Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

David Blaise
Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

The Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales podcast provides tips on how to increase sales, improve profit margins and grow your business. Each week, we address issues related to important topics like targeting your ideal prospects, fine-tuning your messaging, attracting the clients you need, monetizing social media, the MVPs of Marketing and Sales and much more. From mindset to marketing and prospecting to podcasting, the Top Secrets podcast helps B2B and B2C entrepreneurs, professionals and salespeople get more of the customers and clients they need so they can do more of the work they love.

  1. 2 DAYS AGO

    New Year Success Planning: A Simple Framework

    Today, we'll discuss a simple framework you can use this week for New Year Success Planning. Very often we say we're going to prioritize time with our family and our loved ones. And we do this every year, January 1st, going to spend more time with the people we care about, the people we love. And then by March, it's back to life as usual, right? So if we decide what we're going to prioritize, who we're going to prioritize, and again, the flip side, what am I going to deprioritize? Who am I no longer going to prioritize in terms of allocating time? Those things as well allow you to live a far more proactive life. And it allows you to really start living the kind of life that you want to engage in. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to use this week for New Year Success Planning following a simple framework I call The Big A.P.E. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Well, I'm so glad to be here. David. I have to tell you, after Christmas my number one tendency is just to kind of want to detox, you know, because of all the shopping and everything else. But I know it's also, because there's not a lot going on business wise. It's probably a great time to kind of start thinking about the next year. David: Yeah, and I think detoxing is also a really good part of that. It's nice to be able to use this time, it's sort of the eye of the hurricane, a little break in the action before the new year starts and everything gets rolling again. It's just a great time to be able to do that, to be able to take a breath. Take a moment. Sort of think through how things went, what we liked, and what we didn't like about the past year and what we want to do better and differently in the coming year. And for me, I think it's just a great time for planning, for making notes, and really considering the things that we'd like to accomplish. Because, there's something magical about a new year where everybody wants to start fresh and turn the page. I mean, there's no reason you couldn't do that any day or every week. Reminds me of the expression, "today is the first day of the rest of your life." People hear that and they go, "yeah, that's right." And then we never do anything about it. But boy, January 1st rolls around and everybody wants to do things. We've got different resolutions, and I'm going to do this better. I'm going to do that better. Lots of people join gyms and they go for two weeks. Then that's the end of it, right? So there is this tendency to get really excited and really focused about a new year, and then perhaps let it fall away. So if we use this week to just really think through, okay, what do I really want? What am I trying to get out of my life, my business, you know, my relationships? What is it that I'm looking to accomplish? It's just a nice sort of quiet time to consider those sort of things. Jay: Yeah, and I think, you gave the example of the gyms. My wife goes to the gym all the time and she can't stand January and into February because she can't find an open machine to use, because everybody has set this new goal and it's going to last at most six weeks and then everybody returns. I think that that's kind of a microcosm of our goal setting for the new year and for resolution. So it has to be important too, as you're being mindful to be specific I think, but also to be reasonable with yourself, achievable, right? And trackable are all things that I think would probably be important in this process. David: Absolutely. There's another thing that I tend to think of, just in terms of planning and thinking things through. I refer to it as The Big Ape, A.P.E., the Big Ape. And it stands for activities, priorities, and expectations.

