Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

David Blaise
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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. 12月2日

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 4

    David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will continue our discussion about the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is part four in our series, and today we’ll be talking about learning, segmenting, and the Three Ds. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I really, really enjoyed this. I know I’ve said that in previous podcasts, but it’s true. After each one, I’ve gone into my own business and I’m like, okay, I got to apply this and apply that because these conversations are of such value. So I appreciate your time. I love this. And hopefully it’s been helpful to everybody else. David: I’m glad, I feel the same way, and I’m really looking at this almost like a mini-course. If people were to put together these four episodes and say, “How much of this stuff am I doing in my business?” You can probably implement some things very quickly that can probably help you get some great results. Jay: 100%. David: All right, so let’s do the quick review. And again, what we’re talking about here is we asked AI what will help you to multiply your business because that’s been a focus of our conversations recently. AI came back with some different responses, and then we’re talking about what AI says and how we’re able to help implement those things in business with our clients. And so let’s just recap. Number one was refine your target audience. Number two, develop a compelling value proposition. Number three, optimize your marketing channels. That was our first episode on that topic. In episode two, we covered points four, five, and six. Number four was enhance your customer experience. Number five, implement a referral program. And number six, leverage the power of content marketing. In episode three of this series, we hit utilize upselling and cross selling strategies, which was number seven. Analyze and optimize your sales funnel, which was number eight, and invest in customer relation management software, CRM, which was number nine. Now we’re going to be doing 10, 11, and 12. Eleven and 12 are really bonus because originally I asked it for 10 and then I realized that doesn’t break out well if you’re doing three in a podcast. So I went back to the AI and I said, give me two more. And it did. So we’ll be talking about numbers 11 and 12 in this podcast as well. So number 10 in the list of things that AI says will help you to multiply your sales is: 10: Continuous learning and adaptation. Stay updated with industry trends, attend relevant workshops or conferences, and be open to adapting your sales strategies to meet changing market demands. Well spoken AI! Continuous education. It’s a good call! Jay: It is, and some professions actually require it. But again, that continuous education is often on a service or a specialty or things like that. It’s not really on customer service or the technology or things like that. I feel like in that regard, so many of us are a hamster on a wheel. You know, we’re just trying to keep up with what today is giving us. We’re putting grease on the squeaky wheel and we don’t have time to really think about staying up on, you know, all the latest trends and those kind of things. David: Yeah. And a lot of people just don’t like continuing education, because they feel like so much of it is platitudes. It’s like, I already know this stuff. I already know it, right? But knowing what to do is very different than knowing how to do it. And that’s really what I’ve been trying to differentiate in this series of podcasts is that, yes, these are great statements. Continuous learning. That sounds great. But what are you learning? Are you learning things that you can implement immediately? Are you putting in place processes that will allow you to start getting results right away so you can gauge those results and then adapt, change, or tweak the process as you go to make sure that it’s working for you? So once again, we’re focusing on all the little details that make these general recommendations profitable. Jay: You know, I don’t know where I get it. I think I get it from my dad, but I am on a never ending quest to make things more efficient. I am always looking for the next software, the next device, the next system. I’ve done it since I was 15. My first job was in a burger barn at an amusement park. And I was watching how they put everything on the grill and what they would do is they’d cover the whole grill with burgers And then they would flip them all at the same time, and then they would pull them all off at the same time, and while they’re preparing them, the grill is sitting there empty. And so the line would move, and then it would stop, and I’m like, this is crazy. Put down two rows, wait a second, put down two, put down two, and at 15, I changed the whole thing. I’ve been doing that stuff my whole life, so I I love the tech. I love the next thing. And I’ll spend weeks and months finding the right thing knowing that it’s going to improve my business for years to come. David: Yeah, and that really goes to the point. The words that the AI used , it said continuous learning and adaptation. Jay: Yes. David: And what you’re talking about there is adaptation and implementation. Adapting the system to be able to get the result that you want Jay: Yes. David: So that everything gets better for everybody. Beautiful thing. Jay: Yeah, KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, that’s kind of what we use nowadays. And we’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, understanding every aspect of your business and knowing how you can influence it and adapt it. Because you can’t adapt, if you don’t know the reality of what’s going on. And I’ve worked for so many companies where management has no clue what’s happening on the front lines. And so we’re asking them, we’re begging them to adapt. Or they have software built by engineers who aren’t on the front line and we’re pulling our hair out because it doesn’t answer any questions. It makes life harder for us. David: Right. And unfortunately, a lot of it boils down to not knowing what to do and not knowing how to do it. “Yes, this is a problem, but I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t have time to think about how to fix it. Therefore, soldier on, keep moving, keep working. Good luck with that.” And so much of this, and even this point, continuous learning and adaptation is about identifying those small hinges that swing the big doors. And so much of what we do with our clients is about doing just that. Finding what is a small and obvious fix to a problem that could have been plaguing a company for literally months or years. You fix it in 10 minutes with a one sheet piece of paper that says, “Do it this way,” and they implement it, and they immediately start to see better results. So, I think in terms of, okay, this is what AI suggests, this is how we end up getting it done. So that’s number 10, continuous learning and adaptation. 11. Targeted Marketing Campaigns. Develop targeted marketing strategies tailored to specific customer segments. This approach ensures that your marketing efforts resonate deeply with your intended audience, leading to higher conversion rates. Once again, a lot of buzzwords in that sentence. A lot of really good recommendations in that sentence, but a lot of confusion too. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Can I brag for a minute? David: Please do. Jay: I want to brag for a minute. So a lot of people know that I’ve just recently started an accounting firm that focuses on day traders and they’re taxes. And we’ve spent over a year and a half with my current company and my last company working on keywords to make sure we get the right leads from Google advertising. And David, in the last four months, I have not had one lead that is not right in the strike zone. Now, think about that. Think, I mean, that is unbelievable to me. That, and they, you know, we’re in constant contact with the company that we use. And every month they’re like, okay, how many leads were outside? What do we need to adjust? And I’m like, just keep pitching ’em, man, because they are right there. And the beauty of that is, all we have to do is adjust the volume. Right? Certain times of the year we crank that volume up, and certain times of the year we crank it down. And, wow! When we have the secret sauce, I mean, everything else is just gravy at that point. David: Exactly. And what you’re talking about really ties back to point three, earlier in our conversation, which is about optimizing your marketing channels. Jay: Right, right. David: When you’re able to do that, and you combine that with what we’re talking about here in number 11, which is targeted marketing campaigns, it’s a double whammy. Because now you are getting to the right people through the stuff that you’re doing with your SEO. And your communication is better, which is something we also talked about in the first episode in this four part series. And now, when you talk about targeted marketing campaigns, to me what that means is you’re taking the communications that we’ve perfected, creating value in the communications like we talked about in a previous episode, and now you’re sequencing that communication. That’s how we describe it to our clients inside our program. You’re sequencing your communication. You’re putting together a series of messages that go out in a specific order, in a specific timeframe, so that you’re getting the information in front of them when they need it most. To me, a targeted marketing campaign is about doing that. You’re getting the right message out to the right people at the right time. Using the right targeted marketing vehicle. Jay: I love that. Sequencing the information. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I think u

