Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

David Blaise
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  • MARKETING
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
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

    Your Competition Isn’t That Good

    When I say your competition isn't that good, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to perform better. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I say, your competition isn't that good. Right, Jay? Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Do you even know who your competition is? Do you know what they offer? Do you know what people think of them compared to you? Maybe you don't even know if your competition is that good. David: Exactly. And I hear, so many times, when I'm talking to salespeople, the idea that, there's a lot of competition. Competition is very difficult. There's a lot of online competition. There's a lot of local competition. There's a lot of price-cutting competition. There are all these different variations on competition. And that's all true. But a lot of them really, honestly, just aren't that good. And if you recognize right up front that most businesses are average, right? There's an average in every business, in every industry, there's an average. And some people are better than average. Some people are worse than average. There are a lot of average. So if you're competing with the average or the less than average, then you should be able to do pretty well. If you're a conscientious individual, if you're reasonably good at what you do, if you study and practice your profession and you get reasonably good at it, you'll be able to outperform a lot of them because to the extent that there are really exceptional competitors in your market, there are a lot less of those than there are the ones on the other side. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I've always believed this, you know, you can get caught up in the muck. When I was in radio, I worked for a radio station that had a built in listenership because it was so ingrained in the community. And what that did is it made it so they didn't have to work hard to get sales or to get numbers. Now you would think, oh man, that's an amazing place to be. But what happened is, they started to get complacent, right? Everything was so easy, and then all of a sudden ratings started to shift and suddenly they realized, we don't know how to sell. Because we're so used to sitting at a desk and the phone is ringing. And we're just taking orders. So you're not a salesperson, you're taking orders, right? And their competitors started to eat them alive because their competitors had to sell all the time, and they were very good at it. So sometimes you're successful just in spite of yourself. And that may be what your competitors are in, what state they're in. David: It really could be as simple as that and as difficult as that, in either situation. But, you know, the idea that the competition is excellent, or the competition is terrible, or the competition is average. In a sense, none of it really matters. Because this is life. This is the world that we're in. These are the cards we've been dealt, right? So our competition is there. We're there. The question is, how are we going to make sure that we are outperforming our competition in all the key areas of customer contact? I mean, if you were to boil it down and say, okay, let's say my competition is very good. Let's say you completely disagree with the premise of this podcast, that your competition isn't that good, or that it's average or whatever you say. "No, I've got a lot of competition." Okay, then that's your question. How do you outperform your competition in all key areas of customer contact? Some people may say, "well, I don't know. What are the key areas of customer contact?" And if you're asking yourself that kind of question, that indicates that there's work to be done in your organization.

    14 min

  2. OCT 8

    Don’t Wait for the Economy to Improve

    If you're at a point right now where you know you need to be selling more, but for whatever reason you're not -- and you could feel like it's the economy, you could feel like it's the competition, it doesn't really matter what it is -- If it's either of those things or if it's something else, there are ways around it. There are specific things you can do that will help you to get through to the people that you need to reach, and drive them to either a yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down decision. Sometimes the answer is going to be no. But sometimes it's going to be yes. If you're not even giving them the option to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, there's no way you win. David: Hi, and welcome back. Today, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Don't Wait for the Economy to Improve. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, Dave. As always, it's a real pleasure. You know, I've been thinking a lot about the economy, and it's really kind of unique because there are parts of this economy that are really struggling and there are parts that are really booming. So depending upon where you're at in that spectrum, you could be getting hit really hard or you could just be celebrating, right? In our case, we're definitely feeling the effects of inflation. I can feel it in our client's willingness to make purchases. Cause things are a little bit tighter than they normally are. David: Yeah, it's interesting. Like you said, some people are really struggling right now. Some people are having their best months ever. It really kind of depends. But when we talk about the idea of not waiting for the economy to improve, I think there are a lot of good reasons for that. The first reason I would say is that your smart competition will not, they're not going to wait, they're going to be out there, they're going to be in front of people. And if you're not in front of people, then that just means you have absolutely no opportunity to get the business. So I've heard a number of people talking about the problems with the economy. And I've heard a number of people talking about the fact that they're waiting for things to improve. And I saw that comment online the other day, and I thought, we need to talk about this because essentially we have to be selling all the time, right? I mean, most businesses can't afford to wait around until things get better. Reminds me of that old Zig Ziglar line where you don't wait until all the lights turn green before you head into town, right? It just doesn't work. Jay: Right. Right, right. It's a great point. And I also think that part of any of your business strategy, you have to be prepared for the ups and downs. Good businesses know how to pivot, they know when to pivot. So if you're a new business, this is going to be hard for you, but it's one of the reasons why you want to always be tracking, right? Always be watching because there's seasonality, there's economies of the country, of your local economies, all kinds of things that can impact your business model. David: Yeah. And the truth of the matter is that we only ever have right now. We can't sell in the past. We might be able to sell in the future, right? Nobody knows their future. But yeah, we can plan to sell in the future, but we can't sell in the future right now. All we can do is sell now. We can make plans, but sometimes they happen, sometimes they don't. Right now is the only thing we've got. So it's always the best time to sell. Right now is always the very best time that we have to sell, because we really have no alternative in the moment. Well, I guess the alternative is wait. But when you're waiting, you're not selling, and other people are. Jay: Yeah, and I'll tell you, I'm not in a business model where I can just stop selling. I mean, that's not an option,

