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I would say the number one thing that helped me to overcome call reluctance is when I realized the people who are likely to yell or scream or be angry or be obnoxious or belligerent, they’re not the people we’re doing it for.

We are doing it for the needles in the haystack. We’re doing it to find that perfect-fit customer that needs what we have to offer, and who was waiting for someone like us to come along.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of overcoming call reluctance. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: So glad to be here, David. And I really want to hear your feedback on this topic, because this is something that I struggle with. I’ve been put in sales positions in the past. I have a list of leads. All I have to do is pick up the phone and dial those numbers, and I can’t bring myself to do it.

Which is funny. I can do it, if it’s a qualified lead and they’re expecting my call, or if they’ve set an online appointment with me, all of that fear goes away. But if it’s a cold call, forget it. I can’t do it. I just can’t.

David: Yeah, well call reluctance is a big topic for people who have to make cold calls, and that is one aspect of it. But you hit on a couple of other aspects of it. There are some people who still struggle with the idea of picking up the phone, even when somebody is looking to hear from you.

So, we’ll touch on a little of all of that, but you went to the big thing first, which is the idea that there are a lot of people who struggle with call reluctance. They don’t want to pick up the phone, they don’t want to do it.

And if we think about the reasons for that, a lot of it becomes kind of obvious. What would you say is your number one reason?

Jay: I guess fear of rejection. It’s just hard for me to feel like I’m going to get them to want to hear me.

David: Yeah, and one of the reasons that I struggle a bit with this topic is that I’m not a huge fan of cold calls. It’s not that we don’t do them , we do. It’s not that I haven’t done them, I have.

But generally speaking, my approach is to try to lead with something of more value. So in those situations, if you follow up with a phone call, it’s a lot more welcome than if they’re not expecting your call.

But yes, what I’ve found personally and also with a number of the people that I worked with is that a lot of people think, Well, it’s fear of failure. It’s fear of rejection. I’m afraid that this person is going to get mad or they’re going to get angry or they’re going to hang up on me, and all valid fears because those things happen when you’re making cold calls.

And so part of it for me, because those of us who have been in positions where you had to make the calls, regardless of whether or not you felt like it, you have to come up with a way to get over that.

And the things that helped me the most, I would say the number one thing that helped me the most, was when I realized the people who are likely to yell or scream or be angry or be obnoxious or belligerent, they’re not the people we’re doing it for.

We are doing it for the needles in the haystack. We’re doing it to find that perfect fit customer that needs what we have to offer, that was waiting for someone like us to come along, you know, the knight in shining armor or whatever.

Those are the people that we’re doing it for, and you can’t get to those people until, and unless you first get to the ones that might not be as receptive to your message, shall we say?

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. My dad was a very successful salesman his whole life. And he always told me that every day he has a goal for how many no’s he’s going to get. He just knew if he’s going to have a successful day, he’s got to have a hundred no’s. And of those no’s, he’s going to pick up a certain percentage of yeses.

And so that’s how he made it a game. He made it fun for himself. That tactic never worked for me, but I know it works for a lot of other people. Cause after 10 of those nos, I’m just worn out, you know?

David: That is so true. And I’ve heard that and I know that that works for other people. And the fact that it does makes me say, Hey, listen, if that works for you, absolutely do it.

For those of us who are like, eh, still not quite there for me, it’s like, okay, well we need another way of approaching it. We need another way to think about. Because really fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of failure, it doesn’t even matter. It all boils down to fear, right?

And so if we recognize that it is really fear that’s at the core of this, or in some cases it’s a lack of confidence or a lack of certainty. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. It could be fear of uncertainty. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. And no one is. You can’t be.

If you’re making a cold call, you cannot be at all sure of what’s going to happen. They may be great, they may be terrible. It may be somewhere in between. Most likely somewhere in between. But it could go any of those ways.

So when you recognize that and I guess this is actually pretty similar to what your dad was talking about in the sense that he knows he needs to get enough nos to get to the Yes. If you think of that in terms of getting to the people that we’re actually doing this for, they are very similar.

But for me there’s a mindset difference. The mindset of finding the right people that can be long term customers and recognizing that I kind of have to go through this. I have to sort of run that gauntlet in order to get to the people that I actually want to get to.

Jay: Yeah, and also as I think about it, it’s just harder work to cold call because you have to first get them to stay on the phone with you, then you have to get them to believe in your product It’s a lot harder than if they’ve been on your website and they scheduled a free consultation, right? Now they’ve already kind of said, I need your product. So you’re way ahead in that regard.

David: Yeah. I also think that call reluctance is not probably the best description of what people are dealing with, because in a lot of ways they’re dealing with contact reluctance.

Sometimes it’s like, Oh, I have to email this person. I don’t feel like doing it. In person, I have to go to this networking function and I don’t feel like doing it. I mean, a networking function isn’t like cold calling, but it has similarities.

If you’re going to this thing for the purpose of meeting people and introducing yourself and trying to come up with a prospect, then it is kind of like cold calling. So I think the idea of call reluctance is only a sliver. It’s really only part of the issue that people are dealing with.

And if you recognize that it’s contact reluctance, or in a lot of cases it’s first contact reluctance, then it becomes maybe easier to deal with. Because if you’re not comfortable making a phone call and if you have the option to initiate other forms of first contact, then you can very likely come up with another form of first contact that works better for you. So you can accomplish the same or even better results without having to convince yourself that the only way to do that is to overcome your call resistance or reluctance.

Jay: Yeah. I love how you described it, first, contact resistance. That’s what I have. Because it is the same, whether it’s on the phone. I’ve been at trade shows, and I’ve just got to go up to different booths and talk to people. And they’re there to talk. That’s why they’re there. Right?

And that’s the scenario I struggle with. But if I’d been introduced to them or if they’d been prequalified, no issue whatsoever. So that puts me in a place where if I’m going to be in sales, it’s got to be a specific type of sales funnel where I can thrive in. Because you know, I’m not the person and I tell people this, I’m not the pound the pavement, cold contact guy. That’s just not where I’m successful. But I’m a closer. Right? So yeah, put me somewhere in that funnel and I can close. Don’t put me at the front of the line though, because that’s not where my skill-set is.

David: Yeah. This is what we work with with our clients all the time in our Total Market Domination course. And one of the modules, I think it’s module five, is about first contact. And it’s about coming up with a first contact that makes sense for you.

Meaning it’s something you’re not afraid to do, you don’t hate doing, you don’t dislike, you’re not afraid of doing it. It’s something that you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m actually comfortable with this.” And there are lots of different forms of first contact that actually just position you a whole lot better than a cold call.

Things like networking, that’s one approach to it. But also, if you have a list of prospects, it could be something as simple as sending them something in the mail and then calling to say, Hey, did you get the thing I sent you? Because a call like that is a hundred times easier than making that first call.

And in a lot of cases, and again, I do a lot of work in the promotional products industry, so people who are sending out some sort of promotional gift in advance and then calling to say, Hey, did you get the item I sent you?

It creates that gift of obligation, among people of conscience. Not everyone has a conscience, but among people of conscience, it does create a bit of a gift of obligation.

So people are more likely to take the call and they’re more likely to be nice to you when they pick up the phone because you sent them something in advance. I mean, that’s just one example.

But other forms of first contact can be things like social media. Your first contact with them could be replying to something that they posted on social media. Now at least you’re on their radar. They have an idea of who you are. And if you were able to continue that discussion inside a direct message, and then eventually that leads to a phone call or having them go to your page and then opting in for a call with you.

All that type of stuff changes the dynamic from one of, “I am calling you because I need business” to, “hey, here’s an opportunity to talk with me about something that could seriously benefit you.” And so the whole dynamic shifts from “I’m a salesman calling to sell you” to, you know, “you are a person in need who’s seeking me out for potential help.”

Jay: Yeah, I love this line of thinking. I work with a business where we do webinar training, right?

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: And so people watch that webinar and at the end I’m like, “Hey, sign up for a free consultation. It will be me that you do the consultation with.” So now, when we eventually talk, it’s weird. They feel like they know me because they sat with me for this 10 minute video or whatever it is. And so we’re already way ahead in the game because they have already kind of started to build that relationship. And part of that is I was definitely giving them something of value in the webinar. It wasn’t just a commercial. I was giving away good information.

David: Yeah, and you are positioning yourself as someone who knows what he’s talking about in that particular area, which is exactly what people are looking for.

So while this really gets into the whole other topic of first contact and different ways to initiate that, to get more people into your pipeline, who could conceivably work with you. It all does tie together. This idea of contact reluctance and how we overcome it can be handled in lots of different ways other than “well just get over it and make the calls.”

Jay: Yeah, I do think that we should have a much deeper discussion about first contact, because it definitely depends on what industry. I mean, if you are cold calling individuals, it’s a lot harder nowadays because we all set our phones to ignore calls that it doesn’t recognize. So that whole potential lead list may have gone away. And so you have to adapt and change to figure out whether it’s email or pay per click or something else.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I think also part of getting over this goes back to what we touched on before. Which is essentially a focus on disqualification.

In other words, if you overcome your call reluctance, you pick up the phone, you talk to somebody, and they’re rude, obnoxious, and belligerent. You can either be put off by that or you can be grateful that you found out that early on in the relationship that this is the type of person you’re dealing with.

What’s worse is when you think somebody’s great and then you start doing business with them, and then they turn into Mr. Hyde, you know, they go from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.

So the idea of focusing on disqualification and some sales managers will strongly disagree with me on this, and I’m not saying you use that as an excuse to eliminate your call list. What I’m saying is that if you go into this situation with the idea of coming out of it with a yes or no, qualified or disqualified, you’re going to be a lot better off than if you go in with the idea of, “I need to sell this person something,” even before you have any idea of whether or not they need what you’re selling.

Jay: Yeah. And I think that’s going to reduce the number of rejections that you get. Right? So if you have to get 20 no’s instead of a hundred no’s, then that’s going to go better for you. It’s going to be easiest, right?

I think one of the other things is I want people to know that I do believe that with repetition, you can overcome those fears. And oftentimes it’s just put your head down and push forward. And you’ll find, and I have found this, eventually, it’s not as hard.

You can change, you can adapt. And so, you know, just don’t make the excuse that, Oh, I can’t do that and so I have to find something else. You can, you know, you just have to work at it.

David: Yeah, and if you’re motivated by money at all, one of the things you can also do is you can start with the goal in mind. And you can even write down on a post-it note that you keep in front of your computer or in front of your phone, what’s the average dollar amount of the sale that is made?

Now, you’re not going to sell that to every person you call, but you are absolutely not going to sell it if you’re not in touch with that person. So if you think of each of those contacts as being worth X amount of dollars, whatever that number is, if it’s $3,000, if it’s $10,000, whatever that number is, if you look at that and say, Okay, this call could be worth $10,000, you might be a lot more motivated to make it than if you don’t think of it like that.

And I’m not really advocating the idea of thinking of it in terms of money instead of people. I’m thinking of it in terms of recognizing that in order to generate the money, you’ve got to have and initiate relationships with these people. And if this helps you do, go for it.

Jay: Yeah, motivation is different for everybody. So if that’s your motivation, focus on it and figure out how many calls it’s going to have to take you to get to that dollar amount. Then you can motivate yourself.

If you don’t know, and I feel like so many people in sales, it’s just kind of haphazard. I’m just calling. I don’t know how many calls it’s going to take and that makes it much. more of a slog I think.

So figuring out some of those key performance indicators and testing them. And the other thing I would say is it really helps if you love your product, and you know it will help people. You know, that’s one of the things that keeps me going is I know that I’m helping people.

I’m not just earning a living. And that’s very important to me. Not important to everybody, but to me that’s very important.

David: Oh yeah. I’m the same way. I mean, that’s what gets me fired up in the morning. The idea of helping people pass these challenges and allowing them to get from where they are to where they want to be. And so anything we can do to help that, I’m all for it.

Jay: Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons I love our discussions, because I know these will help people move forward. So I love that. How can people find out?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call, and we can have a conversation about where you’re looking to be, what you’re struggling with. If you’re struggling with call reluctance, we can work with you and come up with different ways that you can initiate first contact that you will be comfortable with, that will potentially position you better and allow you to get to more of the people that you need to reach, a lot faster and a lot more comfortably than you’re doing now.

Jay: Yeah. And don’t have call reluctance calling David, right?

David: Yeah, that’s right. You have no fears with us, right? It’s easy.

Jay: That’s right. Fantastic. It’s great talking to you today, David.

David: You too, Jay. Thank you.

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Million-dollar ideas don’t always create million-dollar results. Only focused implementation can do that. I remember the day that I got a phone call from a client who said, “Hey, we hit a million dollars in sales for this year. I’m really excited.” It’s a huge thing, because when you’re looking to grow like that — when you’re talking about multiplying your revenue in a relatively short period of time — there are very specific things that have to happen. Most people don’t know what those things are, and even if they do know what those things are, they don’t take action on them consistently enough to make it happen.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing million dollar ideas. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you, David. I have to tell you, this is a running joke in my home that I constantly have million dollar ideas. But I never do anything about it. And so I’ll have them.And then years later, my wife’s like, you told me about that, you know, five years ago, why don’t you do something about it? And I’m like, I don’t know.

David: Yeah. And you’re not alone. I do the same thing. I think pretty much anyone I know who’s been involved in business in any capacity has had ideas. And then they see that somebody else did it later.

And they’re like, “Oh man, I thought of that years ago.” And it’s like, yeah, well, unfortunately, as you indicated, thinking about it does not actually get it done. But it’s a fun topic because since we all pretty much have had them, we all have million dollar ideas, the question becomes. What are you doing with it?

Or are you doing anything with it? And as I was thinking back on this in preparation for this podcast, it occurred to me that of the million dollar ideas that I might’ve had, and who knows, the ones that you don’t pursue, you have no idea what they’re worth, especially if nobody else then comes along and turns it into a billion dollar idea, but it occurred to me that I only took action on a few of them, and the ones that I took action on actually yielded some really good results.

And the thing about a million dollar idea is… There’s a time component that really plays an important part in that, right? You could say, all right, my million dollar idea is to make $25,000 a year from the time I’m 25 until the time I’m 65. So if you multiply $25,000 by 40 years, it’s a million bucks, right?

But if you’re earning $25,000 a year and it costs you $35,000 a year to live, then that plan is not going to work for you. But it is a plan. It’s an idea. It’s a million dollar idea. And so as we’re thinking about things that can actually get us from where we are to where we want to be. It’s a good idea to consider that.

All right. Well, what’s the likelihood of generating revenue from this and how much on an ongoing basis so I can have an idea of where it’s going to take me?

Jay: Yeah, it’s such a great point. I think for me, the fear of putting myself out there is one of the reasons why I haven’t pursued.

And I’ve taken, some of them were good enough. I’ve taken a little stabs at them and I want to be successful by just stabbing at them and not really diving in a hundred percent.

And it’s not until I said, “okay, I’m all in.” It wasn’t the idea that was bad. It was my desire to actually put any work and effort.

I’ve just, I’ve always said, I want to have a company where all I do is come up with ideas and sell them. I don’t want to have to actually put the effort into, working on them. Why can’t I just earn the money from the idea?

David: Right. Yeah. It’d be great if it worked that way, but somebody has to do the work that actually generates the revenue.

But when I think about million dollar ideas, particularly as it relates to business. If somebody’s doing $250,000 a year in their business in four years, that became a million dollar idea. Now, again, if that’s your gross sales, it doesn’t mean that you’re making that much, right? It doesn’t mean that you’re pocketing that much, but it counts.

It’s a million dollar idea, and then the question really becomes. Is my million dollar idea a million dollars in a lifetime? Is it a million dollars over 10 years? Over five years? Over a year? Is it a million dollars a month? Is it a million dollars a week? A million dollars a day? Because different businesses generate different amounts of money.

I don’t know what Amazon is generating, how quickly it generates a million bucks, but it’s probably a lot faster than a million a day. It could be down to the minutes and seconds, probably is.

Jay: Yeah, I really think a lot of what you’re talking about is your expectation, right? you’re just saying, I want to have this idea to make money, that to me really kind of feels misguided.

And to be honest with you, a million dollars does not sound like that much money anymore, right? So it’s more a matter of, I think defining better what the idea is and what you want it to achieve.

Are you looking for financial freedom to where you can travel and buy nice cars? Are you just looking to pay your bills?

I think putting some better definition on it is more important than using this word million dollar and somehow that’s a sign that you’ve been successful. Cause as you said, you may be making millions a year in gross sales, but you could be losing as much, if not more. So, yeah, you have to be a little bit more specific than that.

David: I remember when my daughter was young, we were talking about the idea of a million dollars at one point. And I said, well, think about this. Let’s say you make a million dollars. You’re able to save a million dollars and you’ve got a million dollars.

You’ve got exactly a million dollars in the bank. And so you go out to celebrate and you go have lunch at McDonald’s and you spend $12. Now you’re no longer a millionaire. Right? Because you spent your twelve bucks. Whatever it is. And, I don’t know, just the idea of these money benchmarks being some form of accomplishment, I think is a little misguided.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And generally it’s misguided by people who look at it as a goal, think that it’s something to aspire for, and then if and when you get there, it’s like, oh, okay, now what? You know, now you go for more, right? And no matter what your number is, even if you’re Warren Buffett and you’re a multi billionaire, probably another extra billion or two never hurts.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. For me, I kind of think about how I determine success in business. I have steps, like you said, benchmarks. So my first benchmark is, can I just pay my bills? Right? Can I feed my family, pay my car payment, keep the electricity on?

If I can pay my bills, I’ve achieved a level of success because I don’t have to go out and have somebody else tell me how to do my job all day for an hourly wage.

So that’s goal number one. Can I pay my bills with my business year round? Then I start saying, well, can I still make the money I’m making, but do less or spend less to make it?

So maybe I only have to go into this business three days a week, and then two days a week I can be with my family or I can be tinkering, you know, with my car in the garage or something like that.

So I start to look at it more in terms of time than I do in terms of actual dollar amounts.

David: Yeah, the time component is huge and also consistency I think is huge. I had a client who signed up for our Total Market Domination course a couple of years ago. She was doing about $250,000 in sales at the time.

She wanted to get to a million dollars. And so we went over the specific steps that she would need to take to do that. And she was a great implementer. She was able to do it. And I remember the day that I got a phone call from her and she said, “Hey, we hit a million dollars in sales for this year. I’m really excited.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: It’s a huge thing because when you’re looking to grow like that, when you’re talking about multiplying your revenue in a relatively short period of time, there are very specific things that have to happen.

Most people don’t know what those things are, and even if they do know what those things are, they don’t take action on them consistently enough to make it happen.

So for those who are looking to get to benchmarks like that, if you have a million dollar idea, if you know in your bones that this thing is likely to generate that amount of money, but you’re not quite sure how to get there, then we really ought to have a conversation.

Jay: Yeah, and again, we talked about scary things and the fear of the unknown in our Halloween podcast.

That’s what’s so hard, and one thing I keep telling people is, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is not the beginning of time . There are so many people out there who have done this and duplicated this over and over again.

And often times, just coming up with a unique idea, that’s one of the toughest parts of the battle.

Then if you can access and not be afraid to talk to people, see people like yourself, who have done this over and over again, and who have helped other people achieve it, if you can get rid of a lot of the unknown, and then just implement your idea, how much better is that going to be for you?

David: Exactly. And so much of it just boils down to focus. It’s about what are the few things, what are the fewest steps I can take, the fewest number of activities that I can engage in to get me to my goals. And a lot of times it’s a lot simpler than people think. But they’re so distracted with all these different things they think they have to do that they end up missing the boat.

And it goes back to your point earlier where, “hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could do less things, do fewer things, and still generate the revenue?” And the truth of the matter is that if you’re doing too many things, your likelihood of getting there goes down dramatically.

Jay: Yeah, and we’ve talked about if the way you run your business is just putting out fires, or just, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, oftentimes those are not the places that you should be focused.

And if you could identify those things, be very strategic in your mind and identify what the most important things are. Focus on those. You’re still going to have fires, but maybe you’ll approach them differently.

That’s how mentorship, speaking with you, you always say give us a call. Sometimes just vocalizing and hearing yourself say it and having a sounding board is all it takes to get a little bit of clarity.

David: Yeah, and we’ve had many conversations with people who were not a good fit for our program, but they still got a lot of great ideas for the call. They had some direction. They had some steps they could take. And sometimes what happens, we’ll have a conversation like this. They’ll implement a couple of things that we’ll tell them on the call.

And then we’ll get a call back from them a few weeks later or a month or two later. Hey, listen, I did that. That really worked. I was able to generate more than enough to pay for the program. You know, let’s talk about that again now.

And it’s about being able to help people to accomplish what they’re looking to accomplish when they either don’t have the exact knowledge they need, or if they don’t have the consistency in the approach.

Jay: Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I love this podcast because, you know, I’ve been in business my whole life and I think, hey, I’ve got some level of understanding here. But you and I get on and we start chatting and either I say things that I’ve never thought of before, but this conversation triggered that, or you have a completely different perspective because you’ve been in different types of businesses than I have.

And I walk away going, you know what? I’m going to use that! I mean, there are things that we’ve talked about just in this podcast that I’m implementing in my new business.

And why? It’s because we talked. That’s it. We just, we’re bouncing ideas off of each other and learning from each other’s experiences.

David: Yeah, and that’s one of the things that I love about talking with you. It’s also one of the things that I love talking about with my customers. Earlier this week, I was going back and forth with one of our customers inside the Total Market Domination course, and she referenced something that I had talked about years ago.

She didn’t put it in those terms, but she was talking about the idea of sort of flying under the radar. And it reminded me of some material that I put together a while ago talking about moving from stealth mode to intimidation mode, like flying under the radar, getting everything in place, getting relationships set up with clients before your competitors even know anything is happening.

And so you’re flying in stealth mode. And then you get to the point where you’ve got this momentum going under the radar. And then when you burst onto the scene, it’s very intimidating for your competitors because they’re like, “Where did this person come from?”

So I believe these conversations, they’re helpful for everybody. When I talk to somebody for the first time on one of these strategy sessions, we have a conversation, very often it will remind me of something else that will help them. And it will also help me in terms of, yeah, wow. That’s something that we should talk more about because we know it works.

Jay: Yeah, and kind of circling back to having that million dollar idea.

One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do is have a million dollar idea and achieve it on my own. That way I don’t have to deal with employees. And is that going to happen? Am I really going to pull off a million dollar idea on my own? Probably not. Maybe as an internet influencer or something like that.

But the reality is… The first step is having the idea. The second step is asking the question, “Who’s going to help me do this?” Whether it’s partners, staff, or consultants. I think the first thing you have to do is get that out of your mind that you’re going to pull this off on your own.

David: Yeah, and maybe there’s some people who do that. I’ve never done that myself. I mean, any business that I tried to do by my, well, I never really tried to do any business by myself, I knew very early on when I would start a business, I’m like, “oh no, I need help with this, I need help with that.”

But maybe there are some people who can do it, but I think the smart way to approach it, in my opinion, is that you look at what you need to have happen. You look at what you need to build and then who can help me do that.

You get those spots in place, filling the seats on the bus. Good to Great. In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus. And I think that’s really key.

Jay: Alright, well, people who have their million dollar ideas or they’re already working on them, how do they find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com, schedule a call with us, actually TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with us, TopSecrets.com is the main website, TopSecrets.com/call is where you can go to schedule a call with our team and we can just sort of talk through things.

What are you looking to accomplish? If you have a million dollar idea or if you know that your business should be hitting numbers that you’re not yet hitting. Let’s talk about it.

Let’s talk about where you are now, where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits, and see what we can do to help you get there.

Jay: And it’s a great first step, David. Thank you so much. Always great to talk to you.

David: You too. Thanks, Jay.

Ready to Convert Your Million Dollar Ideas into Cash?If not, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Jay: I’m not lying when I tell you that I struggle with this idea that I’m being a pest in sales. So I think it’ll help my sales, I think it’ll help my daily attitude towards what I do.

David: Well, I’ll tell you something, Jay, many of the most conscientious human beings feel this way. I mean, if you’re one of those sales guys who, “Hey, everybody loves me,” you’re not even going to think of that. It’s never even going to occur to you. So the people who are most likely to struggle with this are people who just want to help. They’re there to provide a service.

Jay: Yeah.

David: They don’t want to be a pest. And so really, most of the people who feel this way are the ones who are least likely to be a pest because they’re not arrogant to begin with.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast in today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I’ll be discussing the topic of how to avoid being a pest in sales. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Oh, thank you for having me, Dave. This is a real problem for me. I always feel like a pest in sales, whether it’s an email, whether it’s a text, I always feel like they don’t want to hear from me.

And. it’s been an ongoing problem. I’ll just be honest with you when it comes time, okay? I got to sit down and reach out to people. I’m like, oh, do they really want to hear from me? Am I going to bug them? How do I get over that?

David: Yeah, it’s a great question. A number of years ago, I was doing a speaking presentation and Mary Lou Retton, the gymnast, was also speaking at the same event, and she told this story.

It was just so great. I don’t know if somebody asked the question, but it came up in her presentation where people were saying to her, when she was doing her routine, the person who went on before her did a really, really good routine. And so at that point, the pressure would really be on her to deliver a flawless performance if she wanted to be able to get the score that she needed.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And so the question was how do you deal with that when this person delivers a great performance and you have to go on next? Don’t you feel nervous after that? And her response, I’ll never forget it. And this was easily 10 or 12 years ago this happened.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Her response was, “you know, I watched her performance and it was great. And I looked at it and I thought to myself, wait till they get a load of me!”

Jay: Mmmm.

David: And I was like, “wow, how much does that apply in sales?”

Jay: Yeah,

David: I mean, I think it applies every bit as much in sales as it does in gymnastics. If you go in with the idea of, oh, that person’s better than I am, or they’re not going to like me, or they’re going to think that I’m annoying, or I’m rude, or I’m obnoxious, or I’m a pest, or whatever.

If you go in with that mindset, then what you are likely to say, the way that you’re likely to position yourself, all of those things are going to reflect that. But if you’re able to go into a situation with the idea of “wait ’til they get a load of me,” or at least “I have something valuable to offer.”

Now, any salesperson who doesn’t feel like they have something valuable to offer should be either in another line of work or selling a different line of product. Right?

Jay: Yeah.

David: You need to be able to feel good about what it is that you’re selling. And if you know that what you’re selling is, ideally, better than the competition. If you know that you’re going to deliver better than your competition, you know that you’re going to be more responsive, you’re going to be more concerned, you’re going to be more caring. If you know all those things, then you owe it to the client to convey all that. And if you don’t convey it to them, then you’re doing them more harm than good, and you’re doing yourself and them more harm than good.

So, If you look at it from the standpoint of, “I’m here to provide a solution, I’m here to help,” then it’s a lot easier to not start thinking of yourself as a pest and just recognize that if you’re there to help, it’s very difficult to be a pest.

Jay: Yeah, I’m not a pest. I’m a value. And I’m trying to pass that value on. It’s really interesting because, you know, I do these initial consultations and I’m going to toot my own horn. I am incredible at building that first relationship.

But in that first relationship, it’s them learning. We don’t talk about costs a lot or anything like that. And then we schedule a second follow up, and that’s where we get into the other things.

And it’s the second follow-up where I’m like, oh, now we’re going to talk about money. Now I’m going to turn into a pest. Now I’m going to do that. And I can see how what you’re talking about is, “no, I got them excited in the first meeting, and so why would they think I’m a PEs in in the second meeting?” And, and furthermore, maybe I should just get to the money in the first meeting and do it when I’ve got them excited initially.

David: Well, yeah, that’s a great point. Because if they are excited and if they’re ready to move forward, then scheduling another call and having time pass in between and they get distracted, it’s probably giving opportunities for them to fall out of the process. So,

Jay: mm-hmm.

David: I think you just asked and answer a great question for yourself.

Jay: Yeah.

David: But if you think of a pest, I mean, I think of something like a mosquito, right? A mosquito is a well recognized pest. And it’s buzzing around you and it wants something from you. It wants blood, right? And so it’s trying to get to you so that it can take something from you and not give you anything except maybe a bump of your skin, right? Which is not pleasant.

So, If you’re not doing those things, then you’re really not a pest. And when you are creating value in your communication, when you’re creating value in the relationship, there’s nothing pesty at all about that. If you’re talking to somebody about the products and services you offer and they’re interested, even if they’re not like really excited about it, if they’re like, “oh, okay, that sounds interesting. I’m open to this…”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And then you provide them the information on, okay, here’s how much it will cost. Here’s how it’s going to work. Then at that point they get to evaluate, does this make sense for me? Can I justify the cost of that for what it is that you’re offering?

If the answer is yes, you’re going to be doing business together. If the answer is no, if they tell you that, if they say, well, listen, this isn’t for me, that’s not in my budget, and if you can’t come up with another solution, then at that point the conversation is over. The person is disqualified and you move on.

The times where we’re most likely to feel like a pest is when we’re talking to somebody and they start ghosting us.

Jay: Hmm.

David: And when that happens, when they start ghosting us, then we feel like we have to follow up because they asked for information from us, right?

Jay: Right. Right.

David: They wanted to know stuff. They seemed interested. They said they were interested. Now I’m supposed to follow up on a certain day at a certain time, and they’re not taking calls and they’re not returning calls and all that sort of thing.

At that point, if you are following up, you’re not being a pest. You are attempting to deliver what it is that they asked you for. It’s like if you called and ordered a pizza and I’m the pizza delivery boy, and I come to your house and I know you’re in there and I’m ringing the bell and you’re not answering it.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Well, am I a pest because I’m trying to deliver the pizza you ordered? I think the answer is no. And it’s the same thing here. If you’re trying to provide them with information they requested, if you’re trying to follow up because they said they have a particular in-hands date on an order and they’re not responding to you, then at that point, what you’re doing is not being a pest.

What’s happening is that they are being rude. They are being discourteous. Right? They are wasting your time and wasting their time. They’re also creating frustration because you’re frustrated because you can’t reach them. They’re probably frustrated because they might see you calling and they’re like, “I don’t want to take this call.”

So they’re creating unnecessary anxiety by doing those things.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: So I put out a post on social media the other day talking about my feelings about people who ghost. And they’re not good. I don’t remember exactly what I posted. It’s up there on social media. I’ll share it below this video. But when we are in a situation where people have an interest, express an interest, we’re having a decent conversation, then as long as you’re acting with integrity to try to get them what they said they wanted from you, I don’t think there’s anything pesty about that.

Jay: No, I, think that’s a great perspective and you’ve helped me as I’ve got calls coming up after this podcast that I need to do, and I think I’m going to approach them with a little bit different perspective. And also, if somebody is ghosting you, they are systems now, right?

I put them in a drip program and so they’re still going to hear from me automatically. I don’t have to do anything about it. And. If the time comes around where they realize again that they need me, well, I’m still in their face a little bit and they’ll come around and I don’t have to worry about it until then.

David: Right. And so when we think about the topic to avoid being a pest, I mean, essentially if you are focused on them, you’re focused on helping them, you’re focused on getting them the answers they need, focused on helping them to create value to achieve the results they’re looking for then as long as you’re continuing to do that and literally just trying to provide them with the information they wanted, they should be totally fine with that.

A lot of salespeople feel this way. They feel like they’re being a pest, but nobody’s ever actually said it to them.

Right. Right.

And I know salespeople who have left messages saying, “Hey listen, I don’t want to be a pest.”

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And I’ve said…

Jay: Don’t do that.

David: Don’t leave a message like that.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because that might’ve never occurred to them.

Jay: Yeah.

David: It probably hasn’t occurred to them. And if you position yourself like that, you’re also positioning yourself lower on the scale, right? You want to at least try to be coming a people from an even level where we’re on an even playing field, “I’m here to help, you’re here to get help, let’s work together.” As opposed to, “oh, I don’t want to be a pest.”

Because if what you have is of value to them, then they should want it, and you’re the person who can help them get it.

Jay: Yeah, that’s such a valuable, valuable point. So I’m going to reassess

David: Good!

Jay: And I’m going to work on this this week and next week when we talk, I’m going to report back and…

David: Cool.

Jay: And let you know how this kind of new perspective goes. ’cause I’m not lying when I tell you that I struggle with this idea that I’m a pest. So I think it’ll help my sales, I think it’ll help my daily attitude towards what I do.

David: Well, I’ll tell you something, Jay, many of the most conscientious human beings feel this way. I mean, if you’re one of those sales guys who, “Hey, everybody loves me,” you’re not even going to think of that. It’s never even going to occur to you.

So the people who are most likely to struggle with this are people who just want to help. They’re there to provide a service.

Jay: Yeah.

David: They don’t want to be a pest. And so really, most of the people who feel this way are the ones who are least likely to be a pest because they’re not arrogant to begin with.

Jay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s a great point. All right. How do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re looking to create actual rapport with people, get into relationships that are going to be mutually beneficial, we’d love to talk with you about that. TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have a conversation.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ve loved this conversation. I think it’s going to make a difference, David. So thank you so much.

David: Cool. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it.

Are You Ready to Create More Value and Avoid Being a Pest?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Want to get better sales leads? It starts with tracking what works.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic of where are your best leads coming from? Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thank you. And I’m just going to answer the question. I don’t know. (laughing) I’m just…

David: Short podcast. Thanks for listening.

Jay: Yeah, I’m just going to say it straight up.

I mean, I do have some systems. We do try and use Google Analytics and things like that, and that helps a little bit. But I’ve never done a deep dive yet on this is the source, this is the well or the font of where my best leads have come from. So I’m looking forward to this discussion.

David: This is really a good one to look at and to dive into a bit, because I’ve always maintained that if you don’t know where your best leads are coming from, then you don’t know where to go to get more of them, and when you are able to identify it, everything else gets a whole lot easier because now you can go fishing in the same ponds, rather than just trying to put stuff out to anyone and everyone, which is very expensive to do.

You can really tune in and focus in on what people are doing, where they’re coming from, how they’re hearing about you so that you can go find more of them. In addition to… well, a number of the businesses that I’ve been involved in over the years, one of them was a retail mail order catalog business that I owned.

And in a business like that, it’s absolutely critical to know where your best leads are coming from.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: We would run magazine ads and we would get people out of different magazines. We had ads running on television that were designed to get leads for our catalog business.

And every single one of the ads we ran had some sort of mechanism to let us know where they were coming from. If it was calling an 800 number, we had one primary 800 number, but we would give them an extension to ask for. So we’d say, call this 800 number extension 214. Right? And 214 meant that it was coming from this particular TV station or whatever.

If they were seeing something online, there would be specific links that they would click through that would tell us where it was coming from. If it was a magazine ad, it was a similar kind of thing on the back of the magazine, it would say, call this number, dial this extension, or go to this web address, and there would be a slash with a suffix on the url..

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And that would tell us where it came from. And when people would call in, one of the first things that our people were required to ask them is, “where did you hear about us?” And there was a box there that they would fill out. Where did you hear about us? Oh, I saw your ad on such and such a magazine, or, I saw your ad on such and such a TV station.

And so we would have the data that the computer said based on what they came in and said, and then we would also have the data corresponding with whatever the person said. So I was pretty pathological about it, and to this day I’m still very pathological about determining where leads come from. Even now when, you know, at the end of this podcast, when you say, how do people find out more?

And I give out a link that link tracks back to the podcast, it lets me know that the people who register on that link, Came from the podcast. And if they’re coming from some other ad, then it’s going to have a different code and that sort of thing. So it’s not that hard to do when you discipline yourself to do it.

And most people don’t do that until and unless they realize how much it is actually worth to you when you do that right.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And in today’s world, honestly, there is no excuse. It is so easy. There is so much data out there. If you want to target a specific group, you can target that group. And that’s kind of the process, right?

You’re going to send out a link for this podcast, you’ll know who you get back. You’ll know age groups and those types of things. And then you’ll be like, well, let’s adjust it this way, or let’s adjust it that way. I mean, never in our history has there been such an easy way to say, I want this age group who’s interested in this type of thing.

Then you can target that group. And then based upon that new batch of information you can target in even more. I know we all kind of complain that we’re being tracked everywhere we go, but at the same time, we’re all asking for it.

We’re subscribing to newsletters, we’re hitting the like button. We’re feeding all of that information. So it becomes this circle, right? And I think it’s incredible personally. And if I am going to get sent an ad, I want it to apply to me.

When I get something that I’m like, there’s no way that this is something that I would ever consider. I almost get angry. Like, come on, get your algorithms together here.

David: Yeah. And what you’re talking about is probably a level or two above what I’m even talking about.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: I’m talking about simple things that most small or medium sized businesses can integrate into their own business, just so they have an idea of where the people who are paying them money are largely coming from.

