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. 4D AGO

    Get Off to a Flying Start in 2026

    To get off to a flying start in 2026, we can start by taking responsibility. Whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you’re just going to feel better about yourself. You’re going to feel better about your situation. Because you’re allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you’re a victim and there’s nothing you can do about it. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to hit the ground running in the new year. Happy New Year, and welcome back Jay! Jay: Thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I think everybody has a desire, you know, at the beginning of the year, to say this year’s going to be different, you know, we’re going to make all these changes. It’s going to be fantastic. But do they really have a way to translate that into action? I picture myself hitting the ground, you know, it’s like the cartoon when they start to run, you know, their feet are moving, but they’re not moving quite yet. I think a lot of us are in that place. How do we get from spinning to actually moving forward? David: Yeah, it’s a great question. I know in the promotional products industry, we have trade shows that start at the beginning of the new year, the ASI Show in Orlando, the PPAI Expo in Las Vegas. And, There’s one in Fort Worth as well, an ASI show in Fort Worth. So we got three trade shows in the industry that are really designed to help people get off to a flying start. But as we look at today, you know, this first week of the new year, even aside from that, whether or not you’re attending a trade show, chances are you’re probably pretty reasonably fired up. Okay, here we go. It’s another new year. What are we going to do? This is exciting. And if we think about the types of prospects that we want to interact with this year, the types of clients that we would like to attract, the types of customers that we might want to let go this year, and really focus on building our businesses as proactively as possible. Building our client lists as proactively as possible can really help to improve our quality of life in a dramatic way. Jay: Yeah. I love that. in the restaurant business, there’s something called a theoretical food cost and an actual food cost. Theoretical is, what would things be like if you ran perfectly? If there was no waste, everything was perfect. And then actual is where you’re at. The goal is to constantly be trying to close that gap. So to me, I think about it in any business, what does your ideal look like? Your ideal client base, your ideal staff, your ideal sales? So if you can know what that is and then track a course to get to it, I think that’s a great way to feel progress. Because that’s what I tend to miss when I’m running a business is sometimes it’s just a daily grind. And I don’t feel like I made any progress today. And if you do that over and over again, it’s hard to continue to press forward. David: It really is. And I think a lot of that goes to the fact that very often we’re just tied up in the day. Whatever it is that’s going on in the day, we’re just facing whatever is happening to us moment by moment, day by day. And that can get very frustrating. I remember, I think it was Tony Robbins was talking in a seminar one time about the idea that in order to create our future, we need to envision it first. It’s like if you are going to build a house, you don’t just start nailing boards together, I think was the analogy he used. I thought it was a great one. You have to envision it first. You have to figure out, what do I want this thing to look like? Where is it going to be located? How many rooms are going to be in it? All that sort of thing. And at the beginning of a new year, it’s really nice to start thinking about what do I want my life to look like this year? Who do I want to be surrounded by? To interact with? Who do I no longer want to interact with? What types of customers do I want to work with? What types of customers have I decided I’m no longer really interested in pursuing anymore? Simple decisions like that can have an amazing impact on your life and your career. If you simply change the quality of the prospects that you’re targeting. If you go from interacting with a whole lot of small dollar clients to interacting with a smaller group of high dollar clients, particularly if those high dollar clients are people that are actually enjoyable to work, everything changes. Because now you’re not running around like a crazy person. You’re able to focus more on a smaller group of people that you can serve to the best of your ability and all of that impacts everything you do going forward. Jay: Yeah. Quality of life, frame of mind, stress level, home life, all of those things can be impacted. You were talking about your Tony Robbins analogy. I’m a big sports fan, and in football, typically when a coach comes out, they have their first 15 plays planned. They know exactly what they’re going to do. And the reason for that is so that they can kind of assess the skills and what the rest of the team is doing. I kind of was thinking, maybe that’s a great way to kind of start the year. because you’re not going to plan out every step of the whole year. because things change. We’ve talked about pivoting. But if you’ve got a plan for your first 90 days, this is what I’m going to do and this is how I’m going to go about it, then maybe that can set you up better for the rest of the year. David: Yes, and it makes us just feel better about ourselves because we’ve actually given it some thought. We at least have an idea of what we want to do and where we want to go. There’s that great quote from wartime, which basically says, “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” right? So we know that even if we put everything together, we want to do things a certain way. We know that it’s not necessarily going to happen that way. However, if we at least have some things in mind and we say, okay, I would like to do this and I’d like to do that, and I’d like to do this. You may not be able to do it immediately, in the order that you’ve chosen, but it gives you something to go back to after you’re dealing with putting out the fires or whatever else you have to do. If you’ve got that basic plan laid out and say, okay, I was able to accomplish this first thing, then I got sidetracked, but let’s go back to that second thing and then I got sidetracked again. But let’s go back to that third thing and work through it systematically. It just allows you to probably live more the kind of life you want to live. Because you’re deciding, in advance, what it is that you want to do, who you’re going to be doing it with, where you’re going to be doing it, when you’re going to be doing it. And even though you will not be 100% successful in accomplishing that, if you get 70% of the way there, or 80% of the way there, or 86% of the way there, whatever your number is, you’re going to be a whole lot better off than if you start out with a blank slate. Not knowing, not deciding where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, then just taking it as it comes. Being reactive like that is okay for some people, but generally for business people, business owners, salespeople, reactivity is not a tremendous asset. Jay: Yeah, I agree. But I also think we have a tendency to look at losing in a negative way, because it’s losing, right? But losing is learning, right? And that’s one of the reasons why a coach runs those first sets of plays because they find out, will the run game work? Will the passing game work? Is their defense strong on this side of the line or that side of the line? So as you try things in business and you do lose, in some areas, it should be losing is learning, right? David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And then you can pivot and you can adjust. And the goal is to win more than you lose. But if you think you’re always going to win, you’re setting yourself up and that’s going to be very hard for you. Or if you only focus on the losses and not learn to grow from them, that’s also going to be difficult. So learning from losing I think is such an important part of starting a new year. David: I agree completely. And even the word lose or the idea of losing, I mean, if you think in a sports analogy, you can be losing in the second quarter, in the third quarter, and then you can end up winning at the end. And you haven’t lost until the game is over, right? So Jay: yeah, David: in life and in business, we haven’t lost until the game is over. We’re still in it every single day. We are still in it. We’re still in life, we’re still in business. We still have opportunities. So, It’s difficult to even say I’ve lost, because if you’re still breathing, the game is still going and you haven’t lost. You may feel like you’re behind. You may feel like you need to change the plays, but you haven’t lost yet, right? Jay: Yeah. You haven’t lost yet. And one of the other things that I find to be valuable, maybe especially at the beginning of the new year, is to challenge some of the assumptions that kind of creep around your business. Like I’ve been somewhere and I’ll say, what about this? And they’ll say, oh, we

