By the way, our process is 14 conversations in 30 business days. It works because it's “human” and accounts for the fact that most of our ideal targets are super busy and won't take action right away.

3. “KISSS” your e-mails.

Keep, It, Short, Sweet, and Simple. Make your emails no more than five sentences, with a full paragraph between each sentence.

Don't preach to your prospects in industry jargon or buzzwords or what you do — talk about what the they will receive.

4. Fall in love with sales technology.

Marc Andreessen is famous for saying, “Software is eating the world.” This is especially true in sales.

It doesn't matter what part of your sales process you're on, there's an app for that: lead generation, e-mail automation, or contract management.

Want new super powers? There's an app for that. For example, see all of the goodies. Yeah, I like those guys. You should, too.

5. Systemize your next move.

We both know it's far easier to ask your existing customers to upgrade than to try to find new customers. So do that. How? Develop a specific plan that includes an outreach cadence that makes it easy for them to want to upgrade.

Figure out:

• How long do you wait until you reach out and try to upsell more products?

• What specific products are you pitching as your upsell?

• How do your e-mail templates read?

6. Learn all you can.

Frankly, we found that the process of Predictable Revenue is extremely helpful — some smart people have even called it the “Silicon Valley sales bible.” We took what we learned and added our special sauce to it. The more we saw it working, the more creative we became.

We are still learning what works. We're only a few months into the New Year and already have more business booked than all the weeks of last year combined.

And we're not going to stop learning. It's making us millions of dollars.

7. Live by your numbers.

Develop a “sales dashboard” that you can look at and check your progress. It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't matter what program you use to create it, just make sure to include these things:

• Number of sales e-mails sent per week.

• Number of leads generated per week.

• Number of inbound leads received per week.

• Number of wins per week.

• Average deal size.

• Average sales cycle.

8. Specialization is your friend.

If we break down the process, you've probably got three specific sales tasks (like we do):

1. Lead generation – Finding new potential customers..

2. Closing – Securing partnerships with these new customers.

3. Account management – Managing your customers.

If you have the benefit of having multiple sales team members, specialize their roles. If you're a one man band, specialize your time. For example, dedicate:

• 5 hours – lead generation.

• 3 hours – closing.

• 2 hours – account management.

9. Put your awesomeness on a template.

Make what you do repeatable, repeatable, and … repeatable. As awesomely as “repeatably” possible. But make sure that your templates do not look like templates. They've got to be emotional and personal. Write like you're only talking to one person. After all, you are.

Turn your whole sales process into a series of “templates.” And keep making them better by learning. Remember: You have to stop and dig into the ugly details of what you have been doing — and why.

10. Follow up on your follow up.

A “no response” from your prospect is unacceptable. You (or your sales rep) was just too lazy to follow-up. Don't hate; that is truth.

It might take something like this to get a reply:

• Day 1 – E-mail.

• Day 3 – E-mail.

• Day 4 – Voicemail.

• Day 5 – LinkedIn Connection request.

• Day 7 – E-mail.

• Day 9 – Cold call.

• Day 11 – E-mail.

• Day 13 – Twitter mention.

• Day 15 – E-mail.

No more guesswork: Now you know when to reach out, how to reach out, and what specifically to say.

Stay hungry

Everything you do affects your sales process: technology, marketing, psychology, and finance. All of these play a part in the sales hustle.

Study the new sales apps. Take a writing class — or imitate great authors. Read a good book. Practice your spreadsheet wizardry. Whatever you do, keep fighting.

Related: Take an 'inside' look at your sales process

Here's the crazy math

We started off the year with a target list of 400 potential customers. I wanted to do business with 10 of them. That would yield epic results for us. We ran into a problem — a good one — after 17 selling days. We had reached out to 81 of those potential customers, talked with 53 of them, and signed a deal with 27 of them with more deals following. We achieved 1,300% better results than expected.

I think you can do the same. It's not easy. And certainly this article won't change everything all at one time. But it might be the best start you've had in a long, long time.

Are you following us on Facebook?