And I don’t mean every site they’ve visited over the past 20 years.

Jay: Sure, sure.

David: I mean, where did they hear from us most recently? Did they hear about us from the podcast? Did they hear about us from an email broadcast that went out through an email broadcast platform? If so, which one?

If there is some sort of ad, which ad did they click on? There are some ads that we run on some websites where there’s an ad at the top of the page, there’s an ad on the side of the page. The ads say different things. We track those separately so we know which message and which ad.

Does the top position get more of a response? Does the side position get more of a response? Because that tells us where to focus our attention on getting more people. And a lot of it, in the early stages especially, is just about seeing where the people are basically coming from. But then when you see who’s actually buying, that narrows it down even more.

Jay: Yes.

David: Because you may be getting more leads from one source than another, but you find out that the leads from that source aren’t converting.

Jay: Yes.

David: At which point you can stop advertising there and put your money behind the ads that work.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when I mentioned how easy it is today, I even mean for small businesses. I mean, we started a small business and I don’t know anything about pay per click or, you know, anything like that. But I looked on Fiverr, you know, the website, Fiverr and Upwork, and I found somebody who said, I’ll do this for you for a month for 30 bucks and I’m like, it’s 30 bucks. I’ll try it out.

We did the $30 and the results were dramatic. So we’re like, wait a minute, if we do 30, let’s do 60. Now we’ve got this guy we spend about maybe 250 a month with him, and we get constant leads that convert from him.

I don’t know how he’s doing it and I don’t need to know how he’s doing it. Right? Now I can spend my time focusing on those leads. The other thing he’ll do is come back and say, okay, you’ve got a lot of people who are landing on your checkout page, but they’re not converting.

So we’re like, “oh, wait a minute, what’s going on?” Is it the language we’re using? Is it the pictures we’re using? Are we not conveying the message? These things can be done for relatively cheap nowadays, and so even if you’re at the smallest point, I would definitely try some of those things.

David: Yeah, it’s simple enough to be able to at least get an idea of where most people are coming from to be able to go back and get more.

And obviously, we’re talking quite a bit about online, but there are a lot of offline sources. If you do networking, you go to networking functions, you may find that one networking function does much better than another.

You may find that you go to one particular networking function and you don’t get any leads from it. You go back again and again and again, and you’re not getting leads. Everybody’s just schmoozing. That happens a lot in business.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Particularly in B2B. Well, B2C as well. So in those situations you can make determinations if you’re keeping track of it. But very many small businesses in particular will just go out, go to some sort of networking function or go to something that’s supposed to generate business, and they use that as an excuse like, “I’m doing something.”

But if you go out to something like that and you’re not going out there with the idea of coming back with leads that you can follow up on, it’s really just a waste of time.

So there’s a focus aspect to this. There’s an online versus offline aspect to this. But ultimately what it boils down to is the subject of this podcast. Where are your best leads coming from?

Jay: Yeah.

David: Where can I go to find more?

Jay: Yeah, and I see this a lot and I’ve been a victim of it. Movement for the sake of movement. You know? I’m doing something, I’m going to these networking events. Going to these shows. Placing these ads. So when is it going to start working?

Movement for the sake of movement is of no value. Right? There has to be some intent. It has to be trackable. It has to be adjustable. And I think it’s so easy to fall into that trap of “I’m doing something!” And so, where’s the result?

David: Yeah, it reminds me of that Zig Ziglar quote, “Don’t look for your ship to come in if you haven’t sent one out.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And very often we’re trying to do things that are generating results. We talked about goal setting in a previous podcast, and a lot of times we’re so focused on the goal, “I need to generate X dollars per month or X dollars per year.”

And what am I going to do to do that? And we just run around in a lot of different directions trying to generate that amount of money. Well, what we need to be doing is saying, “okay, what is going to get me to that?”

In other words, how many leads do I need to generate in a month in order to get to my number? If I know how many leads I need to generate in a month, because a certain percentage of them will convert and a certain percentage won’t convert.

If I know how many people I need to initiate contact with on any given month, then we can track those metrics and say, “okay, well today is the 20th of the month” or whatever the date is. How many people have I initiated contact with so far this month?

And if it’s less than the number that you know, you need to reach to hit your numbers, then okay, I need to initiate contact with this many more people. Because when you focus on those lead metrics, the things that you can actually control as opposed to the lag metrics, like how much actually came in for the month.

You can focus on the lead measures and then the lag measures will follow.

Jay: Yeah. And again, the focus of this podcast, the high value leads. So if you’re just not fishing in any pond, but you’re fishing in that pond where you know you’ve gotten some good leads before, maybe you won’t get as many leads, but who cares, right?

Because you’ve got quality customers who are going to come back to you. And we’d all rather have that than, you know, a hundred little minnows on our line, right?

David: Yeah, and it absolutely ties into the topic of what we’re talking about. Because when you find those really popular or those really productive fishing holes, then you say, okay, well if I go here, primarily, I can get fewer leads and know I’m still going to hit my numbers, so why would I want to waste time bringing in more leads over here if it’s not going to produce at the same level?

Jay: Yeah, maybe ’cause some people like movement. It feels like you’re busy, so that’s a good thing. It’s not always a good thing, right?

David: No. It’s an easy trap to fall into.

Jay: Yeah. Well, how do people find out more? David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re looking to attract more high quality leads in your business. If you’d like to start focusing on the high value, high dollar leads that can do better things for your business, it’s probably worth a call. TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right, as always, great conversation. Can’t wait till we talk again.

David: Thanks a lot, Jay.

Are You Ready to Determine Where Your Best Leads are Coming From?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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To grow the value of your business, consider this. If your business burns down, you’ve got whatever… desks, furniture and things like that. That stuff’s all insured. You should be able to come back from that okay.

But if your book of business burns down, right? If you still have all this overhead, but you don’t have that book of business anymore, you are really in trouble. Because if you have desks, and furniture, and technology but you don’t have the ability to sell to the people that you need to sell to, what’s that really worth? All of that is just overhead.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing building the value of your business. Welcome back Jay.

Jay: Hey, I’m so glad to be here, David. Once again, you hit me with another term, Do I really know what the value of my business is? And value has such a different meaning for so many, right?

Value could be. Well, it gives me free time. I hate my business, but it gives me free time. So it’s of great value. Or it’s of great value because I have all these shiny toys, you know, those types of things. So I think value could be very different for different people.

David: Yeah, it absolutely can. Particularly when we’re thinking about business owners versus salespeople.

When I think about business value, I mean what is it worth to someone else if they wanted to buy it from you. For a business owner, what would someone actually pay for the business? For a salesperson, what is your book of business worth?

If you’re building something up and somebody wanted to buy your book of business, what would that be worth? That’s what I was thinking of in terms of value. But you touched on a lot of other great points regarding the term.

Jay: Yeah, like I said, there’s so many other things. I’ve talked to people who have said, yeah, I’m thinking about selling my business.

And I ask them, well, what’s it worth? They often look at me like I have no idea whatsoever. In fact, I was working for Kinko’s way back when, when they wanted to sell. And they wanted to go public first, and the SEC came in and said, you don’t know what you own. You don’t know what you owe. You don’t know anything about your business.

And you have the worst paperwork system we’ve ever seen in our lives. You’re not going public. And so they went and found a private buyer, which was FedEx, who went and bought FedEx Kinko’s. So just in how you manage your business can affect the value of that business.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And for a lot of people, the value of their business isn’t going to be FedEx Kinko’s worthy, very likely.

Jay: Yeah.

David: But still, it’s good to know. And, for some it might be worth more than that. But for most people, particularly small to medium sized businesses, when they’re looking to sell, they really don’t have any idea of what the business is worth or what it could be worth to someone else. And in different industries, there are different metrics and multipliers that people use.

They say, okay, well, we’re going to take a multiple of your net value. In other words, what is, bottom line, after owner’s compensation and things like that. They have a number of different metrics that people use. But in a lot of cases, that’s what it boils down to. What’s it likely to be worth to someone else?

Glen Holt was a professional in the promotional products industry for a long time. He was one of my mentors in the early days. I remember him saying that when people are looking to buy a business, what they’re really paying for is the likelihood of future business. Because the only way I want to spend a dime on a business is if I know it’s going to generate a high multiple of that over a period of time. Whether it’s two years or five years, or seven years or ten years, whatever that multiple ends up being. At some point I know that I’m going to be able to recoup my investment and make more going forward.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. Maybe you envision running this business forever and then you hand it off to your kids and their kids. But a lot of parents find out their kids don’t want the business. So it’s not easy to offload it that way.

But I like the idea of even if you’re never considering running your business, things happen. Right? Medical things happen. Emergencies happen. You may find yourself someday saying, “I don’t want to sell. But I have to sell because of my circumstances.” So I think always running your business in a way that if you had to sell, you’d have your numbers in line.

You’ve built your value, you have a clientele. I think that may be just a good mindset.

David: Yeah. It’s also a good mindset if you think about the fact that some people don’t want to sell their businesses. That’s perfectly fine. But the thing that you have to realize is that if you don’t sell your business, then who bought it? You did, right?

Jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David: You bought it with your time, your energy, your effort, all the hours that you put into it. So it’s good to be able to say, “okay, I know what I’ve put into this.” If you even get a value of what it might be worth to someone else, you can say, “would I be willing to pay that for this business?”

Right? Or the amount of time and energy and effort that I put in, would I want it to be worth more than that? So I think it’s a good metric to know from our own standpoint in terms of what’s the business worth or what’s the book of business worth to someone else. But also how am I doing in terms of what I was hoping to build when I started out?

Jay: Yeah, that’s a good question. What were you expecting to build and where are you now and what more can you do? I think there’s also some sticker shock when you think your business is worth one thing and someone comes in and says, “oh, I think it’s worth half that.” You’re like, “wait a minute, this is my baby! I built this thing. It has to be worth more than that.”

David: Right, but there are metrics that you can use to make those determinations. And chances are, if you go to sell your business, somebody’s going to tell you they think it’s worth less than you do. But that’s where you have to make a determination as well and say, “okay, well look, if you were to buy this business, in three and a half years, you would be able to get your money back even if you just maintain it,” right?

So, and if they say, “well, I only want to pay, you know, a year’s worth,” then you can say, “all right, well we probably don’t have a fit here,” or whatever. But as long as you’ve got the metrics to back it up, to say, okay, we’re doing this amount of sales after our costs, we’re doing this amount. If you take out what the owner’s being compensated, then this is what you would have left at the end of each year.

And then you use that as some sort of multiple to say. Is it two years? Is it three years? Three and a half, five, seven, whatever you can get. Now, there are some companies, particularly in the tech space, and particularly if they’re recurring revenue companies, that they can sell for high multiples of what they’re bringing in each year.

It just depends on what people feel that it’s worth and also, what they think they’ll be able to do with it. Because if somebody has a book of business and they’re selling whatever, a quarter million, half a million dollars a year, I’m talking about a salesperson and they want to retire. If they were to sell their book of business to someone else, and that person was going to look at it and say, well, I think I can probably maintain that for a certain number of years.

Then they would value it based on that. If they looked at it and said, I think I can do twice what this guy’s doing with this book of business, then they might value it higher.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: So a lot of it has to do with the person that you are looking to potentially sell to as well.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think just some of the more simpler things like staffing, you know, who’s running the place when you’re not there?

What does the place look like? Is the equipment updated? Because, you know, that’s what I’m thinking. Am I going to have to come in here and update all of this equipment? Will I have ongoing capital costs? Am I going to have all of these things? You may think you’re saving a dollar now, but if you do have to sell, it’s really going to hurt yourself in the long run.

David: Yeah, and we didn’t even really talk about things like that because it depends on the kind of business that you have.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: If you’ve got a lot of overhead, if you’ve got furniture, fixtures, real estate, all those types of things, those are all going to play into it. I was really thinking more in terms of small businesses or a book of business that a salesperson has, where it’s primarily their book of business that they’re selling. Because in those situations, when people buy businesses too, they very often prefer to do an asset sale.

They only want to buy assets of the business so that if there were any potential issues with the business before, if somebody was going to try to sue the business or whatever, that wouldn’t potentially come with a sale. So they’d say, “I just want to buy certain assets. I want to buy your customer base. Maybe I want to buy certain furniture and fixtures. I want to take along certain employees.”

So they can sort of cherry pick the things that they want to buy from the business. But I don’t want to get too much into the weeds on this. I think for anyone who has been considering the idea of, okay, what is my business or my book of business worth? What do I need to look at?

And so some of it would be to say, okay, what type of clients do I have? Do I have a base of high value clients? People who spend money with me consistently? Because if I do, that’s going to be worth a whole lot more than if I’m getting one-off and two off orders from lots of different people, and it’s coming from all kinds of different sources and I can’t say where it’s coming from.

Jay: Right.

David: When you know where your clients are coming from and you’re selling to them on an ongoing basis and you’ve got a lot of repeat and referral business, that’s a whole lot easier to sell.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you know, I’m just going through this process right now. I am basically starting a company that is mirroring the company I work for, because they’re going out of business, and I was able to cherry pick the things that I liked, so,

David: mm-hmm.

Jay: Yes, give me your customer base. Yes, give me some of your systems with your website and things like that. Throw the rest away. I don’t want any of the other stuff because I didn’t feel like they were doing it right. So I really came away, like you said, with this book of business that I know is going to be of high value and high dollar for me.

David: Yeah. And what a lot of people lose sight of sometimes is that that is really the primary value of a business. There are a lot of people in the print and promotions industry where they’ve got printing equipment and they’ve got all that sort of thing, inks and all sorts of things like that, which for the most part reflects overhead.

That stuff that you’ve got to pay for, that then has to be paid back. And all of that’s going to be paid back by the customers that you’re able to bring in. So it’s all going to be dependent upon the business that’s coming in. So a lot of times the things that some business owners and also most banks, the thing that most banks look at as assets are to most business owners, actually liabilities because it’s overhead.

And I’ve, said this a number of times when I’ve been speaking in public about this. One of the things that I’ve said very often is the fact that If your business burns down, you don’t want that to happen, right? But if your business burns down and you’ve got whatever, desks and furniture and things like that, that stuff’s all insured. You should be able to come back from that okay.

But if your book of business burns down, right? If you still have all this overhead, but you don’t have that book of business anymore, you are really in trouble. Because if you’ve got desks and you’ve got furniture, and you’ve got technology and everything, and you don’t have the ability to sell to the people that you need to sell to, at that point, what’s that really worth?

All of that becomes overhead. So it’s just good to think about.

Jay: Well, and I also think, and I don’t know if this is on topic, with what you’re thinking of, but it really pops in my mind, is if you have different salespeople in your business and their book of business is treated as their book of business, if they leave, you’ve lost a portion of your clientele. And so it’s very important to somehow incorporate that into a customer management system where you can see everything that’s been going on, maybe have non-competes. Because in the situation I was in, I attained a certain level of knowledge that no one else in the company had.

And so when I went to leave, they’re like, “we’re going to have to shut down because he is the only guy who knows this stuff.” And so offloading their information, offloading their customer base, making sure that it’s treated as your property if you do have a sales team, I think is absolutely critical.

David: Yeah, absolutely is. In the promotional products industry in particular, a lot of businesses hire independent contractors. And when you’re an independent contractor, unless there are documents that say something different, you pretty much own that book of business.

Jay: Yeah.

David: If you’re an employee, if you’re a paid salesperson, if you’re on salary, then it’s very likely that the company owns that book of business, unless there’s some sort of documentation saying otherwise.

So regardless of however you’re set up, it’s really smart to have some sort of clarification upfront when you join an organization. Okay, who owns these clients? Is it the salesperson? Is it the business? Because if you’re unclear on that stuff, that could lead to expensive legal issues down the line.

Jay: Yeah. One person could walk out the door and that’s it. Then you’re rebuilding from scratch.

David: Yeah, we have a manual system, that a number of businesses in the print and promotional products industry have used. And when we were promoting that at one point, one of the points that I made with that particular product was that if someone were to walk out of a bank with $250,000 that didn’t belong to them, that would be called bank robbery. It would be a crime.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah.

David: And they would send the police after you. But if a sales representative walks out of your business with $250,000 worth of business, if you don’t have the paperwork in place, there’s no crime there, right?

Jay: Nope.

David: You just lost it, and that person has it.

Jay: That’s right.

David: So you really want to make sure that stuff is nailed down in advance.

Jay: Absolutely. I love this discussion. How can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re thinking about building up the value of your business, one of the best ways to do that is to have the systems and processes in place that will allow you to be able to sell it, move away from it, and have the person who buys it be able to expect to continue to grow that business and obtain a high return on investment. That’s what’s going to allow you to sell it for top dollar. If you don’t have systems and processes like that in place, it’d be great to have a conversation.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, once again, it’s always a pleasure.

David: Thank you very much, Jay.

Want to Grow the Value of Your Business?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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To get responses, create high-value communication. When you’re doing this, obviously, you’re not actually telling your customer “I’m here to create value in our communication.” You’re just doing it: Adding value in the conversation. You’re thinking about, “what can I say when I reach out to this person the next time to make this communication more interesting, more beneficial?” By doing that, you’re going to create that in their brains and they’re not even going to know why or how it’s happening.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will discuss how to get responses by creating high value communications. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, once again, great to be here with you as we talk again about a topic that I know in my business career, we probably haven’t had this conversation a lot.

Communication is just something that happens. And it may depend on whether you’re old school or new school. Old school, we’re just making phone calls and picking up the phone. That’s high value communication. If it’s new school, we’re texting and emailing. And that’s the extent of the thought process.

David: Yeah, and I think the adjective here, the high value part of it may be what we’re bringing to the discussion today. Because you’re right, communication in business is expected. It comes with the job.

Mm-hmm.

And we’re always going to be communicating. But the fact of the matter is that particularly now, as people are more and more likely to skip over communication, if they don’t like what you’re saying or if they don’t feel like it’s worthwhile to them, it becomes more important for us to ask ourselves “am I creating value in this conversation?”

Am I creating value in this email, this text, this phone call, this podcast, right? Because if we’re not communicating value in the discussion, then we’re doing our listeners a disservice. We’re doing whoever it is that we’re calling a disservice. Whoever we’re emailing, we’re doing them all a big disservice.

So, If we consider the idea that we need to be engaged in high value communication as much as possible, it will very likely change what we’re saying at any given time.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think that most people now are engaging these new technologies that make the communication part automatic, right?

Like drip campaigns, newsletters, automatic texting or whatever. So that part of the equation is fairly easy to implement. But then the real question, as you’re bringing up, is if I’m not providing value in that communication, I am training the customer or the potential customer to block me out.

Because that’s the other thing that’s so easy. It’s so easy to automatically communicate. But on the other end, it is so easy for me when I hit delete in my messages. It says, do you want to block this sender? And that’s it. It’s done. It’s over. So that’s why you want to focus on that word value.

David: Yeah, and particularly now when people are using AI to help generate communications. And my belief is that’s going to cause a lot of communications to start looking like other communications.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody’s going to be saying pretty much the same things. But if you are operating with the intent of creating value in the communication that’s going to be a component that you might be adding that other people aren’t going to be adding into their algorithm, whether it’s with AI or whether it’s what they’re doing themselves.

And you also raised a great point, which is the idea of if you’re not doing this, you are training people essentially to ignore you. And wow, that’s not what we want to train people to do.

Jay: Right. my email service now, I use Mac right at the top now, they put the unsubscribe button, like that’s the first thing I see.

So it is so easy, and I just think about it. There are newsletters that I keep, that I allow to keep coming, and there are those that I unsubscribe to immediately. And I kind of do this thing where I, okay, I’ll scan down quick. And I’m looking for value for me. Because I have a time to value, you know, ratio.

So I’m looking, is this something, is there anything in here that this person’s sending me that I really care about? And if I get one or two and the answer is no, they’re done. That’s it. You’ll never get through to me again.

David: Right. And when you think about it, particularly with something like email, but it also applies to texts or whatever, When you’re looking through your inbox, you’re going to see two things. You’re going to see who it’s from, and you’re going to see the subject line.

Mm-hmm.

What is it that they’re trying to communicate? So sometimes people will look at your name and they’ll say, “oh, it’s from Jay. I’m going to open this.” They don’t even care what the subject line is.

Yeah.

But if you don’t have that sort of relationship, they’re going to say, “okay, it’s from Jay. What does he want?” Right? And then they might go to the subject line and say, “does this subject line interest me enough to open this?”

And if the answer is yes, then it will get opened. But that combination is going to be huge. And if you’re not thinking in terms of adding value in your communication, then you’re very likely not going to have any value mentioned in your subject line, and you’re going to dramatically reduce the likelihood that it’s going to get opened.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. So we’re kind of talking about the drip campaigns or the ongoing attempts to kind of get in and remind them about us. That’s one part of communication. But I also think it’s important to assess the value of the regular ongoing communication that is happening.

Like when somebody calls in, are they getting a phone tree? When somebody on your staff or you talk to somebody, is somebody going to hang up the phone and say, and we’ve all had this happen. I hang up the phone and I go, well, that was a big fat waste of time, right?

And so clearly I didn’t have a high value conversation with the person who I was talking to.

David: Yeah, exactly, and I think we’ve all been in that situation where we’ve either been on the receiving end of it or we’ve been on the ascending side of it, where we just feel like, “oh wow, I clearly didn’t create enough value in this communication.”

If they’re ignoring us, if they’re ghosting us, there’s always a reason for it. Now that reason is not always us. maybe it’s not your communication. Maybe you’re doing everything right and this person just has different things going on, or they’re afraid to say no, whatever that is.

We’re never going to completely get around that. But if you recognize the fact that most people are going to be looking for “what’s in it for me? What’s the benefit to me in pursuing this conversation?” Then we can change what we’re doing.

And the really great point that you raised there is, yeah, we’re not just talking about drip campaigns, we are talking about every single bit of communication that you put out. And that’s sort of what we led off with, is that you need to create high value communication in everything.

Telephone calls, voice messages when you’re leaving a voicemail message. A lot of people don’t get calls back when they leave a voicemail message. And some of the reason for that is very likely the fact that there may not be enough value created in the message that is being left.

If the message is, “Hey, give me a call back,” and I don’t know why I should, because I don’t know how that will benefit me, then the likelihood of me calling back is dramatically reduced.

But if I recognize that I need to dangle some sort of carrot there. Why should they want to contact me back? Why should they want to return the call? And if I can add some value in there, give me a call back so I can, dot dot dot.

What is it? What can you do that would be beneficial to them? Because if you say that in the communication, they’ll be a lot more likely to reply.

Jay: Yeah. I think today it’s so funny how we respond to things. When I get an email that I don’t feel like had value or that I didn’t ask for. I feel invaded. I feel like somebody has come into my house and forced their will upon me. And when I get a text, it’s even worse.

We judge these communications so aggressively and one of the other things that jumps into my mind that is so important about high value communication, one of the things I hate is when I call and whoever I’m calling goes right into the sales pitch, like right away.

We don’t want to misinterpret value as the minute I get on the phone with them, I’m going to tell you what my value is to them. My preference is that they spend some time getting to know me so that they can properly explain to me how their product or service fits into my situation.

If they’re just going to start cramming stuff down my throat, the minute we start talking, I’m going to be gone pretty quick.

David: Yeah, and that’s an excellent distinction. Because there’s the value that we will create if and when we do business together, right? If I’m trying to sell you something, there should be value created if we’re doing business together, right? Otherwise, there’s no purpose in that happening.

But I’m talking about the value that has to happen to even have that conversation. When you dive right into “here’s who I am and here’s what I sell,” they don’t understand the value at that point, right?

Because the value has to come, to some extent, from the relationship that we are establishing in that call. And so to the extent that we’re going to lead off with value in that call or in that communication, we need to do it in a way where they get the value upfront and it can’t be related to the fact that they’re already buying something from us.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. This is one of the things I do every day as I do sales consultations. And oftentimes I will have people that have already spoken to two or three of my competitors and they will vent to me about how they talk to those people.

They were just trying to sell me. I never felt like they had any real interest in me. And then they talk to me and the first five minutes of the conversation, I’m getting to know them and their product and what they’re looking for so that I can actually provide a consultation, because that’s what I bill it as, right?

I if I say it’s a sales consultation, or a free consultation is what we call it, and what they’re getting is a sales pitch, that is just bait and switch and they’ll sense it immediately.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And once again, I think just considering this, just thinking about it, keeping in the back of your mind or tacking it up on the wall next to your desk, next to your phone to remind yourself that ultimately it’s about creating high value communication, if we want to get a response, if we want to engage with people, create relationships, and ultimately sell something,

Jay: Yeah, and at every level of communication, right? Not just the beginning, not just the middle, but the entire process from beginning to end.

Think about that mindset, if a customer knows that every time they interact with you, it’s going to somehow be fulfilling on some level. Whether it’s the product or how the communication is perceived or how you just pick up the phone.

Then, like we talked about in the last podcast, when we see a caller ID and somebody’s calling us, we’re not going to be like, “ugh, I can’t believe I have to pick up the phone on this one.” We’re going to be like, “oh, it’s going to be great to talk to that person.”

David: And nine times out of 10, they won’t even realize why. Right? Because most people don’t talk about this. They don’t think about this. They don’t even consider the idea of creating value in the communication.

So if you’re doing this, obviously, you’re not telling your customer “well, I’m here to create value in our communication,” right? You’re just doing it.

Adding value in the conversation. Thinking “what can I say when I reach out to this person the next time to make this communication more interesting, more beneficial?” By doing that, you’re going to create that in their brains and they’re not even going to know why it’s happening.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Such a great point. How do people find out more, David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you are looking to create value in your communication, that is really one of the core principles of what we do in our Total Market Domination course.

A lot of it is about creating entry-level communication, the kind of communication that’s going to introduce you to someone initially so that they can start to feel comfortable with you and comfort level communication, because they’re not going to buy until they get to the point where they’re feeling comfortable.

So there are different levels of high value communication that we walk you through that are specifically designed to get you the result that you’re probably looking for.

Jay: As always, I love the conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Get Responses with High-Value Business Communication?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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The follow-up mistake that costs sales (and kills communication) is a lack of sequencing. If I’ve got a sequence in place that says, all right, when I get a lead from a networking function, I’m going to initially, either same day or next morning, send out this email message, which essentially says, “it was great meeting you at the networking function. Nice having a chance to talk.”

Then, you include something in that email to elicit a response. Some will initiate a dialogue, some of them won’t.

So from that point, if you don’t hear back, you could have another one that goes out a couple of days later saying, “Hey, never heard back you on this, but something else occurred to me that I didn’t mention…” and then you add something else to the conversation that could potentially be of interest to them. So you’re not just hitting them with “call me, call me, call me, call me.” You’re actually creating value in the communication, which is particularly key when you’re doing sequencing like that.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of sequencing your communication. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. I really love that we dive into these things that can have such an impact on your daily business.

Oftentimes people will focus on the large things, not understanding that sometimes the smallest tweaks can make all the difference.

David: Yeah, and things like this really are kind of diving deep. And many times I know other people in podcasts or in stuff that’s actually going out to the public, they’ll just keep it all high level and not really get into too much.

I think we’ve done a reasonably good job over the years of diving a little deeper and getting into things in a little bit more detail. Because it’s important for people who watch this or listen to this to recognize that there are a lot of aspects to all of this.

And we touched on this in the previous episode. We were talking about sort of the high level goals, we were talking about the high level concepts versus the nitty gritty of what do I have to do on a day-to-day basis. And this really gets more into the idea of the nitty gritty.

But sequencing is something that I don’t hear many people talk about in business. And I think it’s a real game changer for people in the sense that when you get this and you start implementing it, it changes the way that you interact with your prospects and clients to make what you are doing better and more appealing than what your competition is probably doing.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And back to the idea of focusing on the smaller stuff.

I’m weird. I call myself lazy because I want to avoid steps and reduce steps, but in the name of that laziness, I will spend weeks trying to create a system, whether it’s a software system or a planning system or something, just knowing that over the long run, it’s going to have such a dramatic impact.

And I can be lazy about that thing after that. And I focus. I mean, if I can reduce one little step, I’ll spend weeks trying to figure out how to do that.

David: Yeah. But that’s smart. I don’t think that’s lazy. I think it’s far lazier to just go into each situation, not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing how to respond to the common objections you get, not knowing how to create a system that will allow you to bring clients through the door like clockwork.

And when you do that, you’re basically going into work every day with no idea of what’s going to happen. So I think that’s really lazy and really sloppy and I don’t think what you described is lazy at all.

Jay: Well, I don’t, you know, I think you’re probably right, but it is something that drives my wife crazy and it’s really bad.

Like when we go grocery shopping, I have a route, and that route has a very specific design. It’s based upon how the groceries are going to end up on the conveyor belt. And that’s important because that determines on how they will go into the bags, because I want the bread on top and all of those things on top.

So I have this all planned and thought out from years of experience. It brings me joy, David, it’s, it’s a little, probably obsessive compulsive, but that’s the way I am.

David: That’s funny and she still lets you come along. That’s amazing. But it’s a great example though, because when you think about that, and there are two schools of thought when it comes to outcomes, right?

You described a more outcome driven approach. And it reminds me of the expression, the road is better than the inn, if you’ve heard that one.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And I remember hearing that years ago and thinking, no, I kind of like the inn, right? I like, where are we going? Let’s get there. Mission accomplished. Onto the next thing.

But there are people who just enjoy the experience. Shopping is a great example of that. I have never been a good shopper.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

At least before online shopping. I was a terrible shopper. As a kid. My mom would drag me around to different stores and she could just look at stuff for hours. I got bored three minutes in.

As a kid, I could go to the toy section and I could look around for a few minutes, maybe see something I liked or whatever. Then I’m done. Right? And people are just wired differently in that regard.

But I think if we really get down to the core of it, and we start thinking in terms of creating the systems and processes that will allow you to get results in your business, and tying it again back to our main topic, sequencing your communication, what this will allow you to do is to leapfrog your competition. Because you won’t have to think about each step of it.

And it really ties to what you were saying about, you know your process in a store. Well, imagine that in business.

Imagine a situation where you create a sequence of communications to send out to the prospects that you want to convert, in a specific order, in a specific sequence, at a specific timeframe. You can automate that as well. And design it to accomplish a result

Too often in business because we’re sort of focused all over the place, we’re here, we’re there, we’re everywhere. We think in terms of sending a message out to a prospect and waiting for them to reply. And when they don’t reply. We become confused and annoyed.

It’s like, why didn’t they reply? I sent you an email. Why didn’t you reply? And it’s cause that’s not the way the world works anymore. Right? I sent you an email. Yeah, it’d be nice if it were like tennis, where you bat it across the other person bats it across, and you bat it across and you have a nice volley going.

That happens sometimes, but more often than not, it’s not happening. And if you’re depending on getting that volley hit back to you right away, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Where instead, if you recognize, you may have to send it across the net 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 times before it gets lobbed back, you’ll be prepared. And if you prep that in advance, you are so far ahead of what your competition is doing. It’s just not even funny.

Jay: Yeah, I, have this situation going on right now where somebody has sent me an email inviting me to do something. I don’t know who this person is. I’ve never heard from them, and then I don’t respond.

And then like four days later, I get an email that says, Hey, you didn’t respond. And I’m like, Well, that should tell you all you need to know. And then I got another one. I’ve sent you two emails and you haven’t responded. This person is sequencing, but they’re doing it in a horrific way. I mean, by the third email, I’m like, who do you think you are?

That you can sit here and demand a response from me? And I don’t even know who you are. The whole thing has soured me. I am never going to call them back based upon that type of sequencing.

David: Right. And if that’s the type of sequencing we’re talking about, then yeah, don’t do that. That is not what I’m talking about.

It’s interesting you should mention that because over the past several months I have received so many messages from people, pitching guests for this very podcast where they’re saying, Hey, I think you should interview this person who’s talking about this thing, and let me know if that’s of interest to you.

You know, I’ve listened to your podcast. I think he’d be a great fit. And most of the time I get, you know, pretty much the same pitch for different speakers. So I’m on some kind of list and I normally ignore them.

But they’ve got sequences set up where it’s the second one. Hey, just bumping this up to the top of your inbox again, you know, do you want to consider so-and-so for the podcast?

And so finally, I just put together the response that I’m sending to people, which is to say, if you listen to this podcast, you would recognize that we are not an “interview of the week kind of thing.” You know, there are two of us who do this.

Jay: Yeah.

David: If we were a podcast that had a lot of people on and we were interviewing what you said would make sense, and I don’t get into all that much detail. But they’re basically not pitching the right thing to the right person.

And so in those situations, yeah, sequencing is not a great idea. But when you’ve got somebody who is engaged or would like to be engaged and you want to find out whether or not they’re on board with you, when it’s done right…

And that ties into the MVPs, the messaging, you know, is the messaging going to be good? Which combination of marketing vehicles you’re using to reach them, and who are the people you’re reaching? If you’ve got those three things in sync, then sequencing is going to work extremely well for you.

Jay: So let’s talk a little bit more about. Sequencing. I can guess at a, couple of these things. I’m guessing like so many of the things we’re talking about, you want to start with pen and paper and maybe start identifying who your potential customers are. What are potential, the stages that they might be in, and then start focusing on the messaging for each of those stages.

David: Yes. And when we think in terms of the overall stages, or the initial stages, where is this person in the journey? If this is somebody that I just met, let’s say I meet somebody at a networking function. We exchange business cards or whatever, I go back to my office, this person goes back to their office and nothing happens until one of us moves, right?

So, If I’ve got a sequence in place that says, all right, when I get a lead from a networking function, what I’m going to do is I’m going to initially, either same day or next morning, send out this email message, which essentially says, it was great meeting you at the networking function.

Nice having a chance to talk. And then. you have something that you say and obviously it’s going to be different for each person who’s doing that, but you’ve got something that is said in that email that is designed to elicit a response.

So you might want to end that email with a question so that they’re likely to initiate a dialogue. Some will initiate a dialogue, some of them won’t.

So from that point, if you don’t hear back, you could have another one that goes out a couple of days later like, with a reply to your own message saying, Hey never heard back you on this, but something else occurred to me that I didn’t mention…

and then you add something else to the conversation that could potentially be of interest to them. So you’re not just hitting them with call me, call me, call me, call me. You’re actually creating value in the communication, which is also key to good marketing, but it’s also particularly key when you’re doing sequencing like that.

And then the third step in your sequence could be calling to follow up. If they gave you a business card, it could be a phone call that comes whatever, a week later or a certain period of time later, and you decide what that is.

In our Total Market Domination course, I mean, we walk through all of this so people can decide, can determine for themselves what is a good timeframe to do this in.

Because a lot of times if you get a business card from somebody at a networking function and you forget about it? Or you go to a trade show, that’s the worst! You’re paying to have all these people go out to the trade show. You’re paying to put ’em up, you’re paying to feed them. They bring cards back and they stay in the bottom of their briefcase or their suitcase. And those people never get phone calls. It’s just such an incredible waste.

But if you’ve got these processes in place to be able to sequence your communication, to be able to get those people back into the zone that they were in, that first initiated the conversation, then they will be far more likely to respond to you and reply to the conversation and keep it going.

Jay: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m in the heat of this process right now, because as you know, I’m setting up a new business.

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: building the CRM behind the scenes and I have to ask myself, what are each of the stages and what do I want to happen? What type of communication? And one of the other parts about that, that is so important is, oftentimes, I know when I’ve been put in somebody’s CRM drip system. Because the messages stop being personal and I’m like, you’re sending this out to everybody.

So there’s a fine line between having a sequence and making people feel like, oh, they’ve just been put in the hopper. I think we have a high awareness. And so I think that your sequences need to be a combination of personal contact. And these systems that will save you a lot of time and effort.

David: Yes, I agree completely. I also think that the way that those sequences are written is going to determine a lot of that as well.

Jay: Yes!

David: There are people in business, many of us in business have initially been trained on “corporate speak.” And we write in brochure language, instead of in human language.

Jay: Yes.

David: A lot of what you just described can be overcome simply by engaging in conversational English, even in the messages that are going out automatically. Even in the automated messages where much of the content will be the same. But the way that you’re conveying it still seems more personal and still feels like it’s coming from another human being as opposed to an auto-generated sequence.

Jay: Yeah. David, I love this point. And you know, I’ve discovered a way for me to do this. And that is I’ve started using dictation on the computer a lot.

Because I don’t know if people notice if they’re watching the video. I have something called Essential Tremors, which causes me to shake. And it’s getting harder and harder for me to type. So I’ve gone to dictation, but I found if I close my eyes and I act like I’m on the phone with the person when I’m doing the dictation, that brochure speak goes away.

