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. 2D AGO

    Stand Out from Competitors: What Makes You Different?

    To stand out from competitors, start with what makes you different. Identify your ideal target market. It’s largely going to consist of people who want to do business the way that we do business. Then matching up our style of business with the way that they want to do it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will ask the question, what makes you different? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you for asking me to be with you again. David. I love this question. Because if we don’t know what makes us different, I think it becomes harder to sell or to present yourself or anything else. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and playing to your strengths is key. That’s obviously something we should be doing. But I’ve met a lot of people who don’t have self-awareness. They wouldn’t be able to answer this question. So they don’t really know where to focus and they’re kind of haphazard. David: Yeah. In the promotional products industry in particular, people struggle with this. You have all these distributors who are essentially representing very similar lines of product. Often it’s the same lines of product from the same manufacturers. So a lot of people look at that and say, “how can I be different if I’m selling exactly the same products as all the other people that I’m competing with?” And if you ask that question in a rhetorical sense, “how can I possibly do it?” You’re doing it wrong. You need to actually ask yourself that question in a way where you demand results of yourself. Sit down and bullet point it out. What is it that makes me different? What could make me different? Many times I ask the question in live seminars. I say, what differentiates you from your competition? Sometimes people will shout things out and somebody will say service, right? And I’ll say, who here feels their service differentiates them and sets them apart? 40% of the hands in the room go up! And I say, okay, keep ’em up and look around. Can you all be right? Can your service differentiate you from the other people who have their hands in the air? And it’s kind of a rhetorical question, but the answer kind of has to be yes. It has to be yes. I have to be able to differentiate myself in a way that justifies my existence in the market. And so I can be different. I can be different than you. We can both be great potentially in different areas. You know, if you think in terms of the Walmart approach, you know, their thing is cheapest price. Ideally, we don’t want to be that in our market, right? But there is probably something that we can do that will better serve the clients that we’re looking for than what other people in our market are doing. Jay: Yeah, it’s such an important question if we’re all selling the same product. Then what’s going to make somebody choose me over somebody else? And we talked about it in the last podcast. Relationships can be a, a certain part of that, but our systems are turnaround. You know, there’s so many things we can look at internally to say that we live up to that. I think the other hard part, and maybe it’s an important part, is to figure out how to assess what your competitors are doing. If you’re losing sales to your competitors, can you try and assess what they’re doing that is making them win and you not? David: Yeah, and for a lot of people, the difference between an online business and an offline. Is like night and day. Very often there are offline businesses that are trying to compete with online businesses, which have a completely different set of rules and a completely different set of benefits. So very often, rather than saying, how can I compete with this website or whatever, it’s often better to say, how can I be competitive among the people who aren’t really interested in buying from a website, the people who are actually interested in buying from a human? If I’m selling as a human, right? If I’m selling through a website, then I have to ask the opposite question. But there’s always something that we could and should be doing that will differentiate us from our competitors, and that’s what we need to find out. Dan Kennedy, the marketing legend, I remember he said in a seminar one time, the question that we really need to ask ourselves: Why should I do business with you versus any and every other option available to me, including doing nothing? And I was like, wow. Mind blown. Right? But I’ve considered that question so many times over the years. And the last part of it, “including doing nothing” is huge. Because the biggest thing that people tend to do when they’re not buying is they’re deferring. They’re delaying, they’re not doing anything. So the answer to that question has to position us in a way where doing business with us is better than them continuing to do what they’re doing or doing nothing. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And such a great point. I’m just sitting here thinking about ways to differentiate myself. I personally am somebody who I don’t want to talk to anybody. I want to do it all online. In fact, I will look for every last option to do it online. But if I’m looking for it online and then suddenly I get something in the mail that is a free piece of, you know, talking about promotional products. No website is going to do that, right? And so now I have something tangible and there’s a name attached to that. And if that gets followed up by a phone call, then that’s a way in the door, that a website is never going to do. A website is going to sit there. They’re going to do their Google ads and everything else, and they’re going to be competing for the same space in those search engines. And so for you to try and rank even at a place where you’re going to get seen can be very difficult. So, the website path, I think in many ways is the harder path if you’re not already dominant in that area. David: Right, and so many of the people that we work with are individuals or small businesses that are looking to get attention. They’re looking to create awareness in their market. They’re not sure how to do it. They look at all the online solutions and they get overwhelmed by that. But it really is apples and oranges. And one of the analogies I use very often is it’s the difference between the kind of person who is going to hire a contractor to put a deck on the back of their house or go to Home Depot, buy the lumber, buy the nails, buy the tools, buy the saws, and do it themselves, right? The people who end up going to the websites are the do-it-yourselfers. And so for most business, If you don’t want to compete with that, then you need to make sure that that’s one of your differentiators. That you’re looking for the people who would much rather interact with another human being. And even those who might prefer to do business online, like you indicated. If I can do it quietly myself, I’m happy to do that. The only time that’s really different is that if you’re going to buy something and you know somebody and you trust somebody in that realm, then you’re actually kind of excited to pick up the phone. When you want to buy something from somebody that you know and like and trust, as the old saying goes, you’re excited to do that. You’d rather do that than go online and find it. Which also goes back to our last discussion about relationships. So, When we think in terms of what makes us different, a lot of it should be addressing who is our ideal target market? And it’s largely going to consist of people who want to do business the way that we do business, and then matching up our style of business with the way that they want to do it. But identifying those people and disqualifying those who don’t meet those criteria are really the quickest ways to do that. Jay: Yeah, I love that because I think so often in business, we feel like we have to sell to the whole world, like everybody is our client and that makes it very hard to zero in, very hard to market to. You’re going to dilute your marketing power when you do that And what also occurs to me, David, is that you can do both. I mean, in the business model I’m in, we have a website that gives information. But we also offer a free 20 minute consultation. So now you’ve got kind of both. If they just want information from the website, then great. If they want to talk to a human being and have specific answers to their situation, then great. And we do well off of both of those models. So it’s not like you have to pick one over the other. But one of the things I think is very important is you have to have somebody during that consultation who is good. And if it’s you, then great. But if that 20 minute consultation is a sales call, then you’ll have blown your credibility. You need to make it a legitimate consultation where you provide a value and a service. If they just get a sales call, man, I will hang that phone up so fast, you know, and move on to the next person. David: Right. And I think for a lot of people, a lot of businesses, a lot of salespeople, the website is a good place for them to be able to deliver information that will advance the sale, advance the conversation. So if you’ve got access to resources like that, you can say to someone who would like to interact with a human being you can go to the website, you can download that, or if you’d like, I’ll email it to you. And the people who want to do business with humans might say, “yeah, just email it to me. I’d rather do that.” So identifying your target audience, letting people know the way that you do things. Those are the big differentiators that people are looking for. And at that point, a lot of it becomes simply finding the right audience. Not trying to convince or persuade people who are not interested in doing business the way you do busin

