I can’t believe how lucky I am to be able to have lunch with people like Chris Mikhael.

Chris was the 11th person I’ve met on my journey to have lunch with 500 strangers. Chris has an incredible amount of sales and business knowledge – and he was so generous in sharing it that I felt like I should’ve been paying him $10,000 per hour for his time.

As Chris explained, salespeople should prioritise dollar-productive activity – prospecting, negotiating and selling. Other, lower-value tasks can be delegated.

Chris also revealed there are just four things a business can do to increase profits – reduce costs, increase the number of customers, increase the size of the purchase and increase how often they buy.

Small improvements in each area can yield big results, because if you attract 5% more customers and they buy 5% more often and they increase their orders by 5%, these improvements multiply against one another to deliver exponential results.

Making a few more phone calls, asking for a few more referrals, or doing a bit more cross-selling or upselling might be all it takes to get those 5% gains.

As someone who’s quite new to business, I found Chris’ advice invaluable.