Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

David Blaise
  • 4.4 (11)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Biweekly

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. 5h ago

    How to Outperform Your Competition Without Competing on Price

    If you need to outperform your competition, you want to look at who is the primary competition and what are their advantages? In what areas are they outperforming me? Are they outperforming me in terms of just price? If that’s what it is. And a lot of times that’s what people are up against in the online market. The online sellers are able to sell for less. And at that point you have to say, “okay, is that something I even want to try to compete with?” Or am I more interested in finding the types of clients who understand and appreciate the value that I bring to the table. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. Today, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing the importance of outperforming your competition. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: So good to be here again, David and this topic is very interesting to me. You know, I’ve been in small business. I know a lot of business owners and I got to tell you, oftentimes you’re so caught up in, just generating sales that what the competition is doing, how much they’re doing. Are you competing with the competition? A lot of times, those thoughts don’t come up because there’s just no time for that. And so I’m wondering what the consequences are if I’m not even thinking about my competition. David: Well, if you’re doing great and you’re making the money you need to make, maybe you don’t have to think about your competition at all. Maybe you’re the one that everybody is trying to come after. And when we think about that, it’s not just about the fact that, okay, well, maybe somebody else is outperforming me. But a lot of people, if they’ve been in a market for a particularly long time and they’ve been selling to people who have other options, they’ll find out who their competitors are. Because they’ll say, “oh, I’m already doing business with somebody.” And you ask who it is and they give you a name or they give you a company name. And you’re like, okay, I’ve heard that name once now. And then you talk to somebody else and now I’ve heard another name and now I’ve heard another name. So you have three different names. Then you go to somebody else. And now you hear two for this one. Then you hear three for this one. And then four for this one. You say, “okay, this person has a lot of traction in this market.” So you start to recognize them as competition. Also, as things have evolved online, there are now online competitors that compete with local businesses left and right. And so there are a lot of people who think in terms of the online competition. How can I compete with that? So, when we talk about the importance of outperforming your competition, it’s not because, “well, I’ve got to win at all costs,” and all that sort of thing. But if you are in business for yourself and you are counting on your sales and your salary to be able to put food on your table. And if your competition is sometimes interfering with that, then the necessity of outperforming your competition becomes very clear. You don’t want to run into a situation where somebody says, “yes, I’m already dealing with this person.” You want that person to go in there and they say, “no, I’m already dealing with you,” right? Jay: Mm-hmm David: You want to be the person who already has that sort of foothold, that sort of traction in a market. So outperforming the competition starts with saying, “okay, who’s doing a pretty good job in this market?” And is there somebody that I think is actually doing a better job in this market? Or is there somebody who is doing a job that the marketplace thinks is better? Right? Because you may know that you are already better than this competitor they mentioned. And nothing can be more frustrating sometimes for people, when you go into a situation, they say, “oh, I’m doing business with that person.” And you want to say, “oh, they’re awful. I can’t believe you’re doing that!” But of course you don’t say that. But when you recognize that you’re already better, but other people don’t have that same perception, you say, “okay, well, how am I going to fix that? How am I going to change that?” Because it’s not just about outperforming the competition, it’s about letting the market know and understand and talk about how you outperform the competition. Jay: Well, it’s interesting. So first I have to assess kind of where they’re at and where I compare to them and then create kind of a battle plan to be able to go up against them and demonstrate to my potential customers that when we talk about outperform, we’re talking about quality, we’re talking maybe about cost, customer service. I mean, there’s all kinds of different ways that “outperform” can be, right? That it can indicate. David: Yeah. And that is a really beautiful distinction that you just drew there. Because for some people, if their primary buying criteria is price and somebody else is charging less than you are, you might not want to outperform that particular person. Because, you know, as we often say, “the rush to zero margin is not a race I want to win.” You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you’re cutting price and you make the sale and you end up regretting it because you’re not making enough money to justify the time that you’re putting in. So there’s certainly that aspect of it. But when we think in terms of outperforming the competition, it’s not even the kind of thing that you need to drive yourself crazy over. It’s not the kind of thing that I suggest that you really think about and focus on and get worried about. If it’s an issue for you, you want to look at who is the primary competition and what are their advantages? In what areas are they outperforming me? Are they outperforming me in terms of just price? If that’s what it is. And a lot of times that’s what people are up against in the online market. The online sellers are able to sell for less. And at that point you have to say, “okay, is that something I even want to try to compete with?” Or am I more interested in finding the types of clients who understand and appreciate the value that I bring to the table and who are more interested in working with someone like me, who may be willing to pay a little more from me because they know I’m going to deliver better and more consistently. And I’m going to be available, and all those sorts of things. So it’s almost like the sliders on a control board or, you know, volume controls and that sort of thing where it’s like, “okay, how’s the service?” Am I pushing the service up or down? Am I pushing the pricing up or down and looking at all the different options there and saying, “where do I want to excel? Where do I want to outperform my competition? Where do I want to be higher?” And price may very well not be one of them. For a lot of us, price is not going to be the one we want to do. We don’t want to become the Walmart of our industries. Instead we need to say, “okay, how does my service compare? Am I more accessible? Do I have more and better options available? Am I more reliable in terms of getting stuff to people?” We did a podcast recently with one of my clients who was talking about the fact that she tells people who say they’re doing business with someone else that ” if you’re ever in a pinch, give me a call.” And she gave this example of somebody who gave her a call because, and this was like a few days after she was told that they did business with someone else. She said, well, if you’re ever in a pinch, give me a call. Couple days later, she got a call and they said, Hey, the people that I use, can’t get it for me. Can you do this? And she was able to do it. And she didn’t even have to break a sweat doing it. It wasn’t like it was an impossible deadline and she pulled it off. It was like, yeah, this is something that she was capable of doing. It was already in her wheelhouse. And she was able to accomplish that and win the client. So once she does that, she becomes that go-to person, because they’d rather deal with the person who can do it for them than be the one who tells ’em they can’t and then they have to go find somebody else. Jay: Yeah. I think that’s such a good point. Part of the key though, is identifying where it is that you want to compete. And you’ve talked about this David: mm-hmm Jay: Do you want to compete on price? Do you want to excel in one way? I think it’s fascinating. You know, I’ve seen studies and research where sometimes when people just pay more for something, they feel like they got a better product, even though it’s the same level of service. Right? So paying a premium can actually be a way to outperform your competition, right? As long as you live up to that. David: Right. It’s an advantage for a certain segment of the market. I remember marketing legend, Dan Kennedy was talking about the fact that in every market, there’s one group of people who will always stay at, you know, the Plaza, you know, the, the highest end hotel. And there’s another group of people that will always stay at the Motel Six. They’ll always stay at the cheapest option. The majority of people are somewhere in the middle. You know, they’ll stay at someplace that is pretty nice. Probably more expensive than a Motel Six. And everybody could stay at Motel Six if it was all about price, right? Same thing with cars. If we’re all about price, everybody would buy the cheapest car. But people don’t. And very often people will spend more money because they feel that they’re getting a better experience. That they’re getting somebody who’s more knowledgeable or more responsive or just nicer to deal with. Or they want to deal with a human instead of a keyboard. They don’t want to be a do it yourselfer. There are lots of reasons that pe

