How does a wildly successful sales consultant and author of a New York Times bestseller (The Ultimate Sales Machine) promote himself to his top prospects? With promotional products, of course.

“I call this the ‘Dream 100 Sell’” says Chet Holmes. “Basically, what we do is pick out dream clients we'd love to work with, and we send these little gifts every week for five or six weeks in a row. Then, when you call them, they come right to the phone.”

For someone like Holmes, a dream list consists of 3,000 names, including the entire Fortune 1,000, the 500 fastest-growing companies in the country, 200 associations and some hand-picked smaller companies. To promote his book, he sent this list a series of mailings, starting with an orange calculator (the same orange as the book), along with a sales letter that said, “You're going to need an extra calculator to calculate your sales increases, once you apply the concepts in the new book, The Ultimate Sales Machine.”

The calculator was followed by a shoe-polish brush kit, a highlighter, and a magnifying glass, each in separate mailings. Before the program was even completed, Holmes reported receiving an avalance of calls requesting consultations. “I'm expecting that we'll get more business than we can possibly handle - you know, honestly, that my time will be so sold-out, that I'll just have to keep raising my prices.”