In a cutely titled post called “Six Degrees of Customer Separation,” my cyberfriend Sean D’Souza opined that it’s going to take six contacts before his prospects become customers. And that he actually doesn’t expect (or even particularly desire) a sale right away. Other experts use Jeffrey Lant’s “Rule of Seven” contacts.

I take a heretical view of this. Here’s the comment I posted on Sean’s article.

Actually, the answer is (like so many things) “it depends.” I actually talk in my book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First about how to bring the six or seven impressions down to just one by laser targeting the intersections of prospect’s need/desire, frequency, and message. In other words, if you make exactly the right offer to the right person at the right time, you may only need one impression. If you have something that’s just not of interest, no amount of impression will shift. Example: as a 36-year vegetarian, I am not motivated to buy anyone’s burger by any amount of marketing. Only a sudden and very urgent need (like genuine starvation in a prison cell somewhere where meat was the only available alternative) would move me into the customer zone.

But in truth, it works the opposite way, too. I have had people who were on my newsletter list or in a group I participate in for several years, or who saved a newspaper clipping and then two years later, contacted me—and became clients. In some cases, there may have been 100 or more contacts; in some cases, only one, but with a big time delay.

No hard-and-fast rules, in other words–which is one more reason to…