And so it’s something I don’t have to give a lot of thought to. It’s just a change in how I’m recording that information.

David: Yeah, I do a very similar thing on the treadmill in the morning. I’ve got a, a little digital recorder and I’m on the treadmill and I’m moving and I’m recording. It could be a letter, it could be notes for some sort of presentation I’m going to do.

But I will record that and I’ll just stop it every few seconds. If you heard those recordings, it’s a lot of heavy breathing and little bits and pieces. And I’ll say three words and I’ll stop and I’ll try to figure out what the rest of the sentence is, and I’ll say that, and then I’ll just take that whole thing and I’ll get it transcribed.

And then at that point I can clean up the words and it’s a hundred times easier than trying to sit down in front of a blinking cursor and figure out what I’m going to say next.

Jay: Yeah. And that blinking cursor, it does something to us. It changes how, how we record that information. So I love that piece of feedback when it comes to sequencing.

Cool.

How do people find out more, David?

David: You can go to top secrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team if you are interested in getting better response from people by thinking things out in advance and sequencing your communication so that people are actually looking forward to hearing what you have to say next instead of dreading it, schedule a call.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, once again, it’s a pleasure talking to you.

David: Thank you so much, Jay.

Are You Ready to Start Getting Better Results by Sequencing Your Communication?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Wondering how to achieve your goals? Well, achieving goals is quite different than just setting them. So while the first step may be to set the goals you really want, then we have to prioritize our actions from high to low. What is the most important thing that I need to do in order to get there? Because generally, you can come up with a dozen or a hundred different things that you’re going to need to do to achieve your goals. But there’s probably one to three things on there that are going to be more important than the other 97.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to achieve your goals. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, so glad to be here, David, and once again, I’m looking forward to this discussion. We hear people talk about goals all the time, and I know for me it’s something that I struggle with because what will happen is I’ll set those goals.

I really haven’t defined how I’m going to get there, and then when I don’t achieve them, it becomes something that deflates me. So I think for a lot of people, goal setting can work against them.

David: I think it can too, because I believe there is a lot of focus on goal setting, and it’s something that we do, particularly at the beginning of a new year.

A lot of people focus on their new year resolutions, which are their goals. And while there’s been a lot written about goal setting, the importance of goal setting, writing things down, reviewing it regularly, having your affirmations and things like that.

All of those things are certainly helpful, but they don’t actually, directly connect to the idea of how to achieve your goals. And that’s why I wanted to title this the way that I did, because setting your goals has been done to death, but how do you achieve your goals? I think it’s interesting to explore that aspect of this topic.

Jay: Well, yeah. And one of the things that frustrates me is, when people talk about goal setting, they tend to assume that everybody’s the same.

Oh, just follow this and you’re great. It’s like, I read The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and what was never mentioned or considered in that was, it was also seven habits for highly organized people already.

You had already achieved a level where all you had to do was put these things in place and you’re good. You can achieve your goals.

Well, what about me? I wasn’t raised with systems and those kind of things, so what about me? I didn’t feel like there was any place that I could implement that.

David: Yeah. And that is very common. I mean, I think everyone probably deals with that because unfortunately, when you’re writing a book that’s going to be on a shelf for a long period of time, you have to include things that are essentially timeless.

And The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I mean, it’s such a great book. It’s a very inspirational read. But when you’ve got rules, like “Be Proactive,” that’s a big, broad rule, right? And in many cases you can be proactive, but what does that mean? It gets down to the nitty gritty.

We’ve talked in the past about Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth. I love that book.

The E-Myth, The E-Myth Revisited. I read the original copy a long, long time ago, and I just loved it, because this was all about processes. And that book talked primarily about the fact that you have to have processes.

But then what are those processes, right? Because that’s the part that people like you and I need. It’s like, what are the processes? How do I do that? How do I make that happen?

And so much of my career has been focused on that. How do I turn this great recommendation, “be proactive,” you know?

Jay: Yeah.

David: “Work on your business, not just in your business.” How do I take broad statements like that? To some extent, they become platitudes, and how do I turn that into something that is actionable?

Because that is the only way you can ever achieve your goals. You have to be able to convert those great ideas into actionable tasks.

Jay: Yeah, such a key point. I think for me, what I found is I have to break it down enough to where I can feel that feeling of success instead of failure. Right?

So it’s got to be minute enough to where I can say, okay, I did it. I accomplished something. And it could be something very simple. But that motivates me to the next step. I find if they’re too big, then I’m setting myself up for disappointment.

David: Absolutely. But I think anyone who reads any sort of self-help material or business material, if you can take what they’re giving you and then just ask yourself right away, “how do I apply this right now to my business?” Again, Seven Habits, “begin with the end in mind.”

Jay: Right.

David: I mean, you could find that in a fortune cookie, couldn’t you? It’s brilliant advice, but it’s like, oh, hey, yeah, that’s really great. Now, again, in fairness, because it’s an excellent book…

Jay: Yes.

David: And he goes into a lot of detail about some different ways that you can do that. But in some sense it has to be general. And that’s why, if you’re able to ask yourself that question, “how do I apply this right now?” It’s going to get you a lot closer to being able to achieve your goals.

Because now it’s not about concepts, it’s about you: Your activities, your focus, and what your next step is.

Jay: Yeah, so let’s get into a little bit more detail. I’ve asked myself, “how do I accomplish this now?” Is that a list you would write down or how would you recommend people proceed from that point?

David: Well, yeah, I think what I would generally want to start with is thinking in terms of resources. What are you going to need to achieve your goals?

Okay. because once I’ve written down the goal… say my goal is X amount of dollars in sales by the end of the year. My goal is to sell X number of customers by a certain date. Whatever your thing is, now you’ve got the goal.

All right. Well, as I said, the goal is kind of the easy part. Now we need to think in terms of, okay, what are the resources? What are you going to need in order to be able to achieve your goal?

Can I do it by myself? Am I going to have to hire additional staff? Hopefully you’re not. But you need to know upfront. Because if you don’t take the time to consider the resources that are needed, versus the resources at your disposal, then you won’t even know if you’re taking actions that are not going to allow you to get to your goal.

But if you take the time to think upfront, okay, what are the resources I’m going to need? Who am I going to need? Right? It’s not just about the things. It’s also about the people. Am I going to need additional help with this? And if so, what kind of people am I going to need?

There’s an excellent book called Who Not How, by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy. It talks about the fact that when we’re looking to get things done, a lot of times we think in terms of “how am I going to do this?” When in fact we’re often better served by saying, “who can help me with this, who can help me get this done?”

And that goes back to the resources.

If you have a clear idea of what you’re going to need and who you’re going to need, then it’s going to be a lot easier to achieve your goals. And then ultimately, how much am I going to need?

How much am I going to need in terms of resources, in terms of money, in terms of people, in terms of time?

Time is always one of those resources that you need to evaluate upfront, and if you don’t do that, you’re never going to get beyond the fortune cookie aspect of what it is we’re talking about here.

Jay: Yeah, you’ve kind of brought up negative emotions with me because it reminds me, I grew up in the restaurant business. And before I became an area manager and a regional manager, I remember my area manager coming in every year and we’d have to set sales goals.

And so first of all, it was a complete shot in the dark. It was based upon air. Right? Just how much do you want to increase your sales? And second of all, there was never any instruction on how you’re going to do this.

And so, how do you do it as a restaurant? I’m not in control of the marketing budget because it was a chain. So what am I going to do? Nobody ever said, well, you can increase your sales by doing A, B, C, and D.

They just came in and set this arbitrary goal, and at the end of the year I was beat up because I didn’t reach that goal. And I’m like, this just becomes a bludgeon that creates disappointment.

David: Right, because the focus there is on the what.

Jay: Yes.

David: What is it that I want to accomplish? Just like we’re talking about with goals. This is the goal. Okay. The goal is established very early on. But then every day, every hour preceding that, you need to ask yourself, am I on track?

And that’s going to go back to, first of all, do you have a plan in place? Because if you don’t have a plan to achieve your goals, then it’s not going to happen. But then beyond the plan, do I have the resources? Do I have them in place? Am I firing on all thrusters?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: Are we doing the things that we need to do in order to accomplish it? And then also just adapting, recognizing that, let’s say you establish your goals today, you lay out a plan today, and you’re starting on it tomorrow.

Well, as soon as you start it, it’s like that old quote, I don’t know if it was Colin Powell, some military general talked about the fact that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

Jay: Yes.

David: And it’s the same thing with a goal in business. It’s not going to survive contact with prospects and clients. You set your goal in terms of what you want to reach, but every day you’re going to be taking actions, some of which will work and some of which will not.

At which point you need to be able to discern what’s good, what’s bad, what’s working, what’s not, so that you can jettison the stuff that isn’t working, do more of the stuff that is, and ultimately achieve your goals, achieve your objectives.

But too often, just like New Year resolutions, we write them down January 1st and we don’t think of them again until December when we realized we’re nowhere close, because we never had the plan in place. We never had the resources in place, and we didn’t take consistent action.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And back to my own example, when I became an area manager, I resolved not to be that guy who put my managers in that place. And so I identified an action plan of how you can increase your sales.

Starts with excellent customer service. Who are you putting on the front lines? How do you handle complaints? How do you assess your customer service? Then it went to quality of product. Are you following guidelines? Are you building the product the way that it should be? Is it consistent?

So there was a checklist that they could go through and then they would see the results happen. To me, that was empowering as opposed to deflating.

David: Yes. When you empower your employees with the specific steps they need to take in order to accomplish the objectives, that’s exactly what they need.

Jay: Yes.

David: You know, there’s a difference between lead measures and lag measures. I’m sure you’re familiar with that concept as well.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And our goals are usually lag measures. I want to be able to get to this amount of sales. But what are the lead measures that are going to make that happen?

So when you talk about customer service being a first key, and then breaking that down, what does that mean? If you’re answering a phone, how many rings do you have? Do you have to answer it within three rings or 30 rings? Because that’s going to determine the experience of the customer.

You can’t control how the customer’s going to feel, but you can control what you do on the front end to at least help to impact that experience.

Jay: Yeah, and we had it as much as, you know, I had a really good employee in the back of the house, but not so good with customers, not a very good communicator. So I’d never put him on that interface with customers. It doesn’t mean he couldn’t help me in other places.

So being that specific about each of those goals is so important.

David: Yeah, I think so too. And I believe you want to start with setting goals that you really want, that are important to you. Because if you don’t have a really solid, great feeling about it, if you don’t have that driving “why” behind it, I really want this because it’s going to allow me more freedom in terms of my time, or it’s going to allow me to spend more time with my family or do more of the things that I want.

If your goals don’t motivate you, then once again, you’re going to forget about them very quickly, or the moment some sort of temptation comes up that’s designed to derail you from your focus. So the first thing is you set the goals you really want, then you prioritize them from high to low.

What is the most important thing that I need to do in order to get there? Because generally, you can come up with a dozen or a hundred different things that you’re going to need to do to achieve your goals.

But there’s probably one to three things on there that are going to be more important than the other 97. So prioritizing is key. After you’ve set the goals, you got to prioritize what is that list of actions, and then it’s a matter of just focusing on each one.

And in a previous podcast, we were talking about declaring independence from business as usual, looking at that and saying, I’ve got to be consistent about implementation because if I’m not, there’s no way it’s going to happen.

Jay: Yeah and this last one you mentioned, focusing on getting them done. This is where so many times it falls down. And where if you do have a staff, you can really destroy your credibility.

Because again, back to my own experience, company rolls out a new company-wide goal. For three days they’re pounding it and watching it. On day four, and forward? You never hear about it again.

That teaches everybody that we just have to stay in line for a couple of days. Then it’s going to disappear. So you’re actually working against yourself at that point.

It’s something I resolve to never do. You have to have systems of follow up. You can’t just say, “oh, we’ll follow up.” Have dates, have benchmarks, have things that are built in to help you track where you’re at at all times.

David: Right, and just because they stopped talking to you about it after day four doesn’t mean they’re not going to hold you accountable for it.

Jay: True.

David: They’re still going to hold you accountable for it 362 days later, right?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: They’re going to say, “Hey, we talked about this. Why didn’t you hit it?” It’s like, “oh, are we still doing that? I forgot about that. That was, that was a long time ago.”

Jay: Yeah. Absolutely. Again, I love this discussion, David, how can people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We love having conversations like this with smart, focused, bright business people who are not just interested, but committed to achieve your goals and get to the next level in your business.

If you’re just interested, it’s like, “oh, it’s kind of cool. It’s kind of interesting, maybe.” No, forget it. Because that’s not going to get you there. But if you’re serious, if you listen to these podcasts, particularly if you’ve been listening for a long time, if you haven’t scheduled a call yet, do it today.

Now’s the time to do it. TopSecrets.com/call. We’ll have a conversation. You’ll love it or you won’t love it. If we’re five minutes in and you say, this isn’t going anywhere. Perfectly fine with that. It hasn’t happened so far, but it could. So you don’t have to feel like you’re locked into anything.

If the call does not have value for you, then we’ll drop it. But if you’re open to the idea that there are better ways of doing things that will allow you to achieve your goals and generate more sales in less time, then schedule a call.

Jay: Yeah, set a goal to call right now and then follow up on your goal.

David: Execute, right?

Jay: That’s right. Thanks David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Achieve Your Goals?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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If you want to increase revenue, upselling and cross-selling can help. So what’s the difference? Upselling means selling a better or a higher priced version of the thing that they’re looking at. Whereas cross-selling is making a recommendation of something that’s compatible.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of upselling and cross-selling. Are you doing it? Welcome back, Jay

Jay: Yeah, hey, thank you, David. Listen, have these bad memories when I was a kid and I was working in a fast food place and the manager was always pressing me, “ask them if they want a Coke, ask them if they want fries.”

And I got to a point where it’s hard to upsell and I think this has grown into my adulthood. You know, I just barely got the sale and now I’m asking them for more. It’s not an easy thing to do for people.

David: You know, it’s interesting you should mention the fast food example because it’s the perfect example. It’s the one that everyone can relate to. “You want fries with that?”

Jay: Yeah.

David: Or the shortened version that you hear a lot of times, “want fries with that,” as the four word upsell. And it works extremely successfully for people in that sort of industry. Because it makes sense. Somebody’s coming in, they’re ordering whatever, a burger or something, or they’re ordering a burger and a drink, “want fries with that” makes perfect sense.

And some percentage of time they’re going to say yes. And whether that is 1% of the time or 80% of the time, it’s probably maybe 30 to 60% of the time, I would guess, they’re going to say yes. Because it’s like, “oh, all right, sure. Why not? I’m already here.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And you hit on a great point, which is that we can feel funny about upselling, if we feel like the purpose is to simply get more money out of a person. If it feels like it’s completely one-sided, if it feels like it’s manipulative, then we’re not going to want to do it.

So I personally believe that the times that we should upsell and cross-sell are the times when we truly believe that we have an additional solution that is going to be better for them.

Now, in the fast food example, are french fries better for you on top of the Coke and the hamburger?

Jay: Yes!

David: Probably not from a, health level, but certainly from a satisfaction level, yeah, it’s better. People are likely to want that. But in business, if you’re selling something, and somebody comes to you and they have something very specific they want to buy, and you have something that would be complimentary to that, or something that would go with that really well and would increase the value to the buyer, then you kind of owe it to them to at least ask them if they’re interested in that.

Jay: Mm, I love that. I love that idea that if you are feeling uncomfortable, maybe you should ask yourself why. And how do you feel about your product? Are you really providing a value to them or are you just trying to sell something and get a paycheck, right?

And I think we all have to ask that question about our own careers and what we’re doing and what we’re selling. But, you know, if you can just feel great that what you’re providing them is going to improve their situation, then you’re just passionate about what you’re doing and that’s going to come through.

David: Yeah. So when you are talking to somebody like that, if you’ve got something that is actually going to be a benefit to them, if it’s going to help them, then it’s a lot easier to do it. So that really just boils down to motives.

What is the motive? And unfortunately, I think sometimes managers, like in the situation you described in the fast food restaurant, the manager says, “just do this. Ask them if they want this. Push it, push it, push it. Sell, sell, sell.”

When instead, if the manager had said to you, Hey, listen, when people come in here, they’re hungry. They want something good. You know, they’ve ordered this, they’ve ordered that other thing, so they might want it and maybe they didn’t think of it.

You might want to suggest that. Maybe they want dessert, maybe they want an apple pie at the end, right?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: Apple pie. I’m saying yes to an apple pie, right? And if you don’t ask, you don’t get, and it’s very easy for them to say no. Now, there are situations, and I’ve heard it referred to, particularly in online situations, where there are online upsells where you buy something and then it asks you if you want to buy this and you want to buy that and you want to buy this.

Yeah, I’ve heard people refer to that as upsell hell. Now, if you get somebody involved in that, then that’s not good. But if you make a recommendation that makes sense for them, then I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I also have heard this, you know, back to the fast food example, when the person who’s embarrassed to do it, they say, my manager wants me to ask you if you, and I’m like, oh, that’s just the worst situation.

But I think, you know, I’ve also had like servers say, ” you should try this because it’s really good.”

David: Yeah.

Jay: And that’s different, right? That doesn’t sound like an upsell. That doesn’t feel like an upsell. So how you go about it, and are you passionate about it? Do you really believe that?

David: Right.

Jay: That makes all the difference.

David: When my son was traveling, he was in Italy with some of his friends and they went out for dinner one night and they went into this restaurant and the waiter was very happy to see them. Americans there to spend money, and the waiter came over to take for order and one of the guys ordered chicken and he said, “no, no, no, no. You don’t want the chicken. It’s terrible here, get the steak,” right?

Now there’s an example of an upsell, I guess.

Jay: Yeah,

David: Upsold them from the chicken to the steak. The steak was a lot more expensive. Was the chicken there really terrible? I have no idea. But he presented it in a way that made them think, all right, I’ll get the steak.

And it was entertaining, too. So I think there are ways of engaging in this type of behavior where if it’s not manipulative, and it actually gets them a better result than you might as well do it.

You know, another thing I think that people should consider is that when it comes to upsells and cross cells, it’s not something that always just has to take place at the immediate point of purchase.

I mean, obviously that’s a great time to do it, but if someone buys something from you… in the promotional products industry, I mean the, examples are kind of easy. Somebody buys t-shirts or sweatshirts, “want caps with that,” right? Would be the equivalent of french fries.

And you can ask and they can say yes or they can say no, whatever it is. But if you don’t do it at the point of sale, you could contact them back maybe a few weeks, a month later. Hey, I just wanted to let you know we just got this new product in. I think it would go perfectly with those shirts you got.

Would you be interested in having a look at that? Right? And that’s an example of an upsell or a cross-sell that could take place later. So it’s not like, If you didn’t do it the first time, you can never do it again. There are plenty of opportunities to do that throughout the sales cycle.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And the other thing, I’ve seen some research and it’s something that I’ve implemented that has helped me get over the upsell thing, is that research that I’ve seen shows that the time when people are most willing to spend more with you is when they just spent with you. And that seems counterintuitive, right?

Like, I just got this money out of you. You just spent money and you’re willing to spend more. That doesn’t feel exactly right.

David: Yeah, but again, if you go back to the fast food example, it does make perfect sense. I’m getting this and I’m getting that. Do I want this too? Yeah, sure, why not? So there is that aspect of it.

Now, outside the fast food example, it might not be quite as obvious and there might not be as much of a connection. But once again, I think if we get beyond the idea of selling product, and we get more into the idea of satisfying the customer, what is the customer looking to get from this experience?

So in a promotional products example, am I looking to buy shirts? Not so much. I’m looking to buy awareness of my business. Maybe I’m looking to have people wear this thing and have people see it and recognize my business. Perhaps I’m looking for a sense of affinity, that the people who wear it feel good about my company.

So there are very deep things that I could be looking for in this purchase. And so if I’m able to connect my additional recommendations, my upsells and my cross cells to those types of things, the things that motivated them to want to do it in the first place, then they’re going to be a lot more likely to say yes.

But they’re also going to be a lot more likely to appreciate the fact that you thought about what they actually want and you’re trying to deliver it to them.

Jay: Yeah, and then you’re avoiding that salesperson feeling and you’re more like a consultant, as we’ve talked about so many times in these podcasts.

I think the other thing that you have to remember, just from a pure business standpoint, we talk about customer acquisition costs a lot, and if you can upsell somebody, That’s product on top of your initial acquisition cost.

And then if you can cross-sell them, take your existing lead database and cross-sell them into other products, that by far is a better way to do business than constantly having to find new customers and always paying that cost to get those new customers in the door.

David: Yeah, absolutely. One of the other things that we’ve done in our training is also suggesting to salespeople that when they’re recommending a product to the customer, you don’t always have to recommend the lowest priced option.

Now, there are a lot of customers who are like, I just want the cheapest, I want the cheapest thing. But a lot of times the cheapest thing is not the best option. It’s going to fall apart, or the logos are going to rub off, or it’s not going to be the best thing.

So another thing we can do, and this isn’t really related to upselling or cross-selling, but one of the things you can do is you can start out offering something that has a higher value that is a, a better product, a more high-end product, and let them say to you, “no, I want something cheaper.” Right?

Because if you don’t do that, and you’re successful in selling them the cheapest thing, congratulations. You could have had this better sale and the customer could have had a better product.

So that’s, as I said, not directly related to upselling and cross selling, but when you’re thinking in terms of, “well, what would I do or what would I like?”

A lot of times we are more sensitive about other people’s money than they are. And we’re more likely to recommend something that’s cheap, just for the sake of getting the sale, rather than thinking what’s going to serve this person best in terms of what they’re looking to accomplish.

Jay: Yeah, I think that’s a great line, that we’re more concerned about their money than they are. Again, looking at research and looking at our own behavior, I think sometimes we feel that if it costs more, it’s going to be better. If it’s cheap, it’s going to be worse.

So oftentimes charging a premium, or at least giving them that option, makes them feel like they’re getting something of value. And I’ve seen situations where people didn’t sell very much of a product at a really low price point.

So what did they do? Instead of lowering it, they raised it and it actually brought in more sales. There’s a lot of psychology involved in this, but it’s absolutely true and I think the bottom line, if you don’t ask, it’s not going to happen, right?

David: Yeah. And also just to clarify real quickly, because we didn’t do this upfront, when I think in terms of upselling versus cross-selling, what’s the difference? Upselling to me means selling a better or a higher priced version of the thing that they’re looking at. Whereas cross-selling is making a recommendation of something that’s compatible.

So the hamburger to french fries, that would be more of a cross-sell. An upsell would be upselling from a hamburger to a Big Mac, right?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: So you’re getting a bigger, better version of the thing that they were looking at. And so again, we’re talking about this in industries where people are selling, not just behind the counter taking orders.

So when you think about that, if somebody is looking at investing in whatever t-shirts, well, maybe they would like to get the heavyweight, hundred percent cotton rather than the promotional weight 50/50.

Maybe they would like to get multiple colors on there, that type of thing. That would be an upsell. Whereas a cross sell would be, you know, want caps, that type of thing.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah. And just talking about promotional products, I can tell a difference when it’s a nice shirt or when it’s just like the cheapest. And so that’s some way that I could use to upsell somebody.

Because if you’re putting your name and your logo on it, and it’s not very good quality, you’re sending a message, right? And so that’s a way that I think you can help people understand that it’s important that they consider those types of things.

David: Yes. And one thing that you will find out for sure is that if you’re selling promotional products and you sell something cheap to a customer and they buy it and it’s not good, they’re not going to blame themselves.

They’re going to say, why did you sell me this shirt? Well, you told me you wanted something cheap. Well, not that cheap. Not so cheap that it is going to be terrible. Oh, I didn’t know. Right? So…

Jay: That goes back to the don’t buy the chicken, it’s terrible. Get the steak. Right?

David: Exactly. Yeah.

Jay: Yeah. Which again, great example, because if I heard that, I’m like, wow, this person cares about me. I’m not thinking, wow, this person wants me to spend more money, right? So it’s all in the attitude and how you convey it.

David: Yeah.

Jay: All right. How do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We would be happy to walk you through this stuff. If you’re struggling to increase the average value of your orders, if you’re struggling to bring more customers through the door, or you just need somebody to talk to about how to make things better in your business, TopSecrets.com/call, we would love to have that conversation with you.

Jay: Well, and I love our conversations, David. Thank you so much for your time today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Integrate Upsells & Cross-Sells to Increase Value and Help Customers?If so, check out a few ways we can help:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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How much time do you spend chasing prospects who will never buy? If somebody is not responsive, you can decide, do I want to continue to pursue this person? Or do I want to leave them to my competitors? Let my competitors chase that person. If they’re disqualified, you don’t have to spend time with them at all.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the idea of converting more sales: turning leads into customers. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Such a pleasure to be with you. This is kind of the secret sauce, right? I mean, if we could all increase our conversion rates and bring down our customer acquisition costs that’s where the rubber meets the road.

David: Yeah, in a lot of cases it’s a really critical part of it. I think some people make a mistake upfront when it comes to conversion. They want to try to convert everyone. You know, they just meet somebody for the first time and they immediately go into sales mode.

And I think that they can really save themselves and other people a lot of time and a lot of aggravation if they actually start where it really should begin with a little bit of qualification. Trying to find out if they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, those kind of things.

Because a lot of times there are salespeople who will spend weeks, months, years pursuing somebody, just to find out once they get an appointment with them that they weren’t qualified to buy to begin with. And you can eliminate that right up front. Save yourself a world of heartache.

Jay: Yeah, I love this point, David. I can’t tell you I’ve had this happen, you know, I’m on the phone with somebody and talking about the product and things like that, and then after asking some questions, I realize this is not a good fit. I don’t have the services they’re looking for.

And I could have saved us both a lot of time if I had done a little pre-qualification before we got started.

David: Yeah. Or if that’s happening on the first call, then you’re pretty good at that point. But literally, I know there are people who have gone to networking functions for a long period of time, and they’re talking to people and trying to get them to agree to an appointment, and then they finally agree to the appointment, and then you get out there and you’re talking to them.

I had this experience myself early in my career. I’ll never forget it. There was this guy and I thought he was going to be a great prospect, so I tried to get an appointment with him. He agreed to the appointment. I showed up at his place.

His place was a dump and he didn’t show up for the appointment, and I was sitting there looking around and I was thinking, “okay, why am I here?” And so a little bit of diligence upfront and a little bit of qualifying goes a long way.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And I also think technology can do a lot of that pre-qualifying, right? We had the experience where our Google ad buy was not targeting the right people. And so I was getting all these calls and I’m like, “wow, look at these leads we’re getting.”

And it turned out I was just wasting time. So I’m wasting money on the Google ad buy. And then I’m wasting money fielding all of these calls. That’s just, you’re spinning your wheels at that point.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about it, pitching unqualified prospects is the single biggest time waster on the planet. So if we can avoid that, we’re going to be a lot better off.

Jay: Yeah. I think there’s a tendency though to think, “oh, we can sell anybody.” Or I think the other side of that is if you’re not pre-qualifying, then you don’t have a really good idea of how effective you are as a salesperson, because you’re comparing it to every person you talked to.

Like, I’ve talked to a hundred people, my close rate was 20%. Well, if 5% of those were never going to be a lead for you, or never going to be a customer, then you’re not really using accurate numbers. Right?

David: Yeah, exactly. Everything’s skewed when you’re doing it that way. So, I mean, I believe qualification upfront is really important and systematic follow up is another thing.

If you’re not following up systematically with people, which means that you are in touch with them at the times when you need to be in touch with them, then you’re also going to be at a big disadvantage.

Jay: Yeah. and that’s really an area where I struggled a long time ago, and that is if I didn’t get them right away, then I’m going to move on to the next person.

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: And like you said, it’s about relationships. And again, I love technology that can do a lot of this stuff for you, drip campaigns and those kind of things.

David: Right.

Jay: But because somebody down the road, they don’t need you now, that doesn’t mean they’re not going to need you in the future.

David: Yeah, and so if you’ve qualified them and you know that they would still be a good prospect for what you’re selling, then at that point you want to make sure that you’ve got something in place, whether it’s inside a crm, however it is that you’re doing, so that you know that you are in touch with them until they’re ready to buy from you.

And when we talk about systematic follow up, it goes far beyond the, “are we there yet” approach that a lot of people take where it’s like when you’re traveling in a car with small kids and they keep saying, “are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

And there are some salespeople who do that. They just call and say, “Hey, you want to buy, you ready to buy? You ready to buy? Are we there yet?” And that’s not what I mean by systematic and or strategic follow up.

Jay: Yeah. I think part of that is you start to seem desperate, right? And I think what we need to avoid, and I’m really learning this, is the feeling that I’m a salesperson and they’re a potential lead. If they feel like I’m a salesperson, then I’ve already lost kind of the battle, right?

So, whereas if I’m a consultant, if I’m somebody who can help them grow, if I’m somebody who they have a relationship with, who they feel really cares about them, then that’s a real advantage.

But if they just feel like this is sales to potential client relationship, that’s a much harder road to go down.

David: It definitely is. And when we think about it, you know, once you’ve qualified somebody and you’ve got your follow up in place and you’re interacting with them. You know, part of the deal then is persuasion.

You know, what are we saying that is going to entice this person to want to move forward? Essentially, are we hitting their hot buttons? What are their hot buttons? What are the things that are motivating them to either take action or not take action?

Because if you’re not doing that, once again, you’re going to have a lot of difficulty converting.

Jay: Hmm. Yeah. This kind of goes back to the pre-qualifying you talked about. You’re not just finding out if they’re a fit for your product. You’re finding out what their specific needs are.

Because how often have you been in or anybody been involved in. I’m pitching a sales strategy to them and it doesn’t meet their needs. And what I’ve done is I’ve conveyed to them that I didn’t listen or that I don’t know their business.

There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, if somebody’s trying to sell me something and they haven’t taken the time to really figure out who I am, what my needs are, what is my business model? That can really be a detractor to the process.

You can lose the sale if you are going down the wrong path.

David: Yeah, you definitely need to keep it focused on them. A lot of times we make the mistake of talking about ourselves and our product and our capabilities and how great we are and it’s like, you’ve lost me at hello. When you do that.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve been there like with somebody else and we walked in the door and we were both supposed to be part of the sales process and before there’s even a hello, they’re like diving into the product and opening the book and this is what we have and what we have.

And. I’m just like you got to at least take a few minutes to set some baseline relationship and ask some questions and pre-qualify even there, if you’ve pre-qualified them before you’ve arrived.

I think that pre-qualify is really, I think there is a pre part, but there’s a constant requalifying that happens as you go along.

David: Absolutely, and people are constantly cycling through the five levels of qualification. Sometimes they’re ready to buy right now. Other people have specific dates in mind. Still others are open to it. They’re generally receptive. Sometimes they’re disqualified, and sometimes they’ll just ghost you. They’re just unresponsive.

When you recognize that they’re five essential levels, then you know exactly how to follow up with each one, and it becomes a lot more systematic.

Jay: Yeah, and I love that you’ve broken these things down into different levels. Because that makes it really easy to classify. And that’s the problem is you may have a sense that you want to do this, but you really don’t know which buckets to put people in. What are those buckets?

If you can have a system where you’re not giving a lot of thought, you’re just like, boom, this one goes here, this one goes there, then you can spend more time working on the right buckets, I’m guessing. Right?

David: Exactly. Because if somebody is not responsive, you can decide, do I want to continue to pursue this person, or do I want to leave them to my competitors? Let my competitors chase that person. If they’re disqualified, you don’t have to spend time with them at all.

But if you focus on those first three buckets, the ones who are ready now, the ones who have specific dates and the ones who are generally receptive, you’re going to be a lot better off.

Now the ones who are generally receptive. The goal there is then to find out, well, when are they planning on moving forward? When will they be ready to buy? And a good way to do that is through sequencing, which would be another step in this process is to say, we’re going to put out a series of communications, drip campaign, whatever you want to call it, that is designed to be in front of them when they’re ready to buy. Even if we don’t know exactly when that’s going to be.

Jay: Yeah, because that can be hard to project. I mean, I know with promotional products there’s a seasonality, but it could also be based upon their product releases, right? They’ve got a new piece of software coming out, or they’ve got a new special or something like that. So it can be very business oriented.

They may not know when they need it until the day before. Right? Or the day of, the way I see some people run their businesses.

David: That’s true. And there are a lot of times where we’re in touch with someone for a long time and we’re not hearing back from them. And then we sort of give up for a while.

We wander off, we do something else, we pursue other people, and then we come back and we find out they bought from someone else.ry

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And it’s cause we didn’t have these sequences of communication in place for the people who are actually worthy of them. Now again, if somebody’s totally ghosting you. then I don’t know that you even want to do that. Because if they’re not going to be responsive to you, when they’re thinking about buying something, how are they going to be when they need to pay their bills, right?

Jay: Yeah. Yeah.

David: So you need to balance this, but if they seem like a good prospect, if they’ve been qualified upfront, if you have been following up systematically and you’ve been able to determine that there is a good fit, you’ve been able to exercise a little bit of persuasion and keep yourself in front of them, then at that point it could very easily convert into a sale.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I love this. This is great feedback and great instruction. How do people find out more, David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with my team. We can walk you through this stuff. If you’re thinking about where you’re stuck, you’re not quite sure where that is, you’d like to have a conversation… TopSecrets.com/call. We would be happy to have that conversation with you.

Jay: Well, and I love it. Just sometimes talking about it is important. But there’s not a reason to reinvent the wheel. You’ve got these systems ready, and sometimes that’s just perfect for people, right?

David: I was literally talking to someone the other day who’s been in the industry for a really long time, and she was asking a question about what to say when someone says they already have somebody they’re working with. And I was thinking to myself, “you’ve been in this industry a long time, like you need to have an answer for that.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And a lot of what we do with our clients is we have this type of stuff in place so that when you get a really common objection, you have a very specific response that you know works. And without that kind of thing, you can be spinning your wheels for a really long time.

Jay: Oh yeah. I love that. I love it. David I hope people check it out. And as always, it’s great talking to you.

David: You too, Jay. Thank you.

Are You Ready to Stop Chasing Prospects Who Will Never Buy from You?If so, check out a few ways we can help you make it happen:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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A lot of people think the goal is to get likes and engagement, but when it comes to using social media in business, conversations and conversions are the metrics that matter. That’s what results in sales. The rest are vanity metrics. Those who think it’s all about views and clicks might be missing the point.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best use of social media in business. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David I feel like this is one of those areas where I don’t feel confident in myself, but I’m not in a position yet where I’m going to hire somebody to do it.

And so, it’s hard to get motivated every day, because I know it’s an important part, especially in my business. Most of our leads come from the internet and social media, so it’s like I don’t know that this is something I should be handling myself.

David: I think a lot of people feel that way, and for many of us, social media can be a huge distraction.

And in some cases, like, well, the best use of social media is to keep it turned off if you have to actually get things done. But there are benefits to it when it’s used properly, and part of our Total Market Domination course involves working with our clients to help them through the best forms of first contact with a new prospect.

And one of those methods is social media. I mean, you can be doing it via cold calls, you can be doing it via networking events, direct mail, lots of different ways to initiate first contact with a new prospect. But many people like the idea of using social media, particularly because it is a one-to-many method of reaching people.

You can post something on social media one time, and hundreds of people could see it, or thousands of people could see it. And so it allows you a great deal of leverage much more than if you’re making one phone call at a time or meeting one person at a time. So there are definitely benefits to utilizing it.

Of course, with the benefits come the flip side, the detriments that go along with it in some cases. One of the things that a lot of people seem to struggle with is that they go onto social media with one purpose and they end up doing 10 other things that they didn’t plan on doing when they got in there.

They don’t end up doing the thing that they actually wanted to do. And so a lot of it, I think, boils down to the fact that we’re not sure what to do. In a lot of cases. We’re not sure, well, what should I post? What should I say? What should it be designed to do? And there’s so much talk among so many people about creating content, and I’ve done classes on this.

The fact that content is kind of a misunderstood word. If you think about what is content? Well, content is whatever’s in something, right? If you’ve got a bag, whatever’s in that bag is the content. Could be something good, could be something very bad, right? But whatever’s in the bag. So if you think of it like that and you say, okay, I have to create content.

Well, yeah, but you need to do more than just content. You want to make sure that whatever it is that you’re dispersing to the masses has enough value for people that they say, wow, that was actually worthwhile. That was worth my time. So a lot of what we focus on in the communication aspects of what we do with our clients is related to how do we do that?