    12 min
  2. 12/24/2024

    The Best Holiday Gift to Give Yourself and Your Family

    I think the best holiday gift is to make the most of ourselves, when it comes to personal development, whether that means sales and marketing training, whether it means personal training, whether it means meditation, whatever it is for you, prayer, whatever it is that allows you to get to a place where you can really focus, really be present, and be your best for yourself, and those around you, is really important. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David, for the opportunity to be here. And I love this question. It's a little off track from some of the things that we normally talk about. But I think as we talk about running your own business and the amount of time that it takes, taking a little bit of time out to think about your family and how you can make their holidays special, I think it's a critical topic. David: Yeah. And of course, because of the nature of the things that we talk about, what I'm really thinking about when it comes to the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family, I tend to look at it as "a better you," right? If you can provide yourself and your family with a better you, a smarter you, a more motivated you, a more inspired you, that is going to really make a huge difference in your business life, in your personal life, and the life of the people that you care about. And of course, this time of year a lot of people are focused on actual gift giving, which of course is a traditional thing as well. But when we think about what really is going to help ourselves, our family, our loved ones most, it's going to be, you know, a healthier, happier, safer, more productive you, generally. Jay: Yeah. I love this line of thinking because you could give them all the presents in the world, but if you're stressed out all the time, if you're angry, because of what's going on at work and those types of things, you can't buy their love or their gratitude with gifts. Maybe they're a little bit happy in the morning, but by the end of the day they still remember what kind of circumstances you've left them in. David: Yeah, I remember when the kids were really young and we'd have gifts in the morning and by afternoon , it was like everybody was kind of cranky because you kind of get what you wanted out of the day and have too many sweets and all that sort of thing. But again, I think if we think really more in terms of what we're going to be doing and how we're going to be living and interacting with each other. A great example of this about a week or so ago on social media, Charity Gibson, who is involved in the promotional products industry in a lot of ways, and is just really inspiring for a lot of people. She posted something on Facebook about what happens when, at some point, you're doing everything for everyone else and you're not doing anything for yourself. You're not taking care of yourself. And I think it's such a great point, because a lot of times people can fall into this trap of thinking, well, I don't want to be selfish. But there is a big difference between selfishness and what I refer to as rational self-interest. In other words, rational self-interest is what keeps us from stepping off the curb and into traffic, right? The desire to look both ways before we cross the street. That's rational self-interest. Nobody would really look at that and say, oh, you're being selfish. But I think a lot of times people tend to, for themselves mostly, think, well, I should be doing more. I could be doing more. They want to help everybody else. And if you don't put gas in your own tank first,

    11 min
  3. 12/17/2024

    Stop Following the Followers

    If you're just copying what everyone else is doing, and 80 percent of the market is doing that, you're just going to be seen as part of that group. So stop following the followers! If you want to differentiate, it starts with that. How am I communicating my strengths to an audience that actually needs the strengths that I'm able to deliver? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Stop Following the Followers. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Once again, a great topic for our discussion. This one is hard. Sometimes we are sheep and we're not following a leader, right? We're following everyone else who's following that leader. Why are we doing that? David: Yeah, great question. Why are we doing that? I know in the early stages of my business, I did that all the time. When you don't know what to do, you're basically looking around to see what other people are doing, and very often they don't know what they're doing either. I particularly remember in the early stages of my business where I would look at somebody who I saw as a competitor in my space, and I would say, okay, well, what are they doing? And sometimes I would do that pretty indiscriminately, not even realizing that they may have been in worse shape than we were at that point, and I'm looking at what they're doing. Now, fortunately, I've always been able to learn as much from bad example as I have from good. And to me, that's like a superpower. If you're able to do that, it is extremely helpful. If you look at something that someone else is doing and you say, you know what, I am not doing that. And you see something that you like and say, well, I am going to do that. That's extremely helpful. But very often we don't know who's doing extremely well and who's not doing as well. And we see something we like, and we may imitate it. We may try to copy it. But, it may not be working for that person, and it very well might not work for us either. Jay: Yeah, or I think understanding what is making them successful and what you're seeing them do, that doesn't mean that's what makes them successful. I mean, there are many people out there who are successful in spite of all of the mistakes they're making. And that really frustrates me, David, when I see that, because here I am busting my butt to try and do it right, and I see other people that are... it's like they'd have to work hard to mess things up. They just fall in a bucket of gold everywhere they go. Drives me crazy. It's like when I was in the radio business, we had a consultant who was paid incredible money and we're like, why does this guy know what he's doing? Well, he happened to work for somebody who achieved major syndication. Well, just because he worked for that guy doesn't mean that he's the reason that guy was successful. And that doesn't mean we should listen to everything that he says. David: Absolutely. I've got similar radio horror stories. I think we've all had experiences like that. We've also probably had experiences where we see someone, and our impression is that that person is successful, is smart, is doing things right, and is doing things well. And that's not always the case. Because we don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. In our work with clients, one of the reasons we have the brand we have, TopSecrets.com, is that there are things that people don't know that can help them. Whether you want to consider them secrets or whether you just want to consider them things that somebody's never learned, doesn't really matter. But it's a fact. And I've had conversations with people who say, "oh, there's no such thing as secrets in business.

