When a prospective customer calls you on the phone and wants to buy—either they heard or read something about you, or read something that you wrote, or someone referred them to you—the odds are close to 95 percent that you can make a sale and build a relationship. Not bad odds.

The reason is that the prospective customer called you, seeking information in hopes of making a purchase.

Back to reality, you come into your office and you sit at your desk. Today's the day you're going to—or have to—make 100 cold calls to prospective customers. The odds are that 95 percent of them will say "no," assuming you get that far. Bad odds.

And of the other five people who displayed some form of interest, one might eventually end up buying. The problem is you will have to go through every sales gyration and your entire sales cycle to make that happen. That includes product offerings, appointments, proposals, biddings, follow-up ad nauseam, finding the right decision maker, and other walls of selling that you have erected based on your or your company's inability to be a marketplace value provider.

So here's the recap: You'll make the sale 95 percent of the time when you receive an unsolicited call from a prospect and you'll lose the sale 95 percent of the time when you make an unsolicited call to a prospective customer. Hello!

For the past 10 years, it's likely that your business has been winning sales by capturing low-hanging fruit and you, as a salesperson, have thought to yourself, "I'm pretty good. I made president's club." Then, all of a sudden you get to today, and you're looking around for fruit. It's nowhere to be found.

And now you're in scramble mode for several reasons: You've built no platform. You have no video testimonials to prove your value or the value of purchasing your product. You have little or no reputation built in your marketplace. Your product or service is highly competitive, and it's difficult for you to differentiate yourself from your competition. You have no value message that you send to your existing customers week after week.

Which brings me to tomorrow. Or as they say at Disneyland, "Tomorrowland." You believe in your heart when the present economic situation changes, that in "Tomorrowland" it will be way, way better, and everything will be just fine—and, of course, you will live happily ever after, making president's club again.

You might want to take that strategy next door to "Fantasyland" and shake hands with Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy.

There's an old expression that says, "If you want things to get better, you have to get better." And if you have not prepared for this time, or tomorrow, then now is the time to dig in—stronger, faster, harder, and with more determination than ever.

When sales are tough, your competitors will be coming at your existing customers with offers that appeal to their pocketbook. You have to be providing valuable service, you have to be a value partner, and you have to be a value provider. If not, you'll either lose the account, or worse, be asked to match the price. In the land of profit, matching a price is the same as losing.

In order to make anything happen tomorrow, you'd better double your intensity today. Now is the time to invest in yourself, and now is the time to invest in your customers in order to get the 95 percent pendulum to swing in your direction.

Now is the time for value.

There are very few alternatives to what I'm recommending—and of those alternatives, none is as valid.

Many salespeople at this moment are somewhere between whiny and panicky. They're worried about their jobs when they should be worried about their customers' well-being. They're worrying about the state of the world, when they should be concentrating on their customers' loyalty.

The 95 percent success strategy is very simple, but requires work if you want to be on the receiving end of an unsolicited call. You must become a consistent value provider, build your reputation impeccably, and get your existing customers to endorse you, support you, and stay loyal to you. You also must utilize the strategy employed by every great athlete: Self-talk equals self-performance.

Tell yourself you're going to hit a home run, or return the punt for a touchdown, and picture yourself doing it.

Figure out where your value message is with respect to your customer's perception of it, and their willingness to receive it, and then do the one thing that 95 percent of salespeople will not do: Work your tail off. Today.