  2. Sep 29

    Stay Focused: Get More Done in Less Time

    Stay focused. It’s easy to say, but harder to do. Anybody who’s been in sales has probably been in a situation where you’ve been in a room with someone and you’re looking at them and having a conversation with them. But they’re looking around the room. They’re looking at things. People are buzzing them on the phone. They’re like, “excuse me.” They’re taking the call and you’re sitting there thinking, “why am I here? Why am I doing this?” So other people maintaining focus (or not) will give you a really good idea of where you stand with them. David: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. We are back once again. Jay McFarland, and I will discuss how to stay focused in your day. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It’s so good to be here, David. And I know that focus is something that everybody’s working on. One of the reasons I know this is all of the technology companies are building focus tools into their devices. We must want this because I can now tell my phone, no I’m focused on this and it gives me different screens for that particular time so that I can stay focused in on this. So we must all want to be able to focus better. And the question is, how do we achieve that? David: Yeah. Especially when there are other technology companies that are trying to get you to stay focused on them. Right? You gave a great example. I noticed that too, on my phone, there’s the new focus button. And I like that idea, but in the meantime, nearly every social media platform is designed to steal your focus, to derail you from what it is that you wanted to do today in favor of what they would like to have you do today, which is to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and then scroll some more. So we do have technology that is working for us, and we have technology that is working against us. But last time when we were talking about the idea of building proactively, I think these things tie together. As we’re building proactively, we recognize that it does require us to stay focused day-to-day. And so in order to do that, we have to say, okay, how are we going to make it happen? Particularly with all sorts of forces, potentially conspiring against us. Jay: Yeah. I love that point, that on the one hand tech is trying to help us stay focused, and then everything else in the world, I’m like, “squirrel!” You know, squirrel there’s something new and it’s not just social media who’s trying to distract you. It’s the employees who want your time, the customers who call up because they don’t know your schedule. They just know they have a question, right? So they’re calling you. So how do you go about building some semblance of focus throughout your day with all of these distractions that are coming in constantly? David: Well, from my standpoint, I think we need to decide at the beginning of the day, as early as possible, what really needs to happen today? Because that’ll help us to determine where our focus needs to be. What is it that actually has to get done? What has to happen? What do you have to do versus what do other people in your organization have to do? So if you own the organization, you’re going to have to determine what you’re doing and what they need to stay focused on. And how are you going to avoid distraction? Lots of people have, or had, open door policies when people were working together. Do I have my door open? Do I have my door closed? I liked the idea of having an open-door policy. So for many years in my business, I did. But unfortunately, that sometimes programs people to think, okay, door’s open! I’m constantly available. So you really need to balance that and make determinations as far as how much of your time during a given day is going to be dedicated to focus time. The work that you have to get done in a specific time frame, in a specific way, without distraction. And then adapt or create an environment that allows you to stay focused. Jay: Yeah. I have a funny story. I went to a company, it was a brand new company. They just built this beautiful building. And I went to the CEO and his desk was right out in the middle of everybody else’s. David: Wow. Jay: No cubicle walls, nothing. There’s the CEO’s desk, right? And about six months later, I went back. And instead of that desk, there was an office. And I’m like, what happened? And he is like, well, I just realized, as much as I wanted the open door feeling and that people could come to me. I just couldn’t do the things that I needed to do, because it was like a line, where people were wanting to talk to me every few minutes. David: Right. Yeah. And so everybody needs to determine how much they can take. How much they can actually get done, without completely distracting themselves. And you basically have to engineer your environment around that. But I think the idea of, professionals in particular, requiring the time and ability to stay focused. It can’t be understated. You really need to be able to do that. And a lot of times, because we’re so reactive, we don’t even think about it. And so simply by identifying the fact that you are going to require focus hours in at least some of your days. Probably most of them, if what you’re doing is important work. And because of that, you’re going to very likely have to change the way that things are done. Jay: Yeah, I know people and I’ve tried to start doing this in my own life where they only check their email at a certain time of day. They have an email check time. And their point is that they never get an email that has to be responded to immediately. If somebody has an immediate concern, they’ll call. They’ll do something else. And so they literally do not look at their email. I have my email up all the time. I’m going to be totally honest. And when one pops up, I will leave whatever else I’m doing. And I will respond to that email. And I know that this is an issue for me because then afterwards I’m like “now, what was I working on?” Because if I was typing something up, now I’ve lost my train of thought. And so I know that I’m hurting my productivity, David. But I still do it anyway, because I’m such a creature of habit. And I also have FOMO, the fear of missing out. I have FOMO so bad that I’m not sure how to stay focused long enough to overcome it. David: It sounds a little like a shared malady. Entrepreneurial A.D.D. Jay: Yes. Yeah. David: Where, it’s always the next thing. What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? I certainly have a tendency to share that as well. But one of the things that I do when something is a real focus project –and actually, you and I through this before we jumped on this call. I literally turned off my phone, not just silenced it, not just turned it upside down on the table. Literally turned it off. Closed out the email, shut everything down, got rid of all the other apps so that we can have this conversation. And for something like this, it makes perfect sense to do that. But if there are other projects that I feel like I need to get done, I just do the same thing. And if it’s available to you, you’re going to do it, right? If you can access that email right away. And if it is in front of you, you are going to be a lot more likely to respond to it. I do tend to check email a couple times a day. There are some times where I’ll grab my phone and I’ll do it in between. But for the most part, I’m not a complete servant to my email for the exact reason that we discussed. It’s critical to set aside time when you can stay focused. Email is a list of other people’s priorities. And so if you’ve got priorities of your own, that are important enough to you, then you’ll start to do that. At least for me, that’s what I did. You know, another thing that helps me stay focused… actually, let’s start with this. One of the things that really distracts me from focus is input. So things like whatever, email, videos, social media, all of that is input. Most of us get paid, not for our input, but for our output. What is it that we’re doing? What are we actually putting out into the world? If you recognize that input is generally not dollar work and output is dollar work. It becomes easier to say, okay, no more input for now. I’m going to stay focused the next two hours on output. And that means shutting down social media, maybe turning off the phone or silencing it. Shutting down the email and then just focusing on the output. If you just think in terms of input and output, you can really start to make a big difference in terms of the focus hours you’re able to put in during any given day. Jay: I really like that. Kind of maybe having a balance scale in your mind. Am I spending more time with the input or the output? How much more could I accomplish in my job? How much more proficient could I be if I stay focused on that output? I have to tell you, while we’ve been talking, a text has come in and it’s up in the top left corner of all my screens. I haven’t looked at it. But It’s there. And I know it’s there. And it is so hard for me, David, to not look over at that while we’re… And so I forgot to put my computer in do not disturb mode. And so now it’s sitting there and I’m like, you know, “what if I just peek over?” But there’s no way that any text that I have coming over is going to be more important than what we’re talking about right now. So I’m going to exercise self-control and I’m… David: You’re doing great. Jay: …going to keep the discussion. Yeah. David: You’re doing great. I think if something popped up in the corner of my screen, I think my eye would automatically go to it. So you’re doing very well. To nutshell it really, I think a good question for all of us to ask ourselves is how much time each day can we actually stay focused? It doesn’t have to be eight hours a day. I mean, you ca