    13 min
  4. 12/10/2024

    The Need to Say No in Business

    I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, "no is a complete sentence." have you ever heard that one? It's interesting because it's very hard to just say no in business when someone asks you something. That was an old Nancy Reagan thing, right? "Just say no." Say no to drugs. Just say no. But when somebody asks you to do something, you just say "no." I think there was an episode of Seinfeld like that... David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss the need to say no in business. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I think this is one of the hardest things to do in business because we feel like we can answer every question and that we should. And the reality is, that's not the case. David: Yeah, and it's such an easy trap to fall into because there are so many people that we feel like we need to say yes to, right? We've got business associates, we've got clients, we've got prospects, we've got family, we've got friends, everybody coming to us with things. And the agree type of person inside us wants to say yes to most things. We want to be agreeable. We want to do the best of our ability. But sometimes we can really get in over our heads when we don't at least start to say no to some of the things that are not going to allow us to get where we need to go. Jay: Yeah, and I agree. It's in your personal life. It's in your business life. If you have a sales cycle, it's which customers you choose to deal with. I mean, you can let your entire life be dominated. And I know people like this and I've looked at him and I said, how do you ever get something done? I mean, I love you because you want to help everybody and you're so serving to other people, but your family might be neglected. Your business might be neglected. There's got to be balance in the force, right? David: Yeah. And sometimes, during some stages of life, it's easier than other times to say no. But there are periods in there, man, where it's just like you feel like you have to do everything. You have to say yes to every opportunity. You have to at least explore it. You want to try to help everyone you can possibly help, which is a great thing, but we all have a limited, finite number of hours in a day. 24 hours is fixed. It's inflexible. We can't change that. And everything we say yes to means that we're saying no to something else, even if we're not physically saying no. We're not giving ourselves the ability to accomplish additional things, which creates sort of a huge opportunity cost if we're not careful. Jay: Yeah, and how many of us are careful? That word careful, right, David? What does that mean? Is it identifying the things that you have to get done? I think yes, the things you want to get done, the priorities? And I don't think we're saying no to everybody, right? It's understanding yourself and what's most important and saying, I'm actually going to say yes. to so many people, but after that, I'm booked. I can't. I've got to be with my family. I've got to be at work. I've got to be, with these other priorities. David: Yes, and I think for a lot of us, it's inside of work where we often have the most difficulty saying no. Because when you're dealing with family and friends, in a way, it's easier to say, well, I can't because I have to do this. I can't because I have to work, right? We're not saying no I'm not doing it. We're saying I can't. When in fact, we're either prioritizing incorrectly or prioritizing poorly or we're just making the decision that no, I'm going to do this instead And it's very difficult to do that to actually say no to someone as opposed to presenting the excuse instead of the actual no. Saying I can't as opposed to I am choosing to d...

    12 min
  5. 12/03/2024

    Why Working Harder Isn’t Working: The Effort to Outcome Myth

    Working harder won't cut it, and breaking the Effort to Outcome Myth starts with understanding that it's not going to be a 1 to 1 thing. You're not going to put in more effort and just immediately generate a corresponding amount of result. That's why it's necessary to look for points of leverage -- in the form of systems, technology, and delegation. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the Effort to Outcome Myth. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I've got this figured out. All I have to do is spend so much time on something and that guarantees me that I'm going to have the exact outcome that I want, right? David: Cool. This is going to be the shortest episode ever. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it kind of falls along the line of what people always say about "you get out out of life what you put into it." And I like the sound of the expression, but what I found personally in my life is that it's just not true. It's not accurate. It's never really a direct correlation. You never really get out of life exactly what you put in. You never get out of business exactly what you put in. You get out some sort of multiple, at least that's been my experience. Now, if your multiple is one to one, okay, then you're getting out what you're putting in. But I'm sure you've had the experience as well, where you put a whole lot of work in on something, and it didn't create the return that you wanted. You've had other things that maybe you didn't have to put a lot of work in on, but they happened to work out well and created great results. So I think sometimes when we make that connection in our mind saying, I have to push harder. I have to work more. I have to do more things in order to get what I need out of it. We may be missing some elements there. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. As you know, I've studied a lot of these billionaire types. I think a lot of people do, and I was looking for some commonality. And I do see commonality in how they think about things, how they look at things, but I don't see commonality in scheduling and how hard they work. Some people like Bill Gates, his schedule, I mean, I get exhausted just reading it. But other people are like, no, I work smarter, not harder. And I work because I want time off. I want to enjoy my life. So I don't see a correlation between how much they work compared to what their results are. David: Yeah, definitely not a one to one correlation. Now, some of it also is common sense. If you think in terms of people engaging in busy work, as opposed to impactful actions, things that actually move the needle. There's an example of where you can start to create some leverage for yourself. If you look at your day to day actions. And you recognize that many of the things that we might be doing are not actually moving the needle for us, then it's easy to say, Okay, well, what can I eliminate? And what can I focus more attention on so that I can get the results that I'm looking for? Jay: Yeah, and I think it's really difficult. We talk about this a lot. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? Especially as a small business owner, the idea of working smarter sometimes is the hardest thing that you can do. Because you're putting out fires and those fires need to be dealt with. That's why they're called fires, right? So finding a way to do that but still move the needle forward can be a very difficult process. David: Yeah, and I think when we look at things in terms of applying a brute force solution to what could be a strategic or a planning problem, that's also where we kind of run into trouble. Thinking, okay, well, I have to do more. I have to push more. I have to push harder.