    21 min

  2. 12/30/2025

    The High, Hidden Cost of Inadequate Sales

    If you’re not generating the level of sales you’re capable of in your business, the real cost of inadequate sales is a lot more than you think. And it’s not just the cost of the sales you’re missing out on. When you operate a business that consistently generates inadequate sales, revenue, and income, you’re effectively starving your business of the oxygen it needs to survive. Inadequate sales chokes a business, stifles its growth and can threaten its survival. So today, let’s take a look at some of the real costs of inadequate sales in your business. Generating significant sales in your business, or at the very least “adequate” sales is critical for many reasons. First and foremost is the financial stability necessary for survival. When you generate significant sales, it gives you the stability necessary to cover all your operational expenses, pay your vendors, pay your people, invest in growth, and make sure the business remains sustainable in the long term. Your sales growth directly impacts your overall business growth, which allows for reinvestment, product development, expansion into new markets, and hiring additional talent. It also gives you an edge that many competitors find hard to overcome. In previous podcasts, we discussed the concept of moving from Stealth Mode to Intimidation Mode, and this depends on your ability to attract, qualify and convert more clients than your competitors. Inadequate sales makes it nearly impossible to build infrastructure or even attract investors who could help you make it happen. When you’re generating adequate sales and stable revenue, you can build effective processes, improve productivity, and negotiate better terms with everyone from your suppliers and vendors, to your lenders and potential partners. It contributes to a stable work environment by giving you the ability to hire, motivate and retain the right people. And whether you’re a small business or even a solo entrepreneur with no desire to add a lot of people or build infrastructure, having adequate sales, along with the processes necessary to be able to generate them consistently, will ultimate determine how much your business is worth. …because no one wants to buy a business that’s unable to generate adequate sales and revenue. And most solo entrepreneurs don’t really want to run that kind of business themselves. So regardless of your growth plans, adequate sales are key. With all that said, some small business owners figure that even if they’re not generating adequate sales right now, it’s no big deal. They’ll figure it out eventually, or get around to it at some point. As a result, they can plod along for weeks, months or even years bringing in just enough revenue to make themselves either mildly comfortable or not quite uncomfortable enough to do what it takes to generate the sales they need to run a fun, exciting, sustainable business. And shouldn’t that be the goal? If it’s not fun, lucrative, or ideally both, then what’s the point? If you just want to earn a steady paycheck, you can do that with a regular job. So if you’re still with me, let’s take a look at just Three of the Real costs of inadequate sales: Real cost #1. Lost revenue. This is the obvious one. If you’re not generating adequate sales, then you are losing out on revenue every business day. Some people don’t think of money that they didn’t make as being lost. But isn’t it, though? If there are sales you could have made today, but you didn’t make them. Didn’t you lose out on that revenue? Especially if they ended up buying it from someone else? Sure, you may sell something else tomorrow, but that doesn’t make the sales you lost today any less real. Now if you think that mindset is too negative. If you believe in an abundance mindset and you feel like there’s plenty of business to go around for everyone. Then we’re on the same page. I totally agree. There is plenty of business to go around for those who are willing… to do what it takes… to bring it in.  So if that’s you, congratulations. Keep up the great work. But if you’re not generating adequate sales, then it’s likely some changes are necessary. Real cost #2. Lost opportunity. Every sale you fail to make today, means there’s one less reorder, one less referral, one less happy customer, positive review, success story or testimonial in the pipeline. Inadequate sales are a pipeline killer. This results in opportunity and future sales that are either lost completely or delayed indefinitely. Life is full of opportunity. But it requires being present. You have to get in front of it. So when you’re generating inadequate sales, you are missing out on all the related opportunities you could have had. Real cost #3. Lost credibility. When you don’t care enough to do everything you can do every day to help as many potential clients as possible, it kills your credibility. What would you think of a doctor who could have helped someone today but who just didn’t. How about a lawyer who could have gotten a much better result for a client, but who failed to let them know that, so they went to an inferior lawyer and got a bad result? If you’re good at what you do, you owe it to your prospective clients to let them know THAT you can help, HOW you can help and WHY it’s in their best interest to choose you. Then, if they still choose to not work with you, it’s on them, not you. Listen, if you know that you could and should be selling more of your products and services than you’re currently selling… If you’re impacted by the Real Costs of inadequate sales, including the lost revenue, the lost opportunity and the lost credibility, then go to TopSecrets.com/call and let’s discuss how we can help. We’ll work together to help you multiply your revenue. In fact, when you join our Total Market Domination program, our initial goal is to triple your investment within the first 90 days, or we’ll keep working with you until you do. You’ll get the tools, tips, strategies and answers you need to grow your sales and profits fast. So go to TopSecrets.com/call and let’s discuss how we can help. Ready to Overcome Inadequate Sales? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here. Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here. Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here.

