minimum. Any combination will do. But you cannot just do step 1 four time every day. It’s simple, you have to speak with prospects and take action.

Try this point system and see if your IE doesn’t improve.