    15 min

  3. OCT 1

    Getting Results from Social Media

    We get results from social media when we're able to identify the result that we're looking to get, and identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to have them raise their hands and express interest. When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where nearly everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing getting results from social media. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. This is a big topic. Talk about opening a can of worms. It's something everybody wants, and we talked, last podcast about learning online and what great resources there are. This is a place where there may be such an overload of information and different ideas that I don't know if you're going to find the answer online. I really don't. David: You'll find a lot of answers online. Yeah., Right? Whether or not it's the answer you're looking for, whether or not it's the answer that solves your problem, that is the big question mark. But I feel like this topic is so important because everyone's on social media. Everyone's trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. And the reason that I believe the word results is so important is that it narrows your focus. It forces you to think in terms of, okay, what is the result I even want to get here? What am I trying to do? Because as we talked about in a previous podcast, you can go on social media and it's nothing but distraction after distraction. And if you just turn it on and go in there without a really strong focus in terms of what you want to accomplish, what result you want to get, you're not getting any sort of result, except you're going to get pulled into other people's experiences. So from my standpoint, the first thing we need to do is to identify what is the result that I would like to get from social media? And then you can look at how much time that I spend on there is actually allocated to getting that result. That'll tell you a lot right off the bat. Jay: Yeah, and I think that there is a misguided focus that you need a large audience, right? Like if I can get up to 10, 000 followers or whatever, that's not true. it could be better to have a thousand dedicated followers who are potential clients than having a hundred thousand people who may just clog up your pipeline and who really never are going to be your clients. David: Right. And if they're not responding to what you do, if they're not liking, if they're not replying, then the algorithm says people aren't interested in this. So you're exactly right. If you just had the hundred people or so who are going to click today's link on there. You'd be seeing everybody, everyone would be seeing your stuff. But of course it's impossible to do that. So you're exactly right. It's about saying, all right, well, how can I get to more of the right kind of people who resonate with the material that I'm putting out? And I am not speaking as an authority on social media. Okay. I want to be really clear about this. I'm not coming to you and saying, oh yes, I'm the guy for social media. No, not saying that. However, what we have been able to do is to identify specific things that our clients have wanted to accomplish, and we're very good at helping them accomplish it, once we decide exactly what those results are. Jay: Yeah, I'll tell you where we're at right now in our company. As you know, we offer Tax Services to a very specific group, so, I've told you in the past, we have spent two years identifying keywords for paid ads, and it's been a constant process where we're refining, I do the consultations,