    13 min

  2. APR 28

    Strengthen Client Relationships & Increase Repeat Business

    Strengthen client relationships if you want to increase repeat business. Some people feel like they can get more attention from a salesperson calling than they get at home because maybe they feel like this person’s listening, paying attention and then asking about it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to strengthen client relationships. Welcome back. Jay: Hey, David, once again. It’s great to be here and I think that this is another really, really important topic. The key word for me is relationships. I think that oftentimes you see people with a business model who want to “turn ’em and burn ’em,” so to speak, and they don’t think about that word, relationships and how important it is. David: Yeah. And very often, even if they don’t intend to do it, the tendency among many salespeople is to get in there, make the sale, move on, get to the next one, get to the next one, get to the next one. And when it happens this way, it’s very difficult to really maximize the value of those relationships in terms of dollars, but also just in terms of the relationship itself. When you do that, when you just get in there, you sell something and then you move on to the next one, you’re not really building and nurturing a relationship, which is critical if you don’t want to have to constantly replace the clients that you’re losing because you’re not maintaining those relationships in the first place. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is that there is for most companies a customer acquisition cost. And so if you’ve already paid that cost to get that customer, well, that goes away if you can build a relationship and they continue to use you. That to me is just such an important approach. If you’re just doing it one at a time, you’re going to pay that cost every single time, and it’s going to lower your profit margins. David: I completely agree, and people talk about that sort of thing all the time. We all know that it costs a whole lot less to resell an existing customer than it does to find and sell a new customer. We all know it intellectually, but it is rarely practiced as well as it could be and should be within most businesses. You know, an analogy that helped me a lot was when I realized that when we’re building a client base, it’s a little like building a brick wall. You know, you get that first brick in place and then you get the next brick in place and the next brick in place, right? So your first year in business, you’ve got this sort of layer of bricks. These are each of the initial customers that you brought in. And then, your second year in business, if you’re able to maintain all the customers you brought in the first time, then you can add on, you can layer in another layer of bricks, another layer of customers, and then your third year you can build in a third level and you can continue to grow it like that. And eventually you’ve got this great monolith of exceptional clients who continue to pay you money on an ongoing basis. But the problem is that we are not able to retain those customers. You get a crack in that, one of the bricks disappears from the first level, then your second year in business, you’re starting out by plugging the holes. You have to replace those missing customers. And so everything takes a lot longer. You’re essentially reconstructing your customer base, and a lot of it is unnecessary if we would just focus on strengthening and maintaining those client relationships. Jay: Yeah, and there’s several ways to do that, right? Phone calls, emails, drip campaigns from your customer management system. There’s a lot of ways to do that. But I got to tell you, you know, as somebody who’s on the phone all day long doing sales, when I already know that person and they know me, it’s just easier all the way around. I mean, it just feels so good when I call ’em and they’re like, “Hey Jay, how’s it going?” Instead of, “what do you want?” You know, “I don’t have time for you.” It doesn’t just affect your sales, I think it affects your peace of mind, right? To work with customers who know you and like you, and know you provide a good service. That’s just a great feeling and it really helps motivate you, I think, to move forward. David: Yeah, and so much of it is a mentality issue. If we go into that call with the idea of “I want to sell this person something.” With every single call, then that’s not going to build and strengthen the relationship. Sometimes those calls are just designed to find out how they’re doing, what they need, what they’re struggling with, how the last thing that we sold them worked out for them, what’s working for them, what’s not working for them. Because those are the types of things that many salespeople never bothered to do. They’re just so busy, as you indicated, just sort of churning and getting from the next customer to the next customer, to the next customer that they miss out on, okay, well what happened with that order? What happened with that thing you bought from me? Did that work out well? Are there things that could have been done better? If you’re buying something for me, and this is particularly true in the promotional products industry, where sometimes people will buy promotional items and we’ll contact them back and say, Hey, how did that promotion go? And they say, you know what? It’s still here in a box by my desk. We haven’t given them out yet. Well, that’s not going to get the job done, right. Not only is that not going to get you a reorder, it’s not going to get them whatever result they wanted from buying that product in the first place. And so those are the types of things that need to be corrected. So very often, what I recommend for my clients is that when there is follow up, effective follow up on a sale, it’s not just about, are you out of the thing you bought for me yet, and do you want to buy more? It’s about how did that go? What might have worked better? What other alternatives could and should we consider? Because that’s the type of thing that allows them to recognize that we’re actually trying to solve a need for them. We’re trying to solve a problem as opposed to just providing them more and more stuff. Jay: Yeah, I love this concept. Something as simple as a follow up call to say how did that work out? And if it didn’t, help educate them on how they could do it better and come up with strategies together to make it work, and not make it sound like I’m just pressuring you for more product. I think that that builds a powerful relationship. And maybe they don’t need more product right now. But because you’ve taken the time to do that, it’s one of the things I love about your brick wall concept is you may not even be calling the first layer right now. But you’re going to get surprise orders from them that you weren’t expecting because they’re starting another campaign or whatever. So it stops being just when I call, I get an order. And starts being this constant income stream from all of these relationships that I’ve built over time. And that’s a lot less work, right? David: It is a lot less work, yes. And one of the things that we focus on in our Total Market Domination course with our clients is the idea of creating value in every communication with a prospect or client. So if somebody bought from you previously, when we’re reaching out to them, it’s not just about asking for the order. It’s about creating value and asking yourself a question, how can I create value in my next communication? Whether it’s an email or a text, or a phone call. Not just the idea of “checking in” or “seeing how you’re doing,” but being able to say something that will actually create some value for them in terms of an idea, a thought they didn’t have, a concept they hadn’t considered before. Something that allows them to think, “oh wow, that’s great. I hadn’t thought of that.” And then for a lot of people, Potentially automating that sort of thing. And that’s another one of the things that we get involved with in our program, is allowing our people to create, set up drip campaigns that are designed to create value for the prospects and clients, even when we’re not physically in front of them. Because too often, one of the reasons that follow up doesn’t happen is, oh, well I don’t have time. I’m too busy. I’m distracted. Right? I’m busy dealing with other clients. But when you are able to. Create value in your communications and potentially stack that value in the form of messages that are going out on an ongoing basis to create value for the specific purpose of creating value for those customers. It creates a level of loyalty that most people never see. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think, you know, when you talk about value in emails, I know from my own personal experience, going through all the emails we get, and let’s be honest, we get so many emails. When they’re just like, “Hey, we’ve got a special on this.” I’m like, “delete.” But when for example, if I got an email saying, here’s a promotional product success story, right? Something like that, to me I would be much more likely to read that if I rely on promotional products. Because I know that’s going to help me. And educate me a little bit. So we try that in every one of our drip campaigns as well. We’ve got to have something more than just a price point or a sale, something valuable that will draw them in. And also, I think it helps them know that you care, you want to educate them. So again, it changes that relationship. So, so important. David: And when we think about the idea of building relationships or strengthening relationships, obviously it involves communication. Business relationships a

