When you’re a salesperson, leads are your lifeblood. A constant flow of good leads keeps you from having to spend a lot of time making cold calls (yuck!). And if your job hinges on meeting your sales quota every quarter, you need new leads all the time. Unfortunately, in every company I worked, the marketing department didn’t seem to have the same urgency I did. The leads they would give me were … well, worthless! So it wasn’t long before I realized that if I wanted to put food on the table, I had to find my own leads. So I began to write and send sales letters to prospects, at my own expense. And within a few short weeks, I had more sales leads than I could handle—and my sales shot through the roof!

As I studied my direct-mail results, I found an interesting pattern. I noticed that only about 10 percent of the leads I was generating were actually ready or willing to talk with me about my product. That was no surprise. But what shocked me was how many of the other 90 percent (the ones who weren’t ready when they first contacted me) bought from me 3, 6, or 12 months later—as long as I stayed in touch! In fact, at one point, one third of all my new business was coming from this group of “not ready yet” leads!

By staying on their radar screen in a nonthreatening way, I was the first person they thought of when the timing was right. As a result, the cost of my mailing efforts began to drop (I no longer needed to generate as many leads to make one sale). And I quickly rose to the top sales position in my division. Since then, I’ve implemented this same “staying in touch” strategy in my freelance business.

In fact, I’ve found that much of the difference between just “getting by” and earning an executive-level income as a freelance professional lies in what you do with prospects who are not ready to hire you today.