    15 min

  4. SEP 24

    Learning from Failure in Business

    David: When we talk about learning from failure, it doesn't just have to be our failures. We can learn from the failures of others. Jay: Oh yeah. David: We can learn from the failures of our friends, our family, our parents, our children. We can learn from any type of failure that we meet along the way. And when we do that, when we learn from other people's failures, we are saving ourselves a lot more aggravation. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing learning from failure. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Once again, it's a pleasure to be here. This one, again, another important topic. I think we have a tendency, when we have failure, to not want to try that again, as opposed to saying I don't know who said it, but fail forward. Right? So like it or not, we're a result of our failures, and we're probably going to fail more than we win. So defining what we do in failure, I think, is very important. David: Yeah, I think this particular topic for myself, I know, has been absolutely critical in every aspect of my development from the time I was a child. When I was in grade school and I wasn't always the most motivated student because I wasn't interested in some of the topics, I would not do well in certain areas. And that wasn't great. I mean, what I should have learned from that is do a better job of it, anyway, I didn't learn that at the time. And maybe that's why I'm an entrepreneur today, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs start out the same way. It's like you're on a path. There are specific things that just really interest you that you can focus on diligently. And there are other things that you can't. But also just an example, I know throughout my own life, you're going to be able to learn something from everyone you meet, whether it's positive or negative. So you might as well take advantage of that. And if you recognize that you can pick up on these things fairly early on in most relationships and decide to learn from them, everything gets a whole lot easier. Jay: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. Once again, I think all the podcasts we've been doing recently self awareness. So important. Personal inventories, so important. Do you even recognize the failure? Are you deliberate about what your response is going to be? And if so, I think you can turn it around and make it a positive. If not, I think it's just by nature going to become a negative. David: Yeah, and whenever we're going through something in business that we would categorize as a failure, and that varies widely in business, as you know, to a complete business failure, I mean, that's something you'll learn from for a really long time, when that happens. It can be small things, it can be large things, but if we look at each of those things as an experience, there is very likely a lot that we can learn from that. What was it that caused this problem to begin with? I know in business for myself, most likely cause of issues and ultimate failure has always been, In some way related to communication. We weren't communicating properly with the other people, or they weren't communicating properly with us, or they weren't communicating honestly with us, or however it worked out. But a lot of it, for me, boils down to communication failures. And when you're aware of the areas where these failures likely happen, you can then pay closer attention going forward so that you don't repeat those types of things. Jay: Yeah, I grew up kind of in the retail industry and, when a failure happens, you have managers who want to just find the closest person and, yell at them and blame them.

    13 min

  5. SEP 17

    Are You Investing in Yourself?

    Investing in yourself isn't always easy. It is a matter of finding the time to make these investments in ourselves and to say, "okay, if I can't go to a cabin for a week, what can I do? When can I do this?" David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarlane and I will be discussing investing in yourself. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey David. It's so good to be here. I feel like lately we've been going after things that I really struggle with. We talked about controlling your internal monologue. Now we're talking about investing in yourself. It's really easy for me to invest in other people. That is very easy. But taking time to invest in myself... when I need something, I will go and find it and I'll learn how to do it. But being proactive about it. I'm reactive, just about in every way. David: Interesting. So when you think in terms of investing in yourself, you mean investing what? Time, money? Jay: All of it. you know, investing in myself when it comes to just taking time to learn new things, or I think investing in yourself can be just reading on a regular basis, or instead of watching social media, be listening to productive podcasts, or, taking a walk, those kind of things. We talked in the last podcast, controlling your internal monologue. Those are all things that require proactivity and honestly, I don't know if it's pride or stubbornness or whatever else. I'm like, oh, I'm good. You know, I'm good. David: That's interesting because we are actually on completely opposite ends of the spectrum on this one normally we're agreeing with each other not that we're disagreeing here, but I am at totally the other end of the spectrum. I'm constantly reading stuff. I'm constantly investing in programs and audios and videos and courses. I can't tell you, and I'd be embarrassed if I could tell you, how much I spend on that type of thing. Just because, I don't know if that is like a FOMO element of mine, where I'm afraid I'm going to miss something, but I'm conscious of it to the point where I recognize that you don't want to invest in everything, right? There's looking at investments that are designed to help you with right where you are now. If you need help getting over a particular challenge, that's where I find the investments most worthwhile. And then there are investments that sort of just in case learning. I'm learning this skill just in case. I'm going to learn how to do whatever, something related to social media that may or may not help. Or that sounds like the catchy thing of the day. Because when you're online, you will hear all kinds of people talking about all kinds of different things that are the solution to your problem. And one person is going to tell you that it's Instagram. And another person is going to tell you that it's Facebook ads. And somebody else is going to tell you that it's organic. And somebody else is going to tell you that it's something completely different than those things. Everybody's got a solution. And it reminds me of the old adage that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? So depending on who you're listening to, who you're paying attention to, you may end up investing in things that are not actually designed to get you from where you are now to where you want to be. Jay: Yeah. And I guess I have to clarify a little bit of what I've said. If it's something I need or want, I'm a dog with a bone. For me it's the difference of, do I learn how to do exactly what I want, or do I go to college and learn all of these broad subject matters, and then focus. I think both are important, and I'm never the broad subject matter guy, right? I mean, Over the course of my lifetime,

