A Ten Most Wanted List Will Dramatically Increase Your Sales

If you really want to make more sales, create your own Ten Most Wanted List. Identify prospects or companies you want to sell, but have not had current success. Put them on your list. The list will create a focus and urgency you have not experienced before. Post the list where you can see it several times during the day. Your mind will go to work on strategies and plans that will allow you to be successful.

The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted program was implemented by J. Edgar Hoover on March 14, 1950. According to Eric Hickey’s Encyclopedia of Murder & Violent Crime, the average amount of time a fugitive spends on the Ten Most Wanted list before being captured is 314 days. Recently, a local fugitive wanted by the FBI for more than two years was apprehended after being on the list for 114 days. They knew that by putting him on the “List” he would soon be apprehended.

Several years ago I was relaxing on the beach in Hawaii after spending an invigorating morning swimming with sea turtles on the Waikoloa coast. I found myself engaged in conversation with a sales person from California who was involved in the heating and air conditioning industry. He was telling me about one of his competitors that had taken several of his key accounts. Obviously this sales person had become complacent with his account base, but this incident provided a major wake-up call. The salesman went on to tell me how in his anger, he researched his competitors clients, created a list of the ones he wanted, and proceeded over the next year to steal away eleven clients, almost every one of those on his list.

Over the years, my clients have effectively used a Ten Most Wanted List to focus on those prospects they really want to sell. If the FBI can capture fugitives on their list in 314 days on average, you should be able to close the sale with prospects on your list in just a matter of months.