How do we create value in our communications? And I know I’m sort of rattling off all kinds of different things that could be entirely different podcast subjects. But coming back to the idea of the best use of social media, if you think about what it is, I mean, I’ve got an idea of what I believe it is.

Do you have any thoughts on that before I spill the beans on what I think here?

Jay: Well, I think it’s going to be different for everybody and what type of clientele you have. I’m guessing a key part of this and we’ve spent a lot of money on my end doing this. Is identifying who our end user is, what, what type of client are we trying to attack?

When we first started it, we were and I’ve told you this story before, we were attacking so many leads. It was blowing us out of the water. But the leads were not closing, and so we had to narrow that field, finally to a point where we could just get potential leads.

In order to do that, we spent a lot of time around a table figuring out who that potential client is and what are the keywords that are going to be interesting to them?

And when you talk about posting content, if you’re just shooting in the dark and you haven’t identified who your target is, then you’re going to spend a lot of time on social media spinning your wheels, and you may be chasing people away or just making them disinterested because you haven’t put in the time ahead of time to really have an impact.

David: Yeah. When I think about having an impact on social media. And I want to be really transparent here too. I have not used social media nearly to the extent that other people have to get clients. We have other methods of first contact that are extremely effective that work really well. And so don’t look to me as the expert on this, but what I can tell you is that to the extent that we have done this effectively, the way that we’ve done that is using social media for the primary purpose of initiating conversations.

So when I think in terms of the best use of social media, For me, but I also believe for most other businesses, the best use of it is to be able to initiate a conversation with someone else. So if I’m able to post something that’s interesting enough to get someone to comment back, and then I can reply to that comment and then they reply to that, now we’re actually in a conversation.

And of course, conversations is exactly where sales happen. You don’t have sales generally, if you’re a salesperson without having a conversation. Now that could take place via text. It could take place via Messenger. Maybe it takes place in comments. It could take place on the phone, in person. Lots of different ways to do it.

“When it comes to social media in business, most people focus on likes and clicks. And while that might feed the algorithm, I still believe the metrics that matter are conversations and conversions. Conversations and conversions result in sales. The rest are vanity metrics.” — David BlaiseBut if we think about it from that standpoint, it makes things a little easier, because when we’re on social media, we are programmed to think in terms of likes and think in terms of shares and things like that.

And likes and shares are fine. Shares are probably better than likes in my view, because it gets it in front of more people. And if the content is good, then it expands your horizons a bit. But if a bunch of people like your stuff and it doesn’t lead to conversations, then what really happened?

Their likes might get it in front of more people, because I think that’s how the algorithm works. But, if people are not actually engaging with it and initiating conversations with you, then I believe there’s a lot of opportunity that is lost.

And when you talk about delegating this kind of thing, hiring other people to create social media for you. If they don’t know what the goal is, then the stuff they create is not likely to produce the result.

When they think the goal is to get likes, then they’re going to create content that is designed to get likes. If the goal is to interact with people, initiate conversations with people who could potentially buy from you, then what we’re doing on social media has to be completely different.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point.

I also think you know, you talked about conversations. It actually has become a very important part of the algorithm that you get comments and more importantly, that you reply to those comments, whether or not they’re important or not. If you could reply in such a way that they respond back then that’s going to increase the algorithm.

So that’s an important part just to get it seen by more people. But then if they’re actually interacting with you, you’re now building the relationship. And I think oftentimes we forget relationships are the most important part of our business.

Anytime I close a sale, when I’m done, I almost feel like I’ve gained a new friend. And in a lot of ways, I have. Somebody that I’m providing a service for, they appreciate that service. And it all starts with a conversation somewhere, like you said, on the phone, in the comments, that’s where it’s all going to begin.

David: Yeah. I think also tracking what’s going on is important, and a lot of people don’t do that. They have a vague idea of, oh, this got a lot of likes. I got a bunch of comments here or there. People seem to like this one or that one.

But none of that is really tangible enough to be able to justify, in some cases, the amount of time that goes into it. So if you track how much time you’re putting into it and you’re able to track how many leads you get as a result of it, and by leads, it may just be something as simple as having a conversation with someone, whether it is in the comments or whether it is through DMing, that type of thing.

Then you’ve got some metrics. You’ve got some basic metrics to look at, to say, “okay, I put an hour and a half into this and I had two people enter into conversations with me.” Is that worthwhile? Well, let’s keep track of those two people. What happened? Were they even prospects? Did you get them qualified as quickly as possible?

Were you able to sell to anybody who might have actually been interested in buying? Was it worthwhile? Because if you can make a decent volume sale with an hour and a half involvement on social media, then you can say, all right, that was worthwhile.

If you put in an hour and a half on it and you have no conversations with anyone, then you keep track of it and you say, okay, well how much have I been putting in?

Have I put in 10 hours, 15 hours, a hundred hours? And if so, how many conversations have I engaged in? How many of them led to actual sales conversations and did it generate a single dollar?

And if it didn’t, then you either need to look at, is it the marketing vehicle itself? Is it the social media? Is that the problem?

Am I not connected with the right people? Or am I not saying the right things? Goes back to what we talked about in a lot of these episodes, the MVPs of marketing and sales. Is my messaging right? Am I using the right combination of marketing vehicles and who are the people or prospects that I need to reach.

If things aren’t working, it is always at least one of those things, sometimes more than one.

Jay: Yeah. Such a great point. Tracking is, and, and measuring such an important part about social media. We started doing this a while ago and it never fails. The posts that I thought were not going to go anywhere, they blow up. And the ones where I was so proud of them and they just went nowhere.

I have hashtags in my database and anytime something breaks like a thousand views, that to me is something. And I don’t know why, you know, I’ll do three posts, they average 300, and then the next one will have 12,000. And I don’t claim to know what the difference was.

But I can see as I go along that there are trends in the description, you know, in the headline? Sometimes your content is great, but there’s a skillset in just knowing what to title your videos and your posts. That’s why I’ve also become a big fan of focusing on what your skillsets are.

And so I do want to point out, it’s so easy nowadays to find people who are talented and skilled in this area on sites like Fiverr or Upwork.

And so it may just be that you need to hire some help to do this for you, and then you focus on the conversations and on the closing.

David: Yes, and if you are hiring someone, you need to let them know what your priorities are. Because a lot of people who do that sort of work, they think the goal is to get likes and engagement, and to some extent it is engagement, but the engagement needs to lead to the conversations that are going to result in sales.

If they think that you’re going to be happy with just getting views and clicks, then they may be missing the point.

Jay: Yeah. And you know, this happened to me. I ran for public office a couple of times and brought in an advertising firm, and they don’t really take the time to get to know me. And so every time we’d sit down and they’d show me what they’re going to post and stuff like this I’m having to repeat myself.

Like they’re locked into this specific thing. And I’m like, that doesn’t match who I am and who I’m trying to attract. So that’s such an important first step in the process. Who are those customers? What is the message they want to hear? Can we provide valuable content? And how do we get them to get their fingers on that keyboard?

David: Yeah, exactly. So just thinking those things through, recognizing that there should be a goal, there should be some tangible measure measurement. And if you just focus on that, you will probably create better results with your social media.

Jay: Yeah, fantastic discussion, David. How do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team if you’re struggling with this.

If you need to be able to get more clients, more quickly, whether it’s on social media or outside of social media, we’d love to have the conversation to see if we can help. So it’s TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: As always, David, such a pleasure talking to you.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Start Getting More Sales from Your Social Media?If so, check out a few ways we can help you grow your sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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Are your priorities BS? Well, focusing on that area in particular, looking at what are the things in my life that really are important to me? What are the actions that I want to take and need to take that are important to me? Even if they’re not urgent, how can I get those things scheduled so that they have a better likelihood of getting done?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic Are Your Priorities BS? Welcome, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, as always, such a pleasure to be with you. And another great topic. I think that it’s so easy to just do the squirrel thing or the squeaky wheel gets the grease and we don’t really know what our priorities should be a lot of the time that’s half the battle I think.

David: Yeah, I think that’s true. Knowing what our priorities are and recognizing that a lot of times they’re not really what we think they are. And most of the time when I talk about stuff on these podcasts, it’s not because I’m particularly smart, is because I feel like I’ve made every stupid mistake that anyone can make.

And so if I can help our listeners and viewers to avoid doing some of those things, then that’s a pretty good service. And when I think about priorities and I reflect on the priorities that I’ve had over the years and over my life, I recognize that we have priorities that we really put out there.

We say, okay, this is what’s important to me. What’s important to me is my family. What’s important to me are my friends. What’s important to me is, whatever, losing weight, like if we have goals, my my priority is to do this and to do that, and all these different things.

And then when we look at our actions and we realize that our actions don’t really line up with what we say our priorities are, it raises the questions are our priorities BS?

And I think in some cases, even when we don’t realize it, they might be.

Jay: Yeah. First of all, I’d say there’s nothing wrong with learning in the school of hard knocks. I mean, sometimes those are the best lessons we can learn. But I also think it, we can spin our wheels a lot trying to reinvent the wheel, so learning from other people can help expedite that process.

Right? Which is why I’m glad you’re so willing to share the trials that you’ve had. I think that that’s so critical. But I think you’re right. We’ve talked a lot in the past about self assessment. Can you really look at yourself and know what your weaknesses are and what your strengths are?

And oftentimes, I think you’re right. We think something is a priority for us, but in the grand scheme of things, and according to our own actions, it’s really not. And we’re kind of fooling ourselves.

David: Yeah, and the way that I’ve actually sort of worked through some of this is recognizing that there’s a really big difference between our stated priorities, the things that we say are priorities to us, and then our actual priorities, meaning the priorities we act on the things that we do, the actual steps that we take or don’t take.

Because if our priority is to spend time with our family and our actions are that we’re working all the time and we’re not spending time with our family, then we have two different sets of priorities, our stated priorities that always sound good, and then our actual priorities, which is what we’re doing on a daily basis.

Jay: Yeah, I see this all the time in like TV reality shows. I don’t know why this comes to mind, but you see people saying, my family is the most important thing to me, and they’re working 80 hours a week at their career, or their job.

And I’m sitting there thinking, Hmm, no, I don’t think you really understand what your priorities really are.

David: Yeah, and most people are sincere, I think, when they say those things. It’s just that in many cases, life interferes. And when we allow life to interfere, then it turns out that our actual priorities are different than the ones that we’re telling ourselves and telling other people.

Jay: So how do we sift through that? How do we do that self assessment and really identify what our core priorities are, and maybe we need to identify them as BS and head in a different direction.

David: Well, I put together a worksheet. You can download it here. It’s very simple. It’s basically got stated priorities on the left and actual priorities on the right, and what you do is you list down on the left hand side all the things that I tell other people and that I tell myself are my actual priorities.

And then you just keep an eye on what you’re doing every day. Did I take action on my top priority on the left hand side of the page? And if I didn’t, what did I do instead? If my goal is to write a book and instead I slept until 10:30, then I’ve got a stated priority and I’ve got an actual priority.

And so when I’m working with clients, these are some of the things that we look at. What is it that is most important to you? What is it that you believe, that you truly believe is most important to you? What do you believe your priorities are, and then what are the actions that demonstrate what your actual priorities are?

Jay: Yeah, and I think, people have specific priorities, but they get trapped in the every day. So it’s not like it isn’t my priority and the priority’s not really BS. What is BS is that I’m, not doing anything towards it. I’m letting my business run me instead of me running my business.

David: Yeah, I mean, a personal one for me is like I’ve been losing and gaining the same 10 pounds for probably 20 years, right? So if my priority is actually to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is. But then I have a conflicting priority, which is, “oh, dessert!” Right? Then those two things are in conflict.

And every time I choose the dessert, which is the actual priority, it’s the action that happens over the stated priority of losing the weight, then it really is BS. It’s BS to say that this is the goal, if the actions on the right hand side of the sheet are not going to correspond to that.

And that’s where I feel like, by calling ourselves out on it, it might encourage us to take the actions that we need to take to accomplish the results we’re looking for and to really get our priorities in order.

Jay: Yeah, and let me tell you, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, of breaking even on weight loss. David .Losing 10, gaining 10, at least you’re not completely losing that battle. So that’s something to be proud of. So we talked about the worksheet and identifying your priorities. And making sure they’re not BS.

I’m guessing then you want to set a path, you’ve got to break that down into smaller chunks or something. You can’t just say, “oh yeah, that’s my new priority,” or that I’ve identified it. You’ve got to talk about how you’re going to get there. Right?

David: Right. So when we look at the left side of the page and we compare it with the right, and we determine that, okay, our actions are not in line with our priorities, then it’s a matter of looking at each of those priorities and breaking each of those down into projects and tasks essentially.

So a project is anything that requires more than one action. A task is basically one action, right? That’s the way I break it out. So if there are a series of three or four things that I need to do to accomplish that, then those are three or four tasks.

If there are three or four or five or 10 related things that belong to an entire project, then I put it in the form of a project. And the way that I manage my time is that I use a time planner that allows me to use different colors for different things.

So I use one color for projects and another color for tasks because I can look at it and say, okay, here’s a task. This is something I can knock out relatively quickly. And when you know which goals, which priorities your projects and tasks line up with, then you can always be taking action on something that is actually important to you.

Jay: Yeah. And I think you’ve hit on something very key as part of this process is by writing things down, by having a color code, by doing those things, you’re giving yourself kind of back testing, right?

So you can look back and say, okay, you know, do a monthly assessment. I know people who spend a couple hours on Sundays just reflecting back on their previous week and saying “Did I really make my priorities, priorities?”

And so that process of writing it down, whether it’s digitally or some people still use day planners, you know, they actually still use paper. That drives me crazy. But I understand, because that’s got to be an important part of the process.

David: Yeah. And I think the calendar is really an important part of the process because we could do another podcast called “To-Do Lists are BS,” right? Because I feel like in a lot of cases they are.

If you have a to-do list that has a hundred things on it and you don’t get to most of them… If you’re getting to the most important things, then it’s worthwhile. But if you’re not, then how do you fix that?

And generally, the only way that I’ve ever been able to fix it is to budget time on the calendar for those specific activities, block it off just like you would any other appointment and say, “okay, from this time to this time, this is what I’m doing.”

Turning off the phone, not answering calls focused on doing this just as if I were having a meeting or an appointment and making that appointment with yourself. I’m sure I’m not the first person to recommend something like that, but for me, just moving things from a to-do list onto a calendar helps a great deal. As long as you’re willing to follow through on what’s on your calendar. And if you’re not, yeah, then you got some real issues.

Jay: Yeah, it’s really a place where I struggle. I kind of have a good idea where my priorities are, but moving them into a schedule, I still have the tendency to just kind of do whatever I feel I want to do. that’s the life I want to live, as opposed to the things that are most important in that moment.

And that comes from the fact that I haven’t identified and categorized them by level of importance. And so, again, I’m letting the mayhem of the day, and my own emotions, dictate what I’m working on at any given time.

David: Yeah, I remember reading the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and he referenced, I think it’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. I think Eisenhower is the one who came up with it originally or popularized it. You can download it here

The idea that you draw a cross on a piece of paper and you break out your priorities according to urgent and important. So one of the Sections is urgent and important.

Another one is urgent, but not important. Another one is not important, but urgent. And then not important. And not urgent. Okay, that’s it. Breaks out something like that. And of course, the things that are not important and not urgent are probably the things we shouldn’t do at all. But very often they’re the easiest things to do.

They’re the most tempting, and they get the attention. The things that are urgent and important tend to get done because they’re urgent and you have to do them. But the sweet spot is the area that is not urgent but important, and that’s the area that tends to get neglected in favor of the other areas.

So, even doing something like that, breaking it out and saying, “okay, what are the most important tasks that I need to get done? What are the most important actions I need to take that I haven’t taken that are not time sensitive?” Because that’s what always nails us. If there’s something that’s time sensitive, that’s going to jump in ahead.

And then the other category of not important but urgent, a ringing telephone, for example. Some people might view that, if they’re required to answer it, as urgent. And in that case, you don’t know who’s going to be on the other end. You have no idea how it matches with your goals or your priorities. You end up taking the call and at that point you can be derailing your success.

So focusing on that area in particular, looking at what are the things in my life that really are important to me? What are the actions that I want to take and need to take that are important to me? Even if they’re not urgent, how can I get those things scheduled so that they have a better likelihood of getting done?

Jay: Yeah, I love that. So figuring out first what your priorities currently are. Are they BS? Then identifying what you really want those priorities to be, and then creating a plan and scheduling that plan. Such great advice. How do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team.

If you’re struggling to get to the results you’re looking for because of whatever, if it’s time management, if it’s a failure to actually address your own priorities, you know, there are combinations of things that can help.

One of the things that I think we struggle with sometimes, and this might be a good topic for a future podcast, is the fact that in some cases, we think that more energy and more effort is going to fix the problem.

But if the things that we’re doing are designed to create average results, then putting time and energy into them is just going to create average results faster. It’s not going to create exceptional results. And so by changing the activities that we’re engaged in, maybe changing the way that we’re doing some of those things, the results change dramatically.

So if that makes sense to you, if you’d like to have a conversation, TopSecrets.com/call. We would love to talk with you about that.

Jay: All right, David, we really appreciate you sharing your experience and what you’ve learned from trial and error and this service that you offer where people can just talk about it, because I think that’s a great place to start. Thank you so much for joining us today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Take Action on Your Real Priorities?If so, check out a few ways we can help you grow your sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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Unqualified prospects can be a huge waste of time. Lately, I’ve been on a bit of a kick in terms of commitment versus interest. If you’re interested in the possibility of working with us, that’s very different than if you’re committed to getting the results you want in your business and working with us to do it.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the pursuit of unqualified prospects. Welcome, Jay!

Jay: Hey, it’s so great to be here again, David, and I always love the topics that we get into. I think usually, I’m in pursuit of just any prospect. I don’t give a lot of thought to are they qualified, are they not?

It’s like, just send me all the leads and I’ll sort through it. I’m sure I’m wasting a lot of time doing that.

David: It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s like just looking for warm bodies. Anybody who can fog a mirror, right? And to some extent, that’s part of every process. Because we really don’t know who’s qualified and who’s not until and unless we have a qualification procedure in place to figure that out. Or if we just get good at it from having conversations and hearing what people say.

So I think you’re right. I think no one really sets out to pursue unqualified prospects. But to some extent, we all do it every day.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. I will tell you that as a company, we’ve done some things. when we first started using Google ads. It was crazy. I mean, we were getting so many responses. And then after taking all of these leads and calls, we realized that 90% of them were not good.

Because, our key words that we were using for Google were bringing us the wrong type of client that we couldn’t help and that we couldn’t close. So once we just did something as simple as figure out our keywords, wow, that saved us a lot of time and money.

David: It really helps to dial it in, doesn’t it? When you’re more specific and it, you’re right. It could be the difference of one additional parameter, one additional thing that you’re saying in the messaging that you’re putting out there. Because all of that’s going to contribute to the type of people who respond to your ads when we’re talking about leading with advertising.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. The other thing we found is a seasonality to it, and you and I have talked about seasonality a lot when it comes to sales. But we’ve found that the same keywords don’t work the same all year long, that there’s different motivations that things change. And so, we’re kind of starting to keep track of that now for the first time, and I’m excited.

You know, we probably won’t reap the benefits of that until next year. But that’s how far ahead we have to be, to know when and how to start pivoting and adjusting.

David: Yeah, I can see exactly how that could be the case. And it’s something that you discover through doing it, right? Through iterations. You try different things and you say, Hey, this isn’t working. This used to work. What’s the reason for that? So a lot of it too is sometimes talking to people.

One of the things that we’ve done for a long time is when people make a decision not to work with us, or sometimes, if someone expresses interest in working with us, but then doesn’t follow through, we’ll reach out to those people and find out.

“Hey, it looks like you were thinking about contacting us. Looks like you were maybe thinking about scheduling a strategy session with us. You didn’t do it. What was it that held you back?

And the answers you get from that can be extremely helpful in terms of finding out what might also be holding other people back.

Jay: Yeah. That is so powerful. I think sometimes people are afraid. They’ve turned you down and they’re afraid that if you make another phone call you’re going to be bothersome to them.

But if you do it in the right approach, or it can even be done in a form, a survey after the fact. You know, some way to kind of gather and harness that information. Something really obvious might rise to the top and you’re like going, “oh my goodness, why didn’t we think about that? It should have been so easy for us to see,” but we get that tunnel vision so often.

David: Yeah, and everything’s obvious in hindsight, right? Once we figured it out, I was like, “oh, of course. How did I not know that?”

You know, one of the things, too, that I think about unqualified prospects is that they’re everywhere. Right? They are everywhere.

And I know one of the early mistakes that I made in my business was assuming that everybody was going to be qualified until they proved otherwise. And that’s a tough mistake to make, too.

Jay: Yeah, totally. I mean, you have to be proactive about this process. If you’re letting them decide if they’re qualified, well then again, you’re going through a pile of paper, a pile of leads, whatever it is, and you’re honestly just wasting time and time is money.

And if you can get that down to where, your close rate you know, instead of one out of a hundred, you can get, five out of 20 because you’ve got 20 good leads instead of a hundred anybodies.

That could change your whole life. It could change your whole business with just that one simple adjustment.

David: Yeah. And numbers like that frequently do. They change everything. They change your life, they change your business, they change the number of sales you’re going to make. They change everything.

And when we look at it, and think in terms of the fact that, yeah, we have to determine if somebody’s qualified to do business with us. But on the flip side, they are also deciding whether or not we are qualified to do business with them.

So as you pointed out, sometimes people think they’re qualified. They think that perhaps they want to do business with us. But then when we have questions, when we ask them some things, we may determine that it’s not a good fit on our side.

It has to go both ways. One of the things that I’ve always maintained is that when two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they will figure out a way to do it. But if one of them doesn’t, it’s not going to happen.

If you and I are talking about putting something together and we’re both pretty excited about the idea, we’ll make it happen. But even if he or she’s not saying it, if one of us doesn’t want to make it happen, there will be excuses. Things will come up and it just won’t end up happening.

So when you realize that and you say, “okay, well these people think they’re qualified to do business with me, I’m either going to have a conversation with them or not.” I mean, if you can determine that somebody’s not qualified ahead of time, you can potentially avoid a conversation. Normally, if somebody is excited about doing business with us, we want to at least have the conversation.

But very early on in those conversations, you can usually figure out whether or not it’s going to be a fit. And if is, then great. You move forward and you work with them. And if it’s not, you determine that as early as possible. Then you either recommend another solution for them, or everybody just sort of moves on and goes from there.

Jay: Yeah. This is such a unique and powerful, perspective. David, I was talking to a financial planner the other day and I was asking him, “so what is your criteria for a new client?” And he said, “well, we sit them down and we interview them to see if they meet our standards for a new client.

I was sitting there going, wait a minute, you interview them? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? That they’re assessing you to see if you’re good for their business? And he’s like, “No, we decided years ago exactly what our potential client looks like. We know who we can help and who we can’t.

And if we choose the wrong client, then both sides are going to be dissatisfied because we didn’t do the work upfront to see, like you said, if there’s going to be a cohesive, kind of gel between the two parties.

David: Right. And the other reason that I think he’s right is that we can only ever decide if we feel that someone is qualified to do business with us.

We can’t decide it the other way. So if you think about it from the standpoint of a financial planner, yeah, they need to decide is this person going to be a good fit for us? Do they have enough money to invest? Do they have a similar philosophy to the way that we operate? And if those answers are yes, then it makes sense to work together.

On the other side, the client is thinking, “okay, is this person on the same wavelength as me? Am I going to trust this person with my money?” But those are the decisions that that person gets to make, right? The client makes a decision. And the organization, the salesperson makes a decision. They both have to come to positive decisions if they’re ever going to move forward.

And the thing is, we can’t decide for the person. We can try to convince or persuade them to do business with us. But generally, it’s far easier to find people who you resonate with and who resonate with you so that you can just put it together.

Everything becomes a whole lot easier when you’re on the same page. Like I said, when two people want to do business together, they’ll figure out a way to do it.

Jay: Yeah. An d it’s because, you know, and we’ve talked about this so much, it’s about relationships. no matter how you slice it, there’s going to be a long-term relationship between the two of you. It is going to be about more than just picking up the phone and calling you.

It’s going to be, “Hey, how’s it going?” There’s going to be understanding of each other’s lives and each other’s needs. I will tell you another point is I’m getting really good, because I spent so much time on the phone, at figuring out which clients are going to be so demanding that they will be problematic well through the process.

And so I’m getting good at assessing, whether or not, I want to just say, “you know what, we probably can’t suit your situation, but there are some other options out there. Have a nice day.”

Because if even on the first phone call they’re that way, well imagine how they’re going to get through the ordering process and through all of those things, I just don’t want to deal with the headaches.

And often I’m going to end up giving them a refund anyway, because I couldn’t make them happy. And so, you know, I’m realizing and starting to understand that I need to be picky about who I bring into our business and who we decide to service.

David: Yeah, no question. Because like you said, if they’re not going to be pleasant on that initial call, how are they going to be when it’s time to collect on what they purchase from you? If you’re going to have to go chase them for money, if they’re rude when you’re just meeting them for the first time, imagine how they’ll be when they owe you money?

But one of the things that I tend to think of, when we think in terms of unqualified prospect, well, what does it mean? You know, to me it means… Unqualified people are the people who don’t have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, right?

Because, and it’s kind of in that order, if they don’t have the need or the desire, then they’re not going to do it. If they don’t have the money, then they can’t do it. If they have a budget, but they don’t have a willingness to spend, right? Some people say they’ll do something, but then just won’t spend the money.

I mean, these are all sort of different things, but they all tie together. They’re all related, and they determine whether or not somebody is actually qualified to do business with us.

One of the other things I look at is if they’re rude, obnoxious, belligerent, uncommunicative. Woo. That’s a big one. And it didn’t used to be, for me.

In the early stages of my business, if people were not rude, not obnoxious, if they were personable or whatever, I would really pursue them to the ends of the earth. But if they weren’t communicative, it kind of kills all the rest of it.

And so I’m certainly at a point now where even if somebody is nice and pleasant and they seem interested in wanting to do something, if they don’t communicate, I tend not to pursue anymore.

Because if I have to chase somebody to remain engaged and remain interested and we end up doing business together, am I going to have to try to chase them to do the things they’ll need to do to get the results they want in their business? Because I can’t do that either, right?

And so there needs to be that reciprocal level of interest and willingness to communicate. Lately, I’ve also been on a bit of a kick in terms of commitment versus interest.

If you’re interested in the possibility of working with us, that’s very different than if you’re committed to getting the results you want in your business and working with us to do it.

Some people are interested in the idea of growing their sales. They’re interested in the idea of getting more customers. Interest is not going to cut it until you get to the point where you are absolutely committed to the idea of growing your sales and profits, growing your customer base, finally hitting the level of sales that you wished you would’ve hit years ago.

Until you reach that level of commitment to say, “okay, I’m going to take action. I’m going to do this.” Then all the interest in the world is really, nothing.

Jay: Yeah, really wasted. And, one final point that I’d like to make is that, you mentioned, you know, maybe it’s because they can’t afford it right now. Maybe it doesn’t fit into their plan. Maybe they don’t necessarily fit the perfect model.

These are not lost people. These are people that you can put in your drip program from your customer management system. And I’ve had this happen. I had it happen to me two days ago. I get an order out of nowhere and I’m like, “I don’t even remember talking to this guy.”

And I pull up my system and I’m all, I talked to him eight months ago. He said he probably was not going to use our service. I threw him into my drip program and he received emails from us every month. And then when the time came, he’s finally ready. Now he became a customer.

So it’s not like these conversations that we have are a waste of time if it’s the situation where they can’t afford it right now, they see the point, but it just doesn’t work for them. Those are still prospects.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And so when they move from interested to committed or when they… well, even there, I would still say that if they don’t have the money right now and they’re committed to doing it, then we’ve got somebody that is going to be a good quality prospect.

If you have somebody who’s mildly interested, they don’t have the money now, well, they may have the money later, but if they’re not committed to the process, they’re still not going to spend it. So I think we’re on the same page. I think maybe we just look at it a little differently in terms of who’s interested in and who’s actually committed.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you are looking to get to the kind of prospects that you need, if you’re looking to be able to qualify those prospects as quickly as possible, and jettison the ones who are not good quality prospects for you.

A lot of times the reason that people don’t make the sales that they want to make is that they spend too much time pursuing unqualified prospects. So one of the things that we do in our Total Market Domination course is we give you a process for being able to do that as quickly as possible.

You know, speed of implementation is key. If I can get somebody qualified in or out. Within the first conversation, that’s a whole lot better than if I have multiple meetings, multiple phone calls, and then four months later I determine this person isn’t a good fit.

So if any of this resonates with you, and if you’d like to have a conversation, TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have the conversation.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, as always, it’s a pleasure talking to you.

David: Thanks. You too, Jay.

Ready to Stop Wasting Time on Unqualified Prospects?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 business to change their minds. You another great analogy that I love is, you can either try to preach to the choir or convert the heathens, right?

And converting the heathens is a lot harder. So if you can get yourself in front of a group of people who are already singing your tune, you’re in much better shape.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ll also add to that, you know, we talked about targeting the audience that will be best for your business model. But I think also assessing your strengths.

There’s a great book, it’s called Unfair Advantage, and it’s where you figure out where you excel more than other people or where you have contacts that other people don’t or whatever.

If you are really good at building relationships and really good at working with people, that should inform your business model, right? Because then the website is not going to be as effective as you reaching out and talking to somebody.

If you’re not that way, and you’re not a people person, you don’t want to talk to people, you just want a website that converts sales without you, well then that kind of speaks to your business model.

So it’s important to know your own strengths and where you are going to be the most successful.

David: Yes, and the type of person that your approach is likely to attract. Because if you just want to do it all online, there is a market for that. There are people who just want to do business that way.

But when you’re not doing business that way, I think it’s a mistake to try to bang that square peg into a round hole.

Jay: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. How do people find out more, David?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have the conversation if you’re having trouble differentiating yourself in the market. If you’re having trouble identifying the people that you need to be interacting with, the ones who are actually likely to spend money with you, this will be time well spent.

So go to TopSecrets.com/call. We’d love to have the conversation.

Jay: All right. I always love our conversation. David, thank you so much for your time today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Differentiate Yourself and Close More Sales?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 are very much like personal relationships. So it requires communication.

And sometimes we can even build into our nurture campaigns, our follow up campaigns. Messages that are just designed to open a conversation. It could be something as simple as sending out a message saying what do you have going on this week?

Something like that, an open-ended question that somebody might actually reply to, to get you engaged in conversation. Let the person know you’re thinking about them and maintain that relationship.

Jay: Yeah, and I also, you know, some of the relationships, the business relationships that I have, Would consider my top tier? I know about their families. I know about their lives. I know about how their business is going.

And it’s not like I pried, it’s just every time I call, it’s just, Hey, how’s everything going? And people will automatically, they’ll tell you. Well, it was a tough week because this happened and this happened.

And if I’m making notes on that and things like that, then the next time we follow up I’m like, “so how is that going?” You know, those types of things go so far in taking that relationship to the next level.

And even then, the really top tier clients, I would say, Hey, let’s get together for dinner sometime. And at dinner we don’t talk business, we get to know each other. We talk family, we do those kind of things.

So relationship really means something. It has strong value. And if you can find ways to build that, those relationships could last the entire time of your business ,right? And just go on and on.

David: Yeah, no question. And one of the important keys to that, I think, is recognizing that in personal relationships, we very often will pick up the conversation right where we left off the last time. There are probably people you know, you might not have seen them in years and years and years, and as soon as you see ’em, you can just pick up on that conversation right away.

We want to be able to do the same thing In business. In business, we usually accomplish that with our contact management system. You enter the appropriate notes in there about what you talked about so that you can reference that conversation.

That sort of thing builds relationships, calling people and just saying, what do you want to buy next? Not so much.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you and I take notes on everything, any interaction with a customer, not just what they’ve ordered, but what they’ve said during that conversation. and I want to point out, people may be hearing this and saying, well, it’s kind of mechanical and you’re keeping notes on them and when you call back you’re just, responding or asking those questions because you only want the sale.

I have found just the opposite. They become friendships. And when they become a friendship, now there’s no way they’re going to go to somebody else. I mean, when I was in radio, I had people who said, “I am only using Jay for our ads.”

And it was because I worked very hard to establish that relationship and we were friends. We were not clients or business partners. We were absolute friends. And if you can reach that goal, then that’s going to last forever, you know?

David: Yeah, exactly. And it takes the same kind of thing. I mean, the same things that go into a personal relationship should go into our best business relationships.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And if you’ve got perfect memory and you don’t have to make notes or write things down, then knock yourself out. For most of us, particularly if you’re dealing with a lot of people, the notes help because you can pick up that conversation. You can know that they will be on the same page.

You know, another analogy to this is if you’re making a number of calls a day and that person isn’t, they have one person to remember, you. And you’ve got a dozen people to remember.

So if you’re able to make those notes and pick up those conversations right where you left off, it just creates a sense of relationship that you will not have if you are not able to do that.

Jay: Yeah. And the other thing is, it plants in their mind, this guy was listening to me last time. Right? And so that tells them, that sends a message that you cared enough to remember those things.

And you know, I ‘ve had that experience and I’m like, “wow, we talked six months ago and you still remember all that stuff.” You know, that tells me you care.

David: Exactly. 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.

It doesn’t always happen as well as it should in personal relationships. Same thing in business. But in business, there’s something very simple you can do about it. Just take the notes and pick up the conversation where you left off.

Jay: Yeah, I love that. David, how can people find out more?

David: Well, you should go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with our team so we can help you try to figure out where you are now, where you’re looking to be. If you’re looking to strengthen your client relationships, we can help you with everything from sequencing your communications to doing that kind of thing on automation.

We help our clients to create the results they’re looking for. And so if you’d like to have a conversation, we’d love to have it with you. Just go to that URL and we’ll talk to you soon.

Jay: Well, I have loved this conversation, David. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Strengthen Client Relationships & Increase Repeat Business?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 easier to start moving toward getting paid what you actually feel like you’re worth.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right. you talked about that boulder in the middle of the road. I think that we have a tendency to get tunnel vision. Like, this is what works for us.

This system has worked for us for years. This is what we do. But if you don’t have an awareness of the market and you don’t have possible contingency plans, then you can find yourself flatfooted. I mean, right now at the moment of recording this, we’re hearing a lot of talk of a recession.

So in your business, are you thinking, okay, how are we going to survive if we go into a recession? Does that impact our business model? Does it impact our strategy? I think in this way we can have multiple income streams, possibly? And like you said, multiple approaches? Multiple advertising vehicles? Perhaps we have to adjust our pricing to get through something like a recession.

We saw the very same thing during the pandemic. I mean, the businesses that survived during the pandemic shut down were the ones that could pivot and find new markets and still be able to provide a product, but in a completely different way.

David: Yeah. If we just think in terms of taking responsibility for our results, a lot of that will end up allowing us to take more responsibility for what we’re going to ultimately earn. Because when you’re outproducing what you are earning, that creates friction, it creates a bit of attention. And in most well-run organizations, the organization says, “this person needs to be compensated more.”

And 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.

Jay: Yeah, and I think one of the other things is if you’re doing gangbusters you’re not really thinking about systems or potential roadblocks. I mean, what’s the saying in sports? Winning is the best deodorant, right?

So things are just screaming along, oftentimes you’re not thinking about systems. You’re just fulfilling orders. things are going great. And then the minute market forces change or something else, you have no clue what to do because you were just in the right place at the right time to produce that level of sales.

And that can be really dangerous if you’re not thinking ahead and creating these contingency plans.

David: Yeah, it’s great when you’re riding the wave, you don’t have to think a whole lot. You just keep doing what you’re doing and that works out great. But then, when the ocean is still, you got to start paddling.

Jay: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Great discussion, David. How can people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, that’s TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We would be happy to sort of walk you through where you are, where you’re looking to be in terms of visibility, sales, and profit, where you are now versus where you want to be in terms of what you’re earning versus what you’re putting into the business.

These conversations have been so helpful. I’ve had so many people who said, “wow, this is great.” And again, even if we never work together, if the conversation is helpful to you, we’d love to.

Jay: Yeah, sometimes it’s just hearing the words come out of your mouth and having a sounding board, so we really appreciate that you offer that service. David, it’s been great talking to you.

David: You too. Thank you, Jay.

Are You Committed to Earning What You’re Worth?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 premium side and you have to identify are they bargain shoppers? Because I get that question. Well, I talk to your competitor and they’re less expensive than you are.

Well, now I have to find a way to let them know, yeah, we are more expensive, but there’s a reason. And it’s because we’re very good at what we do and 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.

