The first twenty minutes

Your report lands first thing every weekday morning. This page is about the twenty minutes after you open it, and about the order those twenty minutes go in, which matters more than anything else here.

The order that works

Most people assume a report like this is a calling list and start at the hardest part. It is much easier, and it lasts much longer, the other way round.

1. Read the report and pick your few. Three minutes.
2. Connect with everyone on LinkedIn. Five minutes.
3. Write to the ones that look right. Five minutes.
4. Ring the two or three you would most like to win. Ten minutes.

Do them in that order and stop when the twenty minutes are up. There will be a fresh report tomorrow.

1. Read the report and pick your few

Open it over a coffee. Every row carries the company's website, so open the two or three that look most like your ideal customer and have a proper look at them.

A minute on somebody's website tells you whether there is a real fit, and it gives you the specific, true detail that makes everything afterwards sound like a person rather than a mailshot. You are not researching ten businesses. You are choosing the two or three worth going further with.

2. Connect with everyone on LinkedIn

This is the step never to skip, and the one that quietly does the most work over a month.

Send a connection request to every person on today's list who has a LinkedIn profile, and do not attach a note. A note makes very little difference to whether somebody accepts, so there is nothing to compose and nothing to put off until later. Ten people takes about five minutes.

Because the request arrives without a note, people decide by glancing at your profile, so that is where your effort is best spent. Then look at who has accepted since yesterday, because those people have now shown an interest in you twice. Connecting on LinkedIn has what to say to them.

3. Write to the ones that look right

For the two or three whose websites told you there is a fit, send a short personal email rather than anything that reads like a broadcast. Say who you are, what you do, one true thing you noticed about their business, and offer a short call. Keep it under a hundred words. The follow-up email has the wording.

Two or three a morning is plenty.

4. Ring the two or three you would most like to win

Now the telephone, and only for the small number you would genuinely most like as customers. The ones whose websites showed a real fit, or where you have something particular to offer them.

You are not expected to ring the whole list and there is no need to try. A business owner who has read somebody's website and has something specific to say is in a completely different position from somebody working down ten names in a row. Picking up the phone has exactly what to say, both at reception and when you reach them.

If the telephone is the part you are least looking forward to, notice what the first three steps have already done for you. Ten people approached, two or three written to, and not a word said out loud.

What it adds up to over a month

No single morning looks like very much, which is why this part is worth holding on to.

Twenty weekdays of this routine leaves you with somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty new LinkedIn connections in your own market, all of them people who had just been looking at you. Around fifty short emails to the ones that looked right. And half a dozen telephone calls to the people you most wanted to speak to.

None of that would have happened without a fresh list of interested people arriving every morning. You would not have found those names, and you would not have had a reason to get in touch. That build up is the real value of the service, rather more than any single conversation inside it.

If the telephone is the part you dread

You are in very good company, and you do not have to start there.

The first two steps reach everybody on the list and cost you no nerve at all. A connection request takes seconds. A short email can be written calmly with a cup of tea. By the time you get to the telephone you are ringing somebody whose website you have read, who has seen your name twice already, and who had a look at you yesterday of their own accord.

Ring one person tomorrow. That is a good week's work, and the other nine have still heard from you.

The ones you do not reach

Nobody gets through to everybody, and it is not a sign of anything. People are in meetings, out on site, or on the school run. A call that goes to voicemail is a first attempt rather than a verdict, and Picking up the phone sets out the friendly, unhurried follow up over the next fortnight.

Today's job is only this. Pick a few, connect with all of them, write to the ones that look right, and ring the two or three you most want.