    21 分钟

  2. 11月25日

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 3

    David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will continue our discussion about the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is episode three in our series, and it’s about upselling, sales funnels, and your CRM. David: Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. This has been fascinating for me as I look at what AI recommends. And even just apply some of those basics to my own business but also realizing that these are kind of general, and figuring out how to apply them to everybody’s individual circumstances is no easy feat. David: Exactly. And one of the things that I’ve really liked about this series is having the opportunity to talk about the “how” of a lot of this stuff, because as business owners, as salespeople, we’ve heard these recommendations forever. But the question is always, “well, how do you go about doing it?” And so what I’ve been trying to do in this series is to say, okay, here’s the general what you ought to do, but then there’s the, how do you go about doing it? And this is exactly what we help our clients with. So it’s been really fun for me to be able to go through these and say, okay, there are probably lots of ways to do these things, but this is how we do it. Because our goal is to simplify it for our clients. So you don’t have to say, Oh, well, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I do this? It’s like, okay. Implement this, gauge the results, see how it goes, report back, if we need to tweak it, if we need to do something different, we can, but you have an instant starting point, and that allows you to get actions taken, get results back quickly, and then be able to adapt as you go. Jay: Yeah, I love that, that you’re able to kind of cut through all of the noise out there because there’s so much noise, and help them identify for their individual situation what they need because they may have asked AI and we have some of those lists here and items from AI, but again, it’s just a starting point. David: Exactly. So let’s take a look at the things that we already discussed in the previous episodes. And once again, what we’re doing here is we asked AI, what are the things that will allow us to multiply our sales? It came back with number one, define your target audience. Number two, develop a compelling value proposition. Number three, optimize your marketing channels. We covered that in previous episodes. Number four was enhance your customer experience. Number five was implement a referral program. Number six was leverage and the power of content marketing. So now in this episode, we’re going to tackle numbers seven, eight, and nine, which is upselling, sales funnels, and your CRM. So let’s get to number seven. 7. Utilize upselling and cross selling strategies: Offer complementary products or services to increase the average transactional value and maximize customer value. What do you think? Jay: Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I will tell you this was much easier to grasp in my mind when I was in the restaurant business, right? It’s like, you want fries with that? You know, let’s make it a value meal. Let’s make it a, you know, a combo, whatever. I will tell you, we’ve spent a lot of time in my current business identifying what are the other things, other products that we can offer that our customers will want, not things that we can shove down their throat, but what other things can we add that they may be looking for because they came to us? David: Yes, exactly. And I think people hear about upselling and cross selling and they’re like, Oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Most people are familiar with the restaurant, the McDonald’s example, “want fries with that.” So it makes sense, but it’s like, okay, how do I apply that to my business? And one of the ways that we help our clients do that is to identify, okay, well, what does this mean? What is upselling versus cross selling and all that sort of thing? And in a nutshell, the way that I view it, upselling is when you’re selling them a better version of the thing that they’re considering buying or a more expensive version of the thing that they’re considering buying. Cross selling is the idea of “want fries with that.” It’s okay. You’re already getting this. This goes with it. Would you like to do that as well? In the promotional products industry, where I do a lot of my work, cross selling is, “ah, you’re buying t shirts, want sweatshirts with that.” Or if you’re buying sweatshirts, want sweatpants with that, right? Want caps with that. Shirts and caps go together, that type of thing. So, It’s pretty simple when we boil it down, and it’s even better and it’s even easier when we turn it into a process so that everybody knows the words you say when someone is ordering a particular type of product. Jay: Yeah. So I think that there’s two steps, right? Identifying what those things are based upon your industry. And I think the key to that, honestly, for me is just listening. Right? I’m on the phone with these people every single day and over time I’m starting to sense, wait a minute, there’s an opportunity here that we can fill. But then there is the implementation of that process, right? If you don’t make it a process, if you don’t identify it, define it, implement it, and track it, then it’s probably not going to happen, or it’s not going to be as successful as you would hope. David: Absolutely. I think that a lot of people know that they need to be doing these things, but once again, they’re not quite sure exactly how, they don’t get a system in place, and as a result, it doesn’t happen. And that’s going to really apply to all the different points that we’re talking about here. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. David: So the next one… 8. Analyze and Optimize Your Sales Funnel: Continuously monitor and analyze your sales funnel to identify areas for improvement and optimize the conversion rates at each stage. That sounds a little complicated. I don’t know how you could possibly get more buzzwords into one sentence than that.. Jay: That’s what AI likes to do. They like to cram all these big words in there, and you kind of sit back and roll your eyes like, okay, how David: You’re really smart. I don’t know what you just said, but you sound really, really smart. Jay: Yeah, and how on earth am I going to do that? I will tell you, we’ve spent almost a year on this, and I don’t think we’re even close, David. I don’t think we’re even scratching the surface on this. David: Yeah, and I think you’re really not alone. Most people, when they think in terms of optimizing their sales funnel, they immediately think in terms of the tech. Right? What does the tech need to do? What do I need to have the tech do? And, once again, we’re all about simplifying things. So when I’m doing work with clients, we first look at, okay, what needs to happen from a human standpoint? What words need to be said to which people at which times? At which intervals? And once you’ve identified that and you get something in place, you can test it out and see how it works. It’s not like you put something in place and it’s immediately perfect. But I’ll go back to one of the mantras that I say over and over again to prospects and clients all the time. Done is better than perfect. You are far better off getting something reasonably good in place today than something perfect six months from now. Because that’s six months worth of missed opportunities and so many people do that and don’t even realize they’re doing it. Jay: Yeah, I love that. Done is better than perfect because there are perfectionists out there. I also think that people need to recognize that, yeah, it may seem daunting, but if you get it done, and you get it at least defined to some degree, you’re gonna save time over the next months and years because it’s just gonna become automatic. And if you bring in new people, you’re like, this is our system. And so, you know, a lot of that kind of haphazard nature will go away. And you’ll have more time, not less time. David: Exactly. Another thing that we do in our approach, I look at a statement like that, analyze and optimize your sales funnel. And I just think of it in terms of the things that have to happen. If you send out a hundred emails, how many people reply? And of the people who reply, how many of them are ready to buy now? How many have specific dates in mind? How many are generally receptive? How many are rude, obnoxious, belligerent, disqualified? And how many don’t reply at all? Because then it becomes process of elimination. If I send out a hundred emails and I hear back from seven people, that means that there’s a hundred minus seven people that so far have been unresponsive. So the next message that I send to them can be designed to pull them in. It can reference the previous message and we can get more juice out of the fruit. Jay: Yeah, I love that. More juice, but also, that seven that you’ve spoken to, maybe you made customers out of two. What about the other five? What is your continuing message to those people? How do you stay in touch? You know, you’ve got to identify each group and how they’re going to be handled going forward. And once you’ve maximized that, I’ve found it really starts to feed itself. And then it’s kind of fun, right? Because I’m dealing with the leads that I got this month, but all of a sudden I get people who call me up and they’re like, yeah, we talked three or four months ago, or yeah, we talked two weeks ago. I got your email, and you’re like, you know, I didn’t have to do anything, because I set up a system to handle that for me. David: Yes, and we have tracking sheets that we use, that we give to our clients to use, so that they