  3. Sep 22

    How to Rule Your Territory and Dominate Your Market

    It’s not like there’s just one method to rule your territory. But the one thing that is critical to all of it, is identifying your area. Identifying your territory. Focusing in on it. Making sure you become a known commodity, so people have the opportunity to choose you. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast in today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing the idea of ruling your territory. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Yeah. Thank you, David. This is a really interesting topic. I’ve been excited to get to this topic, ruling your territory, being the master of your general… David: your domain Jay: …area. Yeah, of your domain. David: That was a Seinfeld episode, I think. Jay: Yeah, that’s right. However you want to say it. So many of the things that we talk about, I don’t know if they’re top of mind for business owners or for salespeople. They have so many other things going on. For them to be thinking about market share or things like that and how that can affect their business, especially over the long haul. David: Yeah. That’s why I think it’s great to discuss. Because when we are in the thick of it, we tend to forget about the fact that, whoever we are, if we’re a business owner or a salesperson, we are operating in a particular territory. And recognizing that we could be spread out, we could have a few customers. Let’s say we have two customers in one huge city, and we’ve got two customers in another huge city somewhere else. If we’re sort of spread out, but nobody else in either of those cities even know who we are, at that point we’re really not ruling our territory. And this idea sort of traces along with the idea of dominating your market, which is something that we talk about quite often. You know, what is your market? What is your territory? How do you define it? Is it defined primarily geographically that you sell primarily in your small geographic area? In your area of town? Your city? Your state? Is it nationwide? Is it with particular industries? How do you define it? Because that’s going to determine whether you are just inhabiting a territory or ruling it, dominating it. Jay: I like that question. Are you just inhabiting? Are you just there? Or are you ruling it? And I think one of the things that can be done, and I don’t see this in a lot of small businesses, is just making a list of all of your potential clients. And that should give you an idea of where you stand. And then if you know a list of who they’re using. And so, you know, your client and you know who your competitors are. I would think that that’s probably a good place to start. David: It’s a great place to start. And also thinking in terms of the other people who are like your clients who operate in a similar area, either in a similar geographic area or a similar demographic, however, you’re defining your territory. Also, when I use words like ruling and dominating, I don’t want them to sound as intimidating as some people interpret them to be. What I mean is that you’re essentially staking your claim. You’re saying, okay, look, this is an area where I want to do well. I want to excel. I want to be known. I want people to know me and I want to know other people in this particular market. They’re not all going to do business with me. I recognize that, but I want to make sure that all of the people who could potentially use my products and services at least know that I exist so that they could consider me if it makes sense for us to work together. Jay: Yeah. I think that’s really important. I think a lot of times people think about, well, I go in and I get the sale and if I don’t get the sale, well, then I’m done with that customer. But if you make it more of I’m going to go in and get a relationship, instead of a sale. If you get the sale, that’s great. But if you don’t, what happens when the customer they’re using falls down? David: Right. Jay: When the customer they’re using makes a mistake or goes out of business. If you already have that relationship, well now you are going to be the first call, right? So that relationship, I think, is so important. David: Yeah, I agree. And I think for most salespeople, the idea of relationship, it’s always a great talking point. Not always as well practiced as it should be. But it’s absolutely true. If we’re establishing relationships, that’s going to be great. And as many relationships as possible and as makes sense in a particular area. So let’s say somebody’s focused on selling to a niche industry, a niche industry, however you want to pronounce it. And you’re selling to the tech industry. You want to make sure that you’re interacting with as many tech people as possible within the market or territory that you’ve identified so that they have the opportunity to potentially talk about you. Oh, do you know Jay? Oh yeah. I know Jay! Right? Because if that happens, then you can start to develop a little bit of buzz. You can start to get more referrals. And when you become better known in a market, it just becomes a whole lot easier to dominate, you know, to actually score in that territory because they talk to somebody else, “oh yeah, I know them. I use them.” And when that happens enough, when they have enough of those conversations, they’re going to be a lot more likely to use you than if nobody else has any idea who you are. Jay: Yeah, in that first blush cold call. Is this a reason to like go to Chamber of Commerce meetings, and get involved in those types of organizations? David: It could be… Jay: …to help build those relationships. David: It could be. I think they definitely require investigation. Because some of them are great and some of them are terrible. And I know a lot of people who have gone to Chamber of Commerce functions and you go back week after week and it’s the same people and everybody’s trying to sell and nobody’s trying to buy. But I think that also goes to the strategy. Because if it’s the same people coming each week, then you want to at least build relationships with them and find out who in their organizations could actually potentially buy from you. As opposed to “yeah, I don’t do that.” And we’re just going to stand around and eat food and drink drinks and not get anything accomplished business-wise. That can happen. So I think it’s a good idea to say, okay, how far can I take those relationships? If they can refer me to the people in their organization who either could use help regarding what I do. Or if they could introduce me to somebody else that they know who could potentially use that sort of help, then you can get some sort of viral effects going. Jay: Yeah, I like that. I know you’ve also talked in the past about sending something to everybody who may be a potential customer. If you’re in the merchandising or print-on-demand business, sending them something with their logo or something like that, just so they’ve seen your name a couple of times. That can be a good start as well. Correct? David: It can, and when you’re doing something like that, some people say, “well, I don’t want to spend the money to do that.” But when you realize that your time is worth at least as much as anything that you might be sending to someone, it can really change your perspective. Some people are like, “well, I don’t want to spend 10 bucks and send somebody a promotional gift.” And you say, “Okay, well, are you going to spend three months of your life trying to figure out if this person is a good prospect for you?” What’s that worth? It’s worth a whole lot more than 10 bucks, probably. And so, if you can utilize something like that to get their attention, to get them engaged in conversation sooner, and to get them qualified in or out faster, it becomes worth a high multiple of whatever it is you would pay to send that out in the first place. Jay: Well, and also maybe you don’t send it to every potential customer. David: Right. Jay: Maybe you send out 10 a month, you know, five a month, whatever you can budget and just have that as part of your plan. So you don’t have to write this huge check that you can’t afford right up front. David: The other thing that something like that does, is it forces you to think about who it is that you’re reaching. Because you’re not going to want to do that with just anyone. And that’s actually a good thing. Because it forces you to think, okay, this is a large company. This is a person who probably makes the buying decisions here. This is somebody who’s worth a $10 investment to even have a conversation and get them qualified in or out. So I think it does a lot of good things in that regard. Jay: Yeah, I, love that idea. What else can I do as a business owner to focus on mastering the market? David: Well, I think if you really look at where you are currently spending your time, again, is it geographic? Is it within a particular industry? Are you spread out all over or do you have a nice, tightly concentrated group of clients in a particular area? If you do then to be able to spread out from there is easier. You can spread out closer to home, essentially, closer to where you’re already dominating. If you automatically jump to a new area, a new pond, you know, you want to be a big fish in a small pond or whatever. If you’re jumping from pond to pond, you’re not going to get the traction you’re probably looking for. So if you are established in a particular area, get as much business there as possible and then work to slowly spread out as close to that area as possible. If you are known in a number of different areas and you don’t have your business sort of consolidated, then explore which of those seems like the best opportunity for you. If you’re operating in a number of different industries, for example. So if you’re dealing w

  4. Sep 15

    Is Customer Service Really Dead?