    14 min
  6. 11/26/2024

    Cold Calls: How to Reduce or Eliminate Them in Your Business

    If you want to reduce or eliminate cold calls, you need to recognize that there are other, and very often more effective ways of doing this. More leveraged ways to be able to do this. More ways of being more focused, more specific... David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to reduce or eliminate cold calls. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey David, I'm so glad we're talking about this. I hate cold calls and who loves them? Right? I mean, if anybody comes on and says they love cold calls, wow. I mean, maybe if you do it enough and it's successful enough, I can see how you would love them, but I'm not to that point yet. David: I've always been skeptical of that too, Jay. I've always been skeptical of people who say, I love cold calls. But I know they exist. And I've had conversations with people like that, and they tell me why they love them and how great they are at them. And when I hear that, I'm like, congratulations, that's awesome. I'm extremely happy for you. I've never actually learned anything from them, though, that I could really share with other people that would get other people to change their minds. And so for that reason, I've never been one, at any of our trainings, to sort of teach cold calling. Now, have we done it over the years? Absolutely. But it's not something that I feel like, oh, okay, I'm going to put together a course on cold calling because I feel that strongly about it. I don't. I feel more strongly that there are other, better ways of getting recognized and getting noticed, and that's why nearly everything we do in our material is focused on allowing people to do that without necessarily making cold calls. And it's not even really just cold calls. There are certain things that some people hate. Cold calls, posting on social media, engaging in paid advertising, different people hate different things. Now, if you hate all of those things, if you're not going to do anything, then it's going to be more of a challenge to get clients. But generally speaking, you don't have to do everything and it's very likely there are things that you don't like to do, that you won't have to do if you take the time to think things through and come up with a strategy that works better for you. Jay: Yeah, and I think you made such a good point there. There may be somebody who loves cold calls, there may be somebody who's successful, but that's really like a character trait. That's like an individual skill set. So if you think Oh, because this person can do it, then that means I can have five people doing it. I don't know if that's reality, finding five people who love cold calls and are successful at it. And the other thing is that because there are so many other ways to contact people now, a cold call is very surprising to me. It's like, if you didn't send me an email first, that's very strange in today's world. It's changed. David: It really is. You touched on something and this is a bit of an aside from what we're talking about, but I think it's important, which is that there are some people who are wired to do things. There are some people whose personalities are geared toward doing things extremely well. There's a sales trainer that I've known over the years. I met him in a number of trade shows. He's kind of a bigger than life character. He's tall and he's really good looking, very well spoken, very smart, makes excellent presentations. And every time I've seen him, I thought, this guy is made for this. He is built for this. profession. But what I've also noticed is that not everybody's him, right? Not everybody's as tall, not everybody's as good looking, right?