    15 min

  3. APR 21

    Earning What You’re Worth? If Not, Here’s How to Fix It

    Don’t feel like you’re earning what you’re worth? Consider this: When you outproduce what you earn, it creates friction. It creates a bit of tension. And in most well-run businesses, the organization says, “this person needs to be compensated more.” If that’s not happening in the organization you’re with, if you are outproducing what you’re earning, it means that there are plenty of opportunities for you somewhere else that will actually recognize and appreciate that value and reward you accordingly. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be asking the question, are you earning what you’re worth? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David, it’s great to be with you again. And as I was thinking about this question, I realize I’m not sure I know what I’m worth. I know some people who say, my time is worth this much money. If I’m not making it, I have to change something or do something. I’m not there yet. I’m just not. David: Yeah. I think you’re not alone. I think there are a lot of people who struggle with this. The real challenge comes in the last half of the question. You know what you’re worth because you can’t answer the question until you determine that part of it. Are you earning it? Well, I don’t know. I have to know what I’m worth. Or I have to decide what I’m worth, choose what I’m worth. Choose what I think I’m worth. I’ve said this to a number of people over the years. The reason that I ended up getting into business myself is that I couldn’t find anyone else who was willing to pay me what I thought I was worth. Right? You work in different jobs and say, okay, I feel like I’m worth more than this. Well, when you start your own business, you earn what you’re worth. Because if you’re not producing anything, you’re not earning anything. And if you start earning, then whatever you’re producing justifies it. And so essentially you’re earning what you’re worth. But even with all that, those of us in sales or those of us who own businesses, may still feel like the work we’re doing is costing us too much in terms of time and energy and effort and not producing what we’re looking for in terms of financial results. That’s why I ask the question. Jay: Yeah. I think it is so important that there’s other ways to be paid for your worth. You know, if you’re in a place where you get job recognition, where they listen to your ideas, where you can climb up the ladder, for a lot of people that’s worth more than the bottom line paycheck. Now, if they’re not getting enough to pay their bills, then obviously cash is king. But all the surveys I’ve seen say that people would take less money if they felt like they could get rewarded in other ways. Now, when you’re working for yourself, that equation changes completely. David: Yeah. And I mean, a lot of times people start their own business. They do their own thing because they figure it’s going to give them all sorts of time freedom and things that they don’t have in a regular job. And very often they find out it’s exactly the opposite. I think it was Michael Gerber, the author of the EMyth who talked about the fact that there are a lot of people who work for other companies and they say to themselves, “okay, this guy’s a jerk. I’m going to start my own business.” And they stop working for a jerk and they start working for a maniac… themselves. And when I heard that line I’m like, “that is so true.” So often we will do things in our own businesses that we would probably never do for another employer. We wouldn’t put in the amount of hours, thought, and all that sort of thing. Now, there are employees who do that. There are employees who are really focused on that and who really give their all to a job. But when you are an entrepreneur, particularly if you’re a solo entrepreneur, when you’re doing your own thing, you’re the business. And so the things that you do have to count, they have to matter. And the actions we take have to generate. enough of a result that we’re able to get the kind of money that we need to make just to maintain the business, let alone earn a good living. Jay: Yeah. And don’t you think we kind of romanticize what it is to be an entrepreneur? To be a small business person? You know, we picture all the good. , you know, all the freedom that we’re going to have and everything else. And sometimes what we did is we gave ourself twice the work and half the pay. And so, it becomes hard when you think, what your worth? But you just can’t figure out how to get there. David: Yeah, exactly. And it is very romantic in the early stages. You have this idea of what it’s likely to be like. But that is often very different from how it actually works out. So whether someone is an employee or an employer, the idea of earning what you’re worth starts with identifying, okay, well, what am I worth or what would I like to be worth in terms of dollars, in terms of time freedom, in terms of relationship freedom, all that sort of thing. Because it all plays into it. If you are a people person and you like interacting with other people, and suddenly you’re forced to work by yourself from home, that’s going to be an issue for you. So for some people, currency is interacting with others. And so we have to think in terms of what’s important to me as far as my work life is concerned? Does it involve interacting with a lot of other people? Does it involve learning things? Because there are some people who are real learners and they like to constantly be learning new things and testing new things and applying new things. And for them that can really get them fired up and that can be a form of currency as well –learning new things, growing within a job, growing in terms of responsibility. Because all of that is designed to increase your worth to the business, but really, ultimately to the market, which is the most important thing. If you’re able to increase your value to the market, the people who buy from your company, then your value goes up. And sometimes we try to increase our value to an employer, and maybe the employer just has a certain view that’s not going to line up with that. So I feel like whenever we focus on trying to increase our value to the marketplace, we’re likely to create better results. Jay: Hmm. I think that’s an excellent point. I think also if you can really establish what your time is worth, if you can come up with an equation, then you can start knowing when and how you should delegate, right? Because if you are doing things that are not worth your time, then you’re wasting time. You know, we talk about time capital, right? And we talk about delegation a lot on this podcast. But if you think your time is worth $150 an hour and you’re doing something that you could pay somebody $18 an hour, well, then you’re not going to make what you think you need to make. And so you’ve got to figure out those equations. And sometimes it takes time to do that. David: Yeah, exactly. And it’s also important to think in terms of what is it that’s holding you back? We need to focus on what is the bottleneck that is keeping us from earning the amount of money we want to earn or whatever it is that we want to earn as a result of the work that we’re doing. And just as in manufacturing, in the book The Goal by Eli Goldratt. He talked about the idea that there’s usually one primary bottleneck in a manufacturing organization. It’s easy to visualize, because if there’s one machine in the middle of a company and that’s designed to churn out the product and that machine is broken, you’ll have people on the front end of the machine who are trying to load it up and they can’t do it. You’ll have people on the back end of the machine who can’t unload it. And shipping people who can’t ship it, and salespeople who can’t sell it, because they can’t produce it because of that one thing. When you are in sales yourself or when you own a business yourself, it’s not always easy to see the one thing that’s keeping it from happening. Particularly when you’re in sales. Because we think of sales as reaching out to people, talking to people, having conversations, closing sales, delivering product, that sort of thing. But within the sales process itself, there are various stages. Is the bottleneck in the prospecting that I’m doing? Am I reaching out to the wrong people? Am I attracting the wrong people in the marketing that I’m doing? Are my conversations not going the direction they need to go? Am I not being persuasive enough? Not responding to questions and concerns? Am I not addressing complaints? There are a lot of different areas there, and just one of them can be the same bottleneck as the bottleneck in the manufacturing facility. If you’ve got one particular thing that is slowing you down, the most important thing you can do is to identify that one thing. Because everything else you do around that is not going to produce the result. All the potential that you have for growing is behind that rock, essentially. If you’re going down the street and you come to a place where the road is completely blocked off, there’s a gigantic boulder and there’s no other way to get there, you got to figure out, “how am I going to get around this boulder?” Same thing in sales. We have to. What is it that is keeping us from earning what we feel we are worth? Now, sometimes it could be we just think we’re worth more than other people think we’re worth, at which point we either need to start our own business or we need to prove it. We need to generate results that are far more in excess of what we’re being paid to demonstrate that we’re worth it. And when you start to do that, when you take responsibility, it’s a whole lot e

    13 min

  4. APR 14

    Losing Business to Inferior Competitors?