    Is customer service really dead? Technology can either help customer service a whole lot, or it can harm it a whole lot, depending on how it’s used. It’s like a weapon. You can use a knife to cut a steak, or you can use a knife to hurt somebody. And I think technology is being used the same ways. They’re trying to save themselves time, energy, and effort. But they’re forgetting the fact that there are other human beings on the other end of that technology. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of customer service. Is it well and truly dead? Welcome Jay. Jay: Well, I think it depends upon the industry, but I’m going to say it’s more dead than not as far as I can tell. David: Yeah, it’s sad. And I feel like in some businesses, in the best businesses, it’s not dead. And it creates a tremendous advantage for those who are still keeping it alive, whether on life support or just because it’s the way they do business. But wow. I have had so many experiences recently where it seems like not only is the customer service unresponsive, uncooperative, unpleasant… Jay: Mm-hmm David: And there’s just this level of apathy that seems to go with it, which when you combine those things, really does seem pretty deadly. Jay: Yeah. And I think there is a temptation, because there’s such great technology out there. There is a temptation to say, “look, we can cut our costs if we just implement this new technology that maybe answers questions online” or “press one for this or for that.” I can see the temptation, but I don’t know if they clearly understand the frustration. I’ll tell you one of my pet peeves right now are the chat bots. I’ll go online and they’ll say, “Hey, if you don’t want to sit on hold,” which is an admission already that you don’t have enough people, ” go ahead, just chat with us.” And I’m thinking I’m going to get a live person. And no, I get a chatbot and I type in my question and it sends me to a predefined link that doesn’t answer my question. And I’m like, “I’ve just wasted 15 minutes and I could have been on hold the whole time.” So, very cool tech, but on the customer end, I think it’s frustrating a lot of people. Does Technology Help or Hurt Customer Service? David: It really can, particularly because technology can either help customer service a whole lot, or it can harm it a whole lot, depending on how it’s used. It’s just like any other weapon, right? It’s like a weapon. You can use a knife to cut a steak, or you can use a knife to hurt somebody. And I think the technology is being used the same ways, where they’re trying to save themselves time and energy and effort. And they’re forgetting that there are other human beings on the other end of that technology. But even beyond that, tech aside, there are now situations where you leave a message for somebody, or you send them an email. I mean, that is obviously tech as well, but if the human being behind the email does not respond to the email or they don’t return the phone call or they don’t return the voicemail or they don’t return the text. Now it’s actually more human error than tech error. And that’s where I think customer service is really struggling right now. Because if you’ve got well-meaning well-intentioned people who are determined to use the technology to make customer service better, then those companies are not just going to survive, they’re going to thrive. But the problem is there are people in organizations who just don’t care enough about the customers to even do the basic minimum things like returning phone calls, returning voicemails, and that sort of thing. Jay: Yeah. And then there’s the question of, you know, how do you know if you’re a business? How do you know if those calls are being returned? How do you gauge your customer service? Do you have a system to follow up with customers to see what their experience was like? If you don’t have a system to gauge that, you may be in real trouble because of your customer service and not even know it. David: We were talking in a previous episode about the idea of when costs are increased and you have to look for places to cut back. When there are situations where a company is employing people who are not taking care of the customer, if you’ve got to cut back personnel, that’s the best place to start. If there are people who will not be educated, and who are unwilling to learn what it takes to continue conversations with clients, that is really problematic. And so for the people who are serious about growing and expanding their business, who are serious about maintaining the type of customers that make you want to go to work in the morning, instead of the type of customers that make you want to run screaming from the room? Then it really means that we’ve got to up our game. We have to up our game from a customer service standpoint, a management standpoint, and an ownership standpoint, to ensure that our people are being taken care of. And as consumers, I think it’s essential for us to let businesses know when we feel like they’re falling down on the job. Because you’re right. They might not know it. And they might not have the systems in place that they should have in place to track that. So if they don’t, really, the only thing that’s going to get their attention is the squeaky wheel, right? The customer who says, “Hey, listen, this is the experience I had, is this what you meant to do to me?” Jay: Yeah. And unfortunately, I think from the research and surveys I’ve seen, people are more likely to just stop using you than they are to tell you that they had a problem. Or they’ll go online and they’ll give you a nasty review. The nasty review can be a source of finding out where your problems are. But a lot of times I think customers just say, well, I’m done with them and they move on to the next guy. David: That’s exactly right. And most of the time that’s what I would do, I would say, “Okay, that’s it. Never going back there again,” I recently had a situation where we went to a restaurant that we go to pretty frequently. And I got an email from them saying that I had a $15 credit that was good till the end of the month. It was some sort of promotion or something like that. And I use their promotions frequently, so I was like, “oh, okay. I got a $15 credit. Let’s use it.” It was close to the end of the month. I said to my wife, “Hey, we should go here and grab some food.” It was, I think it was the 30th. It was going to expire on the 31st. We hadn’t planned to go out, but I thought, okay, $15 credit. I’ll use that. Right. Drop it on the floor. See how quickly I pick it up. And so we went to the restaurant, and had a great meal. Good time. The server was fantastic. Got to the end. Attempted to use the coupon. “Oh no. That’s only for people who took part in this particular promotion that went from this date to this date and who bought a gift card.” And I was like, “I don’t think it said all that in the email I got.” So she apologized and she was very nice about it. And like I said, I go there frequently, I like the place. But when I got home, I’m like, “this does not sit well with me.” So I submitted essentially a review, not an online review that people could see. I submitted it to their complaint department, which would go to somebody who could read it and address it. And I got a call back the very next day from the manager who apologized for the confusion. He said, “don’t worry, we’re going to take care of this for you. I see you’re a good customer,” I’m like a frequent rewards member, stuff like that. Go there a lot. So they saw how much we spent and the guy was great. He made it right. And in those situations you can say, “all right, whew. That’s good. Glad I was able to bring it to their attention and I’m glad they were willing to address it.” But there are a lot of businesses who are just like, “eh, yeah, too bad.” Gone. Jay: Yeah, and this is one of the things that bothers me. It’s that I think sometimes businesses, fear the customer that is complaining. And really they should be looked at as an opportunity. Because I’m going to bet that even though you had a bad experience with that restaurant, the fact that they called you right back after that whole process, I’m going to bet you’re more loyal to that restaurant. Because we all know that nobody’s perfect. All we want to know is that if they make a mistake that they’ll fix it, that they’ll solve it. And if we know that, we’re going to be more loyal, not less loyal. So having good customer service, especially when it’s complaints, I think is an incredible way to build loyalty. David: Yeah. And I think also when you’re complaining, you don’t want to burn bridges. Because if you’re a jerk about it, they’re going to be a lot less likely to help you. When I reported this incident, I talked about the fact that the food was really good. The server was great. It was a great experience, except for this one thing. And so I gave them an honest evaluation of what happened and they responded appropriately. But when we think about the idea of customer service, I like to believe that customer service is not dead, particularly among the companies that are smart about it and take it very seriously. I think that it does give a tremendous advantage to the people who are committed to fixing things that go wrong and who are committed to continuing to look for opportunities to make things better than what other people are doing. And to better serve their customers. With technology, it can and should be easier when we utilize it the right way and when we put that first. When we put the idea of engaging our customers, k