    7 min

  3. 12/23/2025

    First Contact with a New Prospect

    What is your first contact with a new prospect? Another good question to ask yourself is how does that first contact happen? And is it proactive on my part? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your first contact with a new prospect. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it’s good to be with you again. David. When you say first contact, I always think about Star Trek with their first contact with the aliens, and I feel like you’re kind of sitting there going, okay, are these going to be nice? Are they going to try and destroy the human race. You know, there’s a lot of trepidation with first contact and sometimes that first contact, how it goes, determines the whole rest of the relationship. David: That’s exactly where I stole the term from Jay. That is exactly where I stole the term from. And the way that came about is that I was talking to somebody about cold calling. This was years and years and years ago. Well, actually we were talking about prospecting and one of the things that this person mentioned to me was something related to cold calling. And I said, “okay, well, cold calling is one way that you can reach out to people.” I said, “think of it like it’s your first contact.” And literally it was because I saw that movie about first contact and I thought it’s such a great concept. The idea of whatever, meeting an alien species for the first time is one thing. But for salespeople, you’re exactly right. It’s the same thing. We’re walking into an unknown situation. We have absolutely no idea how the person is going to react and that. Doesn’t matter whether it’s on the phone as a cold call, whether it’s meeting someone at a networking event, whether it’s through social media. We have no idea what’s on the other end until we engage. Therefore, the whole idea, the whole concept of first contact, I think is really highly appropriate. It is the very first contact that we have with a prospect. If you understand that conceptually, it can really sort of open up your mind to the possibilities and to the opportunities. Because there are a lot of people who view whatever it is they do as first contact, as first contact. What I mean is if all they do is make cold calls, they view that as first contact. If all they ever have done to generate customers is through social media, that’s what they view as first contact. When you recognize, that’s just a method, that’s just one particular method of first contact, and you realize that there’s a whole other universe. To continue the space analogy here, there’s a whole other universe of options. It really allows you to test different things to figure out what’s going to work best for you. Jay: Yeah. And I love the idea that first contact, when I first thought of this, I was thinking that’s the first time that I meet them voice-to-voice or face-to-face. And in today’s world, that’s probably not going to be the first contact. In my business, the first contact is our website. That’s the first time that they’re going to see us. Now, in my business, I’m very fortunate that our three main competitors, their websites are awful, David, they are terrible. They are designed terribly. They’re hard to read. And all the time I get people saying, literally saying to me, “I chose you because I liked your website.” We’re somebody that offers this high level of expertise and you chose us just because we have a really good web designer. But that was the difference. Their first contact with us is positive, because we spend the time to get that right. David: Yeah, it’s a lot more than the web designer too, because you could have a beautiful design, but if the words on that design are not resonating with them, it’s not going to work. Which goes back to what we talked about before, the MVPs of marketing. The message on a website will definitely determine whether or not they will be interested in what you say. Now, the way we present that, meaning the design, that’s all part of the messaging component. But if the words don’t resonate, if the imaging doesn’t resonate, they’re not going anywhere. But you’re right! So many times, people don’t recognize that first contact is happening all the time. Even with things that you’re not even aware of. You go onto social media and you post something, whether it’s a picture of your dinner or a comment about politics or something business related, that could very well be their first contact with you. And if they hate it, they’re not going to be revisiting. Jay: Yeah, exactly. And that’s why companies out there can help clean up your mistakes if you mess up. You know, we say this all the time. Once it’s on the internet, it’s never going away. Trying to clean that up. Going back to my competitors. They’ve decided that education is how they’re going to draw people in. And so