    Very often, inferior competitors play the price card: Jay: I get that question. “Well, I talk to your competitor and they’re less expensive than you are.” Now I have to find a way to let them know, yeah, we are more expensive, but there’s a reason. It’s because we’re very good at what we do. We have certain guarantees that they don’t, or whatever it is. David: Yeah. A pack of cigarettes is cheaper too, but that can also kill you. No, that would not be a good answer. But sometimes it’s what we feel like saying… David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of losing business to inferior competitors. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It’s good to be here, David. This is one of the most frustrating things for me when I know that I have a better product. I have better customer service. I know this because I’ve heard complaints about my competitor. But you lose it to them for whatever reason. Well, that can really ruin your day , and it can also affect your business. David: It really can. Just this idea and even the words “inferior competitors” makes you think. Probably anyone in business who has competitors that you’ve run into has had this experience. And you’re like, I can’t believe they went with that person instead of us. You know that what you have is so much better and offers so much more. You know it will transform the person in positive ways so much more than if they go the other way. And yet they go in that direction. It can be extremely frustrating. So when we think about how to avoid losing business to inferior competitors, there are a number of different things that we can do. But I think it starts with recognizing, first of all, that they’re out there. That there are a number of people out there who are not as good as we are. Then it’s about how can I communicate that to my prospects without sounding bitter or frustrated? That can be a challenge sometimes. Jay: Yeah, I agree. I have people regularly ask me, what’s the difference between you and your competitor? And I find that you have to be very careful with this question. And the tactic that I’ve chosen is to say, here’s the value that we can bring you. Here’s what I know we can do. I try and steer it back or say, “I haven’t worked with them directly. “But let me tell you this is where we shine.” I know we’re going to bring you success in this way.” Because it’s always been weird to me that somebody would believe what I say about my competitor. I’m the worst person to ask. It’s like in politics when somebody runs an attack ad. Why would you believe the guy, you know what I mean? It ‘s the worst person to ask, but we put so much faith and trust in it. David: Right. One of the things that we do when people ask us is to say, “listen, anything I say is obviously going to be biased. Why don’t I fill you in on some of what our customers have said about that topic? Then we have videos, audios, and written testimonials of customers who worked with us. We’ll point them to that. And allow them to hear what other people just like them are saying about the products and services we offer. Sometimes there are situations where a customer will talk about a bad experience they had with one of our inferior competitors and the reason they came to us. So sometimes we’ll share those stories as well. Say, well, listen, I can’t tell you this personally. I’ve never personally dealt with this other company. But you know, we’ve had a number of customers who were dealing with them in the past, and here are the reasons they gave for switching over to us. They said that they found that we do this better and this better and this better. I don’t know if you’ve ever had any experience with that company. But if you have, you might have noticed those things as well. But either way, I can tell you that these are the things where we’re going to be very likely to provide you with better service in those areas. Jay: Yeah, that’s great. And I don’t want to skip over what you said about having customer reviews and testimonials available. That’s got to be an important part of your sales process because, you know, I have people ask me all the time, well, can I talk to somebody who’s worked with you? And in my particular line of work, my customers don’t want to receive calls every day to give references to people. But if you have a system, you know, if you use an online customer service rating system, or if you have, as you said, recorded video testimonials, that’s all very important. But you have to make a concerted effort and have a system to get those and a place to post those. David: Yeah. One of the places where we got a lot of them was at trade shows. We would be at trade shows and people would come up to the booth and they would start telling us a story. Oh, I love your program. I was able to bring in three new accounts as a result of this. And we’d say, wait, wait, hang on a second. Would you do me a favor? Stand over here. We’d put them in front of our booth where our logo is, and say, “I just want to shoot a quick video. Just tell your story to my camera. Okay?” “Start out with your name, your company name, and what happened. Okay. Ready? Go!” And then they would say their name and their company name and they’d say what happened. And they’d just rattle off these beautiful testimonials that were straight from the heart. They weren’t scripted, there were no bullet points. They were just saying what they came up to us to say. And then we put those on our website. We have a page on our website. We call it The Wall of Fame, and that’s for people who have had successful experiences with our program and wanted to share those experiences. It’s at TopSecrets.com/results if you’d like to see our Wall of Fame page. And so a lot of times now when we have new customers, we’ll say to them, Hey, take a look at this page. I would love for you to be our next testimonial on the Wall of Fame. And now they can just shoot them from their own homes on their own iPhones and that sort of thing and send it in like that. But a lot of times, when you deliver what you promise to people, they’re more than happy to do that sort of thing if you just ask them. Now, some people are a little shy, they’re a little more hesitant to do that. But in those cases, even if they send you an email and maybe a publicity photo that they might have on their website, you can use the photo next to the quotes of what they said. You can pull out a headline of something they said that was particularly important. Put that at the top in bigger letters as a headline. So they see the headline, they see the person’s face. And then they see the description of exactly what they said. It just adds credibility. And it also gives them a chance to promote themselves and their brand because it would have their logo or their company name on it as well. So it’s really a win for everyone as long as what you’re doing actually delivers the results you’re promising. Jay: Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. And I think the other part of that is if you can have a system that encourages people who’ve had a good experience to refer their associates, other companies, people they’re working with to you. This can either be done as you know, on your website, you can have 10% off if you refer a friend, or it could be part of your phone call process. Hey, just, is there anybody else you can think of that would benefit from our services? Because more than anything else, more than anything that I see online, if I hear a referral from somebody who has said I’ve used them, there’s nothing more powerful in business, to me, and the way I look at who I’m going to choose to do business with. David: Exactly. And as you pointed out earlier, it’s not like you’re going to be giving out phone numbers of all your best clients and having them annoy them at work because that’s the quickest way to annoy your best clients. I’ve had situations where people ask me that question and I said, well, we don’t give out our customer’s contact information, but take a look at our Wall of Fame and if you have any questions, let me know. And they’ll look at it and they’ll see page after page and video after video of people telling their own words and their own stories. They’ll say, well, you know, I’d really like to talk to somebody. And I’ll say, well, you know what? I’m not going to give out that information because it’s more important for me to protect my customers than it is to bring in a new one who’s still skeptical after seeing all that stuff. But I’ve also had people who have actually dug up the information. They go to the Wall of Fame, they find the person’s name, they look them up, and they call them and they talk to them. So since it’s rare that that happens, sometimes the people on the Wall of Fame will call and say, Hey, I got a call from somebody. I’m like, well, listen, I didn’t give out your number. They must have checked you out. And at that point, you know, they’re fine with it. They’re not upset about it. But people can be funny with that, you know, it’s like, no, I must speak to the person. But I’ve got to tell you, the times that’s happened, most of the time those people are just using it as an excuse and they don’t end up becoming customers anyway, or they don’t end up becoming good customers, the ones who actually insist on doing that. If they can’t extrapolate after seeing testimonial, after testimonial, after testimonial, then they’re probably not a good fit to begin with. Jay: Yeah. And I think having the testimonials, I love the idea of the Wall of Fame, can be really helpful if you’re more expensive than your competitors. Because you know, you may be on the prem