    13 min

  6. SEP 10

    Your Internal Monologue: How to Take Control

    Your internal monologue is critical. The worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your internal monologue. What's going on in there, Jay? Jay: Hey, David. I'm not sure what's rattling around up here, but I think this is an important topic. I think that often we are a result of what we allow to rattle around in our brains. And if we're not aware of it, if we're not conscious of it, then that can kind of define who we are and what we do each day. David: Yeah, it really does. And I've read a lot about this topic over the years. I've listened to a lot of podcasts on the topic. Of course, we all live this on a day to day basis. I remember reading in one of Michael Singer's books, he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul and he was talking about your internal roommate and how basically you've got all these thoughts going on in your head and half the time you don't know where they're coming from and what they're saying to you. And a lot of times we tend to interpret what's going on in our heads as us. We think that's us dictating that stuff. And he says, no, it's basically, our brain generating thoughts, but it's not really. necessarily us. So when something goes through our minds and we're like, what on earth made me think that? It's just your brain. Don't take it personally. Jay: Yeah, it is random, right? I mean, your mind's gonna just be all over the place. And until you kind of do an inventory of what you're thinking, And I don't know that we're necessarily talking about affirmations. I think that some people are like, look in the mirror and say these things to yourself. I don't know if we need to go that far, but certainly be aware of what you're thinking and take control of it. Because you are what you think. David: Yeah, and taking control of it starts with just being aware of it. Recognizing the different things that go flashing through your brain on any given day and how that then impacts our actions. Because in business, if we're not aware of that, if we just sort of go along, thinking we're on autopilot and just doing things as they come up and not paying attention to what's going on in there, we can find ourselves either distracted, or maybe doing the wrong things, or taking the wrong actions, or responding inappropriately. Lots of different things can go wrong if we're not aware of what's going on in our own brains. Jay: Yeah, for me it's a matter of demotivating myself. My brain is very good at identifying the reasons not to do something. I don't know why that is, But I think that I'm not alone, right? So, I have something that I want to do today or that I've scheduled today, and my mind will just tick off the reasons why I can't do it, why I shouldn't do it, why I should be doing something else, why I should be doom scrolling on TikTok instead. And I don't know why that is, but I feel like my brain always defaults to the here's why you shouldn't do it mode. David: Yeah, and it's good you're recognizing that. I remember I was listening to a podcast, the Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo, and she was talking about the fact that our brain generates sentence fragments. So it might just be a few words that go by in your brain and you internalize it. It might be that you're looking at a project and you know that you need to be working on it. And you might get a sentence fragment like, "I don't feel like it," or "I don't feel like doing that." And if you have the kind of job where you can determine what you do and what you don't do,