  5. Sep 8

    How to Lower Customer Acquisition Cost and Improve Conversions

    What’s your customer acquisition cost? I’ve been accused of being a bit of a maniac when it comes to lead tracking and making sure that we know where everything is coming from. I was a bit of a tyrant about that in previous businesses that I had, because you have to know what’s producing and what’s not. Otherwise, you can waste enormous amounts of money. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing what it costs to get a new customer. Welcome, Jay. Jay: Hey, it’s so good to be here, David. And customer acquisition cost is a very important metric that all companies need to know. It’s almost as though it’s part of your cost of goods sold. And if you don’t know this answer, you may think you’re making money and you might not be. David: Yeah. It’s really funny when I ask audiences that question, if I’m in front of a group and I say, “What does it cost you to acquire a new customer?” I get some blank looks, I get some smiles, some nervous laughter, some looking around. It’s generally a very small percentage of any given audience that actually knows their customer acquisition cost. And I think it’s interesting because if you don’t know this, or if you don’t even have an idea of what that cost might be, then you really have no idea not just what you’re putting out, what you’re getting from it, but you really have no idea how to continue to build from there. And I think to the extent that I do get answers when I ask the question, a lot of it is just generalities. It’s like, “well, I spend a lot, Oh, it’s a lot, it costs a lot.” But what is it? And some people are like, “Well, I don’t spend anything because I get referrals.” And whenever someone tells me that, that tells me that they’re probably doing 10 to 25% of the business they could be doing. Because if they’re getting a lot of referrals, that’s awesome. But if they’re just relying on referrals alone, there’s a lot that they’re leaving on the table. What is Your Customer Acquisition Cost? Jay: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. If you don’t know what your customer acquisition cost is, you can’t impact it. And it should be a goal to try and drive it down if you can. And if you can’t, work it into your sales costs, work it into your systems so that you can make sure that you’re profitable. David: Yeah. I think something else that people often don’t think of, particularly small businesses, they may go to Chamber of Commerce functions, they may do different things, go to different networking events and that sort of thing. And they don’t really think of that as a customer acquisition cost. Because they don’t value their time enough in a lot of cases. And so even if you’re not putting out actual cash in the form of advertising, marketing, things to get you noticed like that, there are acquisition costs. It’s going to cost you a certain amount of time out of your day. It’s going to cost you in terms of energy. It’s going to cost you in terms of effort. It’s going to cost you in terms of what could I be doing instead of what I’m doing now that could potentially produce a higher return? So there are a lot of different aspects to this and that’s why I thought it would be a good conversation to have. Jay: Yeah, I do agree with that. And you’re mentioning all the different types of customer acquisition. I mean, it could be something that doesn’t cost a lot. Maybe you can make viral videos and that’s driving customers to you. But there’s still an expense of creating those videos. There’s a lot of time and effort put into that, and they’re not calculating that in. They would probably tell you we don’t have a customer acquisition cost. But they’re paying somebody to spend 30, 40 hours a week to create viral videos. That’s a cost. David: Yeah. Or they’re doing it themselves, and if their time’s not worth anything, then they’re not spending money, but our time is worth something. Everybody’s time is worth something. And so those are the things that have to start going into the equation. Also, I think a lot of times people don’t bother tracking to see what is their customer acquisition cost in terms of time, energy, effort, and of course, money. Now, if they are spending money to generate leads, maybe they spend a certain amount of money to whatever, buy or rent a list, or maybe they spend a certain amount of money on advertising. Maybe they’re doing Facebook ads, or YouTube ads, or billboards. I mean, it could be anything, any sort of advertising, Newspaper advertising, obviously not as popular these days, online ads, lots of different ways that one can advertise to get their information in front of people. So if you’re generating leads or clients on social media, there’s a definite cost associated with that in terms of how much time are you putting in while you’re online, even if you’re not spending money on ads themselves. There is definitely a customer acquisition cost involved. So these are the types of things that it makes sense to sort of think about as you’re going in on a monthly basis, weekly basis, if not a daily basis. Jay: Yeah, and I think actual individual tracking, I mean, maybe it’s even just a spreadsheet of each platform that you’re using, if you’re paying for Google AdWords. If you’re paying for boosting on Facebook or anything else. Track what you’re spending. And then the other part of that, and I think this is where a lot of people miss, is when that lead comes in, it’s important to ask. It’s important to know, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” Because if you don’t do that, you’re not going to know what’s working and what’s not working. David: Yeah, absolutely. You have to be able to track your customer acquisition cost on the back end once that happens. And once again, I think there are a lot of people who don’t do this. They’re just out doing a lot of different things, potentially. And if you don’t know the things that are actually generating the results, how do you know how you can improve? Because it’s possible you could eliminate a number of different things that you’re doing that just aren’t producing as much. You could double down on the things that are working and you could generate a lot more customers in the same or less time. Jay: Yeah. And the beauty is with at least digital products or social media products, it’s so easy to track where those leads came from. If you have Google Analytics that will help you. Or we kind of talked about it last time, where you used to have an individual phone number for each type of advertising. Now you could just send them to a unique URL for each advertising vehicle and know instantly how many leads are coming through. And then the next step would be, well, how many of those leads are we closing? Because that’s how you really calculate your customer acquisition cost. David: Yeah, and I think in a sense what you said, that’s the ideal. That’s exactly what everyone should be doing all the time. But even getting to that, if people were to do things as simple as pay attention to what it is that they’re putting out, pay attention to where those leads are coming from, even generally. If someone contacts you, however it is they contact you and you’re not sure where they came from, just to ask them, “Hey, where did you hear about?” Now, if they’re contacting you online, if they’re contacting you through Facebook Messenger or something like that, then that gives you a bit of a hint that they probably saw something that you posted on Facebook and they’re responding to that. So you should be able to track your customer acquisition cost that way as well. Without that information, you really have such a disadvantage over the people who are paying attention to those sort of things. Jay: Yeah, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really surprised. You know, we make assumptions about what’s going to work. And of course, people selling us advertising products, they tell us how it’s going to work. But when you do actual tracking, I’ve been really surprised. I’m like, Really? That was the one that I thought, that was just a shot in the dark. I didn’t think that was going to work at all. And that’s the one that’s really performing. So I’m going to dial that one up. And these other ones that I thought were going to perform, and they’re not, I’m going to dial those ones down. I mean, this is how you improve the entire process. And it should be a constant process, right? David: Yes. And that is absolutely the case. I know, I’ve been accused of being a bit of a maniac when it comes to lead tracking and making sure that we know where everything is coming from. I was a bit of a tyrant about that in previous businesses that I had. I had a direct mail catalog business. And it’s absolutely critical in a business like that, because you have to know what’s producing and what’s not. Otherwise you can waste enormous amounts of money, and so that’s something that I’ve just carried over. So even now, if I run ads. There are different types of ads that can be run through different organizations that’ll be doing email communications that can be coded and tracked to a specific page on a website, as you indicated. So if they opt in from that page, you know that it came from this particular ad. It’s very easy to do. And as you indicated, sometimes you think this one thing’s going to be great, and it turns out that it’s not. Sometimes you think it’s going to be great and it is. Sometimes you’re right. But what’s really interesting is sometimes you can have a lead source that will generate a lot of leads and you think, “Wow, this is great.” But then you find out that they’re not producing anything. T