But honestly, just to say to somebody, oh, okay, look, if you’re looking for the cheapest option, then by all means, you know that might be a good option for you.

However, if you’re looking to accomplish the results that we’re talking about here, then it would probably make more sense to work with us because we’re a lot more focused on getting you the result that we’re talking about than we are in terms of, you know, just trying to keep it to the lowest price. You know, if it costs less, maybe they can provide similar service.

I don’t know. But I know that with what we do, you know, our pricing is actually very competitive for what we do.

Jay: Yeah, and I love how you said that, and I’ve said exactly the same thing. I’ve said, look, I understand if finances are important to you, then absolutely, I understand if you go a different direction, but we’re here because we provide results.

And if you want to see that go to our Wall of Fame or go to, right? This is what we do and we are the best, or whatever you want to say to counter that. I’ve seen people stumble on this question. And instead of stumbling, you should be prepared for this question if you cost more, if you’re not trying to be the bargain basement competitor yourself.

David: Yeah, and when you’re getting these testimonials as you’re gathering them, the ones that are going to be the most valuable for you are the results-based testimonials. The ones where they talk about the results they achieved because they worked with you.

It’s not enough for them to say, oh yeah, I worked with this company. They were great. Really nice. Very pleasant to work with. No, what was the result that they got? And on our Wall of Fame, most of the people are talking about the results they got financially in their businesses. You know, they increase their sales. You know, one guy was talking about getting from 400,000 in gross sales to 800,000.

There’s this one gentleman who was talking about how he was able to achieve six figures in growth in a very short period of time. Now, is that the normal, is that going to happen for everyone who takes our program? No, but that was his experience and that’s what he shared there. And we even talk about the fact that most of the people on this page are the ones who are creating the best results.

They’re exceptional performers who create exceptional results. And those are the type of people we’re looking for. The ones who will actually put in the work. Take the next step, follow through, and create the results they’re looking for.

Jay: Well, and I think that’s an important part, especially in promotional marketing. You know, you may have provided the best product, but if they’re not going to go out and use it properly, and maybe this is something we should talk about in the future, how to encourage them and teach them how to use it.

Otherwise, they’re going to say, oh, those guys were terrible. They’re going to blame you. , and it’s really because they’re not using what you’re giving them in a proper way.

David: Yeah, that happens all the time in the industry, and particularly you were talking about pricing earlier, people in the promotional products industry who give in to people who want the cheapest product?

If you do that, and you sell them a cheaper product because they demanded it of you, and if that product is not as good as the product you originally recommended to them, they’re not going to blame themselves.

They’re still going to blame you. Why did you sell me that? Well, you told me you wanted something cheap. Well, not that cheap. I didn’t want it to be bad. It’s like, okay, well I recommended something to you originally that you said no to.

You really don’t want to give into that because the more we devalue ourselves and the more we are willing to do for less money, the less empowered we are to be able to actually deliver on our promises.

So it’s just always so important to sell with a conscience. When you recommend a product, you’re recommending it because you know it’s going to do the job for the person, not just because they beat you into submission, into accepting a lower price.

Jay: Yeah, I love it. How come people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d be happy to walk you through what it is that you’re dealing with now, where you’re looking to be, and how we can help you get to the next step.

If we can help you, we’ll let you know. If we can’t help you, we’ll let you know that too. Either way, I am very sure you’ll get a lot of good value from the call.

Jay: All right, I know they will, and I hope they get a sense of that from our conversations. David, just been fantastic talking to you today.

David: Thanks a lot, Jay.

Ready to Stop Losing Business from Inferior Competitors?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors take the next step:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 you could be destroying everything that you’re trying to build. So these are all building blocks that we’re talking about.

David: Yeah. And for some people delegating can become overwhelming because they’re afraid to let go.

So a lot of it, and just sort of circling back to the overall topic of feeling overwhelmed, it’s often just a good idea to take a moment and try to think about, okay, what exactly is it that I’m struggling with at the moment? What are the things, what of the specific things that make me feel overwhelmed?

And we touched on this at the beginning of the last podcast, right? Making a list, writing them down, and then prioritizing and deciding, okay, what’s the thing that I really need to be doing right now? And what’s the first step on that? And then taking action on it. Because that will then allow us to maybe get a little bit of traction on the important projects so we can start to feel less overwhelmed and feel more inclined to take a next step and a step after that.

Jay: Yeah. I love it. I love it. David, how can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We can help you walk through whatever it is that you’re dealing with, whatever issues you’re struggling with. If there’s an area in which you’re feeling overwhelmed, particularly as it relates to growing your business, growing your sales, being able to keep up with everything on a day-to-day basis. We’d love to have the conversation, so schedule a call, and we look forward to talking with you.

Jay: All right, such a pleasure. Thanks for talking today, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Still Feeling Overwhelmed?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors take the next step:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 got to be there because it’s my responsibility, then fake it until you make it.

And oftentimes you find that because you know, you dreaded it ahead of time, but then when you’re in it, it feels right and you’re making progress and you’re moving your business along, and then afterward you feel good that you did it. So sometimes that philosophy is all you need to move forward.

David: Yeah. And recognizing which you is showing up on any given day. Because some days we start out and 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.

And 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. You know, can I get myself in gear? Can I 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?

I think I’ve quoted this a number of times on the podcast. I just think it’s such a great one. Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach said basically, success in life boils down to three things. Show up on time, do what you say you’re going to do, and say please and thank you.

The third one’s nice. The first two, showing up on time and doing what you say you’re going to do is so critical. And very often people will not do the second one.

They won’t do what they said they were going to do because their feelings got in the way. It’s like, well, I don’t feel like it, or I feel overwhelmed that I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to do it.

And again, when we tell ourselves that, and when we yield to it, when we give into it, we’re done.

Jay: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And all progress stops. It’s a great discussion today. How can they find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with my team or myself and we’d be happy to go through this with you.

A lot of people need focus. They need next steps and next steps and next steps because when you have that, it really does eliminate the overwhelm as long as you’re willing to take the next small step.

I had someone who was going through one of our courses and he was struggling with some stuff, and he was saying, well, you know, to be in your course, you know you have to give 110%.

I’m like, no, you don’t. You just have to be willing to take the next step. I said, like, the next lesson that you’re up to in the course is five minutes and 50 seconds long. Right. Go through the video, ask your questions below. That’s it. Just do that. You don’t need 110% motivation to do that. All you need to do is you need to be willing to follow through on your commitments and take the next step.

So if you’re interested in a next step, TopSecrets.com/call, we would love to have a call and help you with whatever it is you’re struggling with in your business right now.

Jay: Yeah, it’s great. I think the whole message of this podcast is just take the next step. David. It’s great talking to you.

David: Thanks. You too, Jay.

Are You Ready to Say Goodbye to Overwhelm?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors take the next step:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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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 can do what you said you’re going to do. They don’t believe some element of what you told them. And they might not want to tell you that. So in order to sort of reactivate that credibility, sometimes it’s important to follow up with authority kinds of demonstrations. Whether it’s testimonials or a story about a case study or something like that, that would reengage them and have them say, “oh, okay, well yeah, I guess this person actually did do this. They actually are being truthful in what they’re able to do and what they’re not able to do. Yeah, maybe I’ll pick up this discussion.”

And then they’re always, you know, the people who are not interested, I’m just not interested and they don’t want to tell you. At which point, you can often find that out in an email.

You know, “Hey, if you’re just not interested in this, please let me know. I don’t want to waste another moment of your time or mine.” And I’ve said that a lot. Because it’s true. I don’t want to waste the other person’s time if they’re not interested. I don’t want to waste my time if they’re not interested.

That’s respectful of both our times. And sometimes somebody will come back and say, “yeah, I just don’t think it’s the right time,” or I don’t think this, or I don’t think that. At which point you can then respond however you want. Whether it’s to try to reengage and address the specific issue that they put in there, or if it’s to say, okay, yeah, we really don’t have a fit. Let’s call it a day and I’ll move on to the next prospect.

So lots of different options there, but it’s important to remember that there’s no one size fits all solution here.

Jay: Yeah, I do like the idea of saying, look, if you don’t have time, that’s great. Because I have a ton of other customers that are waiting.

What I like about that is the last thing I think any of us want to do is appear desperate. I think once you send that emotion of desperation, you’ve completely lost the battle. And you want to be always from a position of authority and listen, you need me more than I need you, right?

And that’s kind of what you’re saying in a very kind way. You know, if it’s not you, I’ve got a hundred people behind you and that may make them feel like, well, his time is precious, so I’m going to get this done. Or you may find that that’s not the right person, and so you can move on.

David: Yeah. And it’s particularly important that that is actual, real authority, that it’s true. Because there are people who will take an approach like that and go, “well, you know, you’re missing out more than I am.” And they hang up the phone and they’re like, “oh no.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: If that’s a situation, I would say you might not want to use it, but if you really do have it dialed in, when you have more prospects than you have time to fulfill on, then it really does become easier to say, “okay, next.”

And it’s not personal for that prospect either. It’s like, “okay, hey, I’m really busy.”

“You know what? If you’re really busy, if it’s not a good time, if this isn’t a good fit, just say the word, and I’m out of here.” Because life’s too short. Particularly to chase people who are not interested in being caught.

I did a lot of that in the early stage of my career and I am never doing it again. Never.

Jay: Yeah, and you have to admit it’s gotten harder because people’s phones are now programmed to not accept any calls that they don’t recognize. We’ve got spam filters, we’ve got gatekeepers.

It’s getting harder and harder to get through to people, and so we have to get more and more creative in the process. And so once you finally can break through, it’s like getting a fish on the line. You do want to do everything you can to bring that fish in, but sometimes you got to realize it’s not going to happen.

David: If it’s a good prospect, that’s absolutely correct. If you talk to somebody and you’re like, “oh, I know I can help this person,” but they either can’t see it or they don’t have the time or they don’t have the desire, it’s frustrating because, you know, hey, look, if I were to help this person, it would help them enormously.

I can see exactly how I can bring value to them. And if they don’t see it, and if you can’t allow them to see it, then it’s not going to happen. But that also brings us to the idea that if what we’re saying is not appealing enough, that’s also a big consideration.

So it’s one thing if they’re not interested or this or that, but if we haven’t positioned what it is that we’re able to do in a way that is appealing enough that they see the benefits, they see the transformation that could happen, they’re able to visualize a better future with us in it than with us not in it. If you’re able to do those things, then it’s less likely that they’re going to just disappear on you.

But if we don’t do a great job of making it that appealing and it needs to be that appealing in order for us to make it that appealing, then they’re going to wander off.

Jay: Yeah. And wandering away is absolutely the opposite of what we want them to do.

David, how can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We can walk you through some of the things that you’re dealing with right now, some of the issues that you’re struggling with. If you have trouble getting people to respond to you, it’s very likely related to one of the MVPs and everything that we do with our clients is designed to help them to increase their sales and profits. So we’d love to have that conversation. Just go to TopSecrets.com/call.

Well, I know I learned so much from our discussion, so I know that when they call you there’s going to be some great information there. Thank you so much for your time today, David.

Thank you, Jay.

Are You Serious About Growing Your Business, Starting Now?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
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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 well. Is the person that you’re talking to telling you the truth about their inability to buy, or are they just making something up because they don’t want to buy what it is that we’re offering?

Jay: Yeah. And one other thing we’ve started doing recently is if it comes down to the point where they’re not going to buy or they say maybe in the future or whatever, and we put them into our database and we have a drip program that constantly reminds them about who we are and what we do.

But to me, the follow-up to those individuals, a way to ask them straight up, “hey, can I ask what it is that kept you from using our services?” That’s hard to do, you know?

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: But maybe it can be done through a form after the fact, an email that they can get. Any extra morsels of information to find out why this particular group of leads is not working out, I think could really be beneficial.

David: Yeah. And I find that when it’s actually on a conversation, if someone tells you that on a conversation, yeah, listen, I don’t think we want to move forward on this. I find that to be a great time to be able to say to them, okay, I would much rather have a no or a yes than a maybe.

So I appreciate the fact that you’re being candid with me. Can you tell me what was it that caused you to make that decision? It’s a decent time to ask, and you’re basically acknowledging what they said. You’re not trying to talk them out of it at that point. And then, in a lot of cases, they can really open up to you about some of what their issues were or are, and it’s possible then to sometimes swing back into a conversation where you’re able to address something that you didn’t know they needed addressed, answer a question that wasn’t officially asked previously.

And once that pressure or tension is taken away where they think you’re trying to sell them something, they can very often be a lot more open in their responses.

Jay: Yeah, this is such a great point because if you ask them, Hey, can you tell me what it is? They may come back and their answer may demonstrate to you that they missed the whole point. That you had been talking the whole time and they completely missed your benefits.

They completely misunderstood you. And so like you said, that may restart the whole sales cycle again. But now you have a better understanding of what they’re looking for.

David: Yeah, exactly. So part of my feeling here is that it’s important for any of us who are dealing with this type of thing to start out by looking inward. Essentially asking yourself, what can you do today, right now, to advance your own sales career? To target better prospects? To initiate more contacts?

Whatever it is that you need to do, there’s probably something that you can do and that you should do to advance that process. Also, I think there are some people who think they might want to try to sell something, but if they’re not committed to making that happen, they can stretch it out for days, weeks, months, or years, if people let them, and never sell a thing.

And I’ve seen situations like that where somebody had planned to sell something and was talking about it for a long time, and all the dominoes had to be lined up just right before they’d flick it, you know, flick one of them and get it going. And ultimately nothing happened. And that I think is just a failure of vision in terms of “what am I really planning to do and what will I actually take action on?”

Because 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. You’re trying to set up all these different things to be in place, but if you fail to, you know, flick the domino or pull the trigger, nothing’s going to happen.

Jay: Yeah. Such a great point. And if you’re outsourcing that blame or that responsibility, then you need to reassess. David, how can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team, and we’ve been taking a number of calls, particularly over the past couple of weeks, and it’s been great having conversations with people who are really serious about growing their sales and profits.

Because the reality of the situation is, you know the old 80/20 rule. And who knows, these days it might be 85/15, or 90/10 or 95/5. And we love having conversations with people who are serious about growing their sales and profits.

We love having the conversations where we can sort of walk them through their current situation. Where they’re looking to be in terms of sales and profits and visibility in the marketplace. We try to make these calls as valuable as possible, whether or not we ever end up working together. It kind of doesn’t matter.

If you are serious about growing your sales and profits and you want to have a conversation, go to TopSecrets.com/call. We would love to have those conversations with you.

Jay: All right, that’s awesome. Thank you so much, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Serious about Growing Your Business, Starting Now?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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When dealing with indecisive prospects, we each have to recognize our own tolerance for pain. How long am I willing to chase? How long am I willing to wait? What am I willing to sacrifice in terms of my own time and my own self-esteem? Right? And it’s different at different stages of life.

I spent so much time in the past just trying to accommodate people who, ultimately, it wouldn’t have made sense to accommodate in the first place. And so for me, I recognize that it’s not always a good idea to just do that.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing indecisive prospects. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Thank you so much. This is the bane of the existence of so many salespeople. You think you have somebody, they see the benefits, but they just can’t seem to make up their mind. And you know that you can help them.

You know that if they would just do this, they would be on their way to a better place. But you just can’t get ’em over that finish line. It’s so frustrating.

David: Yeah, Jay, you know, I was really struggling to decide if we should do a podcast on this topic. It was weighing on me and I’m thinking, should we do it? Should we not do it? And I went back and forth and I spent eight months, and then I decided, yeah, maybe we’ll do it. No. That approach it’s brutal and we’ve all dealt with it.

The term wishy-washy comes to mind where they just can’t or won’t make a decision and it’s frustrating. But it’s also kind of unnecessary. Because when you’re dealing with someone who really is just not able to make a decision, it’s almost a disqualifier for me. And it very often becomes a disqualifier for me. Because if we’ve laid out our best-case scenario for why it makes sense to move forward with something we’re doing or not to move forward with something that we’re doing.

If we do that and they still sort of go back and forth and they don’t know why or they can’t put their finger on it, then they’re probably not a good prospect. Because the problem with indecisive prospects is they go on to become indecisive clients. That means every time you want to sell something to them, they’re going to have to think about it or go away and meditate on it or whatever it is they’re going to have to do.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for everybody. They’re not getting the result of whatever it is that they were thinking about buying from you. You’re spending a lot of time chasing them. They spend a lot of time either being chased or avoiding being chased or dodging you.

So for me, it can become a disqualifier pretty quickly.

Jay: Yeah, and I think you’ve actually kind of zeroed in on a larger recognition. Are we thinking about what type of customer this is going to be while we’re talking about them initially?

Because it may not just be that they’re indecisive. We may through the conversation find out this client is going to be very hard to work with. They have a bazillion questions, or they seem so demanding or whatever. I think that kind of pre-assessment in the process can be very important.

I also think with indecisive people, you know, you have to have your steps. Have I gone through every step of the process? Have I tried every skillset that I have in the book? If they’re still waffling back and forth, then you’re exactly right.

Is this somebody that I want to be working with on a daily basis? Is it worth my time? And I think the answer is probably no.

David: Yeah. Listen to what people tell you. If you’re having an interaction with someone who’s considering working with you, pay attention to what they say. If their story changes dramatically from day to day, that is a huge red flag.

I had a situation recently where someone talked about how determined they were to grow their business. They wanted to get it to a certain point as quickly as possible, and the reasons that they were doing it were all very noble. They wanted to do it for their family and they wanted to reach this particular level of sales, and they wanted to do it sooner rather than later. And then two days later they decided they weren’t going to do it because they needed to do something with their house first.

They needed to, you know, fix up their house before they could focus on this. And it’s like, okay, well that’s perfectly fine. Right? Everybody gets to choose their own priorities. And the person said, Hey, I’m not saying we’re not going to work together. I’m just saying that, you know, not right now.

And my response was, well, you know, listen, as of the other day, your focus was on growing your business, doing very specific things to achieve a very specific result to benefit very specific people. And now your priority is to do something completely different.

I understand you’re saying that we could work together in the future, but based on what you’re telling me, I’m not your guy. You know, I can’t help someone whose priorities change from day-to-day, minute to minute, second to second. I can’t help someone like that because if today you move toward Goal A and tomorrow you move toward Goal Z and those goals lie in completely opposite directions, I can’t do it.

You know? No one can do it because you can’t operate in multiple directions at the same time. And so I think some of indecisiveness comes from people not being extremely clear on where they want to go in the first place. Or not committing to where they say they want to go in the first place. So for me, when people commit to going in a certain direction, I know I can help them get there faster.

I know I can help them get farther in that destination. But when they’re all over the place, wow, it’s a lose-lose.

Jay: Yeah. what’s so frustrating about that is in the moment when they focus, they’re in, right? They’re going to buy your product. And then the next time you talk to them, it’s as if none of that ever happened. They completely changed their mind and you’re like, wait a minute. You know, we had this figured out. We had put together a plan, and now they’re on a different planet. Man, that can be a frustrating process.

So if you can identify that type of behavior earlier on, then you can move on to other people. I do think that you still want to maintain some type of contact with that person through a drip campaign or something, because eventually they may want to come back to you. But when they do, hopefully they’re ready then.

David: Yeah. And I would say earlier in my career, that would be the kind of thing that I would probably continue to chase out. But again, I think you get to a certain point and you recognize certain behaviors.

And for me, with what I do, we have to have congruity in our communications. We have to have congruity in our actions. So when I noticed that that’s the case, it says to me, this is not a good fit. I’m not going to be able to help a person like that.

If they want to come back later and say, Hey, now I’m really focused on it, and if it makes sense, I’d be happy to do that. But for me, I’m not chasing that out and I’m not saying other people shouldn’t, I’m just saying that’s the way that I’m approaching it now, because there are so many people who get it, who are focused, who are able to maintain their focus. And those are my peeps.

You know, those are the people that I’m looking to work with. And it is a relatively small subset of the population. And so when you have somebody that you think is like that, and then they may or may not turn out to be that way, you have to make those decisions according to your own guidelines and according to who you think you can help and who you think you can’t.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And it depends on the type of business whether or not you can do this, but I’ve seen where people have steps that identify if the customer is serious. So we’ve had an initial call and I’ve said, okay, I’m going to send something over for you to look at. And then you call ’em up and you’re like, have you looked at that?

And they’re like, well, no, I haven’t. Okay, they’re not progressing to step two. So I’m not going to try and progress them to step three yet, because they’re not showing that they’re moving in my direction. Not every business has clear steps like that. But if you can identify, you know, okay, in our sales process, I’ve requested information from the client so that I can get them a quote, for example.

Well, if I’m having to beat myself up every day to get that information, that’s a very quick indicator that this is probably somebody that you’re not going to be able to get over the finish line right now. And so I love it if you can identify individual places where you can say, ah, it’s time to move on.

David: Yeah. I also think that as a salesperson, we each have to recognize our own tolerance for pain. You know, how long am I willing to chase? How long am I willing to wait? How much am I willing to sacrifice in terms of my own time and my own self-esteem? Right? And it’s different at different stages of life. I’m feeling like some of the things I’m saying on the podcast today are dating me in terms of the way that I do things now versus the way that I used to do things.

But I spent so much time in the past just trying to accommodate people who, ultimately, it wouldn’t have made sense to accommodate in the first place. And so for me, I’ve recognized that it’s not always a good idea to just do that. You know, we don’t want to wait forever. We want to be able to have respect for their time and for our time and just ask ourselves, do these people even do what they say they’re going to do?

If they say they’re going to respond back, do they respond back? Are they communicative? Because if you can’t communicate with your people, as we had discussed in a previous episode, it’s very difficult to get much of anything done. And to the extent that there are specific contradictions where they say one thing and then they say something completely different later, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to point that out.

Not in a bad way. Not in a negative way, but just to say, okay, well listen, the other day you told me this and now you’re telling me that. This doesn’t really seem to make sense. And if the goal is to get the business anyway, then what you would do is you would say, okay, can you clarify that for me so we can figure it out?

Or if the goal is to say, okay, that’s sort of a bridge too far, then you say, I don’t think it makes sense for us. And either of those responses are okay. Unless, you’re in a situation where you have a boss who demands that you close the sale regardless, which I don’t think is ultimately always healthy.

But in those situations, then yeah, you’ll probably have to work harder at seeing if there can be a fit if it doesn’t seem like there is a fit now.

Jay: Yeah. There’s one other type of person that I run into, and that’s a person who will always talk to you. They’ll always pick up the phone. They’ll talk to you for hours, but they’re never going to buy from you. But you’ve established a relationship and they may even ask you more questions about your product, but they just want to talk and they’re never going to ever close.

Yeah, those people are time suckers, and it’s easy to fall into the trap and believe if I can just talk to them enough, I can close them. And you’re not going to, because really you’ve become their friend, not a service provider.

David: Yeah. And a lot of salespeople have fallen into that trap where maybe they’re just having a rough day and people are being rude to them and hanging up on them and they’re like, well, I’ll call this person cause at least I know this person will be nice.

Not going to be selling anything, but at least I know that this person will be nice to me. And it’s a defense mechanism. I understand it. But if you recognize that while you’re doing that, you are not potentially in touch with someone who can buy from you, it may be motivation to try to move on to the next person who could actually do business with you.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. Don’t interpret their willingness to communicate with a willingness to buy your product. You have to always be thinking about that. Great conversation, David. How can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We can walk through whatever issues you’re dealing with now. If you’re having trouble getting through to the right people, if you’re struggling with indecisive prospects, if you need to bring new prospects and clients through the door consistently, and you need to have a backlog of people you’re waiting to serve, rather than a big gap in your sales pipeline, go to that link, TopSecrets.com/call.

We’ll schedule a call. We’ll see how we can help you.

Jay: All right. Thank you so much, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

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When I say your competition isn’t that good, that most of your competition is average, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to do things better.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I say, your competition isn’t that good. Right, Jay?

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Do you even know who your competition is? Do you know what they offer? Do you know what people think of them compared to you? Maybe you don’t even know if your competition is that good.

David: Exactly. And I hear, so many times, when I’m talking to salespeople, the idea that, there’s a lot of competition. Competition is very difficult. There’s a lot of online competition. There’s a lot of local competition. There’s a lot of price-cutting competition. There are all these different variations on competition.

And that’s all true. But a lot of them really, honestly, just aren’t that good. And if you recognize right up front that most businesses are average, right? There’s an average in every business, in every industry, there’s an average. And some people are better than average. Some people are worse than average.

There are a lot of average. So if you’re competing with the average or the less than average, then you should be able to do pretty well. If you’re a conscientious individual, if you’re reasonably good at what you do, if you study and practice your profession and you get reasonably good at it, you’ll be able to outperform a lot of them because to the extent that there are really exceptional competitors in your market, there are a lot less of those than there are the ones on the other side.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always believed this, you know, you can get caught up in the muck. When I was in radio, I worked for a radio station that had a built in listenership because it was so ingrained in the community. And what that did is it made it so they didn’t have to work hard to get sales or to get numbers.

Now you would think, oh man, that’s an amazing place to be. But what happened is, they started to get complacent, right? Everything was so easy, and then all of a sudden ratings started to shift and suddenly they realized, we don’t know how to sell. Because we’re so used to sitting at a desk and the phone is ringing. And we’re just taking orders.

So you’re not a salesperson, you’re taking orders, right? And their competitors started to eat them alive because their competitors had to sell all the time, and they were very good at it.

So sometimes you’re successful just in spite of yourself. And that may be what your competitors are in, what state they’re in.

David: It really could be as simple as that and as difficult as that, in either situation. But, you know, the idea that the competition is excellent, or the competition is terrible, or the competition is average. In a sense, none of it really matters.

Because this is life. This is the world that we’re in. These are the cards we’ve been dealt, right?

So our competition is there. We’re there. The question is, how are we going to make sure that we are outperforming our competition in all the key areas of customer contact? I mean, if you were to boil it down and say, okay, let’s say my competition is very good.

Let’s say you completely disagree with the premise of this podcast, that your competition isn’t that good, or that it’s average or whatever you say. “No, I’ve got a lot of competition.”

Okay, then that’s your question. How do you outperform your competition in all key areas of customer contact?

Some people may say, “well, I don’t know. What are the key areas of customer contact?” And if you’re asking yourself that kind of question, that indicates that there’s work to be done in your organization.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And do you even know how the competition functions to be able to compare yourself? I mean, that’s got to be at least half the battle, right?

David: Yeah, that’s part of the battle. Maybe it’s a third of the battle.

Jay: Okay.

David: I was gonna say a quarter, maybe it’s a quarter to a third of the battle. And the only reason I say that is I don’t think we should spend a ton of time overanalyzing our average competitors.

I mean, if there’s a really, really good one, yeah, you can take a look at what they’re doing. But ultimately, sure, we all want to outperform our competitors. But what do we really want?

We want to get to the point where we’re so good at what we do that it’s no longer about outperforming our competitors.

Now it’s a matter of outperforming our past best, right? What’s the best we were able to do? When you’re leading in a market, when you really are the market leader, you’re doing things right, you’re doing things well and efficiently, you’re already better than a lot of your average competitors, then the goal you want to reach for is how can I do what we do better in our own organization?

Right? How can we initiate contact better? How can we leave messages better? How can we send emails that are more compelling? What are the very specific things, all these points of customer contact that could potentially change for the better to get me better results?

Jay: Yeah, I love this idea that your true competition really is yourself, right?

It’s kind of like golf or, you know, another single person sport where you’re, really competing against yourself. And, if you can identify constantly ways to get better and you’re not falling into that complacency, then you’re probably going to do better than most of your competitors.

David: Yeah, exactly.

Something else that I read recently, was talking about the idea that a lot of us want to try to beat our best month ever, our best year ever. We’re always looking to top that top line, which makes a lot of sense.

But I read this in a book by Nic Peterson. He said that, ideally, our goal should be to beat our bottom.

In other words, sales are going to go up and down, right? That’s going to happen over a period of time. Sales are going to go up and down. We’re going to have peaks and valleys, and hopefully it works on an upward trajectory, and as you’re doing that, if you can make sure that the floor is constantly rising ,then eventually you get to the point where your floor is higher than other people’s ceiling.

And if you think about the idea of being better than your competitors, that’s really what you want. Cause if you have a great month this month, an exceptional month, then it’s like, okay, now the new month starts.

Now you’re at zero again. You got to start from scratch. Right? But if you know that your first goal for that month is to make sure that you’re above your previous floor. Then it seems a lot more doable. It’s like, okay, we might not have another peak month this month, but if we can stay above our floor, then we will continue to grow and grow.

Jay: Yeah, I really like that. I’m somebody who tends to look at records, right? Like we just finished a record month and I’m like on a high, right? Things are great, but you’re exactly right. I mean, next month beating that every single month, month after month. Is that realistic? I think you’re pointing out, no, it’s probably not, and it could be counterproductive.

David: Yeah, it’s probably not realistic that each month is going to be higher than the last, and there are not going to be any that are lower. But I think it’s also realistic to say, okay, can I beat our worst month? Or a recent worst month? It’s like if you look at a stock chart and you see how there are these different…

Jay: let’s call them peaks and valleys, ups and downs.

David: Yeah, peaks and valleys. So if it’s bottoming out at a certain point, you want to say, okay, I want to get in higher than that. It’s a terrible explanation, but you kind of get the drift.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And again, we kind of always fall back to this, is what systems do you have to track these types of things?

Do you understand the cause and effect? I mean, so often, yeah, you had a good sales month, or yeah, you increased the baseline, but do you know why you did that? Was it just the phone rang more? Or was it something tangible? Because if it’s not something tangible, how are you gonna repeat it?

Was it more calls? Was it more advertising dollars? What was it that got you there? If you don’t know, then the business is driving you. You’re not driving the business.

David: Exactly. And each of those things are some of these different areas of customer contact, right? Whether it’s the advertising, whether it’s the phone calls, whatever it is, when we’re looking at that, we’re saying, okay, where are these key points of contact and what can I do to make each of those better?

Can I make the messaging better? Can I tweak the messaging? Can I reach a different or better group of people? All these different things. Can I reach them using different marketing vehicles? Can I reach them online? Can I reach them offline? Can I reach them on the phone, via text, via email?

How can I reach them? And look at what you’re doing, look at what’s working well and what may be not working as well as it used to, and then say, okay, how could I tweak some of these things, the messaging, the combination of marketing vehicles we’re using, or the people we’re reaching, the MVPs, we’ve talked about that a lot in the past.

Which of these can I adapt, can I fine tune, like tuning in an old fashioned radio where they used to have dials on them, right? That type of thing. So you’re able to dial it in clearly and make sure that you’re getting the right people, saying the right things, using the right combination of marketing vehicles.

Jay: Yeah, we talked about this last time, avoiding assumptions, figuring out why you got that customer, right?

Cause you may be thinking, “oh, I had a new ad campaign or new marketing and this is why they came in.” And maybe it was a contact you had made with them a year ago. Maybe it was a bad experience with one of the competitors. Maybe it was something that changed in their business cycle. I think that type of communication as to why they’re there, why you were able to close them, you need to have systems to track this and, be open and honest with your customers to find out. What was it that motivated them to come to you?

David: Yeah, in our work with our clients, we talk a lot about intelligent repetition of contact, being in touch with people again and again and again, but without saying the same thing, without getting boring, without getting tedious, without driving them crazy, right?

If we can do that, that’s intelligent repetition of contact, and it makes it far more likely that you will be in front of someone when they’re ready to make that buying decision.

Jay: Yeah, I love that idea, but you’re still going to have competitors. So do you need to have some awareness of what they’re doing?

Or do you kind of say, I’m going to focus on me and I’m just going to be the best I can and compete against myself?

David: Well, I like that better. I like the idea of focusing on ourselves. What I’ve found though, is that in most markets, you don’t have to look too far to hear about what your competitors are doing.

Because if you’re reaching out to a new prospect and you hear about one particular competitor again and again and again, that tells you who is actually pretty good in the market. If you hear those names again and again and again, if you hear different people, each time you talk to someone, then it’s like, okay, well that’s sort of the average, that’s the industry.

But if you’re talking to a lot of people and they’re all saying the same thing and they’re all saying great things, that’s an indication that you have now found the leader in your market. So that’s what you need to target, then.

Then you may look at, okay, well, what are they doing? How are they doing it? How is it better than what we’re doing? Or is it? Is it not better than what we’re doing? But they don’t know what we do, so they can’t compare.

Jay: Yeah, and finding out, can I even compete with them in one particular area? Maybe that exposes a different lane for you where you can be competitive, right?

So it’s not like you have to play chicken with everybody. That may not be the best solution. We’re in a very unique industry because our products and services are so defined that I only have probably three competitors nationwide. And so when I talk to people, oftentimes, our competitors will come up and sometimes it’s in a good light.

Quite often, like you said, my competitors are average. They aren’t that good. It’s not hard at all for us to offer better customer service, better products, everything. I have found, that, a lot of people are like, oh, I hope they don’t go and research and talk to my competitors and get outbid.

I’m like, go and talk to them. Go and have that experience because I know you’ll be back and I’m in a better position when you come back. So that’s made us more confident than less confident.

David: Yeah. And when you have a small number like that, it is easier to know what each of them are doing. I remember in our promotional product business, back in the day, we had a situation where there was one competitor that wasn’t really known for answering their phones.

You try to reach them and you couldn’t get through to them. And so, if a sales person of ours, or if I was in a conversation with somebody and they say, “Oh yeah, we use this company,” sometimes I’d say something like, “Oh, are you able to get them to answer their phone?”

And very often they’d laugh. Because if you know this about a company, you can say something like that. Like, “Oh, well, they don’t usually answer, but I can usually get a call back.”

“Oh, okay. Well, if you ever get tired of that, or if you ever get voicemail and you’d like to talk to a human, here’s my card, right? That’s just a small example, but you basically look for the things that you know to be true about a competitor.

And I’m not saying you’re picking on them. I’m not saying you’re dissing them or anything, but you just point out a very obvious truth about them. And very often that will get their attention.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love it. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call and watch the video on that page. See if it makes sense to have a conversation with myself or my team.

When I say your competition isn’t that good, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to do things better. And if you’re in that camp, if you’d like to be able to do things better and differently than your competition, if you’d like to be seen as the leader in your market, then by all means, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Always a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

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We get results from social media when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, and identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to have them raise their hands and express interest. When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where nearly everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to get results from social media. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. This is a big topic. Talk about opening a can of worms. It’s something everybody wants, and we talked, last podcast about learning online and what great resources there are.

This is a place where there may be such an overload of information and different ideas that I don’t know if you’re going to find the answer online. I really don’t.

David: You’ll find a lot of answers online. Yeah., Right? Whether or not it’s the answer you’re looking for, whether or not it’s the answer that solves your problem, that is the big question mark.

But I feel like this topic is so important because everyone’s on social media. Everyone’s trying to figure out what to do and how to get results. And the reason that I believe the word results is so important is that it narrows your focus. It forces you to think in terms of, okay, what is the result I even want to get here? What am I trying to do?

Because as we talked about in a previous podcast, you can go on social media and it’s nothing but distraction after distraction. And if you just turn it on and go in there without a really strong focus in terms of what you want to accomplish, what result you want to get, you’re not getting any sort of result, except you’re going to get pulled into other people’s experiences.

So from my standpoint, the first thing we need to do is to identify what is the result that I would like to get from social media? And then you can look at how much time that I spend on there is actually allocated to getting that result. That’ll tell you a lot right off the bat.

Jay: Yeah, and I think that there is a misguided focus that you need a large audience, right?

Like if I can get up to 10, 000 followers or whatever, that’s not true. it could be better to have a thousand dedicated followers who are potential clients than having a hundred thousand people who may just clog up your pipeline and who really never are going to be your clients.

David: Right. And if they’re not responding to what you do, if they’re not liking, if they’re not replying, then the algorithm says people aren’t interested in this. So you’re exactly right. If you just had the hundred people or so who are going to click today’s link on there. You’d be seeing everybody, everyone would be seeing your stuff. But of course it’s impossible to do that.

So you’re exactly right. It’s about saying, all right, well, how can I get to more of the right kind of people who resonate with the material that I’m putting out? And I am not speaking as an authority on social media. Okay. I want to be really clear about this. I’m not coming to you and saying, oh yes, I’m the guy for social media.

No, not saying that. However, what we have been able to do is to identify specific things that our clients have wanted to accomplish, and we’re very good at helping them accomplish it, once we decide exactly what those results are.

Jay: Yeah, I’ll tell you where we’re at right now in our company.