    14 min

  5. APR 7

    Still Feeling Overwhelmed? Fix These 2 Things First

    If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, it’s often just a good idea to take a moment and consider: What exactly is it that I’m struggling with at the moment? What are the specific things that make me feel overwhelmed? Then, what’s the one thing I really need to be doing right now and what’s the next step I can take toward making that happen? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be continuing our discussion on how to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. It’s good to be back and I’m really glad we’re following up on this topic because after we recorded the last podcast, we kind of sat around and continued the discussion and thought, we need to share this with everybody as well. Before we were talking about self-awareness. But it really occurs to me that who you surround yourself with, especially on those days when you’re feeling overwhelmed, that’s going to be really important. David: Absolutely. And as you said, we started talking about it after the last podcast and the conversation got so good, I’m like, “we need to hit record and just keep going on this topic.” Because you raised a great point, particularly related to who we’re surrounding ourselves with. And very often when we are in that negative state that we had talked about in the previous episode, where we bring the wrong “us” to work, or the wrong us shows up to work, you know, the unmotivated, unfocused version of ourselves show up. When we do that, we limit the kind of people that we’re even going to be able to interact with. Because most other motivated, focused people don’t really want to be around that version of us. And so the more we bring that version of ourselves to work, the less likely we are going to be to get in front of other people who are going to help pull us out of whatever it is that we are stuck into. Jay: Yeah, and I think the exception to that, and I’ve experienced this, is if you have people who know you well enough and you’ve built trust with them and they are able to tell you and point out, you know, is everything okay? Because you kind of feel like you’re off your game a little bit today. You know, if you surround yourself with yes men, then you’re not going to get that. And if you surround yourself with people who are negative all the time, then they’re going to be bringing you down even on the good days. So being able to assess your team and hire appropriately is so critical, and I don’t think people really think about it in those terms. David: I agree completely. I also think that when people tend to give into those emotions, when they give into the overwhelm and they just basically withdraw and say, “no, I can’t do it, I’m out.” At that point, what are they leaving to themselves? I mean, they’re really leaving the opposite. And there are people who will unintentionally feed into that. If you say, ” I’m just overwhelmed. I don’t feel like doing this.” They’ll say, “well, that’s okay,” you know, “Hey, you don’t have to do it.” And maybe that’s true, and if it’s something that’s not good for you, you definitely shouldn’t do it. But if it’s something that you were committed to, that you really wanted to be able to accomplish, and you’re having an off day and you make a decision like that, in a lot of cases, there’s no going back on that. Jay: Yeah, you’re exactly right. And so in that point you need somebody to say, “look, this is really important. We plan this out. You got this.” You know, this is really important because if we can close this sale, then it’s going to propel us forward. If you can surround yourself, at least have one person on your team like that, what a game changer. But I think when we’re interviewing people, we’re thinking more about will they be able to accomplish a specific task, more than we’re saying, will they fit into our culture and will they be somebody who brings me down or brings me up and helps move the whole team forward? David: Yeah, and even in our personal lives, there are times and there are people in our personal lives where we may not be able to share exactly what we’re going through or what we’re dealing with. I mean, there are people who, if you tell them about something that’s bothering you , they’re either going to then tell you about 10 other things that they’re dealing with that are a lot worse, or they’re going to tell you that why what you’re dealing with isn’t that bad. Or they’re going to tell you that because of what you’re suffering with, now it’s going to make it worse for them because now they’re going to be worried about you. Right? There are all kinds of things that can happen in that regard. So your point about at least having one person, you can go to, to be able to say, “Hey, listen, this is what I’m struggling with. What do you recommend,” is going to be really helpful. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me, I don’t know if you remember the old Saturday Night Live skits, Doug and Debbie Downer, who were at work and everything they did, they would just find a way to make it worse. I’ve worked with Doug and Debbie Downer and it becomes very hard to maintain momentum when you have those people. It’s a fine balance. You want somebody who can see the other side and give constructive criticism or somebody who’s just always negative. and I think that as an owner or a manager, you have to be able to identify how that person is affecting the team. And let that person know. And if you can coach them through it, great. If not, they just may not be a good fit. David: Absolutely. So looking around and deciding, okay, who am I interacting with? Who should I be interacting with? Who could I be interacting with to be able to help me out of whatever issues I’m dealing with in terms of feeling overwhelmed? That’s a big one. Another one that you raised in our time between the podcast was the idea of utilizing delegation. So let’s dig into that a bit. Jay: Yeah. Also so important, especially if you’re starting out. We’ve talked in the past about doing the things that are most important that only you can do. But if you are on your own, you know, or if it’s you and your wife or you know, starting out. You have to do everything. But it’s not true in today’s world anymore. It is so easy to hire a part-time virtual assistant. There are websites like Upwork or Fiverr that I’ve used many times now because I realize doing this one task is something that I shouldn’t be doing, because there’s so many other things that are more important for me to do. And so, I think people often think, well I don’t have money to hire a full-time or part-time employee. Well, you don’t have to in today’s world, and I love that. David: Yeah, that’s exactly right. You really can find most of the skills that you need in a way that is affordable and temporary. I know for decades, a lot of the people that I worked with in the promotional products industry really struggled with the idea of being able to get additional help. Where can I find somebody to help with sending out invoices and that type of thing? Because 20 years ago it meant you had to hire someone and have them sitting there in a chair in your office doing the work. Well, that is now no longer the case at all. It is so easy to delegate work to temporaries or virtual assistants who can do it from wherever they are, as time allows, and you get the benefit of being able to just utilize whatever time they have to do it without having to pay them to be there for 40 hours a week, to do what might just be a five or 10 hour a week job. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. But the other part of it is that’s their skill set. That’s what they do every day, right? So if you’re doing it, it’s probably not your skill set. It’s something that you have to do, you don’t want to do. When you hand it over to a professional, like in promotional products, maybe somebody will ask you for logo design or creative layout or something like that. If you’re not a graphic designer or even if you are, I’ve had stuff produced on Fiverr that it’s amazing. Because there are so many talented people there. So you can improve your product and get things off of your plate at the same time. David: Yeah. In the early days of my promotional products business, I invested in a program called Corel Draw, which of course allowed you to do graphic designs. I had no talent for doing graphic design, but I had Corell draw. And I made the mistake of thinking that if I had a tool that would allow me to create art, that I should actually create art, which was not the truth at all. It’s like saying, “here’s a bunch of paintbrushes, go paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” right? Just because you have the tools doesn’t mean you have the skill. And so I learned fairly early on after that experience that it would make a whole lot more sense for me to pay someone to recreate a logo than for me to try to do it pixel by pixel, not being an artist, not being good at it. Because I could spend six hours on a job that would take somebody who knew how to do it, 15 minutes. And I did that very often in my business and I’d never go back to that again. Jay: No, and you don’t have to, and the product is going to be better. So finding those little ways to offload things that you shouldn’t be doing. I always feel like your goal should be doing the things that only you can do. And then if you can delegate the rest to other people, you’re going to have fewer of those days when you’re overwhelmed. But then, probably the subject of another podcast. How do you then keep that team moving forward? How do you delegate and follow up? Because if you do that wrong, if you micromanage, things like that, then yo

    11 min

  6. MAR 31

    How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed at Work (and Get More Done!)