  6. Sep 1

    How to Monetize Your Sales Pipeline and Close More Sales

    To monetize your sales pipeline, you need to fill it, prioritize it and tackle it. This whole idea of knowing what to do and not doing it, is rampant. It seems ridiculous. It’s like, “who would do that?” And the answer is nearly everybody does it. And none of us do it on purpose, but we all, to some extent, end up doing it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to monetize your sales pipeline. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I really can’t wait to talk a little bit more about this process. I see people who kind of think they have a pipeline. But they’re not sure exactly what to do with it. So a good, important topic today. David: Yeah. What to do with it or in a lot of cases, even what it is. I think even before we can talk about how to monetize it, you almost have to identify it. What is it? What is your sales pipeline? Who is it? Who are the people who are in it? Where is it located? Is it just inside your head? Because if it’s just inside your head, leaving enormous amounts of money on the table. Jay: Yeah, and we’ve talked in the past about key performance indicators, KPIs. First you have to know what that pipeline is. Then you have to know how to track it and where people are at in each stage so that things ideally trigger automatically. I think that’s the end goal, but getting there can be difficult. 3 Steps to Monetize Your Sales Pipeline David: Yeah, I mean I think of it in terms of filling it, prioritizing it and then tackling it. Because if you’re not doing it in that order, it’s going to be problematic for you. Jay: All right. Well then let’s start with filling it. Let’s get that going. David: Okay, Well, when we talk about filling our pipeline after we’ve identified what it is and where it is, filling it obviously is the biggest thing. And I think a lot of salespeople tend to think of this as being pretty important. Getting new leads into their pipeline. And of course, it is very important. It’s the number one step. Because until you know who’s in there, you don’t really have anything you can do. You’ve got to have the prospect first. So filling it starts with asking yourself, who goes in here? And what types of clients am I looking for? Are they in particular types of industries? Are they located in a particular geographic area? What are the different things that I’m looking for in terms of a good, solid prospect for my pipeline? So who goes in is very important. But who stays out is also extremely important. And we don’t think about this, but it is so critical. In my sales career over the years, particularly in the early stages, I just thought if someone was willing to talk to me then they were a good prospect. And I learned, not as quickly as I should have, that that’s just not the case. There are people out there who will be happy to talk to you again and again and never actually buy anything from you. So when you’re looking at who goes in and who stays out, think in terms of exactly that. When you are talking to someone, if you’re not able to get them qualified in as quickly as you’d like, to make sure that they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend. Then, don’t keep going back to that well and expecting to get water out if there’s no water to be found. Jay: You know, we had exactly this problem here recently with the company I’ve been doing consulting for. They wanted to start using Google ads and David: mm-hmm. Jay: So they just put out some general pay for click kind of stuff, and their phones and their online scheduling just lit up. I mean every single day, packed and full. But only about 3% of those calls were related to their actual focus and their product. So they ended up spending all this time. And then what they had to do was go through a process of, like you said, Okay. Identifying the core customer and refining your keywords down to a point where you’re not getting all of that other stuff. At first, they’re like, “look at all these calls. This is going to be great,” and it turned into a huge detractor very quickly. To Monetize Your Sales Pipeline, Don’t Overfill it David: Yeah. And so when we think in terms of filling our pipeline, and I led with that. I said, Okay, first we have to fill it, but we don’t want to overfill it. And we particularly don’t want to fill it with people who have no likelihood of becoming clients. So, a lot of times the thought process is, you know, where is the next lead going to come from? Whether it’s coming from online, whether you’re doing something with Google, whether you’re doing in person prospecting, whether you’re doing it through social media, where they come from is not as critical as making sure that you’re getting people into the pipeline that you can qualify in or out as quickly as possible. So that’s really the first thing. Fill it, but don’t overfill it. Because I know people who have what they think are sales pipelines. It’s basically a database of thousands of people that they’re never going to get to, because they didn’t do the second thing we’re talking about, which is to prioritize it and decide, you know, who are the people in here that I need to be in touch with now? We need to rank the contacts inside that database so that we can be in touch with the right people at the right time. I mean, that’s really all prioritization is, starting with the most important contacts first, and that’s a challenge sometimes too, is to say, Okay, well who is most important? is it what they refer to as the bleeding neck thing? You know, who’s in the most trouble? Or is it, hey, I’ve got a really good, loyal client who reached out to me. Do I reach out to them first, or do I reach out to the person who’s screaming, who I might not know as well? That’s a personal decision, but in a lot of cases, you need to do your prioritization based on what’s most important to you. If it’s serving a really good customer first, then that person has to come first. If somebody else is screaming for service, but they’re new prospects and you have no idea whether or not they can spend a dime with you, you need to decide how that’s going to fall on the prioritization scale. And to the extent possible, if you have help, if you’ve got an administrative assistant who can help with some of that stuff, that’s great. But prioritization is absolutely key. Is it our best customers? Is it the person with the biggest, most pressing need? Now, biggest and most pressing are also two different things, right? Somebody might have a very pressing need for a very teeny, tiny order. And so if that’s the case, does it make sense for you to step away from what you’re doing with a bigger, more important order or customer to deal with somebody who’s got something smaller in mind. And once again, you’ve got to make some of these decisions for yourself. But when you recognize that there are different criteria that go into this decision, then it really becomes more of a simple thought process. Because you make those calls for yourself and then you make those decisions accordingly. And there are always people who are going to have time sensitive projects. So where does that fall into the overall scheme of things? People, you know, say they need stuff tomorrow or they need it immediately. And sometimes that’s the case and sometimes it’s not. So finding those things out is also part of this process. Jay: Yeah. One of the ways I ‘ve seen this done, kind of what you’re talking about, is identifying where different leads are coming from. So I have leads that are referrals and I have leads that are from Google Ads. And then I’m tracking my close rate on both of those leads, and I’m realizing that the ones that come from referrals or my current database, my close rate is 30%, and from Google it’s 10%. To me, that’s a great way to be able to identify where you should focus your time. David: Yeah. And in those situations too, I mean, some people will look at that and say, “well, I got 30% here and 10% there. Let’s forget about that.” But hey, 10% is still 10% right? And if your qualification procedure is tight, and you can disqualify the unqualified as quickly as possible, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that in future podcasts as well, then it makes perfect sense to look at that. Because the 10% that you’re getting from one source might actually perform better than the 30% you’re getting somewhere else, depending on how large a customer it is and what they’re buying. So there are all those different factors involved, and it’s smart. What you’re doing is very smart. Looking at that and trying to make those best decisions based on what’s actually happening in real life, in your customer base, in your prospect base. Jay: Yeah. Such a great point, because I may be able to close 30% of this type of lead, but I’m only getting three of those a day. And then on the 10% side, I’m getting 20 of those a day, so David: Right. Jay: That’s part of that calculation, right? David: Yeah, 10% of 20 is two. So if you can pick up two customers from it, then, you don’t want to throw that away. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other part is you don’t have to ignore those smaller percentages or things. You can have systems to deal with those people. Maybe you put them in a drip program so that they’re still getting contact from you. There’s other ways you’re not going to just, you know, kiss those people goodbye. You just may have a different way to reach out to them. David: Absolutely. All right, so we talked about identifying it, well, identifying it first, but then in terms of the 1, 2, 3 of it, filling your pipeline, prioritizing your pipeline, and th