As you know, we offer Tax Services to a very specific group, so, I’ve told you in the past, we have spent two years identifying keywords for paid ads, and it’s been a constant process where we’re refining, I do the consultations, And so when I see that we’re getting consultations that are not in the strike zone, I go back to our keyword, you know, the person doing our Google ads, and we refine, and we refine, and refine.

And I’ve told you, We’re to a place now, it’s kind of like our secret recipe, where we don’t get a consultation that is not in the strike zone anymore. We’ve been that focused.

But it costs us a hundred dollars per consultation. That’s what we’re paying. And that’s a pretty steep fee. So obviously we’re like, okay, how do we get organic people to come to our website from social media, where they’ve seen something that we’re providing, and they’re clicking through and that doesn’t cost us anything, right?

So that’s the goal, that’s the dream. But now we’re in another problem. We could probably get tons of people coming to our site. But now I don’t want everybody clicking on the schedule a consultation.

Because I’d be back in that same problem. I’d be talking to a lot of people who I can’t help. So this is the dilemma. This is where we’re at in our company right now, moving to social media, but we have to be very strategic about how we do that.

David: Yes. But you’re very clear on the results you’re looking for. Yes. You’re looking for a very specific type of client.

You’re looking for a very specific criteria. And for you, you know that even though a hundred seems expensive, you know that it’s worth it because you know that each client is going to be worth quite a bit more than that. If the service that you were offering cost 50 dollars, you could not do what you’re doing.

And that’s something else that I think is important for people to understand. Not every product, not every service is going to work in terms of social media advertising, no matter how great you get at it, because there’s always going to be competition for various keywords.

There’s going to be a number of factors that go into it. So if you don’t have a product that justifies that kind of investment, if you’re selling a pack of gum at a time, right? When you go into a grocery store and you check out, there’s a pack of gum, they’re like, Oh, I’ll have a pack of gum. You take it as an impulse buy, right? That sort of thing. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to run ads on social media and sell a pack of gum, right?

I mean, just the shipping costs on it, it’s not going to work. There’s some things that don’t work. When you understand that, then you can recognize that if you want to sell something that doesn’t sell particularly well on social media, you need to find other ways to do that. And of course, that’s the subject of a totally different podcast.

But when we think about the results that we’re looking to get. There are a number of different ones, right? The first one is, in your case, it’s about getting someone to have a conversation with, who is qualified. Getting a qualified person to raise their hands and express interest. And you’re talking about your secret recipe.

And I’ve always maintained that any business that does not have some secret recipe in it, is not going to last very long. And I’ve had people argue with me about this a lot. It’s like what are you talking about? You know, we’ve got a commodity business, essentially, like if your business is a commodity, that’s going to be a reflection on your sales, right?

If it’s just a total commodity, it is going to reflect in your numbers. There’s got to be something special, something different that you bring to the table, either in terms of the product or service that you’re offering, or in terms of the way that you sell it, right?

Because if you’re selling a commodity, Then you need to be better at attracting the type of clients who want to buy that commodity.

We do a lot of work in the promotional products industry, in the print industry, and a lot of people view that as a commodity. I sell print services. I’m an offset printer. Everybody sells offset printing. It’s like, that is correct. But what are the types of clients that you really want to bring in, right?

Who are the kinds of clients who are going to spend the kind of money with you that you want to actually encourage, right?

You don’t just want to take anyone with a pulse, anyone who can fog a mirror. You don’t want to just take anyone who comes through the door. When you’re building a business proactively, you’re deciding who you want to work with and who you want to choose to leave to your competitors.

So again, I want to stay focused on our topic, which is social media. We need to recognize that there are specific results we want, and then once we’ve identified what those results are, we can start to figure out what the specific plan is for getting those things to happen.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ll tell you, I don’t say this very often, but I really think this is a situation where you may be better off not trying to learn it yourself.

You know, I’ve watched videos, I’ve taken online courses, and everybody’s like, even down to the thumbnail you put on your YouTube videos and the, you know, what do in the video where I’m pointing at the, you know, taking all these pictures, I’m, looking like surprise and look, this is amazing and the clickbaity titles and all of those things,

but that’s always changing. That target is always moving, right? I’ve used something as simple as Fiverr, right? Where somebody who charges me 50 bucks a week, but this is what they do. I’ve gotten more results from that than I have ever gotten from trying to follow somebody on YouTube, and so I’ve just decided I’m not going to learn it. I’m paying somebody else to do it because I want to focus my time on what’s most important.

And that’s what we’ve found. Again, I’m not saying everybody that’s the solution for you, but we have spent a lot of time in this arena, and that’s how we’ve gotten results.

David: It makes perfect sense. I think it was Dean Graziosi, who I originally heard this from, he was talking about the fact that when you have the money to solve a problem, you no longer really have that problem, unless you’re too cheap to spend the money, right?

And so if you can pay somebody 50 dollars and you can get ad results that allow you to multiply your ad investment, it’s silly not to do that.

That also goes to the topic of “who, not how.” Dan Sullivan wrote a book about that. If you’re looking to do everything, every aspect of your business, you shouldn’t, because there are going to be things that you’re not going to be naturally good at.

But I think the core of this particular topic, when we talk about getting results from social media, The biggest problem is not social media. The biggest problem is people don’t know exactly what result they want, right?

They may think, “Oh, I just want to get more sales.” Well, yes, you do want to get more sales, but there are steps to that. And the first step, particularly if you’re using social media is going to be figuring out a way to somehow identify who those people are, whether you’re doing it organically, whether you’re doing it with paid ads, there are specific things that you need to do.

If those things don’t happen, you’re not going to get more clients. And whether it’s you coming up with the how on how to do that, or whether you’re paying someone else to do it for you, you’ve got to be able to convey to them what you want, and that’s where a lot of people get stuck.

They’re just so unclear on exactly what they want to have happen that they can’t get it done because they can’t even convey it to someone who can help them do it.

Jay: Yeah, such an important point. I mean, I’m just sitting here thinking, if you imagined our business with a storefront, you would think I want to line out the door and down the block.

I don’t. Right? I want the door locked and I’m buzzing you in, once I’ve decided that you fit in a specific category. That seems to go against everything. that we’ve learned about business, but we know that because we’ve spent so much time defining exactly what you’re talking about.

And what I think is the core, if anybody takes away from this podcast, and that is, if you don’t know what you want, how are you going to craft social media or any type of marketing towards that specific thing? That’s got to be job one.

David: Yeah, and the truth of the matter is that that situation you described about buzzing people in versus having the line, anyone who has been even remotely successful at identifying their audience and identifying ways to attract the right people into their organization would much rather have the buzzer, right?

Because otherwise you’re having to swat people away, and that is time consuming and it’s difficult. So when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to get them to raise their hands and express interest.

When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where you are, where nearly everybody you talk to or everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you.

Jay: Yeah, I mean think about it. We’re literally saying how do we get fewer leads? You know what I mean? It just seems like it’s such a different approach.

And I want to add one more thing. We’re about out of time here. And I think we should talk about this in another podcast. People who do have successful social media programs, you don’t want to rely on social media. They change their algorithms all the time. And your goal should not be just to get a sale.

It should be to offload them onto one of your properties. Your mailing list, your website, something else. Because you could spend all this money and have a great system and then an algorithm changes and you’re sunk.

So I’d love to dive into that a little bit more in the future.

David: Yeah, that’s a good one. And also the fact that the people who do this extremely well are not just running one ad forever. It’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. There are constantly going to be changes that are necessary because either the market has seen it and it’s gotten stale or there are approaches that work better and differently, or as you indicated, the algorithm could change.

There are a lot of different factors that go into it. So if you think you’re going to come up with one magic thing that’s going to work forever, it’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. But when you’re aware of the factors that you need to be able to focus on, you’re going to be a lot more likely to get the results you want.

Jay: Yeah, eventually competitors are going to steal that secret recipe. And what are you going to do then, right? How do you define yourself? David, as always, it’s a pleasure. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/install. Check out the video. See if it makes sense to have a conversation with myself or our team.

We love having conversations with really sharp, motivated entrepreneurs, salespeople, those who are looking to grow their sales and profits in a way that is sustainable. You’re not looking for just the next new thing, the next whatever it is that somebody says is going to get you the business you’re looking for.

It’s unique to everyone, and we need to be able to recognize and utilize your unique strengths in your solution. Otherwise, if you say, well, the solution is Instagram, the solution is Facebook, the solution is this, it’s that. No, the solution is identifying what is going to work best for you, and that’s what we do with our clients.

So, TopSecrets.com/install.

Jay: Fantastic. David, as always, a pleasure. Thank you.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Get Results from Social Media?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

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To improve business communication fast, consider this… If nothing that you convey in your communication, instills any sort of belief in the other person as to why they should take the action that you’re requesting, then it’s not at all likely they’re going to take that action.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the TBDs. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, it’s such a pleasure to be here with you again, David. We’re talking about communication here and I’ll be honest. Oftentimes we’ll discuss a podcast that we want to do, or you’ll send me the topics and I sit here and think, you know, I’ve never once thought about this type of thing. How to improve communication. I just kind of fall in the trap. You know, I talk to people, I send them emails. I’m guessing that that’s good communication, but I’ve not really thought about it, David.

David: Yeah. I sort of introduced this topic backwards, I guess, at the top of this podcast. When I say we’re going to be talking about the TBDs, what we’re really talking about is improving our communication with the TBDs.

And for those of you who are saying, “what are they talking about?” Allow me to elaborate. A lot of times when I’m working with clients, one of the things they’ll ask about is how to improve the results they’re getting with the communications they’re having with prospects.

That could be anything from the messages they’re leaving on people’s voicemails. It could be not getting responses to emails. It could be the things they’re posting on social media, any form of outbound communication, whether it’s one-to-one or one-to-many. What you say in those communications is going to determine what happens.

We touched on this a little bit in the previous episode. But if you want to really think about what is likely to get you the best results? I boil it down down for myself and my clients as what I refer to as the TBDs.

Now, when people think of that abbreviation “to be determined,” that’s often what’s used there. That’s not what I’m thinking in terms of. When we want to communicate with other people and get a result, we should ask ourselves:

“As a result of this communication, what do I want this person to think? What do I want them to believe, and what do I want them to do?

Okay? If you structure your communication to address those three points, you’ll be far more likely to get the result you’re looking for.

If I send somebody an email, and there’s nothing I want them to think, believe or do, there’s no reason to send that email.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: If I make a phone call, leave a voicemail message, or do anything to initiate contact with another human being, if there’s nothing in particular that I want them to think, believe, or do, then what’s the point of having the conversation?

Now, if you’re calling a loved one, Okay. You know?

Jay: Yeah.

David: You want them to know that you love them. You want to know that they love you, all that sort of thing. But, in business in particular, in our communications, if we don’t have a reasonably good idea of what we want the other person to think, believe, or do, then there’s not a whole lot of reason to communicate.

Jay: Yeah. That’s so powerful because how often or is the temptation I’m calling a client? Hey, just checking in, seeing how you’re doing give me a call back. It’s like, that’s the trap. I think so many of us fall into.

I’m not thinking at that moment, what I want them to be thinking is, please call me back because you need me.

But I sound kind of desperate and not like there’s a priority. There’s no urgency, there’s nothing really being conveyed. Right?

David: Yes. And when we’re doing follow-up calls, when we’re doing check-in calls, and just even using those words in a voicemail message. There’s nothing really compelling for them to respond to there. Is there?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: If you’re saying to somebody, “Hey, I’m just checking in,” it’s like, “okay, well they’re just checking in. I’ve got nothing for ’em at this point. I guess I don’t need to respond to that.”

But when you leave a message like that, We have things we want them to think, believe, and do. We want them to think, “oh, I’m going to get this message and I’m going to call this person back.”

Ideally, we want them to believe that it would be in their best interest to pick up the phone and call us. We want them to do, we want them to pick up the phone and call us back, right? So it does kind of tie together, but when you’re conscious about it, It requires you to think differently and to speak differently and to approach the whole thing differently.

If I want them to think that it’s important for them to call me back then saying, “Hey, I’m just calling to check in,” is probably not the best approach to take. And in most of our communications, it’s good to have some sort of call to action at the end of it. Give me a call back, drop me an email, send me a text, whatever it is, that’s the “do” portion of it, and that usually does come at the end.

You want to have a very specific call to action at the end indicating what you would like or appreciate for them to do. Are they always going to do it? No, I leave messages for people who don’t call me back. Even people that I’ve known for a long time, who I’ve worked with and things like that. For whatever reason, that still happens.

But if you are at least clear, on your end, about why you’re calling, what you’re looking to accomplish in that call and what you’d like them to do next, then at least you’ve got a shot.

Jay: Yeah, and I think it’s probably a, discussion more for a future podcast, but things have changed dramatically over the last, say, 15 years.

It used to be people expected a voice phone call. We get almost zero results now, in our business with the return voicemail. All of the results come through the return email or the return text. And now, I find it’s easier for people to get back to me because they respond right when they see that text.

But it makes it harder to define, you’re not in person, they’re not hearing your voice, and so now making sure they’re going to think what you or believe it and do what you want them to do, you’ve got to be able to condense that down and share that message in a powerful way, in fewer words. So there’s some wordsmithing needs there that have to happen.

David: Yes, and the belief portion of it, I think is pretty key. And it’s important to differentiate that from the think portion. And what I mean by that is if I want you to think that we should do business together, it needs to go deeper than that. You need to believe that it’s really in your best interest that we do business together, because if you just sort of think it, if it sort of flies by in your brain, then it can just as easily fly out.

But if you’re able to instill some level of belief, even just a little, a little bit of a belief, which is more than a thought, it’s actually a strong consideration that this might be in my best interest, then you’ll be a lot more likely to get the return call, get the return communication, whatever it is.

So it’s a small distinction on some levels, but it’s a really deep distinction on others. If nothing that you convey in your communication, instills any sort of belief in the other person as to why they should take the action that you’re requiring in the third step or requesting in the third step, then it’s not at all likely they’re going to take that action.

Jay: Yeah, I imagine like for example, if you in promotional products are trying to get somebody to believe something, I would think what I want them to believe is that the longer they wait, not using your promotional products, the longer they’re not going to experience the benefit of the sales and the growth that those things can provide.

If I can convey that, I’m guessing for you that would be a win.

David: Yeah, that’s an excellent example of a belief system that we would like to be able to install in other people. That it is absolutely in their best interest to do it, and if they’re not doing it, that in some ways it could potentially be harming them.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: Particularly if those things are true. We’re not just looking to try to make things up to manipulate people into responding to us. If what we’re offering actually has value and has the ability to help the other person, and we don’t create that belief, we don’t convey that belief to them, then we are doing them more harm than we’re doing to ourselves. Because they don’t get the benefit of what it is that we could help them with.

Jay: Yeah. And so being lackadaisical, that’s probably not going to help. Are there any tips or guidelines on how you can really identify that thing? Because I’m asking myself, “okay, what do I want my potential clients to believe?” I don’t know if I know the answer to that question. So spending some time on just that could be very valuable.

David: Yeah, literally if you grab a sheet of paper and you write, “Think” at the top, “Believe” in the middle of the page, “Do” near the bottom, and then say, okay, what is it that I want to accomplish in my next communication?

And when you’re reaching out to a lot of different people with a similar message, for a similar purpose, then this becomes that much more critical. Because every call that you make without doing this decreases the likelihood that you’re going to get the result you want, because you haven’t defined the result you want.

I mean, yeah, you know that you want them to call you back, but you haven’t identified what you want them to think about that, what you want them to believe about that so that they will actually take the action that you’re requesting.

Jay: Yeah. And then what’s probably going to happen, because you haven’t done that, you’re going to sound desperate and like you’re begging. And that is, that is the worst place to come from in a sales call.

David: Yeah. Or that you’re careless, that you’re just, “oh, I thought I’d give you a call.” Like I have nothing better to do. When you convey that sort of a message Into somebody’s voicemail, particularly if that’s somebody who’s busy, who actually has things that need to get done to improve productivity and make things happen, and move things forward in their business.

They’re going to listen to that. I’m going to say, I don’t have time for this,

Jay: Right.

David: But if that same message conveyed a thought that resonated with them, a belief that would motivate them, and then a call to action that would actually happen. Now you’re using exactly or at least roughly the same amount of time to leave that voicemail message, but improving your results and your responses dramatically.

Jay: Yeah. And it’s a legitimate place where you can use the phrase game changer. It’s often overused, but this is a process, right? So you may want to do some A/B testing, I think. You’re not going to nail it the first time. But it’s another place, and we talk about this very often, tracking the messaging that you’re using and seeing which types of message are most effective.

Because if you’re not doing that, you’re not going to know when you’re really hitting that sweet spot or not.

David: Exactly. And if you have the ability to track your most recent calls, your last 10, 50, a hundred calls. If you’ve been doing the same thing on those, how many of them got a return call? Say you made a hundred calls and three people called you back, that’s a 3% rate.

If I change the approach, if I incorporate the TBDs, what does that do? Does it convert it to 6%? Maybe it converts to 8%? Does it convert it to 20%? Or does it reduce it to zero? Any of those things are possible, depending on what it is we’re conveying in that message.

It could make it better. It could make it worse. But if you do this, if you test it, as you’re talking about, an A/B test. The A test was what you did before. The B test is what you’re doing now for a certain period of time. You’re tracking those results. You’re comparing it. That gives you the answer.

It gives you the answer better than any guru, than any marketing Sherpa, whatever it is that’s going to tell you because the market always votes with their wallets. Or in this case, they vote with their phones, whether or not they’re going to call you back.

That’s what tells you the answer. So it’s very easy to define once you’ve got it set up. Not always fun to implement. Not always easy to implement. Probably easier than it seems, but once you do it and you’ve got those numbers, now you know. You don’t have to wonder. Hmm. I wonder if that would work better. You know.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the most important part. That’s the difference between just shooting stabs in the dark or conveying a message of, you know, “Hey, I’m just your friend,” instead of somebody who has a product that can change your business or improve your business. So how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re looking to initiate more conversations, improve your communications with people, get a better response to your emails, your voicemails, your phone messages, anything you’re doing in that regard, then let’s have a conversation.

Our Total Market Domination course is all designed to get you better results from what you’re currently doing.

Jay: Fantastic. David, thank you so much for sharing your information today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Improve Your Communication to Get Better Results?If so, check out a few ways we can help you grow your sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
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3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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Your process for goal achievement is key. Because you’re doing a lot behind the scenes before anyone even knows that you’re alive. So we’re essentially moving from being invisible and working hard behind the scenes — to ideally, at some point, bursting on the scene and being recognized as a force in your marketplace. But none of that happens by accident and it doesn’t just come from setting goals. It requires having those processes in place.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your process for goal achievement. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to be with you. I’m going to be brutally honest here. I’m really good at setting goals. But I’m not very good at mapping out how I’m going to accomplish those goals.

I think it’s good that I’ve taken that first step. And I kind of have a mental idea, but I never really go back and say, “yeah, I accomplished that thing.”

So I think I’m missing some of the motivation to set more goals. That’s one of the key things about goals. Once you’ve checked ’em off, you should feel good about yourself and then do more goals. And I don’t know if I ever reached that point.

David: Interesting. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. I know I’ve certainly had that situation over the years and still do to some extent. We talked about goals several weeks ago. I really wanted to get to the idea that it’s great to have the goal. But it’s like looking at the top of a ladder and saying, okay, that’s where I want to go.

Or it’s like looking at the sky, that’s where I want to go. But ultimately, the goal isn’t what’s going to get you there. The goal may motivate you, but the goal is not going to get you there. Ultimately, it’s the process that’s going to get you there. Assuming you have a process.

So if the goal is to generate a certain amount of revenue in your business, or have a certain amount of money in your personal bank account, or start a business, whatever your goal is, the next step is to say, okay, what are the specific steps?

What are the combinations of tasks and projects that are going to be necessary to help me achieve that goal? Because the tasks, the individual things I have to do, and the projects, essentially the things that are composed of a bunch of tasks, are what’s going to get us there. And the combination of these things is essentially the process.

If my goal is to generate a certain amount of sales revenue, and I’m not there yet. I generally want to start with a process that says, Okay, let’s take a look at exactly how much your existing clients are worth to you. What did they spend with you last year? And then, do I think they’ll spend more, less, or about the same this year?

And generally, you’ll have a reasonable idea of that. Whether it’s going to be about the same, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. You won’t know for sure, but it’s a great place to start. Then you say, “Okay, if I can count on my existing customers for this level of revenue, and I want to get to that level, how do I fill that gap?

Because if this is the goal and this is where I am now, then we have to look at the process that will get us there. What’s the combination of tasks and projects that will allow us to reach that revenue goal?

When we focus on that, everything we do during any given day now leads toward the goal. As opposed to just having scattered focus, just doing a bunch of different things. Just thinking about our goal, but not exactly sure how we’ll get there.

But when you start to think of it in terms of tasks, projects, and ultimately your process, that’s what’s really going to make the biggest difference.

Jay: Yeah, I think if you don’t do that, it can be really demotivating, right? I think I’ve told you in the past, when I was in the restaurant business just starting out, I would have an area manager come into the store and we would set goals, and the first one is always what you’re talking about.

How are you going to increase sales? And he would just increase our sales on the goal by ten percent, right from the previous year and never tell me what I can do to, you know, I’m new, “okay, how am I going to do that? What are the steps?”

And it was just this arbitrary number that he came up with and never trained me or told me how I could accomplish those things.

So then the follow up is like, “oh, you didn’t achieve your goal.” And I’m like, “well, you never told me how to achieve my goal,” right?

David: Yeah, the what is very often easy, it’s in the how that we get into all the details. And that’s what’s missing with a lot of people .And that’s why when we work with our clients in our Total Market Domination course, majority of it is the how, the specific steps that need to be taken in order to get to the desired goal. And when I say how, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it, either.

It means somebody has to do it, right? So you can get into this idea of who versus how, which is a great book, by the way. Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy wrote a book called Who Not How. Excellent book. But that concept still requires somebody to know how to do the things.

So either you’re going to find somebody who has that skill and you’re going to get them to take those actions, or you’re going to have to know what to do, either do it yourself or train someone else to do it so that those things can be done.

And then when you start focusing on that sort of approach, that becomes your process. You say, “okay, when I take this action, then I am likely to get this result.” And then you look at those results and you gauge it based on what you’re expecting. And then you tweak and adapt it as you go.

But ultimately it’s all about the process and whether the process is figuring out what to do or knowing what to do and then taking the action to do it, or whether the process is identifying the right people that you need to bring into your organization to help you with it, it ultimately all boils right back down to the process.

Jay: Yeah, I think it’s so important to say it’s not all on you, right? Identify those things that you need to do and put the other things on other people’s shoulders so that you can focus. I also love how you pointed out that as you’re assessing your goals, if you’re not getting there, you need to tweak and change.

I think sometimes we just say, Oh, that was it. Didn’t work. So I guess that that goal wasn’t right and so again, you’ve demotivated yourself instead of kind of reworking that goal.

David: Yeah, and so often we don’t even realize how close we are to something until it actually happens. And it reminds me of that analogy about how an airplane is off course for 90 percent of the flight.

And so the pilot’s job is to make constant little tweaks to get you back on track toward wherever it is that you’re going. So you take off, you’re headed in a direction, and then there’s a little bit of wind and it sends you one way and then they have to compensate for it.

So most of the little steering we do, even when we’re driving a car, your hands are moving slightly back and forth. And the reason it’s doing that is because you’re slightly off course most of the time.

When you use an analogy like that, and when you recognize that it’s exactly the same in life, it’s exactly the same in business, you’re going to be off course, most of the time.

And so you have to just keep adapting and keep making these tweaks to make sure that you’re back on track and following the path that you’ve set, which, of course, in what we’re talking about today is your process, the tasks, the specific things that have to be done, the projects, the longer term things that require multiple actions and the ultimate process that you’re using to get there.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think when you talk about, you know, find the who, I think that one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is they don’t, and I really struggle with this, they don’t share their process with other people.

They don’t seek mentorship. And so they’re reinventing the wheel. You know, a lot of these things have been tried and tested and you can skip a lot of pain and a lot of hassle if your who includes somebody else, just another ear call you, right?

You know, bend people’s ear and see what they think. And like I said, I really struggle with this. I do everything quietly. And if it doesn’t work, then I’ll go, okay, I should do something else. Cause I don’t want somebody else to know that I failed.

David: And of course you haven’t failed until you’ve decided that you failed until you give up on it, right?

Because a lot of times we can be trying the same thing and it’s not working. It’s not working. It’s not working. And you keep doing it. And then eventually it works. So it’s like, okay, but if you quit before then, you may consider it a failure, but it might not have failed as long as you keep going.

It’s also interesting when you talk about the idea that people tend to keep to themselves and they don’t share stuff. That’s really where we came up with our brand, TopSecrets.com, is the idea that not so much that these things are impossible to find out. It’s just that they’re not often shared.

A lot of sales and marketing training boils down to essentially fortune cookie kind of stuff. Be good to your clients and they’ll be good to you. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. And these platitudes are maybe a little helpful, but until you know how to put them into action, until you know the specifics of, “okay, what do I do with that information? How do I get people to know, like, and trust me” if that’s the goal?

And they’re three different things, right? First of all, do they know that I’m alive? You know, creating that initial awareness. And so in our program, we refer to it as First Contact. What is your First Contact with a new prospect or client going to be?

Because that’s going to determine whether or not they even know you’re taking in air on the planet, which is a prerequisite to them either being able to like you or being able to trust you. It all starts with that.

And so when you have specific processes in place for here’s what we do to get ideal prospects, not just anybody who can fog a mirror, but here’s what we do to get ideal prospects to know who we are. And then here’s what we do to get them to like us and trust us better.

We don’t really use those terms specifically in our program, but what we do focus on is how do we create that level of awareness in the mind of the ideal client, so that they think of you as the obvious go to choice for them?

Because if they don’t think of you that way, and they think of someone else that way, then it’s very likely that someone else is going to get the business.

Jay: Yeah. , those are all really, really good points. And like you said it’s a process. You have to be meticulous about it. I think one of the things that is hard is that, you know, we compare ourselves to successful people in business and we know them as already successful.

And so we don’t really understand that they went through these processes, right? They suffered. They struggled. And so the fact that you’re going through that, the fact that it’s hard and it doesn’t look hard to other people, it’s deceptive, right? We don’t see what they’ve had to go through.

We don’t see that they took these steps.

David: Right. And neither does the market. If the people that could buy from us don’t know we’re alive, they have no idea what we’re going through. They have no idea that we’re struggling because we haven’t figured out a way to introduce ourselves to them that is in any way compelling, right?

It’s just like “overnight success” in any capacity usually doesn’t happen that way. There’s usually a lot of behind the scenes. One of the things that we also focus on in our training is the idea, since that theme is so common, we focus on the idea that a lot of what you do in the early stages is going to be invisible.

And so, you’re doing a lot behind the scenes before anyone even knows that you’re alive. And so we’re essentially moving from that, being invisible and working hard behind the scenes, to ideally at some point bursting on the scene and being recognized as a force in your marketplace.

But none of that happens by accident and it doesn’t just come from setting goals. It requires Having those processes in place.

Jay: Yeah, I think that’s so important. Every once in a while, you see somebody who had an idea and it just explodes, right? And they fall into a pot of gold. But, you know, we tend to think that that’s how it’s going to happen for us.

You know, I see these people who are like influencers on YouTube or whatever, and they have millions of views.

I’ve looked at some of their stories. What you don’t see is that they publish videos without any success or following for an entire year before their channel blew up. They just kept pounding their head against a wall, but they had goals and they had plans and they worked towards it. And that’s the work sometimes that we’re just not seeing.

David: Right, and clearly they resonated with other people because back to what we were talking about earlier You’re not going to generate that level of revenue unless you’re impacting enough people.

So if your story is just that compelling and other people say “wow, this is really impressive,” then yeah, then you can really sort of attract that thing without a whole lot of effort. But for most people particularly if you’re going to do something as a business, it’s going to require a little more thought.

Jay: Yeah, it’s going to be hard, right?

But that effort is going to change you. It’s going to change your views. And I think you find out after the journey and after the pain that you’ve learned so much and now you’re better prepared to, you know, set your new goals and to work towards them.

You build a strength, like you build muscle mass, right? So how can people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you know where you want to be in terms of your goals, and you’re not quite sure about the processes for getting you there, this is a great way to have a conversation.

We can see if we think the same way, if our approach makes sense for you. If it does, great. Even if it doesn’t, we’ll have a great conversation. You’ll probably get a lot of good ideas from it.

Jay: Yeah. And sometimes that conversation is enough to get you kind of moving in the right direction. David, as always, it’s great pleasure to talk to you.

David: Thanks Jay.

Are You Ready for the Processes that Will Get You To Your Goals?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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What does it mean to install a Market Domination Engine in your business? Is that a real thing? If so, what is it? What does it do? What does it consist of? And what does it allow you to do, that your competitors are likely to struggle with?

Hi and welcome back, in today’s quick episode, we’ll talk about what it means to install a market domination engine in your business.

But before we do, I want to address the elephant in the room.

If even the idea of a “Market Domination Engine” sounds strange to you, or unrealistic, or if it sounds like a bunch of hype. It’s okay…

Let’s start by defining what I mean by market domination.

That doesn’t mean that everyone buys from you. It means that the people who could buy from you, know who you are, and know what you do, so they can make a thumbs up or thumbs down decision about whether or not they want to work with you.

Think about Amazon. Everyone knows who they are. Some people love them, and some people don’t. It doesn’t matter. They dominate their market because the people who could buy from them know who they are, and know what they do, so they can make their own decision about whether or not they want to buy from them.

And it’s exactly the same with you.

The reason you likely struggle to get the clients you need is that they don’t know you’re alive. Or if they do know you’re alive, they don’t know exactly what you do, or why they should buy from you, or why you’re better than whoever they might be using now, or why you’re better than any or every other option available to them.

Market Domination is about creating an environment in which your very best prospects know who you are and know what you do, so they can make a decision about whether or not they want to buy from you.

But how do you create that environment?

That’s where the market domination engine idea comes in.

If that idea, the idea of a “Market Domination Engine” does sound strange, or unrealistic, or like a bunch of hype to you. it’s understandable. Becuase very few business owners have never seen a sales and marketing system that actually functions like an engine.

They’re used to a patchwork of random activities.

Doing some networking, waiting for referrals, making some phone calls, posting on social media, prospecting when they have the time, following up when they have the time (or when they remember they should have reached out to someone.)

What is that? It’s not an engine.

In an environment like that, the idea of a market domination engine sounds like fantasy or hype, because they’ve never seen their business run like an engine.

That doesn’t mean it can’t. It just means it’s never been designed to run that way.

The engine has not been installed. And by the engine, I mean the very specific components that create the consistent result they’re looking for.

I’m going to keep this episode very short. Because this topic is likely to either make perfect sense to you, or it’s not going to make any sense at all.

If you’ve ever gone from sales meeting to salesmeeting, from training to workshop, from podcast video to YouTube, from Facebook Group to Skool Community, from Google to AI, asking questions, taking notes, collecting ideas, gathering little bits and pieces here and there, and wondering how it all fits together…

Then you may be ready to understand the value of installing a Market Domination engine in your business.

It’s about replacing all the scattered bits and pieces you gather with proven systems and processes designed to get results.

It’s about creating that environment where your ideal prospects know who you are and know what you do so well, that they can choose you over every other option.

It’s about trading in your anonymity for recognition among the ideal clients you want to attract.

Most business owners never experience what it feels like when everything is deliberately connected. When the hodgepodge makes way for clarity, and structure, and profit.

Think about any system that works well. It’s made up of components, steps, and repeatable processes. So your outcomes are consistent.

Your Market Domination Engine is exactly the same.

So you can either convince yourself it doesn’t exist. OR you we can work together to install it in your business risk-free.

That means if it doesn’t work for you. You get your money back and then some.

If you’d like more details on that, go to TopSecrets.com/engine. That’s TopSecrets.com/engine.

Once you see it in action, it stops feeling unrealistic and starts feeling obvious. Talk to you soon.

Are You Ready to Install Your Own Market Domination Engine in Your Business? If so, click here.Or check out a few of the other ways we can help:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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If our storytelling allows us to build trust, build credibility, and build a bond in sales, then we’re telling the right stories. If it’s just designed to be manipulative, then save your breath.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the power of storytelling in sales. Jay, tell me a story.

Jay: Listen, I am a storyteller. I love to tell stories and I like to build when I tell stories, right? This is something that I use on a regular basis when I’m talking to people. And it’s not just telling a story.

I think it’s putting people in a story and what character are they in that story? And I think most people want to be the hero in their own story, right?

David: They do. Which gets to the whole idea of the hero’s journey, for anyone who follows that sort of story arc. The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. But it’s a book and it describes essentially the plot of most of the most popular movies of all time.

Jay: Yeah,

David: Right. Star Wars, Rocky, anything where you’ve got this person who is initially kind of beaten down and not winning. Then they come into contact with a mentor. They learn new things and have a confrontation and it might not go well. Then they learn some more things and then eventually they come out triumphant.

There’s a whole arc. And you’re right, a lot of people want to be the hero, and the challenge as a salesperson is, in our storytelling, we can’t be the hero.

Mm. Right.

We need to make sure that the person we’re talking to is the hero and that we are the mentor or guide. We’re not Luke Skywalker. We have to be Yoda. We have to be the one who’s helping Luke to destroy the Death Star.

Jay: Yeah. This is a really hard thing, I think for a lot of people. Because we want to go in and think we’re the hero, right? I’m coming into your business. I’m going to provide something that is going to save the day, and then I’m going to walk away and you’re going to praise me and you’re going to pay me.

But that’s not what really is supposed to be happening, right? It’s that I have the tools and the resources that you need to be the hero.

David: Yes, and it’s easy to forget that, particularly when we’re trying to read ourselves in as the hero to each story. But one of the things that I’ve noticed in sales is that many, if not most of the very best salespeople are also the best storytellers.

You can say. “Hi, do you know what time it is?” And instead of getting the time, you will get a fantastic story that might weave the time into it.

Jay: Mm.

David: But you’re going off in all kinds of directions, and when they do it right, it’s captivating enough that you sit there and pay attention.

Jay: Yeah. But you pointed out “when you do it right.”

David: Yes.

Jay: Right. so let’s talk about that a little bit. Let’s talk about your feedback on doing it right.

David: Well, number one, as we already touched on, it can’t just be all about you. You can’t make the story about yourself. You need to make it about them, and a lot of that upfront comes from finding out about them, which means you’re asking more questions, then you’re answering, hopefully in the early stages.

Jay: Yes

David: Because customers always just want to know what it’s going to cost upfront, and you don’t generally want to lead off with that. So a lot of our storytelling will actually have to come from the conversations that ensue after we’ve gathered enough information.

Jay: Yeah.

David: To know what those stories need to be about. If we just go in and we meet somebody for the first time and we start telling them stories, that’s probably not ideal. We need to still initially do some sort of diagnostic upfront to find out what their interests are.

Now, of course, a lot of salespeople, they do the whole thing about walking into the office, looking around, oh, I see a big buck hanging up there on the,

Jay: mm-hmm.

David: On the wall. The person’s a hunter. You start talking to them about hunting, that type of thing. And, it’s very obvious. It works in some situations to break the ice, so you can ask the person. Because the other thing about storytelling is it doesn’t just have to be you telling stories. If you can get the prospect to be telling stories to you, then they’ll be more likely to engage in a longer conversation because most people are more interested in hearing what they have to say versus what somebody else has to say.

Jay: Yeah.

David: So sometimes you can just let somebody talk for a long time and they feel like they had the best conversation, even though the salesman didn’t say anything at all.

Jay: Yeah, I’ve had people like look at the pictures on the wall and stuff, and that can come off as so plastic and so fake.

But I do think the most important thing is to get them talking. And the more talking they do and the less talking you do, the better off those things are. If you can get them to be the storyteller and then you can help them improve that story or tell them how that story’s going to get better, that’s the zone where you want to be.

David: Yeah, exactly. And I think that a good sales process does that, in the sense that when you’re leading off with intelligent, probing questions that don’t come across as intrusive -it can’t be like you’re giving them the third degree. You got a light shining in their face.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And you’re trying to get information out of them. It can’t be anything like that. But if you’re asking intelligent, probing questions and you’re finding out about them, they’re going to open up more. And the more they talk, the better it is for you. Another thing that a lot of salespeople do is they mistakenly ask yes or no questions. They ask binary questions instead of open-ended questions.

