48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
12% of sales people make more than three contacts

2% of sales are made on the first contact
3% of sales are made on the second contact
5% of sales are made on the third contact
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

Shocking Sales Statistics as It Relates to Follow Up | Follow Up Success (via fred-wilson)

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

that man had a way with words

Winston Churchill (via terezan)

The institutional structure of the United States is under stress. We might be in dangerous economic straits if the dollar were not the principal international reserve currency and the eurozone in deep fiscal trouble. We have a huge public debt, dangerously neglected infrastructure, a greatly overextended system of criminal punishment, a seeming inability to come to grips with grave environmental problems such as global warming, a very costly but inadequate educational system, unsound immigration policies, an embarrassing obesity epidemic, an excessively costly health care system, a possible rise in structural unemployment, fiscal crises in state and local governments, a screwed-up tax system, a dysfunctional patent system, and growing economic inequality that may soon create serious social tensions. Our capitalist system needs a lot of work to achieve proper capitalist goals.

Richard Posner

that’s a pretty good list of what we need to fix

Famous judge spikes Apple-Google case, calls patent system “dysfunctional” — Mobile Technology News