    14 分钟

  3. 11月18日

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 2

    Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be continuing our discussion on the AI approach to multiply your sales. This is part two in our series, and today we’ll be discussing service, referrals, and content marketing. David: Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. I’m really enjoying this discussion about AI because I think we’ve already established there are some great tools and resources with AI, but it’s not exactly to the point where it needs to be. But more specifically, can it really speak to your individual situation? How do you pick through that and know what’s right for you? David: Exactly, and last week we were talking about the first three recommendations it made, which were define your target audience, develop a compelling value proposition, and optimize your marketing channels. This week, we’re going to be talking about its next set of recommendations. And it starts with number four on its list is: 4. Enhance Your Customer Experience. Focus on delivering exceptional customer service and creating a positive experience at every touch point to build loyalty and encourage repeat business. That sounds nice. Jay: It sounds fantastic. Again, just do that. You know, but how do you do that? I think I mentioned in the last podcast that so often people go into business not because they’re great at customer service, but because they have a great recipe, or they have a great product. And they don’t really think about how to offer that in a great way. I’m in the accounting field now, which kind of blows my mind and is a different conversation. But I find generally, David, that accountants don’t know how to give good customer service. And they kind of feel like they have a captured audience and so they don’t even try to give good customer service. David: And a lot of accountants also really struggle with marketing because they feel like it’s Jay: Yes, yes. David: Kind of, if not beneath them, they feel uncomfortable with it. They don’t want to come across as a salesperson. They’re very good at what they do and they’re less good at finding the people they need to do that sort of thing. And that’s why a lot of them, a lot of small business accountants struggle, because they’re great at accounting and not so great at the things that we’re talking about here that will actually allow them to service more customers. Jay: Yeah, you’re exactly right. Where I’ve come from, the retail side, the customer service side, that’s been my whole background. So, we’re kind of owning our little space in the marketplace, because we’re focusing on that up front, and people recognize a difference immediately. David: Yeah, exactly. So, one of the things we talked about in the previous podcast related to AI telling us how to multiply sales is that some of these recommendations come across as rather general. Okay, so enhance your customer experience is not really the kind of thing you would think of as “okay, this will allow me to multiply sales.” It’s a necessity. You have to have exceptional customer service in your business if you want to survive, let alone thrive, let alone multiply business. But it doesn’t seem to me to be a multiplier in and of itself. However, when we think about this idea, what can we do to make the experience better, what can we do to expedite the experience, make these things happen better and more consistently, that will allow us to get the velocity we need, in my opinion, to be able to then Multiply your sales. In other words, it’s not enough to just do a great job with customer service. We need to be able to do it with a cadence of accountability. We need to be able to do it in a way where it’s happening consistently. People are able to move through our process, get what they need, feel like they’ve been extremely well taken care of, and then we can move on to the next person. Jay: Yeah, when I hear enhance their customer experience, for some reason, I think of Disneyland, like better rides or better signage or, you know, things like that. It’s very ethereal, like, how do I apply that to my individual experience? I think a key here is that our attention span with TikTok and all of these things is so low. And so when somebody lands on your website or when they’ve picked up a phone to call you, if they’re not moving through that process fast enough, you’re going to lose them. And that’s just the reality of the world that we live in. David: Absolutely. And I think this general idea of enhancing your customer experience is good. And again, some of the words they use are delivering exceptional customer service and creating a positive experience at every touch point to build loyalty and encourage repeat business. So those are all great recommendations. But again, the question is, how are we doing those things? And in our work with our clients, the way that we do those things is through procedures and processes. Jay: Yes. David: And the next time method of delegation is one of the things that we use inside our program to say, okay, how can we make sure that things are being done the way that we as a business owner want them done and that our people can feel good about because they know they’ve got a system or a process in place to be able to achieve the result that they’re looking for. Jay: Yeah. David: So I think that’s what’s missing there. Jay: Yeah, this is so important. We’ve spent the last six months in our business just identifying this process. What happens when they land on the website? What happens with our CRM if they’ve scheduled a consultation? What happens once they’ve had a consultation? What happens down to, it’s funny to me, down to the forms that we send them. If those forms don’t look professional, if they look haphazard, then people will be turned off by them. And that’s such a simple thing when you think about it. Just get them done right so that every step of the way you look professional, that builds confidence in your product, and that’s the face of our business. That’s the storefront now. And, it has to be pristine, in my opinion. David: No question. And I think, you know, the idea of customer service is something that we could dedicate multiple podcasts to, but that was recommendation number four from AI. Recommendation number: 5. Implement a referral program. Encourage satisfied customers to refer your business to others by offering incentives or rewards for successful referrals. What do you Think? Jay: This one’s hard for me. I’m not very good at tooting my own horn. Some people really are and it’s always been hard for me to say, Hey, if you liked us refer us to other people. I don’t know why that’s hard for me. And I know that when I have good customer service, I’m very quick to recommend other people. So oftentimes it’s not even saying it, it’s just providing that extra level of customer service so that we naturally will do that. I think we want to do that. David: We all do. And whenever I talk to business owners, everybody knows the importance of referrals. Most people that I talk to know they should be doing it more. They should be asking more often than they’re already asking. And one of the primary reasons they don’t goes back to what we were just talking about. They don’t have a process for it. They don’t have a system or procedure for it. Earlier today, I was talking with one of my consulting clients and he was working on reactivating some old clients and we put together a process for him, just a week ago, that he was able to get out in front of people and the response that he got was amazing. There were eight people in particular that he had great relationships with previously that he hadn’t heard from in a while. He initiated contact using the procedure we outlined. All eight of them responded to him within the first week. Jay: Wow. David: He’s back in conversation with them. Doesn’t mean they’re all going to become customers again, but he’s got eight out of eight. And that happens when you’ve got the processes and procedures in place that allow you to just deploy it. Right? Too often, if we want to get referrals, we’re going to spend way too much time thinking about it, worrying about it, gnashing our teeth and saying, I really need to do this. Whereas, if you’ve got something that you could just send out via email this afternoon, You’ll know what results you’re starting to have by tomorrow. So once again, the recommendations that we’re getting from AI are great. The devil is in the details. It’s about, okay, how are we going to do it? And once again, one of the things that we do with our clients is we get the things in place, the sort of triggers, the switches that they can throw the switch, make this happen, report back on your results. If it’s working great, awesome. If it’s not, we’ll tweak it and we’ll flip a different switch. And we’ll keep things moving forward. Jay: Well, I love that you use the word switch, because in today’s world of technology, it can be as simple as flipping that switch. But are you sending out quality? Are you sending out things that we’ve already talked about? Targeting your customers? Identifying their needs and their concerns? Because, you know, in my CRM system, I can set up a drip program, right away. But like you said, the devil’s in the details. Is it going to be something that is beneficial to me or am I just going through the motions because AI told me to do it? David: Right. And a lot of that goes back to the idea of creating value in your communications, which we talked about. That was number two, essentially. In what AI came up with and what we expanded on it to mean, AI was talking about developing a compelling value proposition. I was broadening it to include communic