    13 min

  7. SEP 3

    Identifying and Attracting Ideal Clients

    For me, in identifying and attracting ideal clients, I need people who have the motivation, who have the desire, who have the discipline, and just the willingness to move forward. People who are decisive enough to be able to say, "yes, I want to do this. Let's move forward on it." Because the people who just take forever to make up their minds and who don't respond to calls and all that type of thing? Been there, done that. No longer my ideal situation, or even close. David: Hi and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be dealing with the topic of attracting ideal clients. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey David, thank you so much. Another great discussion here. If we could all only deal with ideal clients. I think that would be ideal. See what I did there? David: I think so too. I love the idea of ideal clients. I love the concept of it. And in nearly everything that I do with our clients, I try to keep that the focus. It's not about bringing anyone in who can fog a mirror. It's not about bringing anyone in with a pulse. It's about saying, okay, how do I put together a situation, an environment in which all the very best prospects for my products and services know who I am and know what I do so that they can make a thumbs up or thumbs down decision about whether or not they want to work with me. And along the way, can I identify whether this person is my ideal client or something very close to it? Jay: Yeah. And part of that process is learning to exclude, right? Not include, but learning to exclude. I think sometimes we, especially when we're first starting out, we think I want to cast the widest net possible. And you know, I've learned just the opposite. I want to be as finite as I can be in who I'm trying to attract. David: Exactly, because it determines everything. It determines what you're going to say to people, how aggressively you're going to pursue them, how hard you're going to work for them, when and if they decide to do business with you and you decide to do business with them. I think sometimes, in these podcasts, we say things like this, and it probably alienates a segment of the market who feels like, "Oh, no, you have to really do more things for customers, and the customer's always right," and all that type of thing. And I'm not saying that that type of thinking is wrong. I'm just saying that that type of thinking creates a different result. And if your goal is to attract clients, any clients, then yeah, that can work. But if your goal is to attract ideal clients, the right clients, people who fit with the way that you do business, people who are going to respect you, respect your time, be willing to honor their investments, be willing to reply back to you when you need a response, then. The rules become different. Jay: Yeah. I've stepped away a long time ago from the customer is always right. I think that in certain industries, like maybe retail, that's more applicable. But so often, I'm like, I can't help you or , this has come to a point where neither of us are being satisfied, so we need to kind of cut ties. Like you talked about in the last podcast, being direct and learning how to identify when you should be direct, you're going to help them and you're going to help yourself. David: Absolutely. And if you want to do this, if you want to attract the type of clients that resonate best with you and that you resonate with and that are going to result in long term great experiences, the first thing we have to do in that situation is to clearly identify or define what an ideal client means to us. And I know for me, their ability and willingness to communicate is really high. And that's one of the things that we also talked about in a recent podcas...

    13 min

  8. AUG 27

    Prospects Who Can’t or Won’t Say No

    When we think about prospects who can't or won't say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don't reply back after they've gotten all the information, it's basically two pieces of the same puzzle. When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can't drive them to the yes. Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing prospects who can't or won't say no. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. You know, there's so much to cover about how to deal with prospects. You really have to be thinking in depth about, who are these clients who can't or won't say no? Do you even recognize that? Because that's going to affect how you spend your time. Will you be working with them? Are they worth the time? Things like that. David: Yeah. And it ties back exactly to our last podcast where we were talking about prospects who don't respond to you. We're actually talking about clients who don't respond to you. And then we got carried away with clients. We said, okay, we'll talk about prospects in the next episode. And this really ties together nicely because in many cases, the people who can't or won't say no to us are the very same people who end up going radio silent and just ghosting us. When we're trying to get a sale closed. Jay: Yeah, and I think it's, again, we need to track and keep records. We need to be able to know, like, I have a system where I get a reminder. Hey you know, it's my CRM. The last time I spoke with a potential client, I made a note. Remind me about this client in five days, if you're running through a lot of potential prospects, you're not going to remember your last conversation. You're not going to remember, are they one of these clients that we're talking about? So tracking and, searching for this particular concept, are they saying no? Can they say no? A very important part of the process. David: Yeah, and that's where I think the notes that we keep for ourselves inside our CRMs or wherever we document that stuff are so important, because if we're just saying follow up, follow up, follow up in our notes, that tells us nothing. So a lot of times it's really good in our next set of notes to say, spoke with Joe yesterday, he indicated he'd have a decision by such and such a date, so that when you contact him on that day, you say, hey, listen, when we last spoke, you said you have a decision today at 1230. What are you thinking? Right. And you can move forward from there. But when we talk about people who can't or won't say no, I think this is where I've had several epiphanies along the way, because I think in sales, our desire is always to get them to say yes. But, in reality, sometimes we are better off getting them to say no. Because these non decisions are just killers. And sometimes people, they just can't bring themselves to say they don't want to do it. Whether it's fear of missing out, or they don't want to hurt our feelings. I don't know what it is, but I know that whenever I run into it, I find it extremely frustrating, because I'm a pretty direct communicator. If you and I are having a conversation, I will tell you exactly what I think. I mean, I won't be rude about it. I won't be obnoxious, in most cases, right? But I'll be very direct because I feel like I owe that to every person I talk to. If we're talking about working together, I want to make sure that people are extremely clear on what we'll be able to do and what we won't be able to do. And we can't do anything until we get to that agreement. I mean, I say this all the time,

    14 min
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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.

Information

  • Creator
    David Blaise
  • Years Active
    2005 - 2024
  • Episodes
    299
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © David Blaise, Blaise Drake & Company, Inc. | TopSecrets.com | 463414
  • Show Website
    Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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