    13 min
  7. 11/19/2024

    Focus on Qualified Prospects Only

    Dealing with qualified prospects only is the best. Try to get rid of some people as early on in the process as you possibly can. If you found out that you invested some time with them and you later discover, okay, this person is no longer qualified. Cut the cord, move on. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Qualified Prospects Only. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. Wow, this is the dream, right? This is the dream. If you could spend all your time only dealing with people who want your services, need your services, and then, wow, that's what we're searching for every day. David: That's it, man. We are living the dream. And I think for a lot of people, the reason they don't live the dream is because they don't make it a priority. They don't build it in to their processes. They don't say to themselves, when I am in touch with a prospect today, this needs to be one of the very first things that I do. Is to get them qualified in or out as quickly as possible so I can move forward and not waste another nanosecond of my life energy on an unqualified prospect. It's doable, if you prioritize it as one of the first things that you want to have happen in a conversation with any new prospect. Jay: Yeah, and I do want to point out there's qualifying your leads and making sure that new leads fit in, but then there's what we're talking about. Okay, you've got somebody new, you're talking to them. In that process, you don't want to spend more time with them than you have to if they're just not going to fit what you have to offer. Now, I can usually do this in about five minutes, with somebody on the phone, and it's because I've learned what to ask. So, normally I'm like, I really don't think we're going to be able to serve your needs. And then I get to move on to the next call. And I think you're sending a message to them and they may circle back to you eventually, because you were upfront with them. David: Yeah, and we want to be upfront with people about that. Because we don't want to waste their time any more than we want to waste our own time. One of the things that I've said to people so many times in so many conversations is, "Look, I respect your time as I respect my own, which is to say a lot." And it is so true. And the older I get, the more true it becomes. Although it's been true for decades now, right? I've always looked at it as, I think I heard this from Brian Tracy originally, in one of his recordings, he said if you run out of money, you can always make more, but if you run out of time, all the money in the world won't help you. And I thought that is brilliant, because it is so true. When we invest time with unqualified prospects, when we spend too much time chasing down people who don't have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend. It means we are not in front of people who have all of those things. And I did learn this lesson fairly early in my business, but I didn't immediately implement it. It took me probably another several years before I finally got all the processes and all the procedures in place to try to strain those out, before I ended up in conversations with them. And so often in my conversations with our clients, I'll be talking to them about their procedure for bringing new clients through the door, like clockwork, because in my mind, everybody has to have that. If you don't have a procedure, in your business, for bringing new customers in like clockwork, then you're going to be struggling. You're going to be missing out. And during some of those conversations, I've had people say, "well, yeah, I've been trying to get an appointment with this person for months."

    16 min
  8. 11/12/2024

    Handling Objections in Sales

    Each time we're handling objections in sales, we should get better at it. Every sales call you have, every objection you ever receive, if you're able to document the primary questions and objections and concerns that you get, and you can properly document your best responses to that -- the ones that have gotten you the best results -- now you build up an arsenal of material that allows you to stage those responses up front, make them part of the presentation, part of the reason to buy from you rather than your competitor. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss why salespeople struggle handling objections in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Another great discussion. I feel like we get into just kind of the same old responses, or we feel like at the first rejection, "Oh, that's a no. So I move on to the next person." David: Yeah, I give up when in fact, most objections indicate interest. And sometimes salespeople forget this. A lot of them know it and they forget it, but some don't even realize it. They think, okay, if they object, they don't like it. They don't want it. They reject me. They hate me. All these types of things. Most of which are not true. And maybe none of them are true. But when somebody objects or raises some sort of objection to what you say, it means, "okay, you have me interested enough to ask the question. Otherwise I would say, no, not interested at all. Thanks." So that's one important aspect of it, is that if you struggle handling objections in sales, part of it might just be your mindset. If you believe that an objection means non-interest, then you kind of shoot yourself in the foot to start out with. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think you have to convert your thinking a little bit and look at rejection or questions as an opportunity. This is kind of side thing, but you know, in the restaurant business where I started out, people were always afraid of customer complaints. And I always felt like these are an opportunity. They create an opportunity to build loyalty because none of us expect anybody to be perfect. Well, some people do, and some people you can't please, right? But they do expect you to resolve it. And so, I always felt like if I can really resolve this situation well, I build loyalty. Because they know that if they come here, they will be treated well. And I think rejections are the same depending on how you handle them. David: Yeah, no question. And what you talk about, rejections, especially if it's after they've received the service, right? If you come to a restaurant and you had a bad experience, that's an after the fact, then it's remedial. You have to fix that. In a sales situation, they haven't tried the food yet, right? So this is up front, this would be like, well, why should I even come into your restaurant in the first place? And that's where you've got to be able to have your messaging dialed in to the point where it makes such perfect sense for them to choose the right option, as far as you're concerned. To come into the restaurant or to take advantage of whatever it is that you offer, that they will give you a shot. So when people struggle handling objections in sales, in some cases, it's that they haven't documented the objections they've gotten in the past. And if you don't come up with answers, to the things that come up again, and again, and again, that is really a bad sign. I've seen this recently on TV. I try never to talk politics on this podcast, but sometimes people ask the same question over and over and they never come up with a good answer to it. Jay: Yeah. David: And that doesn't make sense. What you need to be able to do when you sell yourself,

    13 min
4.3
out of 5
10 Ratings

About

The Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales podcast provides tips on how to increase sales, improve profit margins and grow your business. Each week, we address issues related to important topics like targeting your ideal prospects, fine-tuning your messaging, attracting the clients you need, monetizing social media, the MVPs of Marketing and Sales and much more. From mindset to marketing and prospecting to podcasting, the Top Secrets podcast helps B2B and B2C entrepreneurs, professionals and salespeople get more of the customers and clients they need so they can do more of the work they love.

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