    15 分钟

  4. 11月11日

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 1

    Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is the first in a multiple part series, and we’ll start off with targeting, communication, and reach. David: Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David, it’s great to be with you. I’m really excited about this series because I think a lot of people shy away from AI. Or they’re getting into it and they’re hearing a lot of the things that it can do, but they’re not sure how to approach it or even if it’s the right thing to do for their business. David: Yes. Agreed. The way this actually came about is that we’ve been talking for a while over the course of the past several weeks in particular about multiplying your sales. And some people really struggle with this concept. And I thought, well, what does AI have to say on the topic, and how does what AI says about it relate to what we do, and how we help our clients, and do these things line up? So I thought what I’d do is I’d take the answer to the question when we asked AI, “What are your best recommendations in terms of multiplying sales,” to see what AI says and then compare that with what we’re doing. And so the first three recommendations that it had were based on targeting, communication, and reach. Those are my words, not AI words in particular. But that’s pretty much what it broke down to, so I figured that’s what we’d start with. Jay: I love it. We’re going to do a podcast on AI, and we’ve asked AI what it thinks first, and now we’re going to psychoanalyze AI to see if it’s in line. David: Well, to see how it lines up. Because one of the things that I found interesting was that when I asked it about multiplying sales, it was coming back with responses that talked about increasing sales. And so I asked it specifically to come up with recommendations based on multiplying sales. And at first it seemed resistant to that. So it talked about growing sales and multiplying sales. But this is where it landed. So I figured we’d start with this. Now, I had asked it to prioritize these things. I’m not quite sure if it did. But this is what it came back with. So the very first recommendation that it had in terms of multiplying sales. I’ll tell you specifically what it said first and then we can discuss it. So the first thing that it recommended is it said: 1. Define Your Target Audience. Clearly identify your ideal customers and understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. So, that’s how it started. What do you think of that take? Jay: It sounds very, very traditional, very typical, common knowledge. The first thing that I learned in a sales class years ago, identifying your target audience. But I feel like that’s so basic, and when you talk about multiplying sales, I tend to think that’s more about taking the existing clientele and getting them to spend more. That’s what I think about. David: I tend to think that way as well, but I thought it’s a pretty good jumping off point because whether your target audience means your existing clients and the new clients that you want to go after, I think it makes a whole lot of sense to lead with, determining who it is that you’re going to be going after. I relate a lot of this to what we do in our Total Market Domination course. One of the very first things we do in our course is we have a three level system of targeting. So what AI is recommending here in sort of a general sense, in terms of defining your target market, is something that we really dive into pretty heavily with our clients. Because without that targeting up front, if you don’t know exactly who it is that you’re going after, who your ideal client is, the likelihood of bringing an ideal client through the door is Is generally slim to none. Jay: Yeah. And you know, we’ve talked a lot about this in the past that knowing who your target audience is, is so important because you may spend a lot of time spinning your wheels, going after a really large base of customers and getting leads for people who are not going to turn into customers. So you’re going to save time and money and effort if you can really hone that in. David: Yes, I completely agree. So I thought the first thing that it came back with is pretty good. A little general. It seemed to me to be the kind of thing that one might get at a Chamber of Commerce session on growing your sales, to find your target audience. Yes. Makes perfect sense. For me, with a lot of these, the devil is in the details, right? It’s going to be, well, how do we do these things? This is essentially the what to do, but it’s really the how to do it where the money comes from. So, the second thing that it recommended is to: 2. Develop a Compelling Value Proposition: Create a unique selling proposition that clearly communicates the value your products or services offer to customers. So, that’s what it said. What’s your take? Jay: Once again, I think that you need to understand your customer’s pain points, right? And what their needs are. You need to understand why you are of value to them. It can’t be, I just have this shiny thing that you want. They need to understand how it’s going to make their life better. I’ve heard it described as You need to make them the hero, right, of the story. David: That’s right. And you’re the guide, right? Jay: That’s right. David: You’re not Luke Skywalker, you are Yoda, ideally. Jay: That’s right. That’s right. David: So, when I hear this, “develop a compelling value proposition,” makes perfect sense. “Create a unique selling proposition that clearly communicates the value your products or services offer to customers.” It’s, again, great advice, but I can’t tell you how many business owners that I’ve worked with that knew that they should create a unique selling proposition and they either never got around to doing it, or they didn’t have a process for doing it, and they never managed to get it together. So once again, it seems to me like a rather boilerplate approach to this. Good stuff, necessary, but not always as easy to implement. Once again, sort of the difference between the recommendation here and the way that we do it with our clients is that we focus on a couple of different things when it comes to communication. And the first aspect of it is what they hear from you initially. Because the communication we have with clients is very different when you’re trying to introduce yourself to them than it is when you’ve known them for a long time and you’ve been working with them for a long time. So I find that difference, the difference between early stage communication and then ongoing communication and late stage communication are different. And without establishing what needs to happen in each of those areas, I think it becomes a little too generic. Jay: Well, one of the things I love about what you do, David, is, I was having this conversation with my son the other day and I said, “you know, doctors, they learn how to heal people. They don’t learn how to run a medical practice. Attorneys learn how to deal with legal things. They don’t learn how to bill and those kind of things. Or, you know, a chef, he has a great recipe. They don’t learn how to do all this marketing and targeting of audiences and those kind of things. And so, like you said, I don’t know that they ever get around to it at all. David: Very true. And some of them don’t, and that can definitely be an issue. So the third thing that it came up with is: 3. Optimize Your Marketing Channels: Utilize a mix of online and offline marketing channels that align with your target audience’s preferences, such as social media, email marketing, SEO, and targeted advertising. So that’s, one sentence, Jay. Jay: It makes it sound so easy. Just do that. Just do that thing. That’s all you have to do. It’s a miracle. David: Right. What did you do today? Well, I optimized my marketing channel. Really? What did that consist of? Well, it consisted of utilizing a mix of online and offline marketing channels that align with my target audience’s preferences, such as social media, email marketing, SEO, and targeted advertising. Jay: Done! David: And then I took the rest of the afternoon off. Jay: That’s right! Done! David: Yeah. So what do you make of that? Jay: Well, so simple. Oh my goodness. I mean, if we could all have the magic formula for that. In today’s business, that is the absolute key. How do you find balance in those things? How do you know which one’s going to be more effective? I’ve told you in the current business that I’m in, we spent nine months just on Google AdWords to get it to a place where we thought it was effective. And now we spend money every single month honing that and tweaking it and assessing if we’re getting the right kind of leads. And that’s, before SEO, that’s before any other type of marketing. David: Yeah. I find that comments like this, an approach like this just totally overwhelms people. Jay: Oh, I agree. Yeah. David: And so then where do they go from here? They look at that and they’re like, “there’s no way I can do all that, let alone service customers, let alone do all the other things that I have to do in my business.” And one of the ways that we simplify this for our clients is something that we’ve talked about in previous podcasts. We boil it down to what I refer to as the MVPs of Marketing and Sales. What’s the marketing message you want to communicate? Which combination of marketing vehicles will you use to communicate the message? And then who are the people and prospects that you’re reaching? If you take an MVP approach to what they’re saying here, optimize your marketing channels. Right, and I’ll read it again. It said “utilize a mix of

    14 分钟

  5. 11月4日

    Want to Multiply Money in Your Business?