they have pages and pages and pages of small text, educational information. And it’s valuable information. But I’m telling you, nobody is reading that information. Because we live in a bullet point world. We want to know within a few seconds what services you offer. And it’s amazing to me, nowadays, how few people, in fact, I would say in the last year I’ve had three people ask me for references. In a year’s time because of our website and how it’s presented. It answers their questions right away. And that’s phenomenal to me that we’re able to do that. David: Yeah, interesting that the information that’s on the website can be helpful. It can be harmful. Or anywhere in between. Because if you have too much information on there, people can get what they need without ever having to buy from you. They learn a bunch of things and then they talk to their existing vendor about the things they learn from your website, and then they can either do it or not. And a lot of the work that we do in the promotional products industry, the websites are very much the same. It’s a lot of the same products from the same manufacturers. There are similar vendors who put together these websites. So a lot of it is very similar, very cookie cutter looking in a lot of ways. And so one of the things that we do with our Total Market Domination clients is we help them with little tweaks they can make, small things they can do, even within a website that doesn’t allow a ton of customization to be able to switch things up. And change the results. Because that website, that first page that they see, I look at it like a windshield, right? Are they going to fly off it like a bug off a windshield, or are they going to look into it and say, wow, this is great. Are they going to scroll, or are they going to just bounce off it? Because if they bounce off it, you’re done. Jay: Yeah, and it’s amazing to me how many people use tactics that I know that we all deplore. Like I’ll see, hey, chat with a representative, and I’m like, yeah, I think I’m going to do that. And within two seconds I realize it’s not a representative, it’s a chat bot, and it’s only programmed to answer predefined questions. It’s not answering mine. And I’m like, come on. And then the other one I ran into just the other day that drives me out of my mind is I was looking for a quote for something. The website says, get a quote in two minutes. An instant quote. I enter in my information and then it says, okay, one of our representatives will be back with you in two days. And I get so angry when that happens because you lied to me. David: Right Jay: You told me you would give me a quote in two minutes. You completely boldface lied to me. I am done with them at that point. That was my first contact with them. I don’t want anything to do with them because I feel like that’s a dishonest practice. And when you start that way with me, forget about it. I don’t care how many other contacts we have, I’m not going to choose you. David: Exactly. So a lot of times when people are thinking in terms of first contact, well, first of all, it’s a matter of deciding to do that. Thinking, what is my first contact? What am I currently doing? Or what do I think I’m doing in terms of first contact? Now, if you reach out to somebody and they say, oh yeah, I saw you on Facebook, or I saw you on LinkedIn, or whatever, then that’s not your first contact. Whatever they saw was the first contact. So ask yourself, what is it that you want to be your first contact, and then what is the actual first contact that they’re having with you? And if you find out that there are some commonalities that a lot of what you thought was first contact actually isn’t, then you want to go back and say, all right, well what are they seeing first? And how do I need to adapt that or change that to reflect what I would like for them to see first? So what is your first contact? Another good question to ask yourself is how does it happen? How does that first contact happen? And is it proactive on my part? Is it something that I posted that I wasn’t thinking of as first contact and it just happened to turn into that? Was it that somebody saw an ad that maybe wasn’t even related to them or maybe has some sort of messaging on it that was designed to appeal to a different group of people, but they happen to see it, so now they have a misconception about who I am or what I do? There are so many different elements to this. But when you just sort of take a few minutes to try to analyze it, it becomes a lot easier to see where things could potentially be going wrong, even when you’re first interacting with someone. Jay: Yeah. And the other thing I would say is don’t squander your first contact. If you’ve got a first contact and you’ve got them to dial the phone David: mm-hmm. Jay: or something like this. We’ve all had the experience where we’re li