  7. Aug 25

    How to Increase Sales, Profit, Cash Flow, and Personal Income

    To increase sales, profit, cash flow, and personal income, understand that money is always flowing in one direction or another. In a business, it needs to flow in from the customers. It needs to flow through to the employees and to the suppliers and to everybody who is providing you with services. And there needs to be something left over at the end to take home. And when you’re able to make those things happen consistently, everybody’s just better off. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing how to increase sales, profit, and personal income. Welcome Jay. Jay: Yeah. Thank you, David. I’m so excited, as usual, to talk about these topics that we discuss every podcast. I think that people often get caught up, especially small business owners, in one of these aspects, instead of having balance between all of them. And I feel like the one that they think about the most is sales. We have to increase sales. And if you’re not focusing on profitability in that regard, you could be generating all kinds of sales, but you’re not controlling your costs. And so ultimately those sales aren’t helping you. David: Yeah. Been there, done that. I think anybody, if you’ve started your own business, you’ve probably found yourself in this situation and gross sales is usually a good place for people to start. They’re thinking in terms of top line. Okay. I need to bring in as much as possible, which is true. You got to be bringing it in. But if you’re not paying attention to the rest of it, as you indicated, you could be selling a lot of stuff and losing money every day. And unless you’re keeping track of that, you’re not going to know it. I remember in the early days of my promotional products business, I would get together with my accountant once every 90 days. At the end of every quarter, actually the beginning of the following quarter, we would review the numbers for the previous quarter. And at that point, it’s too late to do anything about it. You feel like things are going well because you know, you’re selling stuff, but then you look at the expenses, the cost of goods, the cost of people, all your internal costs, your overhead costs. And you find out that you’re not making money on it. And 90 days later is too late. So once we got that in focus and we started doing it every month, reviewing what happened last month, where are our expenses too high and where are our gross sales too low? And which customers take up too much time and don’t generate enough revenue? Once we’re able to focus on the things that actually allow you to operate a profitable business, things got a lot better, a lot more quickly. And when we think in terms of these three things, how to increase sales, profit, and personal income, it’s almost like you’re starting here with the sales and then that generates whatever profit you have. And then after you’ve spent money on overhead and things, then you have some money to pay yourself, get some personal income going. But different businesses operate different ways. There are some business owners who are so focused on what am I going to bring in for myself that they may cut costs. They may short change people in terms of what they’re delivering in terms of product. They may choose less quality products. And so depending on where people’s focus is, determines where they’re going to be successful among those three things. Jay: Yeah. And I think you need balance. I mean, they’re all important. And so as you talked about looking at things monthly, I think having systems to identify and track each of these areas and have proper goals and benchmarks and reporting systems so that you can catch issues quickly. And pivot quickly is the only way you’re going to find balance in the force with these three things. David: Yeah, I agree. And I’ve operated businesses that had overhead that was too high. And that’s really hard. Because you feel like you’re trying to do everything right. And you’re trying to take care of the business and you’re trying to take care of your employees and you’re trying to take care of your customers. And if you don’t have the metrics right, it’s going to be pretty darn close to impossible to do that. And so finding the balance between the quality of product, which has to be high, the customer service, which has to be great. And the quality of client you’re interacting with, which also has to be great. When you get those three things lined up, you’re more likely to be successful, but if you’re not quite connected with some of those things, it’s a really uphill slog. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve kind of mentioned this in some other podcasts, but I see businesses when they need to increase their profitability. Their default is we need to increase sales or revenue. And I think that can be misguided. Because in order to make a dollar in profit, you may need to increase sales by $10. But if you focus on reducing cost, like for example, in a restaurant, if you can reduce your food cost by 1%, that immediately goes to the bottom line and increases profitability. So I find that the much faster route to profit than just to increase sales. And I don’t know that every business person understands that. David: Right. And I think it’s probably because there is a limit to how much you can cut. But theoretically, there’s not a limit in terms of how much you can generate. Now, obviously there is. If it’s a restaurant, you’ve got a certain number of seats or whatever. In a promotional products business, there’s a certain number of customers that you can visit with. Whatever your business is, there are going to be limits on the upper end. But most businesses never see that. They never get to the point where it’s like, I’m totally overwhelmed. I’m extremely profitable. I’m making a lot of money and I’m capped out. Because when you’re doing things well, when you’re doing things right, you’re generating the revenue, you’re generating the profit, which means you can hire additional people. You can add the staff, you can get the help and you can still continue to make money. But when you’re not in that situation, when you’re just sort of barely eking things out, and you’re saying, “okay, I need to increase sales. I need to generate more.” Yeah, you probably do. But as you indicated, if you are able to cut some of your overhead costs by even just a small amount, all of that drops, whereas gross sales don’t drop. Gross sales do not drop directly to your bottom line. And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve worked with who forget that. And when they think about gross sales, when they focus on gross sales, when they talk about gross sales, they’re like, “oh yeah, we’re generating all of this.” It doesn’t matter if you don’t get to drop it and keep some of it and pay everybody who needs to be paid. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things is knowing what your cost should be. What is the ideal cost that you’re shooting for? Because you’re right. You can’t continue to reduce costs. There is a line. There’s a threshold. My experience, like in the restaurant business, we had something called a theoretical food cost versus our actual food cost. The theoretical was if we had no waste, if we had no theft, if we had no shrinkage, if we ran perfectly, what would our food cost be? And then we compared that to our actual food cost. And so the goal was constantly trying to close the gap between those. And if you’re not an industry where there’s no shrinkage or things like that, then that’s not going to be as easy. But this was a great system for us to always be trying to achieve, to close that gap between the theoretical and the actual. David: Yeah, there are also a lot of business people who, when they start talking about this or thinking about this, it feels cold. “Well, I don’t like thinking about the numbers. I want to make sure I’m taking care of my people” and all that sort of thing, which is great. You do want to take care of your people. But the only way you can take care of your people is by remaining in business. Cause if you don’t remain in business, you can’t take care of anyone anymore. Can’t take care of your customers. You can’t take care of your employees. You can’t take care of yourself or your family. So, paying attention to this and recognizing that, yeah, this is a real thing and it’s not just driving gross sales is absolutely critical. I’ve operated businesses that generated huge gross sales, but they didn’t have the profitability they needed. I’ve operated businesses that didn’t generate a huge gross amount of money, but they had really good margins. And that works well too. And I’ve also operated businesses that generated a lot of sales and had a lot of profit. That’s my favorite. That’s probably most people’s favorite. That’s what you want to stick with. But if you recognize that that’s the goal and you’re taking the actions necessary to make it happen, then you’re going to be in a much better position. Jay: Yeah, totally. And then, you know, something like a pandemic can come along and your sales drop and now you’ve got to pivot dramatically to figure out how to increase sales and stay open. And so it’s not like you can assume that the status quo is going to be the way it always is. You’ve got to be prepared to identify issues quickly and pivot quickly. David: Yeah, you should probably assume that the status quo is never going to be the status quo. Because in life and in business, things are constantly changing. And some people were able to pivot extremely well and extremely effectively during the epidemic. And some people were just like, “I don’t know what to do.” And we’ve, we see the results of t