If you ask an open-ended question, they’re likely to talk more, which is going to allow the conversation to flow a lot more organically. They can tell stories. You can then potentially tell some sort of story about something that relates to something they said.

Again, keeping it focused on them and what they need and what they’re looking to do. For salespeople, case studies, testimonials, things like that can be good stories as long as they’re not just being forced down people’s throats.

If somebody’s talking about a promotion that they did or something that they did in the past that worked well, then you can acknowledge that. “Wow, that’s great. That sounds like that was really amazing. We had a similar situation with a client where this happened or that happened,” and then you can relate with that story.

But that also brings up another thing. If somebody tells a story, then you don’t want to try to tell a story that’s designed to sound better than theirs.

Mm-hmm.

Right? So you don’t want to change gears. But if you can establish some sort of comradery among them by indicating that you’ve had similar experiences, then your stories will go a lot farther.

Jay: Yeah. And I think a couple things from my own experience: don’t interrupt. Don’t cut them off. Right? Let them talk. But I think where people really miss out and you know that I interview people for part of my living, right?

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: And I’ve been a professional interviewer for 20 years, and I find that the key is not the initial question. Yes, ask open-ended question. That’s very, very important. But the key is always the follow-up question, and that’s where people fall down.

They ask the question, they got the person talking, and then they dive into their product spiel, right? If you ask a follow-up question, it shows that you’re listening. It shows that you’re interested. And it will take you places that you never ever thought you could go.

Like I have interview s where people send a list of questions and I’m like, just so you know going to ask you follow up questions and we’ll bounce around, and those kind of things.

And by the time they’re done, they’re energized and they just feel so appreciated. and it’s because of active listening and good follow up questions.

David: Yes. And that is so completely critical in sales.

Jay: Yeah.

David: People who don’t get that are at a tremendous disadvantage. You know, one of the big advantages of storytelling is that it allows you to potentially infuse emotion into an emotionless conversation.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: A lot of sales conversations are very sort of clinical and product oriented and detail oriented and price oriented, and it’s hard to get somebody into the zone. It’s hard to get them emotionally positive about the idea of buying something without being able to trigger something inside.

Otherwise, it’s just a list of details and facts and specifications where if we can get them engaged with how they feel about what the product or service is going to do for them, the end result that they’re getting. What’s the thing that they want to have happen as a result of engaging in this promotion or doing whatever it is that they’re going to do?

If they can tell you that and get themselves into a state of enthusiasm over your product, they’re going to be a hundred times more likely to buy it.

Jay: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that the natural fallback for salespeople is to focus on specifications. You know, I’ve been there on the car lot and the guy wants to show me all the specifics and horsepower and all those things.

And then I’ve had people talk about, what are my goals and focusing more on my life than on this particular one item. It really shows, you know, more caring and that they’re more interested in me.

David: It does, and you also have to be aware of the person you’re talking to. Because sometimes people will hear something like that and they’re like, I don’t want to get into that.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Just tell me how much it costs, or whatever.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And for some, that might be a disqualifier, right?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And for others you say, okay, well I’ll provide the information. I’ll see if this goes anywhere. But a lot of times when people are unwilling to communicate at a deeper level, to me it indicates they’re not a good quality prospect to be interacting with.

I was talking with someone earlier today. I had a situation where they booked a strategy session call with us and like had absolutely no idea why they were calling and

Jay: mm,

David: And so there was a video that they went to, to watch. He hadn’t watched the video and he is, he didn’t know why he was calling. And I said, well, listen, out of respect for your time, why don’t we do this? Take a look at the video, see if it makes sense for us to have a conversation. If it does, we can go back here and regroup. And he said, okay, fine. Right. So the call was over in three or four minutes.

Jay: Yeah.

David: But it was respectful for both of us. It was respectful of his time. It’s respectful of mine, and I think that all sales conversations need to do that. They need to be respectful of both the prospect and the salesperson. And too often, as salespeople, we feel so sort of humbled or so disadvantaged or whatever it is. we always put the needs of the prospect first.

You’ve heard the customer’s always, right.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Which is not always true.

Jay: Agreed.

David: But you want to treat them as if it is. Particularly in the early stages, until you find out that it’s not the truth. But in those situations, if you recognize that your time is just as valuable as theirs, we all have a certain number of ticks on the clock.

We don’t know what that number is. We want to make sure that we’re spending our time as well as possible, as productively as possible, with the people who are on the same wavelength and who are ready to interact with us.

Jay: Yeah. And that goes back to the podcast we did recently about pre-qualifying people and really finding out ahead of time if they really, you know, fit within your business model and those kind of things.

But, you know, a lot of times you’re not going to know unless you just start talking to somebody and you start asking them questions and I think if you’re doing this right, it’s not going to feel plastic, it’s not going to feel fake. I have a genuine desire to learn about people and to find out about them.

David: Yeah.

Jay: And you know, if that’s what you’re doing, they’re going to sense that. If you’re just doing it to, okay, now let’s cut to the chase and let’s get to the details and hopefully I can sell you. They’ll sense that too,

David: Right. Yeah. I think that if our storytelling allows us to build trust, Build credibility, build a bond, then we’re telling the right stories.

If it’s just designed to distract and be a shiny object to try to get them to tell something. If it’s designed to be manipulative, then save your breath.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. How do people find out more, David?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. There’s actually a video right on that page. What I would encourage you to do, it says at the top right there, before you schedule a call, watch this video.

So take a look at that, get an idea of how we’re helping other people, what it does for other people. If it makes sense for you, then you can just scroll down and you can schedule a call and we can work with you essentially to find out where you are now in your business versus where you want to be.

We can look at your visibility in the marketplace. How are you doing in terms of visibility, in terms of sales, in terms of profit? And just walk you through a couple of things will allow you to maybe think more clearly in terms of how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be.

So it’s TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have a conversation with you.

Jay: And I’m sure you’ll tell ’em a great story.

David: I just might!

Jay: David. It’s always a pleasure.

David: Thanks Jay.

Are You Ready to Tell More Stories that Lead to Sales?If so, check out a few ways we can help:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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Choosing worthy clients for your business means making decisions about whether or not a prospect deserves your time and attention, whether they’re worthy of follow up, and you are bound to make some mistakes in that process. When you do this, you have to recognize that some of that is going to come with the territory. You may make a wrong decision that will cost you some business down the line. So you have to weigh that against quality of life issues.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing choosing worthy clients. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be back on again. And once again, I love this topic. I feel like, personally in my experience, there is a tendency to believe that you have to take every client. And you know what? In some businesses that is true, you’re going to take every customer who comes through the door. In other cases, you can be more selective and it could make your life a lot easier. It can make your business a lot better.

David: Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I thought this would be a really good topic, because I believe that in many businesses they don’t even consider the idea of worthy clients.

I think that in many businesses we feel like, okay, we’re going to serve whoever we can serve. We want to take whoever comes through the door, and we just want to serve them to the best of our ability. And while that is noble, it’s not always great from your own standpoint, from your own business standpoint.

And I wish this was something that I knew from the beginning, but it was not. As most things, we learn it the hard way and this is no exception. At some point along the way, the idea of pursuing worthy clients, choosing worthy clients, tracking down worthy clients just really started to appeal to me. When I started using that term with some of my clients, they were like, “wow, that never even occurred to me. And what do you mean by worthy?” Things like that. So we can dive into all of that in today’s podcast.

Jay: Yeah. I think that there are some things that we hear over the years and they start to sink in. We just don’t ever challenge ’em in our mode of thinking.

Like I think of the customer’s always, right. I’ve come to believe. No, no, that’s just not true. Do I want to do everything to satisfy the customer? Yes. Yes, I do. But there are customers who can never be satisfied or I can’t provide what they want. So, no, they’re not always right. I love that we have these discussions. Let’s start off with this word worthy. What in your mind is a worthy customer?

David: Well, I think we have to decide that for ourselves, what we determine to be a worthy prospect or client for ourselves. And some of that can go back to what you talked about, in the customer’s always right or the customer’s not always right.

But you can have a customer that is absolutely right about things and you can have a good relationship with them, but they may not still be a worthy client if they are taking up more time than they are costing.

So if they’re not really focused on buying from you to the extent that you need them to in order to be worthy of your time and attention, it may be something as simple as that.

And in those situations, I’m not suggesting, okay, well you’re just going to bag all these people. If you’ve got a relationship with someone and you like the relationship you have and you’re okay with it, then you can deem that prospect or client worthy. You can say, “all right, well, I like dealing with this person, therefore they are worthy of my time and attention.”

But for me, I believe that’s where it starts. We each have to decide. Is this prospect or is this client worthy of my time and attention? Because obviously our time is the most important asset we have, and when we fail to recognize that, we can invest a lot of it, we can spend a lot of our time on prospects and clients who are not worthy of our time and attention.

And it could go back to what they’re buying from us or not buying from us. It can also get down to personalities. If they’re rude, obnoxious, belligerent, then they’re unworthy in a lot of cases to do business with us.

And I think sometimes as salespeople or as business owners, We don’t really look at it that way. We think, well, we have to be worthy. We have to grovel and try to get their approval and all that sort of thing. And I don’t really think it’s like that.

I think it certainly has to be a two-way street. Because anyone that we decide to do business with also has to decide to do business with us. They have to decide if they think that we are worthy of working with them.

But that’s their job.

Our job is to determine if they are worthy of working with us. And to me that simply means being proactive about your choice of prospect and your choice of customer. Now, you can’t always know that right away with a prospect. You can’t know if they’re going to be a worthy client.

But as you interview them, as you have conversations with them, as you qualify or disqualify them, you can make some judgments. You can make some decisions pretty quickly on whether or not this person seems to be a good fit for you and for your business, and whether or not you want to decide they’re worthy of doing business with you.

Jay: Yeah, you brought up so many points there. I hadn’t really thought about, just like the time to revenue ratio, right?

Because I grew up in the restaurant business, so we knew what our food costs should be. We knew what a plate of food should cost, we knew what our overhead should be, those types of things. And so that’s really easy to quantify. But in businesses where there’s a sales cycle, you know, those types of things, it’s a lot harder to quantify.

Well, how much time did I really take to close this sale? And then what is my time actually worth? Just that thought process, just that equation can be so powerful. And I also think taking the time, maybe just get out a pad of paper, if people still use pen and paper. I don’t know, I haven’t for years. But get that out and just write down, what do you think your worthy customer is?

How much time should it take to close a sale? What type of revenue should you expect from them? What should the communication look like? Those types of things.

David: Yeah. And once again, making the decisions that are most important from your standpoint, for your business, for your coworkers. For me, I think people being friendly, people being nice. People being willing to engage?

Willing to engage, willing to have conversation, that could be right at the top of the list. Because if they’re not willing to have conversations with you, then nothing’s going to happen. There are people who you can have a great conversation with, and then they will just never take or return your phone calls again.

When you determine that that’s happened, when you’ve determined that you’re interacting with someone, or you’re trying to interact with someone, who is no longer willing to communicate, you really have to determine your tolerance for pain and “how long am I willing to continue to do that?”

I know that over the years for myself, that timeframe has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter. Whereas in the early stages, you know, you pursue people to the ends of the earth.

And now, you know, as I recognize the value of my own time, as I recognize the value of my coworker’s time, I don’t want them wasting time on people who are not worthy of our time and attention. So a lot of it could really start with that.

Are they even willing to engage? Are they willing to communicate? Do they seem reasonably friendly, personable, able to interact with us? And if those things are positive, then, are they qualified to buy? Do they need what we have to sell? Do they have the money to buy what we have to sell? And are they willing to work with us to buy it?

So those are all qualification questions and that really goes to a whole different topic when we get into the topic of qualification procedures, and all that sort of thing.

But just identifying the fact that there are prospects out there, some of whom are worthy of your time and attention, some of whom are not. And so a lot of our job in the early stages is discernment: deciding worthy or unworthy? And then following through on that.

Jay: Yeah, just having that mindset. I mean, I think there’s going to be a lot of people listening, like you said at the beginning. I’ve never even thought of these terms. I thought I was just supposed to deal with everybody.

You also said tolerance for pain. I know of customers, like when I look down and I see the caller id, and it’s that person, if I’m going, “oh man, you know, I don’t want to pick up this phone.” Sometimes it’s easy to ask yourself, am I worthy?

And I don’t think you’re saying we have to get rid of unworthy customers. I think we have to assess what we’re willing to do to continue to maintain that relationship.

I think back, and I’ve actually had times where I’ve picked up the phone to a customer who’s taking more time and I said, listen, this is what I can offer you. If that works for you, great, let’s continue the relationship. But if it doesn’t, maybe you should find somebody else because I can’t.

You can bring somebody into the worthiness zone. I know. I’ve done it.

David: Yeah, I think that’s very true. I also think that when you have a situation where you’re looking at your phone and you’re dreading answering it, if you at least have this in the back of your mind now, that there are worthy clients and there are unworthy clients, if somebody’s causing you to cringe when you look at your phone, you have to decide, “okay, does this make this person unworthy of my time?”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And if the answer is yes, then you make the appropriate decision. If it’s not quite that bad. Again, you make the appropriate decision for you. You stick with them or you decide to trade them in for somebody who is going to be a better fit.

And we can use words like that, better fit. This isn’t a good fit, that type of thing.

Worthy, definitely sounds judgmental.

Jay: Yes. Yeah.

David: And so that’s part of the reason I like the word, and it’s part of the reason that I don’t like the word.

I don’t like the word in the sense that it’s not about judging people. It’s about judging someone’s worthiness to do business with us. Right?

It’s about judging the validity or the likelihood of a good relationship. And we all have to do that.

We all have to do that every time we meet someone. We decide, “is this the type of relationship I would like to pursue?” And if the answer is yes, we pursue it. And if the answer is no, we can make that decision to not pursue it.

But again, I think particularly for salespeople who think “I have to sell anyone with a pulse, anyone who can fog a mirror,” this could be a bit of a change in approach.

Jay: Yeah. I love that you make a distinction between is it judgmental ? Because you’re really talking about it from your point of view. You’re not saying this person’s a jerk or an idiot, or anything like that. What you’re saying is, for my business to keep going and to do our best, is this somebody who we want to have a relationship with?

I think that’s an important distinction because I know people who like will put in their CRM system, they’ll make notes like, this person is a complete, dot dot dot, you know what? And you’re jading other employees towards that person. Maybe you should rethink about your process, about how you’re going to classify them, so that it doesn’t turn into a situation where somebody who could be a good customer or who could be moved into that worthiness zone, we’re guaranteeing that they’re not worthy because our systems are just judging them, instead of judging how good they are for us.

David: Yeah, and that is such a great point. Because when you think about the fact that when you are making these decisions about whether or not a prospect is worthy of your time and attention, whether or not they’re worthy of follow up, you are bound to make some mistakes in that process.

And so when you do this, you have to recognize that some of that is going to come with the territory. You may make a wrong decision that will cost you some business down the line.

So you have to weigh that against. Quality of life issues.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Whether or not it would be worth it for you to cultivate this person to come along and to become the type of person that you would like to have as a customer. And again, if you’re willing to do it, you should absolutely do it.

But simply by keeping that term in mind, and again, if it sounds too judgmental to you, you can come up with a different word for it. But the advantage of it is that if you look at your phone and you dread the call, if there’s a particular customer that you’ve been servicing for a long time, that you’ve been thinking about possibly trading in for another one ,then just asking yourself, is this person worthy of my time and attention? Answer it for yourself.

You get to make the call. Maybe you decide that they’re all worthy clients. That every single person that you ever come in contact with is worthy of your time and attention and worthy of your focus. You can absolutely decide that.

But we’re not judging people here. We are judging their ability to buy from us, their ability to interact with us, their ability to utilize our products and services correctly, so it’s going to benefit them.

You know, there are people who I’ve talked to who have been interested in joining our Total Market Domination program, but based on the answers to the questions that we’ve asked them, we’ve said, “listen, I can’t really recommend this to you at this point.”

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And here’s why. And we’ll tell them why. We’ll recommend other solutions for them. And to me, that’s actually being conscientious. It’s not about saying, okay, we’re just going to take your money. It’s about saying, if this makes sense for you, if we really believe we can help you, we’re going to tell you that. And if we’re not sure we can help you, we’re going to tell you that, too.

Because the one thing we don’t want to have happen is we don’t want to take people into the program that we’re not confident we’re going to be able to help. And so to me, that goes into this equation as well.

Is this person at a point where they can benefit from what I’m offering them? If the answer is yes, then by all means it sounds like it’s a good fit. They’re absolutely worthy clients, worthy of our time and attention because we can help them. If we can’t help them, then at that point, I think it’s our duty to disqualify them.

Jay: Yeah. And it benefits both sides. And I also think it depends on where you’re at in your business cycle. I mean, early on to pay the bills, you are probably going to take everybody regardless of how much time it takes.

And then as you grow and progress, hopefully you can become more choosy. It’s a great place to be as a business owner. Great discussion, David. How can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, register for a call with myself or my team, and we can walk you through it.

If this is something that interests you, if this is potentially a focus of yours or even if it’s just something you want to consider. If you’d like to start today, looking at the opportunity to attract, qualify, and convert the type of clients you want, more worthy clients, if that sounds good to you, then schedule a call with us. We would be happy to do that.

Jay: All right. I love it. Thank you so much, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Start Choosing Worthy Clients?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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To leverage the law of attraction, you have to get beyond the book and the movie. If you’re feeling stuck in your business, ask yourself this. “Am I really clear on exactly what it is that I’m building here?

And to the extent that it’s not coming together, how’s your vision? Are you very clear on what that means?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the truth about the Law of Attraction. Now, this applies to business, it applies to life.

If you’re familiar with the movie and book The Secret, there’s been a lot of talk about this concept. The Law of Attraction. It basically says that we attract into our lives the people and circumstances we need, based on essentially the vibes that we’re putting out.

Jay: Well, and I was just sitting here thinking, I must not be putting out very good vibes.

David: I’m sure it’s not that. But… I think sometimes when people get into this mindset, they can get frustrated. Because if you think that all you have to do is really want it and it’s going to come to you, it’s not quite the whole story.

And I think the movie and the book called The Secret probably caused some people some problems with this. Part of it is because a lot of that movie was based on a book called The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. If you read that book, you recognize that there’s a lot more to it than just trying to attract with your mind.

I mean, you actually have to follow up. You have to do some things afterwards if you want to get the results you’re actually looking for. So I feel like what they did in the book and the movie was kind of a disservice to the law of attraction, which I think can be valid, if you follow up with it.

Jay: Yeah, I’ve always kind of felt, talking about this, that it’s more about a change in mentality than it is that you’ll speak into the universe and the universe will grant you this wonderful thing out of the kindness of its heart. That because you’ve said these things, it’s just like setting a goal.

Right? And so, when you hear things spoken, when your mind hears them, when you speak them with your mouth, it’s different than just thinking about them. And so, over time, I think it changes your behavior. That leads you to the thing that you, quote, spoke into the universe.

David: Yeah, I believe that entirely as well.

I think that when you are focused on a goal, when you’re focused on trying to using the law of attraction to accomplish something in your life… When your mind is going in that direction, it is a lot more likely to get you enthused about it, get you thinking about it more and get you taking action on it, which ultimately is what is going to lead to the success.

Now one aspect of it that I think is really important, on the front end of that, is that you have enough belief in what it is that you want to accomplish, that you continue to look for the ways to make it happen.

Because if you don’t believe you can do it, obviously you’re not going to do it. I think that’s pretty much a given. If you don’t think you can do something, if you don’t think you can accomplish something, then you will very likely not take the actions necessary to make it happen. That’s not about law of attraction, it’s about human nature and inevitability.

So in those circumstances, it’s kind of a given that you won’t succeed. But if you’ve got the consummate belief in what it is that you want to do and what you’re pursuing, then in a lot of cases, it will allow you to start to see the things that will make it possible.

So when people talk about attracting people and circumstances into your life, I believe there is truth to that. But I also think a lot of that might’ve been there to begin with.

When you’re aware of it, you’re going to be more likely to see it. If you’re looking for something, you’re going to be more likely to find it. Then you’ll take action on it. And that’s when the law of attraction actually starts to pay off.

Jay: Yeah, I really like that you’re building awareness. Because you’ve spoken these things and you’ve kind of made these mental goals. Whereas before, if you hadn’t taken the time to even assess what you want and talk to yourself about what you want, kind of make these mental goals, then when that person enters your life or that opportunity arises, you’re not going to see it for what it is.

Because you haven’t planned ahead, you haven’t made a mental note that that’s specifically something that you wanted or needed.

David: Right, you’re not tuned into it. And, you know, the mind has this particular activating system that many people are aware of. It’s the part of your brain that notices the things that you’re interested in.

A common example is if you just got a certain kind of car, or if you’re looking at a certain type of car and thinking about buying it, chances are you see it all over the road now, because it’s now in your mind, so you see it and recognize it.

So, there’s a little bit of that with law of attraction. But the primary thing that I think is important for anyone to consider as they’re trying to accomplish things in their lives and in their businesses is that the idea, the goal is a great beginning.

We’ll be talking about this in future podcasts, but then ultimately, it’s what comes from that. The ideas that we get. The things that we take action on. That’s ultimately going to help us to get there.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ve always felt like this is the core of the law of attraction. That it’s very important to not just think about something.

That you attach benchmarks to it, you attach follow up to it. Maybe you work backwards from that thing, that you don’t just put it to chance. If you work towards that thing then first of all the odds of it happening are going to be much greater and you’ve gone out, and you’ve taken it for yourself anyway

David: Yeah, and I know we don’t normally get too woo woo in these podcasts. And I’m not looking to do that today. But I think there’s been so much talk about the law of attraction over the years that it’s at least worth having a discussion about. People may think they’re doing everything they can to accomplish their goals. But they don’t realize that there may be some steps that are missing.

There’s a quote from St. Augustine that says, Pray as though everything depended on God, work as though everything depended on you. And I think that’s sort of a different take on it, but it covers kind of the same thing.

If you take responsibility for what you’re looking for, and I really love what you mentioned, about the idea of those benchmarks, because if you’ve got something that you want to accomplish and you’re keeping track of each benchmark along the way, then you will be more likely to see the people and circumstances that are already there that will allow you to get to the next benchmark. I think that makes the idea of the law of attraction seem more real.

When you just have your eye on the goal and you’re not really thinking in terms of all the interim steps in between, you can really miss out on a lot because you’re looking for this and right now you’re only ready for this.

Jay: Yeah, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time studying highly successful people, Elon Musk, Bill Gates you know, very, very successful people, and none of them sat around and waited for anything, right?

Mark Cuban, and even after they have found incredible success they didn’t say, okay, got what I wanted. They continue to work aggressively every single day. And I think about what would I do if I had that kind of money?

Would I continue to work? Or would you find me on a beach somewhere? You know, this is a mentality, it’s part of them. It’s their love. It’s their passion. I think it has very little to do with money or even the law of attraction.

David: I agree. that’s the result of sort of doing the things that you’re good at and the things that you love exceptionally well. When you do that and you’re able to impact enough other people, and I think that’s a key component that’s often missing, is that they’re great at what they did and they pursued it with passion.

But what they were pursuing was able to impact enough other people, that they were able to generate the result. They were able to generate the revenue, which is essentially the reward for being able to serve or service enough people so that it comes back to you like that.

Jay: Yeah. So I think it’s about, you know, kind of thinking about those things that you want to achieve, creating a plan to get there and working as hard as you can, to achieve that success.

David: Yeah. I know personally, the times in my life where I was really focused on a particular goal, especially business, we’re talking business here. I have an idea for something. You have an idea for a business or you have an idea for a product. You have an idea for something. And when you believe in it enough, and when you’re passionate enough about it, It just seems to almost take on a life of its own.

You sort of know what to do next. You see the opportunities and you take them because you know how it fits in. And pretty much every major success that I’ve had in business has rolled that way.

A lot of times when you’re just sort of trying to slug something out and you’re trying to figure it out and things aren’t coming together. I think some of it has to do with the vision. Either the vision isn’t clear enough of exactly what it is that you want this thing to be, because you have to have that first.

Just like building a house, you have to know what it’s going to look like. You want the blueprint before you start nailing boards together. So you need to have a clear idea of it first, because when you’ve got that clear idea, then it becomes a whole lot easier to build.

Jay: Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, I’ve been caught kind of in no man’s land where I kinda believe in what I’m doing, but I’ve got these other things and I just am kind of scattered waiting to see which one is going to take root.

And that’s always been an issue of mine is can I really find that thing and just stake my claim and say, this is it. And I’m going to push forward no matter what. That’s hard for some people to do.

David: Yeah, saying “I’m all in on this.” Oh, there’s a great book. Is it Essentialism?

It’s got an illustration and the illustration is basically a circle with a bunch of lines coming out of it, going in all different directions. It’s a bunch of short lines, arrows pointed out from the center.

And it’s like when your attention is divided, you’re doing a lot of little things. You’re not really accomplishing anything. And the way you want to do it is you want to have the circle, and then one line coming out in one direction. This is the thing I’m doing because then you’ll get traction on it.

When you’re doing a lot of different things, you’re not really completing anything. When you’re doing one, you’re able to complete it.

So I think for people who are watching and listening, if you’re feeling frustrated in your business, ask yourself, you know, am I really clear on exactly what it is that I’m building here or the thing that I want to build here?

And to the extent that it’s not coming together, how’s your vision? Are you very clear on what that means?

How many people is it going to take? How many hours a day are you going to need to work? Who else needs to be involved? What sort of technology do you need? All these different things.

Because as you start to examine the different components of it, then you’ll start to get the ideas, particularly in the areas that might be holding you back. Because if one of these elements that is necessary to the success of the project is missing, then you’re not going to get there.

So at that point it becomes about finding bottlenecks, which is the subject of a whole other podcast.

Jay: Yeah, I think that’s such great advice. How do people find out more? How can you help them with this process?

David: Well, if you go to TopSecrets.com/call, you can schedule a call with myself or my team.

And we’ll be happy to just talk you through sort of where you are with your business, where you’re looking to be in terms of visibility, sales, and profits. Because when you get those three things lined up, everything comes together a whole lot better.

And once again, we’re not really talking about just, you know, the “I can do it, I think I can, I think I can” aspect of this.

We’re talking about sort of the down and dirty, step by step, here’s what we need to do to help get you from here to there. So if that makes sense for you, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right, David, as always, it’s a pleasure. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Ready to Leverage the Law of Attraction?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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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’ve tried that. That doesn’t work. Right? You’ve heard that how many times, right?

And then I’m like, well times have changed. Things are different. Maybe we can tweak it a little bit. And then you try it and there’s amazing success there. It’s almost cultural within a company, sometimes. “No, that doesn’t work. We can’t do that.” I think challenging those assumptions can be of great value.

David: Yes, absolutely. And there are a lot of times when people will do that. They’ll say they tried something, they’ll say, that didn’t work, and they will assume that it was that thing that didn’t work, when in fact it might have been the way that they implemented that thing.

It might have been the way that they used that thing. Maybe they didn’t implement it as well as they thought they did. In the promotional products industry, salespeople run into this all the time. They’ll come up with a recommendation for a product that somebody can use, whether it’s a custom imprinted whatever, mug or t-shirt or cap or doesn’t matter, whatever the item is.

And people will say things like, “oh yes, we tried mugs. Mugs don’t work.” It’s like, okay, well there are hundreds of millions of custom imprinted mugs that are working for businesses all over the world. If it didn’t work for your business, why didn’t it work? Right?

What did you imprint on the mug? Who did you give those mugs to? What did you do with them? Did they stay in the box by your desk and they were never given out? That’s not going to work, right? So there are a lot of times where people think they did something, they feel like they’ve done something, and they either really didn’t do it, or they didn’t do it as well as it could be done.

And I think for most of us, that’s something that we have to reflect on. Not just, was this done? But did I do it to the best of my ability? Did I do it better than my competitors? Did I do it to the extent that I’m capable of doing it? Or did I just sort of turn in a half-baked performance?

Jay: Yeah, kind of haphazard. And what I found oftentimes is it was the employee, you know, you tried a new sales pitch or a new program to get leads and it was just the person who was doing it wasn’t into it.

David: Yeah.

Jay: And then we all decide, oh, that doesn’t work. Let’s move on. Instead of always assessing your systems and your returns and saying, well, wait a minute, let’s listen in on what you’re doing and let’s find out if there’s ways to tweak or improve your close rate.

So challenging assumptions. I just love that concept. Especially several times a year, and especially at the beginning of the year.

David: There’s a quote that I thought of that really kind of cracks me up. I’ve used it with my kids a lot. And whenever I say it to my kids or whenever my kids say it back to me, it always makes us laugh because the quote is, “it’s a poor artist who blames his tools,” right?

I don’t know if you’ve heard that expression or some variation of that. And the way that we say it is, “’tis a poor artist who blames her tools,” right? If I’m talking to my daughter and she’ll say, “oh, this didn’t turn out the way that I wanted. This paintbrush stinks,” or whatever. “Oh, it is a poor artist that blames her tools!”

And in business, we just have a tendency to do that. Everybody in business has a tendency to do that. When something goes wrong, well, it was this circumstance, or it was this person, or it was this prospect. This prospect was unqualified. Or this person was, whatever it is.

And it may very well be the case. But 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.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah. So, perfect. And, and the other thing I would add to challenging the assumption is just try stuff. You know, sometimes we say, you know, you’re on the whiteboard and you’re like, no idea is a bad idea, which I’ve never believed is true. There are bad ideas that end up on the board. Right? But sometimes something sounds a little crazy or a little wacky, you know, trying some of that stuff, you just never know.

I have some good friends and they’re part of a major software game development company and they used to spend five years, six years developing these vast games, you know, and it would take forever. And they have no idea if they’re going to be liked.

One day they said, “what if we just put out some kind of small games to see how they would go and if people would like them. Then if they do, we would expand on them.”

And they had hit after hit after hit. You may know their most recent hit, it’s Fortnite, one of the most popular games ever created. Fortnite was a side project that they were just kind of saying, “Hey, what if we did this or that,” while they were working on one of these massive projects.

“Just something we’ll try. We’ll throw it out there, see what happens.” And that’s such an amazing concept to me. Sometimes you’re like, no, it has to follow these guidelines. Sometimes try something new and see if it works.

David: Yeah. And sometimes the thing that we have to try that’s new is exactly what you talked about, which is listening.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: Listening more than talking and not making assumptions about what people want. Just actually asking them, what do you need? How can we help? And whatever it is that you’re selling. Sales ultimately boils down to solving some sort of need or some sort of problem.

And if you focus on the product, if you focus on what it is that you’re selling instead of “what problem needs to be solved for this client,” you’re never going to be as successful as possible.

So much of it is about trying to get inside the prospect’s head, client’s head, by asking them questions about what they really want to accomplish. What are they looking to do?

And then prescribing the appropriate solution to help them do it. This kind of ties into the idea of features and benefits. I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day, where back in the fifties and sixties and seventies where features and benefits were considered premium, amazing ideas in selling.

A lot of years have passed since then. And people have gotten more sophisticated. Their needs have changed and developed and evolved. And so the way that I view it now is that you start out with features and benefits, and that’s going to be somewhat helpful. But then you need to start getting into the emotions and the experiences. You know, talking to them about what’s it going to be like to have this result, or what’s it going to be like to have this product and the result that this product is going to create for you?

That’s the emotions, it’s going to feel great to be able to go out and attract more clients with this promotion that we’re going to put together for you. So you can really tie in not just the features, not just the benefits, but the emotions, the experience of what it’s going to be like to do that.

And ultimately, what is the transformation? What are we going to do to transform what they’re doing so that when they buy whatever it is that we’re selling, they’re going to experience something completely different and better than what they experienced before.

Jay: Yeah, so true. I was thinking about the end of the year and that my inbox was inundated with surveys from companies saying, “how did we do?”

And I was like, “oh my goodness. Not another one.” You know, as a consumer, I’m like, really? Another one? But when you think about what the businesses are trying to do is they’re making a genuine effort to try and understand their customer experience and how they can improve.

And so as much as I don’t like those forms, I do appreciate what they’re trying to do. And you can do that. You know, if you’re a smaller organization, you can just make a phone call and say, “Hey, you know, how are we doing? Are we meeting your needs? What else can we do for you? I just want to see if you’re getting, you know, good service from your account executive,” those types of things.

But making an honest effort to find out. Because oftentimes our perception of the product we’re delivering is very different than what the customer is experiencing.

David: Yeah, exactly. And when you have companies like Amazon, for example, who will send out an email after every delivery, “how was it? Was it great? Was it not great?”

It’s like, “oh boy, again?” Like, “I have to do this again?” But for most businesses, you’re not doing it every time. You’re not doing it every order. So if you do it once or twice a year, it’s not going to be as dreaded as the type of experience that you’re talking about. And another thing that you can do, when you are a small business, is you can basically send out a one or two sentence open-ended question kind of email, so it doesn’t come across like a survey.

But if I just sent you an email that said, “Hey Jay, how did we do for you last year? Hit reply and let me know. Thanks. David Blaise,” right?

You’ll reply to it or you won’t. Some percentage of the people will reply to it, but the ones who reply are going to just tell you what they thought, whether it was positive or negative, and it’s very non-threatening.

They don’t even view it as a survey, because it just comes across as a very informal communication between two people who happened to have been working together.

Jay: Yeah, I love this suggestion that you just made. Just a letter. The more it looks like a form letter, the more it looks like something that everybody received, the less likely I am to respond to it.

But if it looks like a personal note, “hey, just checking in,” I am much more likely to respond. Such great feedback, David. So how do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. Then we can see what you’re dealing with, see if we can help you through it as we begin this new year.

It’s just such a great time to be able to focus in on where we want to be, where we want to go, what we want to do. It’s an exciting time. Exciting time to be alive, right? Every day is an exciting day when you’re focused on the right things and interacting with the right people.

And so that’s another thing. If you have been watching this podcast, listening to this podcast for any length of time, you’ll know if you’re the right person for this. You’ll know if we’re a good fit. If we’re not, you’ll know that. You’ll listen to you go, “ah, I don’t like what these guys are having to say.” All right, unsubscribe. Right?

But if what we’re talking about makes sense for you, schedule a call! Let’s have a conversation and see what happens.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree.

David, thank you so much. I hope you have a great year and for everybody who set those resolutions, you can do it! Just keep pressing forward and make it happen this year.

David: Stick with it! Thanks, Jay.

Jay: That’s right. Thank you.

Are You Ready to Get Off to a Flying Start in 2026?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. 1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
   2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
   3. 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.
   4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.

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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:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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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 like, okay, I’m going to pick up the phone. And the person who picks up the phone is unfriendly, they’re curt, they’re not informed. And you’re like, this is the person that you put on the phone to first talk to me?

You have to be very careful with who you put as the receiver of that first contact. Because if that’s not a good experience, I’m done right there again, I’m moving on.

David: Yeah, and when you talk about phone, a lot of organizations will do everything in their power to keep you from talking to a human being. And I am not naming any names, but specifically the banks and the communications companies, the, you know, the cable companies, the telephone companies. They are just, and these are people you’re already paying.

I’m not talking about when you want to sign up for service, when you want to sign up for service, they’ll take your call in a second. But I’m talking about after you have the service and you’re trying to get an answer to a question or resolve a problem, they will put so many robots in front of you. It’s not even funny and it’s nauseating in some cases.

It’s really annoying in a lot of cases. And you could be saying into that phone, “representative, representative, customer service,” and it’ll just keep routing. Yeah, it’ll just keep routing you back and saying, first I need to get some information. And it’s brutal. It just makes you think, if I could do business with anyone else but this company, I would absolutely do that.

And I don’t know, I think huge companies can get away with it to some extent because they are getting away with it. And if they have limited competition and in some areas, there’s no competition.

There are still monopolies in some of the communication sectors because there are limits in terms of who you can get for your cable or your phone. It’s not a complete monopoly anymore, but it’s darn close to it. And so, they can get away with it to some extent.

But most small and medium sized businesses, the kind of companies we deal with, you can’t do that. You can’t do anything close to that. Because if you do, you are never going to have a shot at that business.

Jay: Yeah, you’re exactly right. In fact, just the other day I went through the phone tree, it probably took me 15 minutes. The phone finally rings. I finally have a live person, and then they’re like, “oh, I’m sorry, that’s this other department. Let me send you over to that department.”

So now I’m back on hold again. And I’m just like, how do they think that this is going to keep their customers? But you’re exactly right. They know you’re not going anywhere else. But if that’s a process of first contact, then how many people are you chasing away?

Especially if you’re a small company like you said. There’s no way to me that any potential cost savings could outweigh the loss of potential customers.