    15 min

  4. 12/16/2025

    The Trouble with Targeting in Business

    The trouble with targeting in business is that a lot of people don’t do it well. It reminds me of that line from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone says something along the lines of, “if history has taught us nothing else, it’s that you can get to anybody.” Right? And that is now true in terms of advertising. You can get to anybody, but what is the cost? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I discuss the trouble with targeting. Welcome back Jay. Jay: Hey, David, once again, I’m excited to be here and I’m really excited to get your feedback on this, because when you first said we’re going to talk about the trouble with targeting, I kind of thought in my head, well, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? Aren’t, aren’t I supposed to be targeting? David: Oh yeah. Yeah. We definitely have to target. We definitely need to target. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with targeting. The trouble with targeting that I was thinking about is that a lot of people don’t do it, and a lot of the people who do do it maybe don’t do it as well as it can be done, and as a result, they don’t get the results they’re looking for. Some people think they’re targeting and they may be doing that, but if you’re not targeting to the point where it’s resulting in better quality prospects, better quality clients, and conversations that lead to sales, then you might need to hone in a little bit better in terms of your targeting efforts and your targeting approach. Jay: Yeah, so as I think about targeting, there’s a lot of work to be done upfront, right? If you’re going to target somebody, you’ve got to know who the target is. And that can take a lot of research on your own part. A lot of experimentation, a lot of looking at past contacts, how those contacts came into your funnel, and understand those things before shooting arrow in different directions. The odds that you’re going to hit anything that looks like a target are pretty slim. David: Exactly. And I think a lot of the reason for that is, many people think of the term targeting in terms of what you said, targeting’s like aiming at something. But it’s not just aiming at something, it’s having an idea in advance of what it is that you want to hit. And if we think in terms of some of the more common ways of targeting. Some people don’t even get this specific about it. But if you look at the different ways to target, I mean some people target geographically, I’m going to target everybody within a certain geographic area. If I’m a realtor and I’m working in a particular neighborhood… Great example of geographic targeting. Some people target by industry. If I’m selling B2B, I might target a particular group of people in a particular industry. I might target companies that deal with technical kind of things, or I might target education, or I might target finance, right? So that’s a different way to target, by industry. I can target by need if I’m selling something like whatever, insurance, and I’m targeting people who need insurance. Okay. They could be wherever they are. Now, it’s harder to do that when you target by need because so many people might need it and you might have to pare things down a little bit to be able to get to the people that you want. In the promotional products industry, where I do a lot of work, people can sell by program specialty. In other words, people who are looking for a specific result. If you’re selling to people who are looking to increase safety in the workplace, then you could potentially be selling them a safety campaign, a safety program. There are some people who target by product specialty. There are different companies who might be looking for a specific kind of product. There is a company that’s been in the promotional products industry for ages. You’ve probably received pens from them in the mail, and they’ve been doing that for years. There’s a cover letter. Very often the pen will have your company name on it, and they’ll send that to you in advance. And then there was just a sheet of paper and a place where you could say, all right, if I want 200 of these, I send a check, I mail it in. And that was an example of targeting by product. So you can have a very successful business that does just that, right? Targeting by a particular product. And then some combination thereof. I could target a particular niche, a particular group of people. I could target financial institutions within a certain geographic area, or I could target a certain type of industry with a specific need. So, industrial companies that need safety programs. So lots of different ways to slice it, but if you don’t think through your options, then a lot of your targeting can just leave you confused. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. But I think it’s important to know, I mean, never in the history of the planet, have we had the ability to target like you can today. If you know what you’re looking for, you talked about geographic areas, age groups, people who listen to a particular radio station, people who shop at a particular store. Never in our history has there been the ease and ability to target people. There are people whose profession, and think about this, their profession is SEO, search engine optimization. That’s all they do is they look at your company, and who your targets are, and they figure out how to reach that specific group. I think about what we did 20 years ago for targeting, and I’m like, how did we even do that? I think part of the problem is that a lot of people are just going in and they’re kind of faking it until they make it. SEO is complicated and you have to first know your target, your needs, and then you have to know how to turn that into keywords and other things. It’s a real process, real powerful, but a real difficult process many times. David: Right. And when you’re talking about something specific like that, like SEO, yeah, it’s really a specialty. And even targeted advertising, if you’re looking for a certain group of people on Facebook or whatever, you’re right, it’s easier than ever to target those people with paid advertising. But for salespeople who are in the field who aren’t doing SEO, and they’re not doing targeted ads, and they’re looking for prospects, looking for people to sell to, and still, to some extent, having to do it rather manually, then at least having a clear idea of who you’re after gives you a much better chance at potentially reaching some of those people. Jay: Oh yeah. And we talked about this in the last podcast. If you know who to target, you’re not making a hundred calls today. Maybe you’re making 20 calls today and you’re increasing your close rate. It is hard for me to think, you know, that there are still so many people out there picking up a phone and dialing it and cold calling. David: Mm-hmm. Jay: But it is still a regular part of businesses everywhere and it’s a successful part and can be successful. But if you don’t know who to target, you’re going to be wasting a lot of time. David: Right. Which brings us back to the title, the Trouble With Targeting. If you’re not doing it well, no matter how you’re doing it, whether you’re trying to do it with SEO or paid ads. Because there are people who really want to get the paid ads thing dialed in, and many of them are still spending enormous amounts of money to make that work. And as the algorithms get smarter, theoretically it gets easier, but it also then becomes more expensive because more people are doing it, which drives the costs up. So even those who now understand that, yeah, you can probably reach pretty much anyone you want to reach with targeted ads you might not be able to afford to do. It reminds me of that line from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone says something along the lines of, if history has taught us nothing else, it’s that you can get to anybody. Right? And that is now true in terms of advertising. You can get to anybody, but what is the cost? What’s the cost in time? What’s the cost in money? And are you going to be able to do it? So a lot of that has to do with what you’re charging for your product, what your profit margins are. If it costs you a couple hundred dollars to acquire a new customer, you have to make sure that whatever it is that you’re selling them provides enough of an adequate profit margin to cover the cost of the product, to cover the cost of the salesperson, the overhead, and whatever the advertising is. So as long as the math works, you’re in great shape. Jay: And not just the math. I was thinking as you were talking about this, let’s say you set it up right. You figured out who to target, you’ve got your keywords in, or whatever your advertising method is going to be, and you have actually reached the face of your target. Well, what if your ad doesn’t appeal to them at all? So you’ve managed to hit your target, but it just bounced off of them because you didn’t have the right message. David: Yep. Jay: And that’s a problem we see a lot with SEO, with cold calling. Are you saying the right message? And I know when it comes to SEO, that’s why you do A/B testing, right? You send out two different versions of the same ads, see which ones resonate, see which ones don’t. And you have to keep track of that regardless of what your effort is. Because man, it’s really sad if you have managed to figure out how to reach that target, but you didn’t manage to figure out how to get them interested. That’s a real waste of time and money. David: Right, because you may not even know that you reached that person if the messaging’s off. This really all goes back to something we talked about in a podcast quite a while ago, the MVPs of marketing and sales. Wha