    If you want to multiply money in your business, it means you have to figure out the very specific steps that you need to take in order to make that happen. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic, Can You Multiply Money? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey David, of course you can. I have a tree in my backyard. Money grows on it and I just have to water it every year. What else do I need? David: Nice. No, that’s great. You got a money tree. You’re in great shape. When I think about the abilty to multiply money, I know that in the early stages of some of my businesses, and in the early stages of trying to figure out how to make them work, I was able to multiply money. But I was multiplying it by fractions, you know. So… If you multiply money by 0. 5, you now have half the money you started out with. So I think we’re all able to multiply money. But, ideally, we want to multiply by whole numbers. Jay: Yeah, I agree, but we also subtract money. I’m not sure what the terminology is. Bbut a lot of times in an attempt to multiply money, if you’re not careful, you’re actually losing money. David: Yeah. And you will have to invest. You’ll have to make investments up front. I think a lot of times people go into business, particularly small business owners, will go in with the idea of, “well, I’ll just bootstrap it.” And it’s certainly what I’ve done, I did that a number of times and when it works, it’s fantastic. And when it doesn’t, it’s disastrous. So as long as you recognize that going in, it’s all okay. But having that focus, what will it take to get this going? How much will it cost? How long will I have to work for nothing, if I bootstrap entirely? A lot of those questions come into play. Jay: Yeah, otherwise it’s kind of gambling. You know, starting a business is kind of a form of gambling, but the better the idea is, the more help you have along the way, the more financially stable you can be in the process, the more you increase the odds that your gamble will pay off. David: Yeah, and it really is a gamble in the truest sense of the word. Because you don’t know if it’s going to work. It might work and it might not. You may have a really good feel for it. You may have done it before and say, okay, I feel really good about this. I think this is really going to work, but it’s still a bet. You’re still guessing and betting that it’s going to work based on what you know. You think you can multiply money, but you can’t be sure until you try. I’ve never really been a gambler in terms of casinos and things like that, but I guess people who do that well and know how to do it, they can go into a situation and say, “okay, I have a pretty good feel for the fact that I’m going to make back a multiple of what I lay down on the table. And sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. And it’s exactly the same in business. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Only in business, you may put a lot of things on the line, your family’s future. You may quit your job. You really put yourself out there in many ways. I found success in making sure my family is supported with a day job and then I pursued other things on the side. Meanwhile, I had other family members who have said, “no, I’m going all in” and they put everything at risk. And that didn’t turn out so well, but you know, it depends on the individual and the idea, I think. David: Yeah, absolutely. And I know in the early stages I tried doing sort of a sideline thing for a while and I could never personally make that work. Jay: Yeah, yeah. David: Because it was hard for me when somebody else was paying me money to do a job, I didn’t feel like I could walk away to do my thing, so I was torn in that way. When I was working on my side project, I felt like I should either be working on the work that was paying me or when I was at real work, I felt like I should be working on my business. I remember quitting a job that I had because I knew I was going to start a business. And it was really like flying without a safety net. You know, the big trapeze with no safety net. Because I literally quit a job. It’s like, okay, I’m no longer going to get that money and hopefully it’ll work out. Eventually it did, but it wasn’t fast and it wasn’t a straight line and it took some real time and some real effort and a lot of scares. We talked about scares in our podcast at Halloween. It took a lot of that stuff in order to get to the point where eventually things started to work. And I don’t know many entrepreneurs who don’t go through some version of that. Jay: Oh, I totally agree. It’s a hallmark of entrepreneurship. Can you take that step into the darkness, right? Are you willing, and I think is a double edged sword. Yes, you gamble a lot, but also when you do take the complete step, when you separate from employment or whatever, You’ve given yourself a level of motivation that may not exist otherwise, right? Because when you have to pay the bills, when you have to make the money, and you’re like, the clock goes off, the alarm goes off in the morning, and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to do this today.” If you’ve got a bill coming up, you put your family on the line, sometimes that keeps you going, that in itself. David: Yes, exactly. It’s a tremendous motivator. I think a lot of people too who have never owned a business, never started a business of their own, they tend to look at business owners and say, “Oh, well, they’re rich and they have it made and they should do more. They should pay their people more or doing this or doing that.” I learned that lesson a really long time ago from an employer that I had. When I was a kid, I used to work in radio. I was about 15 or 16 and I was doing on-air shifts on the weekend and doing commercials and things like that. They were doing a remote broadcast, so I was going to to a remote location to broadcast live from that place. And they were going to pay me like, I think it was 350 bucks. This was back in the day. And I heard from the sales rep who sold that job or that gig, that the radio station was being paid $3,500 to do that gig. And I’m like, “Hey, wait a second, I’m only getting $350!” Basically, I said this to my boss, the guy who owned the station, and he was a pretty young guy as well. So he had to be up to his eyeballs in stuff that I had no idea about. And whenever you’d say something about money, he’d always rub the back of his head and he’d say, “don’t count my money!” And as an employee, I thought he was saying, “don’t count my money cause it’s my money, and, don’t count my money.” But then when I became an entrepreneur, one day I figured it out. I’m like, what he was saying is “don’t count my money, ’cause you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it costs to operate this place and to pay salespeople and to pay for overhead and a transmitter, you know, we’re broadcasting, our electric bill, all that kind of stuff. I had no idea. So I think it’s a mistake as, if you’ve never been an employee, if you’ve only ever had a business for yourself, then you may be non-sympathetic to employees. But the flip side is also very true. If you’re an employee and you’ve never owned a business, it’s very easy to say, “Oh, well, this person is this, and this person is that.” And very likely, if you’re saying those things, you probably don’t know what’s been going on behind the scenes. Jay: Yeah, one of the things I used to do in the restaurant business, because, that’s one of the reasons employees will steal from you, because they think you’re making money hand over fist, and the world’s against them, is I would sit them down, and I would show them my P& L. I was just very open with them, and say, “look, you saw all this money, here’s what we brought in, and guess what? You got paid this month, I didn’t.” David: Yeah. Jay: And they’re like, “what do you mean you didn’t?” I’m like, “I only get paid from the bottom line here. You get paid hourly, whether or not…” So who’s taking the risk? That’s what they don’t understand. And so sometimes communicating that can be very important. David: Yeah. And I remember a lot of times in the early stages of some of my businesses where I was just not paying myself at all. Other people were getting paid. I didn’t tell them that at the time because I didn’t want them to be scared, you know, that the business wasn’t going to make it. But I think most small business owners have gone through some version of that. And if you managed to avoid it, congratulations, well done. But most of us, it takes a lot. because you have to go through all these different iterations. You have to figure out a lot of what doesn’t work before you can get to what does work. And if you want to start to multiply money, it’s going to require a bunch of experiments, some of which will fail. Jay: Mm hmm. And I think, for entrepreneurs, if you really get to that point where you can multiply money, you can say, you know what, I spent, $8, but I made 10. So I made a 20 percent increase. It becomes this passion. It’s like a farmer planting a seed and it grows into something. To me, there’s something very, I don’t know, fulfilling about that idea that you’ve made something and you’ve grown it out of the dirt and then you’ve turned it into profit. That’s what entrepreneurship is, and people gain a real love for that. Like, I look at somebody like Mark Cuban, he’s a billionaire, but he’s still investing. The guy spends all day long multiplying money, and I’m like, “you have billions of dollars in net worth. Why do you still do this?” And it’s because I get the fee