  8. Aug 18

    Uncover Customer Needs and Sell More Effectively

    Knowing how to uncover customer needs is critical. Essentially, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs implies that when one need is satisfied, another one is likely to pop up. Once I’ve got this satisfied, then I’m going to be working on this. And then I’m going to be working on this. It’s human nature. So if you recognize the fact that the needs are constantly going to be changing and you adopt a policy of constant requalification with your people — staying in touch, building that relationship, and finding out what they need next — you’re going to be in much better shape. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of uncovering customer needs. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I think that this is another great topic because a lot of times we just decide on our own what we think the customer needs, right? So we formulate that in our mind and we try and force that square into a round hole. You’re probably creating a lot more problems that you really don’t need to have. Uncovering customer needs in sales David: Exactly. When salespeople go in with the idea of “what I want to sell this person,” instead of “what does this person need,” they’re behind the eight ball right from the beginning. And I think there are some schools of thought in terms of sales, particularly if it’s a company that has one primary product that they’re looking to push, that, okay, you just have to go in and sell this. It reminds me of, you know, selling things door to door. If you’re a Fuller brush salesman and you’re looking to sell this one particular brush, well that’s my thing. That’s what I’ve got to sell. If you are sort of a one trick pony like that, if you’ve got one thing you want to sell, then this can still actually apply to you. Because when we think in terms of customer needs, I think a lot of people get stuck on the idea that uncovering customer needs means discovering which products they want to buy from us. And uncovering customer needs goes way beyond that. It’s more about what do they really need? Where are they struggling? What do they need help with? What are they trying to accomplish? Because even if you’re selling a Fuller brush, if you go in with the idea of “do you want to buy this brush,” the answer is no. But if you find out that what they’re struggling with is that they’re very busy and they don’t have enough time, and their life is chaotic. Then you may be able to let them know that this Fuller brush is going to allow them to clean things faster and be more economical in their time and accomplish some of the things that they’re telling you are actually important to them. So while that’s a rather extreme example, it really goes to the whole idea of what I believe uncovering customer needs is all about. Uncovering customer needs with questions Jay: Yeah. And I think there’s only one way to get to customer needs and that’s to ask questions, right? David: Right. Jay: If you start out with your sales pitch, you’re not going to know what their needs are. And I also like the idea of letting them talk and that helps you build the relationship and discover their needs. Is there another way besides asking question? David: I don’t think there really is. I mean, you’ve got to be able to get the answers from them. The only way that you can actually uncover what a customer needs is if they vocalize it. I mean, unless it’s something that you’ve observed, Hey, it looks like you could really use this. Right? Or if somebody refers you to that person and says my friend could really use what you’re offering here. But even then, it’s somebody else’s opinion. So that’s just the beginning of a point of conversation. Hey, your friend suggested I give you a call. I understand that you’re looking to accomplish this and perhaps this item can help. Wanted to see what your thoughts are about that. And then yeah, as you indicated, let them talk. Jay: Yeah, and letting them talk, I think you kind of help them understand why the customer needs your product. And like you said, it may not be something they’re thinking about. They may not know that they need your product. But like you said, maybe there’s something else in their life where they don’t have a lot of time. This product will save you time and so you can actually deal with other issues in your life better. So, figuring out how you can best serve them and then helping them come to that conclusion. I love to go down that path in the sales process. David: Yeah, I agree, and I think this really kind of ties to the idea of what a lot of people think of in terms of features and benefits. If I’ve got a phone what’s the feature of my phone? Feature of my phone is that it’s this big and it’s got a big screen and lots of colors and good audio quality. But what are the benefits? Well, you know, the benefits are that I can be in touch with the people that I care about. I can be responsive to customer needs. I can have the latest and greatest in terms of technology to allow me to connect better with everyone. So, there’s features and benefits, and I think that’s something that a lot of people talk about. But if we really want to get serious about it, it even goes beyond that. And it starts to get into sort of the emotions and the experiences that people want to have. Like we were talking about before, if somebody wants to clean their house, what do they want it to feel like? What do they want it to smell like? What’s the experience that they want people to have when they come in? And I mean, we’re not selling cleaning products here. Again, I’m using this more of an extreme example than anything else. But recognizing that there are a lot of different stages to this. And if you focus just on uncovering product needs, you are very likely going to be selling a much smaller percentage of the audience than would potentially buy from you. Jay: Yeah. And I think oftentimes, depending on what your product is, what you’re really selling is yourself. And once they trust you and believe in you, then they’re going to take your word for it, that that product will do what it says. So you got to realize that it is about relationships so often. David: Yeah. And it’s a lot easier to sell someone on you, if you are interested in them . Right? I think there was a, a brief synopsis I heard one time of How to Win Friends and Influence People. And it basically said if you talk to other people about themselves, they’ll think you’re the most interesting person in the world. Jay: Yeah, I can remember going into a situation, I had a partner at the time, and every time we went into that situation, all he did was talk about himself and then talk about his product. And people would just sit there and they would start to tune out and he never figured it out. I’d come in and when I led, I’d just ask questions and ask questions and you look for those nonverbal cues as well. You know, are they paying attention to me? If they’re not, I need to get their focus again. Are they nodding their head in agreement? Okay, that means they’re coming along. If they look confused, of course, that’s very hard over the phone, but if you’re doing it in person, I find those nonverbal cues to be essential in determining customer needs. David: Yeah, and a lot of people just don’t always do that. I mean, I think another important aspect of this whole topic is that customer needs are always changing. So when we talk about the idea of uncovering a customer’s needs, just because you did it today doesn’t mean that those needs are the same tomorrow. They’re not going to be. And if you are in the kind of business where you’re looking for long term business and long term relationships, and you want to be able to continue to sell to someone, then you really need to sort of get things in gear and recognize that it’s a constant process of requalifying and finding out where are they now? What did they need today that they didn’t need before? How did what they purchased from me before now create new situations that they need to tackle that could require something that I could provide to them later. I mean, a great example in the promotional products industry where we do a lot of business, is that some people use a promotional item to get people to come into a retail store, Come on in and you’ll get this free item. So let’s say it’s a car dealership. Come on into this car dealership and you’ll get this free key fob, right? And on the key fob, there’s a key, and you can try it out in the trunk of this car that’s in the showroom. And if it opens up the trunk, then you win some sort of prize. Right? So that would be designed to get somebody to actually come in. So once they come in, what’s the next thing you want them to do? The next thing you want them to do is probably to take a test drive. Because the goal is to get them to buy a car. They’re not going to come in for the free thing and then just immediately buy a car. So you say, Okay, what we’re doing today is for everybody who takes a test drive, you get a free dashboard cell phone holder for your car. And so then that would increase the number of people who’d be taking a test drive. And then it’s great, okay, so they’re in the test drive, they’re doing the test drive, they’re enjoying the feel of the car, the smell of the car, everything like that. And then the person says to them, you know, for people who buy a car today, we’re including a pair of Italian leather racing gloves that match the interior of the vehicle, right? Custom imprinted, of course, when that’s what you’re selling. So you can use your products to lead your prospects down a path that accomplishes their goals a

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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.

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  • Creator
    David Blaise
  • Years Active
    2005 - 2026
  • 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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