    To stop feeling overwhelmed at work and get more done, consider which version of you is showing up. Some days the you that shows up is the focused, motivated, energized, action-taking you. And some days the you that shows up is the unfocused, unmotivated, lethargic, non-action-taking you. When we recognize this in advance, we can do a couple of things. One is to say, “okay, I don’t really like the me that showed up today. Can I get myself in gear? Take some sort of action? Can I get myself motivated? Or will I at least take the next step?” Will I take one small step in the direction of accomplishing what I’ve told myself and others that I intend to do? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of how to avoid getting overwhelmed. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. It’s great to be here, and this is such an important topic, especially for the entrepreneur. There are so many different things going on. And oftentimes you have to be the front office, the back office, you have to fulfill the orders. I mean, there are just so many things, and keeping track of it can be very difficult. David: It can. Before we even really dive in too much, I just want to point out, first of all, we are not experts in the mental health field at all, right? So if you’re struggling with actual mental health issues, this is not the podcast to listen to. But if you’re in sales, marketing or business ownership, dealing with the day-to-day and occasionally feeling overwhelmed, that’s what we’ll be talking about. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed or stressed in business, that will be the discussion at hand today. As you were saying, Jay, most of us have this situation at one point or another when you’re in business, particularly when you’re in sales. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed on some days. It’s like, “I don’t feel like making the calls,” or “I’m struggling with this or that.” And just that thought alone can stop some people in their tracks and cause them to not move forward. Jay: Yeah. I think first of all, it’s important to tell people it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. I mean, that’s the reality for most people. But if that feeling becomes a stress paralysis, like I’ve experienced, like there are so many things going on. I don’t know which one I should be focusing on, so I end up doing less instead of more. That can really be damaging to your business. David: It absolutely is. I find that in a lot of cases, the things that cause us to feel overwhelmed are when we focus on all the different things that we have to do or all the different things that have to be done. It’s the fact there are too many things coming at us at once. Sometimes it’s the habit of looking at everything, as opposed to looking at the one thing or the next thing that I can do, which would allow us to move forward. I’m sure that sounds very simplistic, and to some degree it is. But when we’re struggling with that, a lot of it really becomes about our focus. How tightly can we narrow our focus so we can actually concentrate on doing just one thing? What’s the one, tiny, next thing I can do to move forward so I don’t just give up? Jay: Yeah, and a lot of people I think, sometimes want to give up. But I think it’s really important to do some work in advance here. If you don’t have a list or a plan that talks about all of those things that need to be done and maybe prioritize them. If you don’t have that done, then it’s going to be very hard, like you said, to say, what is the one thing I should be doing right now? Because you haven’t taken the time to plan ahead and even know, so, then it becomes “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” right? And sometimes that squeaky wheel is just the last thing that you should be doing. David: Yeah, that is exactly true, and it happens to probably all of us at one point or another where there are a lot of things to do, and as you said, whatever is making the most noise, whatever is rattling our cage at the moment gets done when in actuality, that might be something that either shouldn’t be done at all, or it should be something that should be prioritized or de-prioritized to move down farther on the list. I think it’s also important to understand that all of us have good days and bad days. And whenever we make life-altering decisions on bad days, it’s usually not a good outcome. So part of it also is just recognizing when we’re having the kind of days where we are feeling overwhelmed when we’re feeling like things are too much, and then maybe just sort of holding off on making big important decisions until we feel like we’re in better control of our thoughts and our direction and our focus. Jay: So I think what you’re really talking about, this pre-planning and being aware of how you feel, it’s self-awareness. I think that may be one of the hardest skills to master is understanding at all times how you feel and are you prepared to do something. Often, even that bad day, as you said, is going to send us in a certain direction and the next day we’re going to regret it. That’s what we’re trying to avoid. Right? David: Yeah, because what also happens is that a lot of times when we give into these feelings, if I’m feeling overwhelmed and I say, okay, well I’m just not going to do that. I’m going to bail out on this and I’m going to bail out on that. Right? What we’re doing essentially is we are programming ourselves to be able to do less, to be able to perform less, to be able to tolerate less. And each time we do that, it can really become a downward spiral because now instead of saying, okay, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, but what’s the one thing I can do? What’s the one action I can take on this particular project to keep this important thing moving forward? If we just give up on that or any other project that is important to us, we are training ourselves to do that going forward. Because the more we get used to and the more we create a habit of bailing out on things that make us feel a little uncomfortable, the less likely we are going to be able to do anything like that going forward, which is absolutely harmful if the goal is personal and professional growth. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And for me, one of the tricks I learned, and I learned it from my mom, is sometimes when you feel like you can’t do anything or you’re stressed, just do something very small. I remember when she was really stressed about something and instead of sitting there and just stewing in it, she’s like, I’m going to vacuum. You know? And to me, getting the vacuuming done provided a sense of forward movement and the feeling of productivity will often feed more productivity. But sitting there doing nothing that’s just going to feed doing nothing. David: Yeah. And a lot of that I think is about getting out of your head and getting into your body, right? Getting into any kind of movement, taking action is almost always better than just, you used the word stewing, you know, stewing in your own brain and churning stuff over and over again, that’s only going to make you less efficient, less effective, less productive. And we need to avoid that at all costs. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, one of the things that I did, because I realized that I suffer from this kind of stress paralysis, is I made a list of little things that I could do. Because I realized my mood, as you said, really determines what I want to do. So sometimes blocking out your schedule is very important, and I think it depends on your personality, whether or not that works for you. But for me, I found, well, I’m going to make a list of things that I can work on and my mood kind of dictates the thing that I’m going to focus on in that minute. Now I have the type of work where I can do that, other people don’t. But that has been very helpful to me so that I can just get that moment of productivity in. And then I feel good about myself and now I can go on to other things. David: Yeah, and I think the whole idea of taking action based on our feelings, that by itself is a privilege that not everybody has. Like you were talking about, if you have a particular job and you are required to do things, then you may not feel like it, you may not be in a great mood, you may feel unmotivated, you may feel overwhelmed, but in order to keep that job, you have to continue to take action and move forward. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing for people who even aren’t in a situation like that. Those of us who do have a little more control over our schedules should probably not use that ability to take our own power away from us by giving in, by yielding to whatever negative feeling or whatever negative temptation it is that we have, whether it’s the temptation to give up or give in, or eat an entire chocolate cake or whatever your temptation is. Now we’re veering into other territory, but I think that sometimes people look at overwhelm in business as being separate or different than any other type of either not wanting to do something or wanting to do something. But ultimately it boils down to, you know, what are you committed to? What have you said you are going to do? What are you planning to do? And if you are continuing to take action on that stuff, then you’re honoring your own stated goals. And when you stop taking action on your own stated goals because you feel, whatever, overwhelmed or tired or exhausted, or whatever the words are, you just continue to disempower yourself. Jay: Yeah, disempower. That’s a great word for it. What comes to mind for me when I’m in these modes is sometimes I tell myself, “fake it until you make it.” You know, just like you said, because if I’ve got something scheduled and I don’t feel up to it, but I’ve