    16 分钟

  6. 10月28日

    How to Create Explosive Growth in Your Business, Part 2

    I got a lot of great feedback from last week’s episode on how to create explosive growth in your business. So today I’d like to expand on that topic a bit and start laying out the steps to make it happen. If you’re serious about creating explosive growth in your business, let’s start by discussing where that sort of growth begins. It’s not in your marketing, not yet. It’s not in your sales scripts. That comes later. And it’s definitely not in whatever new shiny object comes flying across your screen as you scroll on social media. Instead, it starts between your ears. Here’s what I mean. If you look at the most successful printers and promotional product distributors, and really the leaders in almost any industry, a big difference in what sets them apart from their competitors isn’t luck. It’s their mindset, the way they think about their business, their clients, their messaging, and their results before they do anything to reach out to them. And while you probably already know that’s important, you also need to understand why having the right mindset doesn’t just make you feel better about your business. It’s not really about your feelings, it’s about your vision. Having the right mindset allows you to see better. It allows you to notice the people, the approaches and the opportunities that you might otherwise overlook. It allows you to recognize the profitable activities and patterns that other people don’t see. As a result, you stop looking at the typical average approaches that create average, mediocre results for everyone else, so you can trigger the explosive growth you’re looking for. This means thinking like a market dominator, not just like a participant. You already know that every business has a ceiling, but you might not know that most of these ceilings are self-imposed. They come from the beliefs and the actions of the participants. I hear from business owners all the time who swear they want to grow, but then the very next thing they tell me is the reason they believe they can’t do it. “I want to grow, but I don’t have enough time.” “I really need your help, but I can’t afford it right now.” “I’m serious about growing, but the people in my market are cheapskates.” The problem with that thinking is that you’re making excuses instead of making plans. Explosive growth requires you to blow through that ceiling by asking better questions. Like: “What if I do have the time, but up until now, I just haven’t been using it the right way?” “What if I stop wasting financial resources on things that don’t move the needle and start investing in the things that do?” “What if I adjust my approach to ignore the cheap skates and start targeting clients with money?” These are some of the simple mindset shifts that allow you to see how explosive growth is even possible. Of course, mindset alone won’t do it, but it does allow you to unlock the rest of the process of market domination. One of the biggest differences between struggling business owners, average performers and those who dominate their markets is how they evaluate their resources. Struggling owners think in terms of shortages: “I don’t have enough…” “I don’t have enough time, leads, ideas, help, resources…” But top performers who create explosive growth in their businesses, focus instead on leveraging everything they have. “How can I generate exceptional results from the time, leads, ideas, help, and whatever other resources I have?” It’s a simple shift that provides alternatives instead of focusing on excuses for why I can’t get the things I want. Everything we do with our Total Market Domination clients is built on leveraging their time and resources, so they can accomplish more in less time and multiply their results instead of settling for less. So as others complain about not having enough clients, you’ll be confidently attracting more of the ideal clients they can’t get, by improving your messaging, focusing your targeting, and perfecting your contact processes behind the scenes, in what I call stealth mode. It’s silent, but it’s deadly to your less informed competition. It’s also where all the foundations of explosive growth are built. In our last episode, we talked a bit about stealth mode and how it’s like watering those bamboo trees while there are no visible signs of life. It seems futile, but only to those who have no idea of what’s going on beneath the surface. Much of our industry is kind of primitive. Your competitors very likely engage in the same sort of dull marketing and outdated selling approaches that consistently create average or below average results for the majority of the industry. Instead of following the leader, it becomes a game of follow the follower, at which point everyone ends up traveling in circles and getting nowhere. But when you’re operating correctly, in stealth mode, your competitors don’t know what’s going on. They don’t realize you are adapting your messaging, refining your offers, improving your outreach, and perfecting the systems that will allow you to dramatically outperform them. If you’re determined to dominate your market, you cannot operate like everyone else does because the majority are doing it wrong. Here are a few things you can do right now to start differentiating yourself: Detach Emotion from Evaluation. Many business owners get lost in minutiae and emotionally attached to every prospect and every proposal. Market dominators focus on getting in front of enough of the ideal prospects, that they don’t have to worry about the ones who don’t close. They can focus instead on what worked, what didn’t, what’s next, and then they can evaluate the results dispassionately. Prioritize Process over Payoff. Explosive growth is not an event, it’s a chain reaction. When you focus on improving the process, the results multiply, and growth explodes. Abandon the Victim Vocabulary. Leave phrases like, “I can’t,” “It’s too hard,” “Nobody’s buying right now,” or “My market is cheap,” to your unworthy competitors. Let them wallow in the kind of words that will seal their fate. The victim vocabulary is a signal to your brain to stop trying. Instead, you want to ask questions like, “Who’s buying now?” “How do I find them?” “What do I need to say,” and “How can I reach more of them faster?” If you want answers to these questions, join our Total Market Domination Program and we’ll help you with that. It will allow you to tackle opportunities instead of just obstacles. And while your mindset may be the ignition switch, it’s not the engine. Once you get your thinking dialed in, it’s time to take action, starting with your targeting. Because even if you have the best attitude in the world, if you’re targeting the wrong prospects, you’re still going to get nowhere fast. If you just like listening to this sort of thing, you can wait until next week for that episode. But if you’re a serious professional, interested in creating explosive growth in your business sooner rather than later, and you’re interested in outperforming your competitors now, rather than later, then go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team, and we’ll explain how you can create explosive results in your business while your competitors are still trying to figure out what to do next. Schedule a call now at TopSecrets.com/call. Are You Ready to Create Explosive Growth in Your Business? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here. Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here. Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here.

