209 pages, hardcover
$40.00 + S&H

The Game of Numbers

"There are dozens of books about prospecting. They’re all the same book, and they never work. This is the how-to-not-stop-prospecting book it’s taken me forty years to write."

-- Nick Murray

The Game of Numbers is written in four essential parts, rather than in multiple chapters. Those four parts are:

BELIEF. Our ability to persist in a long-term, high-volume prospecting effort is primarily a function of the experience we believe we are having. Most of us unconsciously believe that when we prospect someone who says "no," we experience the "pain" of "rejection." Because there is so much "no" in high-volume prospecting, most advisors get taken out by the perceived pain.

This first section of TGON argues that this experience is entirely generated in our own minds: that "no" not only doesn’t hurt, but that it is in no objective sense rejection. It suggests that we can desensitize ourselves to this imagined pain by seeing that it is a result of our own anxiety. We can then reduce and ultimately eliminate prospecting anxiety by replacing it with a new belief system, based on prospecting from our most authentic self.

BEHAVIOR. Belief dictates behavior. Just as a belief in the "pain" of "rejection" must cause its victims to stop prospecting, a belief in the power of prospecting with your own authentic self, combined with an unwavering faith in the efficacy of the law of large numbers, must lead to long-term success. It is a mathematical certainty.

This section of the book argues that it doesn’t matter how you prospect, whom you prospect, or what you say. It matters only that you prospect, and that you do not stop. Readers will finish this section completely liberated from all anxiety about prospecting method.

ENDURANCE. This section of TGON lays out a daily prospecting program based on the training program of an endurance athlete. In this methodology, you discover the basic level of prospecting your anxiety will allow you to complete. You standardize this into a daily program. Then, as you get stronger, you expand your capacity slowly but consistently – as a runner or a swimmer does – training, but not straining.

This section also gives you specific methods of falling back to pre-established endurance levels, on those occasions when you find that you’ve tried to bring yourself along too quickly. Along the way, it develops a reward system in which you get instant gratification for the act of prospecting itself, rather than from the outcome.

SKILL. This last section of the book develops a series of specific skills, including a variety of very low-key conversation-opening scripts, non-threatening offers that get appointments, and thought-provoking ways to handle Q&A/objections.