    13 min

  5. 12/09/2025

    Breaking Through Your Sales Plateau

    Particularly in the early stages, breaking through your sales plateau may just mean doing more of what you’re doing. But generally, at some point, we hit a plateau that is created by the fact that we can’t run any faster. We can’t do any more by ourselves. So we either need to implement new procedures and new processes, we need to get some help, or something needs to change fundamentally in the business in order to get us to that next level. Identifying the Real Causes of a Sales Plateau David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing the idea of breaking through your sales plateau. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It’s so good to be here again with you David, and as always, I’m very excited about this topic. I know businesses that hit these thresholds. Breaking through can be a monumental task to get to the next level and they’re not sure how to do it. Is it marketing? Is it adding new products? I think that’s what a lot of them try to do. They’re like, well, let’s add 10 more products to the lineup and then we’ll do it. And oftentimes that can just make the situation worse and not better. David: Yeah, it’s true. Most businesses, I think it’s safe to say, at some point run into a sales plateau. They hit a level of sales and they can’t get past it. I believe in small businesses this is particularly true, where you’re just working and pushing and you’re trying to get to that next benchmark. And you just can’t reach it. There are thresholds in small business, getting to your first hundred thousand in gross sales and then your first 250, and then you hit 500 and then a million and then 2 million and going from there. In the early stages, you can generally do pretty well, like to get from a hundred thousand to 250 is often easier than it is to get from a million to 2 million. But most of us, at some point, will encounter some sort of sales plateau. You get there, you see it, you’re targeting it, you’re working toward it and you just can’t seem to hit it. Breaking through becomes a challenge. You May Not Know How You Got Here And so it’s really just a matter of getting stuck. It’s like, I feel like I’m stuck. I’m here, I need to be there and I’m not sure what to do next. Jay: Yeah. And I wonder how much of it is that they’re not really sure how they got to the first sales plateau. I mean, they may think that they know, David: That’s true. Jay: But it could be something completely different. And this could go back to something we talked about in a previous podcast: following up with your customers. Find out why they purchased, how they feel about their purchase. Are they returning customers? Are they not returning customers? So if you didn’t understand why they bought in the first place and how they felt about that purchase, it’s going to be hard breaking through that next sales plateau. David: It is, absolutely. And the biggest hangup that I see for most people is not knowing, “what do I do next?” And as you indicated, people get to a certain point in some cases, they’re not sure how they did it. What’s that referred to as? Unconscious competence? Jay: Mm-hmm, David: Where I’m doing things and it’s working, but I’m not even sure of what I’ve done. So I haven’t gotten around to building a system around it, to put that into place so I can replicate it. But there’s also the idea that what gets me to here will not necessarily get me to there. Right? So breaking through to level one won’t necessarily get me to level two. When Hard Work Doesn’t Result in Breaking Through That’s not always the case, particularly in the early stages, you can do more of what you’re doing to get to a higher level. But generally, at some point, we hit a sales plateau that is created by the fact that we can’t run any faster. We can’t do any more by ourselves. So we either need to implement new procedures and new processes. Or we need to get some help. Something needs to change fundamentally in the business, in order to keep breaking through that sales plateau and get us to the next level. Jay: Yeah, something that can be very hard for people, delegation, right? Letting go of your baby, right? David: Yeah. Jay: That you worked so hard on. And now you’re going to trust some new employee with some new aspect. It’s not easy to hand those things over. But often, if you’re not willing to do it, you’re not going to grow through that next sales plateau. Refusing to Delegate Can Lead to a Sales Plateau David: That’s true. And some people don’t want to. Some people are like, okay, look, I don’t want to have employees. I’m comfortable with the way things are. And if they are, then that’s fine. If they want to get to another level of sales though, then it’s really going to be a lot more about processes. If you’re determined not to get additional help, at least in terms of human resources, then you’re going to have to figure things out in terms of either technological resources or being able to do more of what you need to do so that you can keep breaking through to get to the levels you want to