The Dream 100 Strategy That Doubled Sales for Charlie Munger

Good Morning. Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter…or in sales terms, six more weeks of prospects telling you to "circle back in Q2." Phil’s got a great gig. Shows up once a year. Makes a prediction that’s probably wrong. And is known as the expert in his field. I gotta find a gig like that… Now let’s get into today’s Follow Up. (:

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I've been on a lot of sales teams where the advice never really changes.

Work more accounts, increase activity, and trust that something will eventually break through.

Sometimes it does. Most of the time, you just end up busy, frustrated, and wondering how you were "so active" with so little to show for it.

Chet Holmes had this same problem.

Charlie Munger (yeah, Warren Buffett's billionaire right-hand man) made Chet the head of sales at his small newspaper.

After 12 months on the job, Mungar asked: “Are we lying, cheating, or stealing? I've never seen growth this fast."

Chet managed to double sales and took the small newspaper from 19th in the industry to #1.

And luckily for us, he wrote a book about it, so we can implement the same strategy ourselves.

Let’s break it down:

Before we talk about what he did, you need to know where he started.

When Chet took the job, he was handed a database of 2,200 advertisers and followed the typical playbook: Make hundreds of cold calls every single day and try to close as many deals as possible.

So that's what he did. Dialed through the list and pitched everyone.

Except... it wasn't working.

Sure, he was busy. The activity metrics looked great. But when Chet actually looked at the results, there was nothing to show.

So Chet took a step back and tried something different.

Chet pulled the data and analyzed where the advertising revenue was actually coming from.

And he found that 95% of all advertising dollars came from just 167 companies.

Out of 2,200 prospects on the list, only 167 actually mattered.

That's less than 8% of the market, driving nearly all of the money.

You've probably heard this before… the 80/20 principle, Pareto's Law, all that. It really works. Especially in sales. And Chet acted on it.

He stopped chasing the other 2,033 companies.

Instead, he focused only on those 167 Dream buyers. No one else.

Here's what that looked like:

This approach became known as the “Dream 100” strategy.

The idea is simple: Identify your absolute best buyers—the ones who spend the most, buy the most often, and have the biggest impact on your revenue—and go all-in on winning them. Forget the rest.

For Chet, that meant 167 companies. For you, it might be 20, 50, or 100. The number doesn't matter. What matters is that you stop treating every prospect like they're equal and start obsessing over the ones that actually move the needle.

Now here's the part that nobody talks about when they tell these kind of stories.

For the first four months, absolutely nothing happened.

Zero deals. Just radio silence while he kept sending packages and making calls to the same 167 companies.

This is where most reps would've quit and gone back to "working the full list" because at least that feels productive.

But Chet stuck with it.

And in month five, Xerox finally said yes.

When Xerox finally came through, Chet landed a 15-page full-color spread. The biggest advertising buy that the industry had ever seen.

And Xerox was just the beginning.

Once that first domino fell, Chet closed 28 more Dream buyers over the next five months.

And it wasn't a fluke. Chet rolled out the same approach across every division he managed for Munger, and the pattern repeated itself: double-digit growth, year after year.

No wonder Charlie Munger pulled him aside and asked if something shady was going on. The numbers didn't make sense until you understood the strategy.

Alright, so… how do you actually figure out who your Dream 100 are?

Start by asking yourself: Which accounts would 10x my year if I closed them?

Not the ones that are easiest to close. And maybe not even the biggest company size. These are the accounts that would spend the most on what you’re selling.

For most B2B reps, that's the big accounts you've been avoiding because they feel "too big."

Then do this: Make your list. Could be 100 accounts. Could be 50. Could be 20 if you're just getting started.

Here's where most people mess this up: They make the list, send one email, get no response, and go back to working their normal pipeline.

The whole point of the Dream 100 is relentless consistency.

Chet sent something every two weeks and called twice a month. For months. That's the strategy.