    7 分钟

  7. 10月21日

    How to Create Explosive Growth in Your Business

    Want to create explosive growth in your business? If so, consider this: Why is it that some businesses take off like a rocket while others can languish for months or years without getting the traction they need to grow? Why do some businesses plateau at a certain level and struggle to break through, while others are able to grow consistently? In my experience, it boils down to three things we’ll discuss in this episode. Recently, I was reminded of a story about how Chinese bamboo trees grow very slowly underground, for years, completely unseen. The people who plant these trees water and fertilize the soil every day, even though there are no signs of life. Sounds tedious, right? Watering the same patch of dirt for years? I mean, that HAS to feel pretty unfulfilling at times. But the amazing part of the story is that roughly five years after planting — when the bamboo finally breaks the surface of the ground — it can grow up to 90 feet tall in just five weeks. That’s an example of how to create explosive growth! And while a typical bystander might see that and think, “wow, that grew really fast!” The people who actually do the work — those who plant, water, fertilize and cultivate these plants — know EXACTLY what it took to trigger that growth. I love this analogy because it tracks so closely to the work I’ve done with promotional product businesses over the past 20+ years. Some of the people I work with might start out feeling a bit like the bamboo gardener — tending, nurturing, and cultivating a business that seems like it might never break through the soil. In fact, some are stuck for more years than it takes for a bamboo tree to crack through the dirt and see the light of day. But the good news is that promo businesses AREN’T bamboo trees. They’re not subject to the same restrictive laws of nature. Instead, there are very specific steps we can take to prep the environment and TRIGGER explosive growth much faster. In fact, when I work with clients, we operate in two primary modes: First is Stealth Mode This is where we lay the groundwork that no one else sees. It’s what’s happening beneath the surface. In bamboo terms, it would be the equivalent of supercharging the seeds, soil, water, and fertilizer to create a better, stronger, faster-growing plant that is heartier and more resilient than the other plants. Second is Intimidation Mode I know that sounds obnoxious. But the simple fact is that when you initiate explosive growth in a business, people notice. Their prospects are excited to see something new and different. Their clients are excited to be associated with a winner, OUR clients are excited to have their businesses attracting the right people and growing the way they want… And their competitors? Well, they just get intimidated. It’s not the intention. But it’s often a side effect. So each month, we offer a small group of promotional product distributors the opportunity to work with us to plant the seeds. Our goal is to help you quickly: Lay the groundwork Plant the seeds and Trigger explosive growth And we do this using our proprietary, proven framework. It is NOT cheap, but it is EXTREMELY effective. So what does creating explosive growth actually look like in a promotional products business? Well, let’s start with what it doesn’t look like… It doesn’t look like 10 to 20% annual growth. I mean, think about it. If you start at $50,000 in sales your first year and settle for 10% annual growth, it would take you more than 32 years to hit $1,000,000 in sales. Even at 20% growth, it would take more than 17 years. So if you’re serious about growth — particularly in the early stages — 10% to 20% annual growth is not going to do it for you. Ask yourself this. Are your current year-over-year numbers getting you to where you want to be? And if so, are they getting you there fast enough? Usually, creating explosive growth requires at least doubling your revenue multiple times over. Growing from, say $50,000 to $100,000 to $250,000 to $500,000 to $1,000,000+. Of course, the larger you get, the harder it is to continue to double like that. But in that example, with year-over-year doubling, you can get from $50,000 to $1,000,000 in four years. If you can achieve those doubles in less time, you can get there even faster. Of course, not everyone in our industry is interested in achieving that sort of growth. And you don’t have to be. I know many people who are happy to generate whatever sales they can in the time they allocate to it. But that’s not who this particular message is for… Instead, this is for you if you WANT to achieve exceptional results but have been struggling to get there… It’s for you if you KNOW you are capable of reaching your goals, but you’ve been unable to blast through your current sales plateau… It’s for you if you have been in the industry for months or years, and you’re still not triggering the growth you need to reach your desired levels of sales and profit. If that’s happening to you, it indicates a problem that time is unlikely to fix. Because, as the old saying goes, if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. So what does it take to trigger the kind of growth we’re talking about? Three things. 1. Mindset We’ll start with mindset. Of course, you need the mindset. Because if you don’t believe you’re capable of achieving that sort of growth, then you’ll never even look for the specific actions it will take to make it happen. For some people, mindset is a little too “woo-woo.” And there’s a good reason for that. There have been a lot of books and videos and an entire subculture built around the law of attraction and the idea that if you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. Now that is not a terrible message, but it is woefully incomplete. And there is a segment of the law of attraction crowd who try to make it sound like that’s all you need. Which is absolutely false, unless you just happen to get extremely lucky. But most people can’t and shouldn’t rely only on mindset and luck. So yes, in my experience, you will need to maintain a positive mindset long enough to determine the specific actions that need to be taken to achieve your goals. That means having a plan. 2. A Plan Having a plan starts with knowing what to do, and when to do it. Most people achieve this through trial and error, which can take an exceptionally long time. Vernon Law once said, “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” And I completely agree. In fact, the reason I have been able to help so many people in our industry to succeed is not that I’m particularly smart. It’s because I feel like I’ve made every stupid mistake you can possibly make. By keeping my clients from making those mistakes, they end up years ahead of the game. So instead of implementing trial and error, they can implement a proven success plan. But in addition to the mindset and the plan, you also need the persistence to take specific action. 3. Persistence In our bamboo analogy, you have to maintain the vision and the motivation to keep watering and fertilizing that plant until it breaks through the soil and you get the results you want. You have to persist through your doubts and disbelief. When I went to college, my mom got me a plaque with a quote from Calvin Coolidge on it. I still have it here in my office on my bookshelf. It says, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” So ultimately, it takes the Mindset, the plan, and the persistence to make it happen. We don’t engage in positive thinking in place of action, we engage in positive thinking so we can identify the plan and take action on it. And we don’t take action just once, we exercise persistence to maintain our action, adjust our course when necessary, and continue until we achieve our goals. If that sounds good to you… or better yet, if it actually sounds exciting and FUN to you, then we should definitely talk. Just go to topsecrets.com/call to schedule a time to talk with me or a member of my team about working with us. The call will be totally confidential, so you can fly under the radar, in stealth mode as we talked about earlier. So go to topsecrets.com/call. I would love to have the opportunity to work with you to take new actions, accelerate your results and get you to your goals. Talk soon. Are You Ready to Create Explosive Growth in Your Business? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here. Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here. Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here.