    13 min

  7. MAR 24

    How to Get Prospects to Respond

    When you need to get prospects to respond, it’s time to fix your follow-up strategy. Think in terms of what gets your attention, what gets you to respond? What makes you want to respond when someone else is reaching out to you? That can also be a great indicator of what you may want to be saying to the other person to try to get a response from them. Now, they might not respond to exactly the same things that you respond to. But it’s possible they will, and it’s not a bad place to start… David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarlane and I will be discussing why people don’t respond. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much David. This is something that frustrates me in the process when I’ve made a good faith effort, I’m expecting a response and I get crickets and it, you know, it’s one of the hardest things to deal with in sales because you got to constantly be remotivation yourself and when you’re not getting a response back, it’s hard to stay motivated. David: It is. And it’s hard to not take it personally sometimes. Even though it’s very rarely personal. It’s hardly ever personal. It’s almost never personal, but it’s still hard to get past that when it’s happening. Jay: Yeah, I I totally agree with you. And again, I think you just kind of have to have that framework that you know it’s going to happen. It’s not personal and you just got to get through those. But I also think that you have to ask yourself some questions and reassess what is our communication system? I’ve found that there are people who will respond via text, but they’re never going to respond via email or they will pick up their phone or they’ll never pick up their phone. So you’re kind of learning, and I keep track of these notes as I’m trying to reach out to people. And if I can get somebody via text, that’s the way I’m going. I just will stop sending that person emails. So, I think learning along the way about each person and their preferred mode of contact is very important. David: Yeah, that is a huge one. such a great point. And I know we’ve talked about this in previous podcasts. We normally talk about it in terms of marketing and sales, but it applies just as much to telephone calls because they’re marketing, they’re sales as well. But we’ve talked in the past about the MVPs of Marketing. What is the marketing message we want to communicate? Which combination of marketing vehicles are we going to use to communicate the message? And who are the people or prospects that we need to reach? And when people are not responding? Well, the P part of it is covered. The people that we’re talking to, the person who’s not responding, that’s the person that we’re talking about. So if they’re not responding, it is either the person themselves, they’re just not going to do it. But if they are still potentially going to be engaged with us, then the reason they’re not responding is usually either the message or the vehicle, like you pointed out. They’re not going to respond to an email, but they very likely will respond to a text. Cool. That’s easy. Okay. Now we’ll communicate via text. They won’t pick up the phone, they won’t return voicemails, but they will respond to text. Great. Once you get something like that nailed down, you’re back in the saddle again. as the old song went. But a lot of times people don’t even think of that because your preferred method of communication might be different than mine. And if mine is to pick up the phone and call you again and again and again and again, which it is not. But if it were, and if your method of communication is text, then you’re not going to respond to me. You’re probably going to get annoyed at what I’m doing and I’m going to be annoyed at the fact that you’re not responding to me. And it’s a simple disconnect that can actually be addressed very quickly. But if somebody is not responding to any of the different methods of communication that you’ve tried, and today there are a lot. If they don’t respond to you on the phone, you can send them a text, you can send them an email, you can message them on social media. You can send them something in the mail. There are lots of different things that you can do. If they’re not responding to any of it, then it’s very likely either the message that you’re communicating to them where they just want to have nothing to do with you, they don’t want to communicate with you at all, or it’s the person themselves, they’re just not going to do it. And for me, it’s very helpful to try to break those things down and when people don’t respond, it’s very discourteous in my opinion. That’s a nice word that I’m using there. It’s very discourteous, and so I try to communicate that to people in as nice a way as I can. Not to say, “Hey, you’re being rude,” but sometimes if I don’t get a response to something, I’ll reply back and I’ll say, Hey, listen, I haven’t heard back from you on this. Please let me know what you’re thinking either way. I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply. And very often just those words, “I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply,” will get some sort of response. Because what it’s saying is you’re not being courteous. But it’s not actually saying that. And so a lot of times people can read that and they can say, “oh yeah, I should reply to this because it isn’t courteous.” But you’re not accusing them. Jay: Yeah. David: So things like that where you can, and I’m not suggesting you just jump right into that, “Hey, you’re being rude.” I’m not suggesting any sort of attack like that. But just pointing out to them that if you’re a professional, you want to be treated like a professional. If I’m going to treat you like a professional, I’d appreciate if you would treat me like a professional. And again, you’re not saying this, you’re not lecturing, but you’re just sort of building in the subtext that if we’re going to work together, let’s work together. If we’re not going to work together, let’s not work together. But let’s just be upfront about it because our time is valuable. Jay: Yeah. And I think that’s more for people. That’s not really a cold calling technique, right? That’s David: No. Jay: After you’ve had some initial conversation, you’ve talked about maybe moving forward, and then suddenly they’re ghosting you. Right? Which is the term that everybody uses now, right? And you’re like, you know, I thought we were moving forward and now, nothing. I’m not getting anything from you. I think that’s when you can send a message like that. Because they’ve occupied your time. Right. And you only have a certain amount of time. Time capital, right? David: Right. Jay: And so, if they’ve taken up that time with you and expressed an interest, and now they’re ghosting you, it isn’t courteous. Because they’re not recognizing or respecting the amount of work and effort that you’ve put into them. So finding ways to communicate that, and I think you have, is a very important part of the process. But I’ll be honest, it’s one that makes me nervous. So… David: Sure, absolutely. And as we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, there may be a lot of reasons they’re not responding. And a lot of it is not personal. They could be very busy, they could be very distracted. It’s possible that they’re rude or obnoxious, but usually it’s not that if you’ve already had some sort of relationship with them. If you’ve had a conversation with them that was meaningful and went somewhere and seemed like you’re on the same page, then it’s usually not that. But they could be very busy or distracted or focused on other things or working under a time deadline. But that’s all about them. So if we sort of go back to what we were talking about in our previous podcast about taking ownership of our results, then we say, okay, well what can we do about it? If we need to get a call back, if we want to get a call back and they’re not responding, can I look at some of these other marketing vehicles? Can I look at the texts? Can I look at the email and see if I can get a response back like that? What can we do? Because, once again, if we just say, “well, they’re ghosting me,” we’re not taking action on our part to correct the situation. Jay: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the other things that I’ve done is oftentimes we’re trying to get through the gatekeeper, you know, because so many people have that gatekeeper. But oftentimes you could go back to the gatekeeper. You’ve gotten through, you’ve spoken to the principal, the one who writes the checks. Now he’s not responding. Sometimes going back to that gatekeeper and saying, Hey I know he is really busy. Do you think you can get me back on his schedule? David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And that’s a way for him to reserve out time for you. He doesn’t even know it’s happening right? But suddenly you appear on the schedule and you’re calling and he’s actually had that time blocked out by the gatekeeper. So that’s one tactic I’ve used in the past. David: It’s a great one. It really is. And also in terms of the messaging, if you think in terms of what gets your attention, what gets you to respond, what makes you want to respond when someone else is reaching out to you, that can also be a great indicator of what you may want to be saying to the other person to try to get a response from them. Now, they might not respond to exactly the same things that you respond to. But it’s possible they will, and it’s not a bad place to start. Another thing that I think it’s important to consider is that there are some cases where the person that you talked to, just doesn’t believe you, They don’t believe you