reach. So in looking at getting stuck, at hitting a sales plateau that you can’t reach, one of the first things I would suggest is that we ask ourselves, okay, what’s causing this? Am I just not able to get enough customers? In other words, could I handle more business, but I either don’t know how to do it, or I’m not successful in doing what I know? Is Your Breaking Through Problem Not Enough Customers? Or Too Many? Or I’m doing what I know and it’s not working? Because if that’s the issue, if it’s just a matter of getting more clients, there are very specific things that we can do to make that happen. On the other hand, if we’ve got a lot of clients and we feel like we can’t keep up with the clients we have, then that is certainly going to prevent us from breaking through to the next level. Unless we can either leverage things so we can get more from the clients we have without having to add more or we figure out how to get some help, depending on our willingness to want to do that. Jay: Yeah. And, an important one, can we take our existing clientele and get them to come back? We’ve talked about this before, right. You know, David: mm-hmm. Jay: It’s going to be easier to get an existing customer to repurchase if they were satisfied and if that’s your type of product. Some products are one and done, and that’s just the way it is. Breaking Through the Sales Plateau with Existing Clients But if you can have a product where they’re like, I like this, I need more of this. I want to come back for this… having systems to remind them to come back, drip, programs and those types of things, to get them to be a return customer. That could be the biggest source of your income. And you’re not spending extra money to acquire new customers for breaking through that next sales plateau. David: Exactly. And when we get to a point where we know we want to be somewhere, and we’re not quite there, identifying what that biggest bottleneck is, is one of the most important things. There’s a big distinction between the idea of potential, where I could potentially be, and what’s keeping me from getting there. And a lot of people focus on the idea of adding more potential. Well, maybe if I add this or I add this, or I add this, I add all these different things for the potential of getting to where I want to be. And instead, to get past that, what they really should be looking at is “what is the bottleneck?” Fixing the Primary Bottleneck that Creates a Sales Plateau What is the single biggest contributor to the fact that I’m not breaking through? What is the one primary thing that is preventing me from getting past that? Is it the people? Is it the customers I’m interacting with? There are a lot of businesses who, if they want to reach their sales levels, they’re going to have to jettison some customers who are not spending as much money with them. A lot of times, low-dollar, low-profit clients who take up a lot of time, who are very demanding, can take up valuable time that could be spent with people who understand and appreciate better, the value that you bring to the table. So if it is a situation where you don’t want to add staff, then you’re going to have to be extremely selective, going back to another point we raised in a previous podcast, about the people that you bring in the door to begin with. The prospects and clients that you choose to interact with. Jay: Yeah, and in that case, you’re going to have to have a system to identify what type of customer they are, classify them and then figure out is this the type of customer that we want? Letting Go of Poor Quality Clients If it is, then you’re going to want to target them and focus more on them. If it’s not, then you’re going to kind of want to let them slowly disappear so that you can focus on the ones that you want. David: Yeah. And I think for a lot of us, if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you have a favorite customer or two. And so a really easy exercise you can do is take a look at those customers and say, okay, what do they have in common? What is it that I like about them? Is it their attitude? Is it the way they communicate? I mean, communication is huge. One of the very first things that will tell you if you’ve got a problem client is their unwillingness to communicate. If they’re not communicating the way that you need to have them communicate in order to fulfill an order or get the work done, that is a relationship that’s really in trouble. Breaking through becomes much harder. Communication Problems: The Early Warning Sign In hindsight, every time I’ve had, in business, a relationship that didn’t work out, it almost inva

    16 min

  6. 12/02/2025

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 4

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

    21 min

  7. 11/25/2025

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 3

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

    14 min

  8. 11/18/2025

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 2

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

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