    9 分钟

  8. 10月14日

    Turn Focus into Profit by Growing Sales

    To turn focus into profit, consider this. Your focus determines the level of profit that you generate. Because the people you meet, the conversations you have, all of that flows from your focus. So when you focus on those activities, the likelihood of increasing your profit increases dramatically. David: Hi and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss How to Turn Focus into Profit. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me, David. Focus. Focus is something we could all use a little bit more of probably in our day-to-day lives, but is that a rare skill in business today? In the people that you work with? David: That’s a great question. I think for some people it is problematic. I think that’s the nicest way to say it. If you lack that focus, then it’s going to be a lot more difficult to accomplish the things that you want. So if it is something that you’re already good at, then the question becomes, how do I best harness that? Can I turn focus into profit? And if it’s not something you’re good at, then the question becomes, how can I get at least good enough at it that I can function at the level at which I need to function? Kevin: I feel like my focus has changed over the years, and part of it is definitely technology. Because I’ve got a phone sitting next to me that might beep. Might be personal, might be business, could be anything. I could be working on a project and a client on Slack gets in touch with me. Then I get an email. And then there’s just so many channels of communication. I mean, do you find that technology has made it more difficult in some ways for people to focus, and to turn focus into profit? As opposed to maybe 10, 20 years ago? David: Yeah, and I mean, particularly when you look at things like social media, because social media is designed to disrupt your focus. Kevin: Right. David: Everything that comes in, whether it’s an email or a post on social media, it’s all designed to get your attention. So that’s why, particularly in the past 10 to 20 years, focus is so much more of an issue for people. Because as you said, there are lots of different things to focus on. The algorithms are specifically programmed to make you focus on their priorities rather than your own. That makes it challenging to turn focus into profit. So if you’re aware of that and if you recognize that you have to determine what your focus needs to be in order to accomplish your results, then it becomes more likely that you’ll take the necessary actions to do that. Kevin: Yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, we’ve all been in situations where you go on social media for a business purpose and all of a sudden you’re watching videos of some knuckleheads playing slip and slide softball, which are kickball, which I’ve gotten watching, are those silly videos. You’re just like, before you know it, you’re like, oh my God, it’s been a half an hour. I just came on here to check out a client’s page real quick. David: Yeah. And again, they designed the system to do that. They built it in. That’s not a mistake. That is the purpose of the design. So when we recognize that only we can determine whether or not we will remain focused, then we take the responsibility on ourselves. We recognize Okay, it ‘s designed to do that. So if I recognize that and if I leave that open, and if I have notifications turned on to an app that is specifically designed to derail me from my focus, then yeah. I’m sort of getting what I’m putting out. Kevin: You’re in trouble. You’re in trouble. David: Yeah. Kevin: Yeah. so the topic today is about how to turn focus into profit. How does a lack of focus directly translate into lost revenue? David: Well, if you’re looking at what your highest value activities are and then you focus on those, you’re going to be a lot more likely to accomplish what you’re looking to accomplish than if you allow your focus to be distracted by other people’s priorities. I’ve heard an email inbox referred to as a storage place for other people’s priorities, and I think that’s very true, and it doesn’t just extend to the inbox anymore. It extends to pretty much everything. Other people’s priorities are going to be popping up and binging and making noises. It’s a lot like being in a casino environment where it’s not designed to allow you to really focus. Let alone turn focus into profit. It’s designed to have you be distracted and get excited and get those dopamine hits that come from replying to somebody’s thumbs up or whatever it is that comes through on social media. So I think if you look at identifying what your highest value priorities are and then focusing on those, it’s going to allow you to get more done. It will allow you to eliminate unnecessary distractions, or at least be aware of them. Because if you’re aware of the fact that these things are happening on a day-to-day basis and you don’t take the necessary actions, whether it’s just adjusting your settings or whatever it is, then you’re always going to be at the mercy of other people’s ideas, other people’s priorities. Kevin: Absolutely. People might think they’re working really hard. Like, oh man, I’m working really super hard, but they’re all over the place, right? They’re not necessarily getting a lot done. How can you go from that to working with focus, and then to turn focus into profit? David: Well, identifying at the beginning of the day, what are the top 3, 4, 5 things that I really need to get done today? And then prioritizing them, starting with number one. And then ideally, moving on to number two, once you’ve completed number one, and then moving on to number three. That’s the ideal scenario. But also if you just do that and if you keep that list front and center, then when something happens, and I’m not saying if something happens, I’m saying when something happens that derails you from the most important priority you’ve identified. If you do have to address that immediately, you can then at least go back to where you wanted to be at the start of the day. Because without that, without knowing, what do I need to have happen today in order, most important priority to least important priority, you’re always going to get distracted. You’re never going to get to do the things that you actually need to do to turn focus into profit. Kevin: But I feel like that’s where I can get derailed the most is I might make that list. I might say, okay, I’m getting this done, this done, this done, and this done today. And all of a sudden I get an email of someone who needs something or I get distracted. But just, even if it’s business related, it’s not stupid videos on Instagram or a friend texting me something funny about fantasy football. I mean, it, can be business related. Do you find that a lot of people have a hard time refocusing even if they start the day really good and then all of a sudden a couple emails come in, they’re like, oh man, I got to address this. Is it hard to refocus? David: I think it can be if you don’t have your priorities outlined up front. Because if you’re focusing on the thing that you decided is most important today, and then something new comes in. You have to say to yourself, is this more pressing than the thing that I’m working on now? And if the answer is no, you need to move that thing that came in down farther on the list. If it is more important, then yeah, you’re going to prioritize it. You’re going to move it ahead of the thing you’re doing now, you’re going to get that knocked out, and then you’re going to move back to the thing that you decided was going to be a priority when you started your day. So there’s a constant process of sort of re-juggling, reprioritizing the different things that come at you during the course of a day. And if you want to be able to remain focused, and if you want to turn focus into profit, which is really the ultimate goal here, you have to be aware of where your focus is, who’s trying to take it, and who you’re going to allow to take it. Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Reprioritizing. That’s a good way to put it. I mean, you could get into danger though if you keep reprioritizing of, if there’s something that’s maybe a, lower dollar client or something that might not be as pressing, that it can just keep getting pushed back, pushed back, pushed back, and pretty soon you’ve completely either forgotten about it or disregarded it or whatever. Is that a danger as well? David: It can be, but that’s where the whole word priority by itself. has to mean something to you. If it’s a low dollar client and they come in and they’re asking for something, you have to ask yourself, is this low dollar client more important than the thing I’m working on now? And if the answer is no, then you’ve got to keep working on the thing that you’re working on now. Maybe you can delegate what they sent you to somebody else to have them do it if you’ve got other people in your organization. So if that needs to get done, it can get done. But prioritization means making the call, deciding, making that decision. Is this more important than that? And if the answer is no, then you can’t distract yourself. You can’t divert your focus to something that is less important if you want to accomplish your objectives. Kevin: We were talking about social media, you made the comment that it’s designed to pull your focus away from what you were doing and lure you in. How can a business person, an entrepreneur, truly identify the distractions and do something about it if you want to turn focus into profit? Because it’s, sometimes it’s hard to see from your own view, you know? David: Yeah. Well first of all, you have to ask yourself, do I want social media to be availabl

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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.

信息

  • 创作者
    David Blaise
  • 活跃年份
    2005年 - 2025年
  • 单集
    299
  • 分级
    儿童适宜
  • 版权
    Copyright © David Blaise, Blaise Drake & Company, Inc. | TopSecrets.com | 463414
  • 节目网站
    Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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