“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas Edison.
That quote sits at the top of this piece not as decoration but as the most concise available statement of what follows. Everything below is really just a detailed explanation of why Edison was right.
The advertising blend #
Most marketers agree that there should be a blend of advertising; subliminal and short messaging and publicity and then longer form articles and thought leadership which eventually brings a customer and a business together at the point of sale. Neither works consistently without the other. The short message creates awareness. The longer form piece builds understanding. The combination, repeated over time, builds the familiarity that eventually produces trust.
A good starting point for thinking about this blend is the Rule of Seven, associated with marketing expert Dr Jeffrey Lant. Lant’s formulation holds that to penetrate the buyer’s conscious mind and therefore make any significant penetration in a given market, a prospect needs to encounter a message a minimum of seven times within an 18-month period. SteveBizBlog –
The precise origin of the number seven is, in honesty, more contested than most marketing textbooks suggest. Earlier authorities put the required number of exposures at twenty, and the founding research on effective frequency suggested three. The specific number matters less than the principle it encodes: repeated, valuable contact over a sustained period is what builds the familiarity and trust from which purchasing decisions eventually emerge. This is grounded in the psychological phenomenon known as the mere-exposure effect; the well-documented tendency for people to develop a preference for things that are familiar to them. AnartfulscienceCup of UX
Call it seven. Call it five. Call it twelve. The point is the same: one contact is almost never enough, and most salespeople stop far too soon.
The statistics that reinforce The Rule #
Here are the numbers that have stayed with me since I first encountered them and which I can vouch for from many years of direct involvement with B2B lead generation.
48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect after the first contact. 25% make a second contact and stop. 12% make three contacts and stop. Only 10% make more than three contacts.
Now consider where the sales come from. 2% of sales are made on the first contact. 3% on the second. 5% on the third. 10% on the fourth.
And here is where the power behind a robust follow-up process becomes impossible to ignore: 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.
Read those two sets of numbers alongside each other and the commercial opportunity becomes visible immediately. 90% of salespeople give up before the fourth contact. 80% of sales happen after the fourth contact. The gap between where most people stop and where most sales occur is not a coincidence; it is the single most exploitable structural inefficiency in B2B sales.
The businesses and practitioners who understand this don’t just follow up more. They build a system that makes following up consistently possible: a call-back rota, a diarised pipeline, a cadence of soft touches that keeps their name in the mind of prospects who are not yet ready but eventually will be. We explore that infrastructure in depth in the pipeline and callback pieces elsewhere in the Hub.
The distinction that matters most #
The mere-exposure effect that underpins the Rule of Seven is psychologically precise: it is positive repeated exposure that builds familiarity and trust. Repeated intrusive contact builds the opposite: the kind of wariness that produces unsubscribes and blocked numbers.
The difference between the two is the quality and relevance of each contact. A follow-up that offers something genuinely useful; an observation relevant to the prospect’s current situation, a piece of information they didn’t have, a warm acknowledgement that the relationship hasn’t been forgotten, is a positive exposure. A generic “just checking in” email that asks for nothing and offers nothing is noise.
This is why the statistics above, compelling as they are, are not an instruction to contact everyone seven times regardless of what is said. They are an instruction to build a follow-up process that is professional, well thought through, and well-constructed and then to maintain it with the patience and discipline that the 80% figure rewards.
Patience is required and it runs in both directions #
Importantly, the responsibility for patience doesn’t rest solely with those doing the doing in lead generation. Clients of marketing agencies have a responsibility too; to adopt a patient mentality and allocate a sufficient budget to let the process work.
The Rule of Seven’s eighteen-month timeframe is not an arbitrary bureaucratic detail. It reflects the reality of B2B buying cycles. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute confirms that companies change service providers roughly every five years, meaning at any given moment, the majority of prospects on any list are not actively in a position to make a decision. The follow-up process is not designed to persuade people to buy before they are ready. It is designed to ensure that when they are ready, you are the first person they think of.
That requires patience from everyone involved. And it requires three things to be consistently true of every contact made:
The approach and message must be professional. It must be well thought through. And it must be well constructed.
When those conditions are met, the follow-up process does something that no amount of advertising spend can replicate: it gives your future clients the time and space to decide before buying from you, in the knowledge that you will still be there when they are ready.
That is what the 80% figure represents. Not aggressive persistence. Patient, professional, well-constructed presence over time, until the moment arrives when the prospect is ready, and you are already there.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
Medium: https://medium.com/@richard-bulldomican
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbulldomican/