    15 min

  8. MAR 17

    Stop Making Excuses Instead of Sales

    I’ve seen situations like that where people are making excuses instead of sales. Somebody planned to sell something and was talking about it for a long time. But all the dominoes had to be lined up just right before they’d flick it. Flick one of them and get it going. And ultimately, nothing happened. Sometimes we have a great idea, but then it’s like, “oh, it seems like too much work” or “I don’t want to do it,” or “I’m scared,” or whatever the deal is. And unfortunately, you’re building bridges to nowhere when you do that. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing making excuses instead of sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. Such a pleasure to be here. And I’m excited about this topic. And I’m just going to be brutally honest upfront. I’m guilty of this very thing. As I’ve been involved in sales and sometimes numbers would drop, and the first thing I’m saying is, “well, it’s this,” or, “well, it’s that.” And the truth is it, might be. And so I think it’s important to always go back and reassess what you are doing and have you changed something or has something changed in your system? David: Yeah, it’s very easy to do. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Because whoever really wants to say ” it’s my fault?” And yet, our behavior is one of the only things that we really, truly have control over to the extent that we can get control over it, right? We can’t control a lot of outside factors, but we can largely control what we do and what we promise to do, and then try to connect the dots between those two things. Jay: Yeah. I remember I was in a training and they pointed out that so often when a mistake happens or say sales have a problem, we’re looking for the person to blame. And so often it’s not a person, it’s a system. It’s something that needs to be tweaked. But it’s so easy to just pick somebody and say, you know, “you’re the problem, you solve it.” Maybe you’re the frontline salesperson, and so you need to fix it or there are going to be consequences. And oftentimes I think that’s the wrong approach. David: Yeah, I agree. And I think the reason that this topic even came up is I had an experience, fairly recently, where I was just sort of blindsided by someone’s ability to blame every single outside factor rather than just the fact that they essentially weren’t selling. And this is common in a lot of different businesses. It’s common in a lot of different sales industries. A lot of times, “well, it’s the leads.” And if you ever saw Glengarry Glen Ross, “it’s the leads.” And I remember when I was first watching that movie, I was like, oh, that’s brutal. You know, it’s probably not the leads. And then you find out, in that particular movie, yeah, it was the leads, because they were giving them bad leads. That’s really the exception, rather than the rule though. It’s the leads, it’s the market, it’s the product, it’s the supply chain. There have been a lot of really, potentially very good excuses, a lot of different things that people can blame for their lack of producing, but none of that empowers the salesperson. None of it empowers the person who is making those excuses to actually address the issues that potentially need to be addressed. In other words, if there’s a problem with the leads, what can that person do to track down better leads? If it’s the market, are there other markets they can approach? Or are there segments of the market that they could and should be approaching? If it’s the product, are they representing the right product? Is there another product they should be selling? So for every excuse, there is normally something that the salesperson can do to address some aspect of the problem that they’re citing as being the real issue. Jay: Yeah, I think it’s so important what you’re talking about. Because I’ve been in a situation recently where we did a Google ad campaign and man, the leads were just coming in. But then we looked at our close rate, and it was just miserable. And so we had to assess, is this the type of lead we want? Because we’re spinning our wheels here. And so we had to change keywords and go through a lot of thought processes and reassess. Because in that case, it was the leads. But I also think it’s important, especially in sales, to constantly be reassessing your own performance and what you’re going through. because we fall into traps, right? And also it’s hard, the grind can be hard. And so things that you know you should be doing, you’re not this time because it’s just hard. So checking every box, every single time can be monotonous. So I think a lot of times the breakdown can just be with us. David: It can be. And it can be our failure to look at the other options that are available to us. It can be our failure to look at the issues that we’re blaming to say, “how could we potentially improve that?” And sometimes it’s not the actual situation that we think it is. In the example that you gave, you were able to determine that this group of leads worked and this group of leads didn’t. And if you got the same process, then you can say all right, we want more of the kind of leads that are going to work. Another option there would be to say, okay, is there something we can do to change the procedure on this particular group of leads to make it match? But that doesn’t always work. Sometimes it is the leads, just like in Glengarry Glen Ross. Sometimes it actually is the leads. But that doesn’t alleviate the responsibility of the salesperson to try to identify what we can do to deal with whatever situation we’re faced with. Because the problem is that if we don’t do that, we are really disempowering ourselves, and we’re training ourselves to blame outside factors that are beyond our control, which means we can never be in control. Whenever we do that, anytime we outsource responsibility somewhere else, anytime we outsource the blame to something else, then we’re completely disempowering ourselves. Jay: Yeah. I love that. That’s such a good point. Outsourcing the blame is not going to solve any problems. You know, it’s been kind of a running theme through all the podcasts that we do, that you should always be reassessing, you should always be looking at the numbers. We’ve talked about key performance indicators and saying, you know, we normally always have a good January. Now we’re not, what is going on? Is it seasonal? Is it the economy? Because we can be affected by so many things outside of our control, but if we’re not reassessing those and we can’t go back and look at where we were before, we might not even know we need to change. And then we’re outsourcing excuses as well. David: Yeah, I think there’s also a tendency for some people to think in terms of blame instead of responsibility. My thinking is it’s better if we can choose responsibility instead of blame. Choose responsibility over blame. That means you know, I’m not asking anybody to blame themselves. I’m not saying blame yourself for poor sales. What I’m saying is “what aspects of that can you take responsibility for?” Can you take the responsibility of saying, “okay, if I need better leads, I either need to dig them up myself, or I need to go to the person who provides the leads and convince that person that we need something different?” Look at whatever sliver of action you can take, whatever little thing you can do to advance the cause, because otherwise you’re just playing the victim and that never helps anyone, particularly in sales. Jay: Yeah, exactly. You know, another example… we were just recently excited. Somebody approached us, “Hey, we have this great new way to generate leads for you. It’s going to involve webinars and all of these things.” And again, it generated a decent amount of leads, but we couldn’t close any of them. And it was interesting because it felt like they were the right kind of leads. They were asking the right kind of questions. So we really spent a lot of time saying, is it us? Is it this particular client? And ultimately, we stopped using that service just because, for whatever reason, whatever it was doing, just not the ideal customer. But if we would’ve just said, oh, it’s not working, I would still today be thinking to myself, maybe we should have stuck with that longer. So try things and then tweak ’em as you go to make sure that if you’re going to not use them anymore, you’ve really done your due diligence. Otherwise, you might be chasing away good leads. David: Yeah. And I think listening skills are critical in that regard. When you’re talking to a different group of people, a different group of people that came in from a particular lead source that you’ve never done before, and you find that they’re not closing, what are they saying that is different than the other people that you normally talk to? What questions are they asking? What questions are they not asking? What questions are they not responding well to? Because a lot of times, if you get a list of people that just don’t have any money to spend, and you find that that’s a recurring motif in that particular lead source, then it’s pretty easy to understand. Okay, it’s going to be difficult to convert. But the challenge there is that there are a lot of people who have money, who pretend not to when they’re in a conversation with a salesperson. And so just because somebody says they don’t have money, very often that just means I don’t have money for you for what you’re proposing right now, because I still don’t get it. I don’t believe it. I don’t see the ROI. If you can show them the ROI, they can come up with the funds. And so that’s part of the challenge as w

    15 min
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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
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    Copyright © David Blaise, Blaise Drake & Company, Inc. | TopSecrets.com | 463414
  • Show Website
    Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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