David: I agree. Again, for the type of businesses we deal with, we have to be better than that. We absolutely have to be better. Now that’s well beyond first contact. Now we’re talking about in the trenches, the day to day and all that sort of thing. But yeah, that’s sort of a given.

If you’re the kind of business who wants to get to the point where you can start treating your customers badly. You’re not going to do that from the get go. Hopefully, that’s not what you want to do anyway.

But ideally, what we need to be doing is taking the opposite approach, getting people what they want, reaching out in a way, initiating first contact in a way that positions us as somebody that they actually want to do business with as opposed to somebody who’s just annoying.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. How do people find out more, David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We would be happy to walk you through a conversation. Try to figure out where you are now versus where you need to be in terms of visibility. Are you getting in front of the people that you need to get in front of?

In terms of sales. Are you generating the sales you want to generate? In terms of profit. Are you generating a bunch of sales but not making any money on those sales? Right? So we’ll look at those three things. And just have a conversation to see if or how we can help.

Either way. We talk to people all the time. We might not end up doing business with them at all, but almost inevitably, I’d say pretty much inevitably, they’re glad they had the conversation because it’s designed to be helpful. And if we work together, great. And if we don’t work together but you got some help on the phone, that’s great too. So we’re happy to have those conversations.

Jay: Fantastic. As always, it’s a pleasure talking to you, David.

David: Thanks very much, Jay.

Are You Ready to Initiate Contact with the High-Dollar, High-Value Clients You Need?If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help.
2. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team.
3. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

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The success of your business is always determined by the what, why, when & how. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? When are you doing it? And How? If you don’t have the desire to help your clients, if it’s all about you making money, or if it’s all about you accomplishing a personal result for yourself, and you don’t have enough care or consideration for the person you’re selling to, I think it’s going to be hard to be successful long term.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the what, why, when, and how of your business. Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: Good to see you, David. How you doing?

David: Doing great, and you?

Kevin: Good. Good. All right — so, what, why, when, how. Let’s start with the first one. Why is it critical to define your what before anything else in business?

David: Well, the way I look at it is, if you don’t know what you’re doing, then why you’re doing it, when you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it are kind of irrelevant.

Kevin: Doesn’t really matter.

David: Right. You sort of—

Kevin: Yup.

David: Yeah, you kind of have to know what it is that you’re setting out to do. Whether you’re operating solo or with a team of people, identifying what you want to accomplish — in your business or in any specific area of your business — is always the first step.

So, if the what is “getting clients,” then the question becomes: What is my procedure? What is my process going to be for getting clients? That’s the what.

You identify that first. Once you’ve even thought about what you want to accomplish — or what you think you might want to accomplish, if you’re still in the ideation stage — the what is important.

But the reason I go to the why next is because if you don’t have a strong why, you might not be committed enough to what has to be done.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that people who have ideas but don’t have a really strong, compelling reason for doing them tend to struggle to get those things done.

Kevin: So it can become a motivation issue to some degree?

David: It certainly can, because if you’ve got strong reasons for wanting to do something — whether it’s to support your family, to create a growing enterprise, or to eventually sell the business and make a profit — that strong why will definitely impact your motivation.

So I think that’s a big component. Without it, why does anyone really do anything?

Kevin: I suppose you could technically start with the why, right? Because if you have a reason for doing something, you can then build the what around it. Or is that a bad way to go in your mind?

David: Well, if you’re thinking in terms of starting a business, that would actually be the what. But I guess it’s possible to start with the why. For example, if my why is “I want to support my family and I’m not happy with what I’m doing now,” then I might arrive at a what like, “I want to start my own business,” or “I want to do A, B, or C to make that happen.”

That hasn’t worked that way for me personally — but it could for someone else. If you’ve got a strong enough why, you can then start thinking about what needs to happen in order to achieve the things you have in mind.

Kevin: When it comes to the when, why is it so important to define a timeline?

David: Wow. Anyone who’s in sales probably has some strong thoughts about when. If you’ve ever spoken to a prospect who seems really excited and seems like a perfect fit for what you offer — and then they just keep dodging you or stop taking your calls — that’s a perfect example of someone who doesn’t have their when dialed in.

In any conversation — with prospects, clients, or coworkers — we need to identify the when so everyone’s on the same page about the importance of the action and the likelihood of it happening. Because without a when, things just don’t happen.

A lot of our work is with people in the promotional products and print industries. In those cases, people will call and ask for a price: “Can you give me a quote on 1,500 of this particular item, in this color,” and so on.

If you just answer that question without knowing when they need it, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. What if you provide a quote that’s valid today, and then they wait six months and come back expecting the same price?

It doesn’t make much sense to quote someone without knowing when they plan to move forward. That’s why I think the when aspect is so critical.

Kevin: Let’s move on to the how. Obviously, that can change over time — how you’re going to implement things. Businesses evolve. How detailed does the how really need to be before taking action?

David: It needs to be detailed enough that you know what your next action will be. We recently did an episode where we talked about the idea stage, the action stage, and the system stage. The how is really about the systems or processes you’re building.

It’s about the actions — the how is about what you’re doing and which of those actions you want to turn into a system.

The how becomes especially important when you’re doing something repeatedly. You want to build a process so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time.

Anytime a business wants to grow or scale, having procedures in place — your how — is vital.

If multiple people in your organization are doing the same thing in different ways, it makes sense to ask: Who’s most effective? How are they doing it? Are there elements of their approach that others could adopt to get similar results?

Kevin: Is this something you coach businesses to keep revisiting — their what, why, when, and how?

David: Absolutely. It becomes clear when it’s time to revisit them — usually when things stop working. You might have procedures that worked great and then suddenly don’t.

When that happens, you have to ask: Has our process changed? Has our market changed?

A good big-picture example is how sales communication has evolved. Ten or twenty years ago, most sales conversations happened over the phone. Now, they might take place over social media, in Messenger, via text, or elsewhere.

So we need to look at what’s effective now and adjust accordingly.

Kevin: I’ve always hated when people text me for business. I’m more of an email guy — but I suppose it depends on when you grew up or entered the business world. Some people still prefer phone calls, but younger generations often favor text.

David: Right.

Kevin: Yeah.

David: And it’s not always our call, right? The client gets to decide how they want to communicate. We can either adapt to them or hope they adapt to us — but realistically, they probably won’t. If they can work with someone who already communicates the way they prefer, that person is more likely to get the business.

Kevin: Absolutely. Are there any tools you recommend for keeping these four ideas front and center?

David: For most people, if you’ve got a CRM in place, that’s where a lot of it happens. You should know what your first step is, what the next step is, and what comes after that — so you don’t have to think about it each time.

If a client has an event coming up, make sure that’s scheduled so you can follow up at the right time. Things like that. That’s probably the most important tech for this.

Kevin: What about a business that’s been around for 20 years but never really thought about these things? Is it too late, or can they still come into it now?

David: It’s never too late. This can happen the moment you become aware of it. Everything you’ve done so far has involved a what, why, when, and how. You may not have been conscious of it, but once you are, you can fine-tune each one — and make it much easier to take the right actions at the right time.

Kevin: How can clarity on these four ultimately help a sales team perform better?

David: For a sales team, they need to identify the right prospects and clients. They need to communicate effectively, show how they can help, and understand their own motivations.

The why should be more than just “I want to make money.” It should include “I want to help my client achieve a specific result.”

If you don’t genuinely care about helping your clients — if it’s all about your commission — it’s going to be hard to succeed long-term.

When you combine a strong what and why with a clear when and how, things align. For instance, if a client needs to send you artwork by a specific date and you don’t make sure that happens, the order won’t go through.

These four elements play together. Everyone kind of knows them, but when you consciously identify and apply them, things become much clearer.

Some people listening might say, “I’m good with the what and why, but my how isn’t getting results.” That’s a sign to re-examine your implementation.

Kevin: You made a great point on the why too — if you’re only doing this for yourself and not because you genuinely want to help, that comes across eventually.

David: Exactly. And if you find yourself in that position — if you realize you don’t like your market, your clients, or your work — it might be time to consider a different profession.

Kevin: Yeah, maybe it’s time to get out. For sure. You mentioned that people often get tripped up on the how. Is that the biggest stumbling block?

David: Probably, yes. Because it can be intricate. The how determines whether the what gets done, whether the when happens, and how the why plays out. Because it requires detail and discipline, it can be the hardest of the four.

Kevin: Right. We’ve talked about what, why, when, and how. So how can people learn more about this approach?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/shift. Pick up a copy of our free PDF. If you’re struggling with any of these areas — the what, when, why, or how — download the report. If you’d like to have a conversation with us, you’re welcome to do that as well.

Kevin: When should they do it?

David: They should do it right now.

Kevin: I think we covered them all. All right — thank you, David. Great seeing you again. Appreciate all the insights.

David: All right. Thank you, Kevin.

Ready to Nail the Why, Why, When & How of Your Business?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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It’s important, no matter who you’re partnering with, from a business standpoint, from an employee standpoint, from a VA standpoint. Whoever you choose as your business partners and colleagues have to have the skills that you lack, if you want to be able to accomplish the things that you need to get done.

David: Hi. Welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the topic of choosing business partners wisely. Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: It’s good to be here. David. I’m excited to talk about this because this is always an interesting topic.

David: Yeah. When we think of business partners, we tend to think of people that we’re actually going into business with. But there’s really sort of a wider group of people that could potentially fit the bill here. So I think it’s important to cover that as well.

Kevin: The first one you spoke of, the actual business partner, business partner. I mean that can test a friendship. It can test a relationship, it tests all kinds of stuff. So in your experience, just from that side of things. What are the biggest mistakes that business people, entrepreneurs make when choosing a business partner?

David: Well, I’ve made them over the years. My very first business partner was a guy that I worked with in another business. We decided we were going to start our own things. And so we just started out renting the same office space and splitting the rent on that sort of thing.

Then we got involved in projects that required both of us working together. It didn’t work out well. I started from the standpoint of we got along well, we interacted well. But neither of us took the time to consider our strengths and what each of us would bring to the table.

A lot of times when people start working with friends or family, they think, “well, I know this person really well. I trust them.” That’s a good start.

But unless you have similar visions for what the business is going to be, how you’re going to get there, and who’s going to do what, you can really end up with a lot of problems if that part of it doesn’t work out.

Kevin: Yeah. it can go downhill fast. It can definitely go downhill fast. So, in any business partnership, you know, you talked about the fact that there’s varying types of them. What qualities do you feel matter most in a potential partner and which maybe are overrated?

David: Well, I would say, starting out, you need to look at: Are our core values basically aligned? Do we sort of view the world in a similar way? Are we viewing business in a similar way? Do we view the relationship with our potential customers and clients in a similar way? Because if there’s a disconnect there, then you’re going to have problems starting with the very first decision.

So I think that compatibility is very important. Making sure that everybody wants to go in the same direction, right? If you’re in a rowboat, you want to make sure everybody’s pulling in the same direction. That’s extremely important.

If you have complementary goals, essentially that’s going to be a very important aspect of it.

I think also, what is the expertise? What are you good at? What are they good at? If it’s exactly the same things, you need to make sure it covers everything that has to be covered in a business.

So, if I’m really good at generating ideas and you’re really good at implementing those ideas, then that’s going to work out well.

If we’re both great at generating ideas, but neither of us are great at implementation, we’re going to struggle with that. And so you want to look at complementary skills.

I think that is probably one of the most important aspects of it. You’ve got the same vision, but you have complementary skills. So that one or more of you are not doing things they hate, right?

If you have to engage in a skill that you don’t like, or if your business partner does, then it’s not a good recipe. But if one of you is really good at idea generation, another one’s good at implementation. Another one’s good at the financial aspect. Another one’s good at the marketing aspect. Somebody’s good at sales.

If you’ve got all those departments covered by people who are good at those things, and who like doing them, then you have a much better likelihood of success.

Kevin: Are there any qualities, do you think people put too much emphasis on that they don’t really need to? That might be overrated.

David: That’s a tough one. Like when I think of what they put emphasis on, I mean, it might just be the initial shared vision, the idea that they want to go into business together.

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

David: That’s kind of the easy part. You know, we talked about ideas in the last podcast, and I’ve said for a really long time now that million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen in effect.

Because unless you’re able to take the necessary actions and build the appropriate infrastructure, those ideas are never going to come into fruition.

So when you’re establishing business partnerships, and again, whether it’s having a business partner, whether it’s a joint venture kind of thing, whether you’re hiring somebody to be a virtual assistant, I mean that’s essentially a type of partnership.

You want to make sure that the person and the people that you’re interacting with have the necessary skills to be able to allow you to achieve the vision that you’ve set out, both for yourself and for them.

That everybody’s on board and everybody’s understanding it. So I think just the idea of getting into business or partnering up with someone without thinking through a lot of those things is probably the biggest mistake that people make up front.

Kevin: You think that sometimes too, that people might think they need a partner when really they just need to hire talent?

David: I think in a lot of cases that is very true. And sometimes that boils down to whether or not they have the capital to be able to do it. And if you don’t have the money to be able to hire someone, then proposing a partnership, it’s like, okay, we’re, in this together. We need to build it together. And sometimes that can work and sometimes it can’t.

You also have to determine if you have the personality for that sort of thing. Because after my first experience with a business partner, I swore I’m like, “never again. I’m never going to have a business partner again.”

But eventually I did, and I’m really glad I did because it worked out so much better.

Because when you have the right business partner, when you’ve got the right combination of human resource assets in your business, people really, I mean that sounds so technical and clinical.

When you’ve got the right people in your business, everything flows a lot more smoothly. So, if you’ve had a bad experience with a business partnership, don’t necessarily rule it out, because if you’re able to do it right, you can leverage yourself, you can leverage your business, and you can create results that you would never be able to create on your own.

Kevin: Are there red flags that you would recommend people consider that might, or that should I should say, tell them, “don’t partner with this person.”

David: I would say communication is number one, two, and three.

Kevin: Yeah. That’s nuts.

David: You’re…

Kevin: Drives me nuts. Yeah.

David: Yeah. The ability to communicate effectively and openly and answer direct questions and just be willing to have conversations.

Kevin: Yeah. Just to respond sometimes, right? Just being someone…

David: Exactly.

Kevin: That actually communicates, period.

David: Yeah. Right, because if someone is not willing to communicate with you, then it’s very difficult to make things work extremely well.

Depending on the nature of the business relationship, it’s just helpful when you’re involved with people who respect you enough to reply back and interact and answer questions or whatever.

And people get busy, you know? So I’m not saying, well, you know, everybody has to be responsive to you immediately. That’s not realistic. But as long as people are willing to remain in touch with you, they’re willing to remain open about any challenges they’re having with communication, that type of thing, that’s different.

But when people are unwilling to communicate on levels where it’s really important, that’s where it starts to become a little dicey.

Kevin: How important is alignment on things like money, work ethic, company vision, when considering a partner,

David: Well, yeah, money’s big, right? Because if one of the business partners is thinking Elon Musk and another one of them is thinking on a much lower plane, that’s going to be a pretty big disconnect.

As far as work ethic is concerned, that is another big one because if one person is really putting in a lot of effort and another one is not, that starts to feel a little frustrating after a while.

Kevin: That’s what happened to me.

David: But also… Yeah, it’s happened to a lot of people. I think the reason it tends to happen sometimes is that some of us are really just wired to do a lot more things and some are just wired to focus on the things that need to be done and get really good at doing those.

I think it’s important to understand that if someone is not doing everything that you are doing, it doesn’t mean that they’re wrong or that they’re not a good fit for you. If they’re getting the things done that need to get done, then that’s the most important thing.

In the early stages of my business, I mean, I just worked all the time. I would just get up early and I’d stay and I’d work late and I did all these things.

Part of that was just a reflection of my lack of structure, right? My inability to focus long enough during the day to get those things done. So, in the early stages of my business, I could look at something like that and say, well, I’m doing a whole lot more work, but am I? Or am I just burning a lot more hours?

So I think we also have to be honest with ourselves about our strengths and our weaknesses and what we’re actually doing versus what we might think we’re doing.

But yeah, I think work ethic is big in the sense that everybody has to be committed to doing the things that they’re responsible for doing.

And if they’re not, then conversations need to be had.

Kevin: Absolutely. And then of course David, some people are just lazy. I mean, come on, let’s be honest.

David: Yes.

Kevin: Some people are just lazy.

David: That’s true.

Kevin: You gotta avoid those.

David: Yeah. And if you identify that that is an ongoing issue, then obviously you have to make the necessary changes.

And again, when we’re talking about partnerships, it doesn’t necessarily mean a business partner. Because hopefully you don’t get into a business relationship where your business partner is just lazy and doesn’t want to do anything. Right?

But even if it’s a situation…

Kevin: Uh, well, it happens. Trust me.

David: It does happen. It does happen. But even with employees or with virtual assistants or whatever, that type of thing can happen. And when it does, you really need to be able to make sure that you’re going after it and addressing that before it becomes an ongoing pattern.

The other problem is that when you have people who are in your organization who are not doing a good job, it impacts the morale of others.

When we had our retail mail order catalog business, we would hire seasonally and we would bring in a lot of customer service reps over the holiday season.

And sometimes we would bring somebody in whose attitude was just poison. And we knew that we had to get that person out of there as soon as humanly possible, because if we didn’t, it was going to impact the rest of the team.

So you have to be really vigilant about that.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. you mentioned before about complimentary skills versus identical skills. Is that just a conversation? Like, how do you determine that in any business relationship, any partnership?

What is the best way to determine where your skillset is versus somebody else’s and how they can all work together?

David: I think sort of starting with the left brain, right brain kind of thing, more creative versus more structured. Those types of things are a good place to start. Because if you have two creatives and you don’t have anybody who’s structured, you’re going to have problems.

If you have people who are just really structured, but they don’t have as much of the creative ability, I think that’s potentially an issue.

The skill sets are important. If someone is willing and able to get on the phone and make phone calls, if that’s required of the business, you want to make sure that they’re able to do that.

One of the things in our Total Market Domination course, one of the things that we focus on in our work with clients is to say, if there are things that you absolutely hate doing, we want to make sure that those are not required of you as you’re doing this job.

So if there are people who don’t like making phone calls, then what are the other methods of contact we can use that they are more comfortable with, that they can then use to get the same job done?

So I don’t require that our clients love cold calling because not everybody does. And I certainly don’t.

Kevin: Do not.

David: But there are some people who are wired to be able to do it. And if they are, that’s great. But if they’re not, there need to be other methods of contact that are acceptable to them.

For some, it could be social media, it could be email, it could be direct mailings. There are lots of different ways to initiate contact with a prospect or clients.

Because then if you follow up with a phone call, it’s not the first thing.

If you send something in the mail to someone and then you call them a few days later and say, “Hey, did you get the thing I sent you?” That’s a totally different experience than calling and identifying yourself and telling them you’re there to sell them something, or whatever.

Totally different experience.

So I think it’s important, no matter who you’re partnering with, from a business standpoint, from an employee standpoint, from a VA standpoint, whoever you’re partnering with has to have the skills that you are lacking, if you want to be able to accomplish the things that you need to get done.

Kevin: With a partnership agreement. It’s important. It’s something that people should do, not everybody does. But assuming people do it, are there certain protections that you feel every agreement needs to have in order to avoid any future conflict?

David: Yeah, I don’t want to get too much into the legal stuff. I would definitely prefer to leave that to the legal experts. But I think that just having the conversation with whoever you’re working with, having the discussion about what you’re trying to do together.

If there’s a lot of friction, even just agreeing on what’s going to be in the agreement, that could potentially be a red flag.

But asking those questions, having those conversations, and then getting legal help to put together what that’s going to look like.

I also learned, a long time ago, that if you’re going to do some sort of partnership arrangement, it’s probably better not to have a 50 50.

I mean, you can have a 51 49, so it’s very close, but somebody ultimately needs to be responsible for making the final decisions.

So I think that’s very helpful. And if there is a point where everybody differs on what needs to happen, you know who has the final say in it. So I think that’s probably pretty key regardless of the setup.

Kevin: That’s a really good point. Really good point that people probably don’t think about. All right, great episode. Thanks everybody for joining us. David, how can people find out more?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/shift. Pick up a copy of our free PDF report. We’ll help you to create a shift in your business that will allow you to go from where you are to where you’re looking to be.

So if you’re at the point where you’re looking to establish and create the relationships you need inside your business to be able to take it to the next level, request a copy of the free report, TopSecrets.com/shift.

Then if you’d like to have a conversation, you’re welcome to schedule one with us.

Kevin: Thanks David. Appreciate your time.

David: Okay. Thank you, Kevin.

Are You Ready to Move from Ideas to Actions to Systems?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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We’ll basically help you to look at where you are now and where you’re looking to be in terms of getting something from ideas to actions and systems. Because without those three levels and without prioritizing it correctly, you can spend a lot of time, invest a lot of effort, and not get to the results you’re looking for.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the topic of ideas, actions, and systems. Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: Good to see you, David. Let’s dig right in. Why do so many businesses get stuck at the idea stage and fail to even move into action?

David: It’s a great question. I think ideas in a lot of ways are kind of the easy part. We have a brainstorm, we’re like, this is brilliant, let’s do this. And then we have another one has this, brilliant, let’s do this. And here’s another one. This is brilliant. Let’s do this. And then the question becomes, okay, what are we actually going to do?

I know this has happened to me over the years in my own business. It’s happened with a number of people that I’ve worked with over the years. You have a lot of ideas. And then the question becomes, what are we going to take action on? And then, which of the things that we take action on, will we systemize? Get into place so that we can take those actions consistently?

So that’s really the purpose of our discussion today.

Kevin: Yeah. how do you personally decide, which ideas are worth pursuing and which to ignore? Because I can find myself to be an idea guy a lot of times too. I’m like this, I got this, I got this. But sometimes it’s hard to prioritize what is actually a good plan. Then put it into action versus maybe we just skip that one.

David: Yeah, it’s helpful if we start out with essentially a data dump of all the different things that we’re considering. Just write them all down. Then have internal conversations initially about which ones of these are going to be our priorities.

What are we definitely going to lock in? Which ones will we save until later? And which ones are just kind of out there? We don’t really have to look at those at the moment.

Kevin: It seemed like a good idea last night…

David: I find that by,

Kevin: before I was falling asleep. Not so good the next day. Yeah, .

David: That happens a lot, doesn’t it?

Kevin: Yep, it sure does.

David: I have a digital recorder. I take it with me wherever I go and keep it next to the bed. When I get one of those brilliant ideas at night, I record it on there. Then you listen to it the next day and you’re like, that was horrible, what was I thinking?

Kevin: What a terrible idea. I can’t even understand what I was saying.

David: Yeah, exactly. But, I think it starts with that. It’s about gathering all those ideas, because some of them are going to be great. Some of ’em are going to be brilliant, some of ’em are gonna be terrible, but we don’t know it.

Now, a lot of times, it’s a good idea to sort of evaluate them yourselves before you start sharing them with everyone else, so that you’re only talking to your people about the things that you’ve already kind of thought through and believe are the best ways to go, and ideally to prioritize those.

And then do another round with your people and go through it and ask for their opinion on which things should be prioritized and which things should be deprioritized as it were, so that you can sort of work your way through and have everybody be on the same page as far as what we should be working on sooner rather than later.

Kevin: I feel like a lot of times ideas can get just stuck in sort of a neutral. Do you have to put a sense of urgency into turning ideas into action?

David: Well, I think you definitely have to prioritize it. So to say that, we give it a sense of urgency, I would say yes for the things that are most important.

But again, there’s this discernment process that needs to happen on the ideas to determine do they need to be prioritized? Do they need to be implemented at all?

And then once you’ve done that, I think it really helps for everybody to be on the same page so everyone knows what we’re doing and which one we’re doing first, and which one we’re doing second, and which one we’re doing third and so on.

Kevin: How can a small business owner build systems to help their business without adding like an overwhelming complexity? I think that’s a hard balance, right?

David: Well, complexity in my experience, comes about as a result of not doing these things. When you actually think it through, when you start with an idea and you decide, okay, this idea is going to be something that we’re going to work on. And then you think through the idea and you say, where are we going with it next?

is this going to be something that we’re going to build in? Are we going to take action on this idea? And if the answer is yes, then you can sort of brainstorm a list of what are the actions we could potentially take here?

Y ou can come up with a lot of different things that you could take action on. But then you also have to further refine it and say, okay, which of these actions make the most sense for the immediate future and for down the line?

So, in my view, it’s a constant process of sort of refining these ideas, testing them, determining what the most sense right now, and what makes the most sense for the foreseeable future.

Once you’ve determined that, that’s the stuff that you attempt to systematize. And I think sometimes this gets out of whack, in the sense that people come up with an idea and start building processes into their business to get it implemented.

That’s putting the cart before the horse in a lot of cases.

Kevin: Yeah, that’s a good point. But it can be intimidating, right? To try to put new systems into place.

David: It can be, sure, if you are unclear on what those systems need to be.

But a lot of times, I think when you do sort of think things through and you start with the idea and then refine and refine and refine that to get it down to the actions that make the most sense.

Then once you’ve identified those actions, systemizing those actions can actually be relatively simple. Because there are only so many different ways to perform a particular action.

I mean, in sales, things like whatever, dialing the phone, right? There are only a couple ways to do that, and that’s a very primitive example. But even as far as targeting is concerned, if you have ideas about who you’d like to target, for example, and then you have actions in place in terms of how am I going to do that?

Exactly how am I going to identify the people that I want to go after? And then that becomes part of your action. And then you say, okay, now in order to create a system around that, I want to make sure that I’m selecting the right quality, the right caliber of prospect to begin with, so that each time I go back to do this a second time or a third time or a fourth time, I’ve got that system in place, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time.

Because a lot of people waste a lot of time by doing that. They get involved in taking action and each time they have to do something, they sort of forget that they had a process for it. And then they’re reinventing the wheel all the time.

Kevin: Yeah, they just keep trying to redo something that’s already kind of working or already there.

you share an example of a business that put a new system in place and thrived because of it?

David: I think a lot of what we do with our clients in our Total Market Domination system, it’s all about that. It’s about identifying these key points of influence where people are having trouble, where people are struggling, and then getting systems put in place to be able to do that.

So for example, as I said, starting with the targeting, who am I going to go after?

There are a lot of businesses who just wing it day to day and they bring in anybody who can fog a mirror, anyone with a pulse, and that sort of approach is not usually helpful long term.

Whereas if you have a procedure in place for your targeting and you say, I’m, going to identify this particular type of business in these particular markets of this particular size,

I’m going to start with that and then I’m going to hone it down from there and say, alright, since I can’t reach every business in this particular niche or in this particular market, then how can I narrow it down to get to a smaller group of manageable prospects?

We refer to it as our largest, manageable submarket. And then from there, down to the initial contacts that you want to test it out with and the ones that you want to reach out to.

And each of those steps requires different systems, but you have that in place and that gets it down to the people that you want to initiate contact with.

Then from there, it’s like, okay, what are we going to say to those people? And then that becomes about the messaging.

How do we create the messaging that we want to communicate to our prospects and clients about our business? Again, a lot of times people just sort of wing it, or they say basic stuff about what they do and how they’re able to help, as opposed to having a bullet pointed list of the things that they want to make sure are communicated to each new prospect, every step of the way.

And then another example going on from there would be, how are we initiating our initial contact with them? Is it a cold call? A meeting at a networking function? Is it a post on social media? Lots of different ways to initiate your first contact, and then what’s the follow up going to be?

And with each of those steps, there are responsibilities that come with it. The responsibility of doing this consistently.

Because if you’re doing different things with different prospects, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, you really don’t know what worked and what didn’t.

When you’ve got consistent systems in place that allow you to know what’s working each time, now you’ve got something you can build on.

And it also increases the value of the business at some point if you want to sell it in the future. Because when you’ve got these systems in place, your business is just worth more.

Kevin: Sure. Makes sense. think a lot of times too, people get ideas and then those lead to maybe one-off bursts of action instead of building those consistent systems. How can people avoid falling into that trap and going more for a real system rather than just like a, quick fix of action.

David: It’s a really great question because so many people do struggle with this. You get an idea and you just start taking action on it. I start doing this, I start doing this. I start doing that before I’ve even evaluated that action, as we talked about before. Then the next day, you’re like, why was I doing that?

It doesn’t even make sense. So sometimes it’s really just a matter of taking a breath when you have an idea and asking, is this the kind of thing that I really want to dedicate my resources to, that I’m going to be willing to commit my resources to my resources in terms of my own time, the time of my team, money as far as if it requires advertising and all that sort of thing.

You want to really think through that first before you just dive into the action taking stage. So once again, I think the question of prioritization becomes really important, making those decisions up front, because if you just dive in, you’re probably setting yourself up for a lot of extra work that’s not going to amount to much.

Kevin: Yeah. And again, you talked about prioritizing your ideas, making sure that you’re not overwhelming yourself. Do you find yourself doing that? Do you go through sort of your idea list, if you will, and go. This is great. This is a, maybe, this is terrible. What was I thinking?

Like, is that kind of how you do it?

David: Yeah, one of the things that I do is I list everything out and I try to understand what it was that I was talking about when I wrote it down, right? Because sometimes.

Kevin: Why were you thinking of this? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

David: Exactly, and then evaluating it and trying to get a feel. And particularly if you’re interacting with someone else, if you’re generating ideas and you’re bouncing it off someone else.

If someone raises a bunch of ideas with you, you have to make sure that you understand what it is that they’re proposing, so that you can repeat it back to them and say, okay, is this what we’re talking about? Is that what we’re talking about?

And then once you’re clear, with the other person that you’re working with on what it is that they have in mind, then you can discuss and how it makes sense to proceed with that.

How you take it from the ideation stage to the implementation stage, which is about deciding what those actions are going to be.

Kevin: there’s a lot of people who are idea people. I’ve known a lot of those people throughout my life, whether in business or just friends, always got big ideas. Never really do anything with them. Sometimes that can be a personality trait, but can it also just be that you have so many, you don’t even know what to do?

You haven’t prioritized,

David: yeah, there are people who are just great at generating ideas and they just come out fast and furious. There are also starters, and there are finishers in business, right?

There are people who come up with the ideas, but they’re not quite sure how to turn it into something real. And so if you’re struggling with any aspect of this, you need to ask yourself, okay, am I an idea creator? Am I an implementer or am I a systems or process builder, or am I all three of these things?

If you’re all three of these things, then obviously you need to prioritize ’em and try to do them in order. But if you’re an idea person and you’re looking to get things implemented, then you really need to make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with the people who can help you to see that vision through.

People who are not just starters in terms of being able to get a project underway, but to get that project completed, systematized, built into the day-to-day aspects of the business so that you don’t have to worry about things falling apart.

You want to make sure that the wheels don’t start falling off the wagon.

Kevin: How can you keep those people accountable to follow through on the actions and the systems if you’re an idea person?

David: I guess it really depends what your position is in the organization, right? because if you’re the head of the organization and you’re setting the pace, you’re saying, we’re going to be doing A, B, and C, then it really is a matter of identifying who’s going to be responsible for making that happen, and looking at what is the plan for making that happen.

Because as the idea person, you may not even know exactly what those steps are, but you need to be working with someone who can identify that, who can get that ball rolling and get those things built into systems so that the idea can be tested. A lot of times it’s not just a matter of coming up with an idea and then saying, okay, let’s go do this.

The first step has to be proof of concept. We need to test it out and see does this even work? Is this idea viable in the marketplace? Viable with my people? Is this something that I can do without breaking the bank?

So there are a lot of practical considerations that come into testing out the ideas that different people come up with, before you can really start taking action and then building it into a system.

Kevin: This is really fascinating stuff. Idea, action system. It makes so much sense. For anyone listening who needs to know more. Who wants to know more? Who wants to pursue this? How can they get some more information from you

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/shift. Request a copy of our free report. We’ll basically help you to look at where you are now and where you’re looking to be in terms of that curve: Getting something from the idea stage to an action stage, and then into a process stage.

Because without those three levels and without prioritizing it correctly, you can spend a lot of time, invest a lot of effort, and not get to the results you’re looking for.

So I think just taking some time to look through that, break through that, and have a conversation is probably very helpful.

But if you start out at TopSecrets.com/shift. Take a look at the report and then if it makes sense for us to have a conversation, you’re welcome to schedule it there.

Kevin: Well, thanks so much, David. Good to see you.

David: You too. Thanks a lot, Kevin.

Are You Ready to Move from Ideas to Actions to Systems?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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We’re going to interact with people who are not ideal clients. But salespeople have trouble when they’re afraid to disqualify a prospect. To say, okay, I’m no longer going to follow up with this person.

I’ve always viewed it a little like the game musical chairs that you played as a kid? You have a certain number of people going around, and a certain number of chairs. When the music stops, everybody scrambles to get a chair. If you don’t have a chair, you’re out, right?

I view prospecting that way in some respects. Where you have to, at some point, start to prune the list. You have to start to get rid of the people who are not likely to become clients. If you’re afraid to do that, you will continue to leave the same number of people and chairs.

Jay: Yes.

David: And if none of them are buying, it’s not going to work well.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing letting ideal clients know you’re alive. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, so good to be here, David. And I think this is, again, such an interesting topic. I find that I’m so caught up in the daily. I’m taking calls and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And some of those ideal clients kind of go by the wayside sometimes.

David: Yeah. A lot of times we don’t even know who they are until we first try to identify them. So, in a sense, the topic itself goes kind of deep. You can’t know they’re an ideal client until you know they’re alive. Then you have to let them know that you’re alive. Then you have to determine if they’re an ideal client.

Jay: Yeah.

David: So there are actually a few steps in this.

Jay: Yeah, and I think that’s such an important thing to know. You need to have a system, like you always have, of identifying those ideal clients. It’s hard for me to really figure out if they’re ideal up front. But I’ll tell you one thing I can tell is when they’re not ideal.

I was on the phone call with somebody yesterday. He’s going to become a client. But I regret the relationship I know I’m going to have with him, because he’s already so demanding. And I’m like, this guy’s not ideal, but he’s a customer. And so, how can I not sell him the product?

David: Yeah, that’s a great question.

And it’s harder for some than others, I think. You get to a certain point in your business or a certain point in your career or whatever and you weigh it. Well, I guess we all do that. We have to weigh it. How much of a pain is this person going to be? And what’s my tolerance for pain essentially, right?

Jay: Yeah. Yeah.

David: But you’re exactly right. You don’t really know that necessarily upfront. So a lot of times when we’re working with our clients, what we’ll do is start with the people they think are likely to be their ideal clients. And whether that means in a certain geographic area or in a particular industry or in a certain sized company, if they’re selling B2B, You can make some initial judgments based on who has been a good client for you in the past, and then say, okay, how can I get more people like that?

And then when you’re introducing yourself to those people who meet those similar criteria, as you’re having those conversations, you can then start to make those determinations about whether or not they are an ideal client, or if they just sort of fall in that general ecosphere of people who could potentially be ideal clients, but maybe aren’t.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. And not just finding new ideal clients, turning your existing ideal clients into more business. Because if they were ideal the first time, if you can keep that to be a generating ongoing revenue source and relationship… Man, I’d rather do that every day than deal with the other type of customer.

David: Yeah, no question. And when you get to the topic we started out with, which is letting ideal clients know you’re alive, that does go for your ideal clients as well. The ones that have been buying From you for a long time, the ones that you already know are ideal. Sometimes it’s just about remaining in touch with them, staying in front of them, remaining top of mind with the people that you already know are your ideal clients. And that’s something that not everyone does. Sometimes the allure of future business is so strong that it pulls us away from the people that we know buy from us, trying to bring new people through the door. So there’s definitely a balance that comes with all that.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say? I kind of have an idea in my mind. How would you describe in your business the ideal client?

David: Well, of course, it’s different for everyone, but ideal clients, I think for most people, it’s going to be somebody that you don’t mind interacting with.

That’s a good criteria to start with. I think willing to communicate is key. Because if they’re not going to have conversations with you, they’re not going to be a great client. It’s just going to be very difficult to get information out of them and to be able to get them what they want when they want it, if they’re not willing to communicate with you.

So likable, communicative, and ability to buy. Do they have the ability to spend money on the products they want? Some people are really nice to interact with. They’re very pleasant, but they just don’t have the financial wherewithal. They don’t have enough of a desire to be able to invest the money to be able to become a really good client.

I mean, those are just some of the criteria, but like I said, it’s different for everyone. And there are a lot of people who don’t even take into consideration the first one that I mentioned. Are they pleasant to deal with? And… I know in the early stages of my business and maybe even into the mid stages of various businesses that I’ve been involved in that wasn’t always the criteria.

It’s like, can they make a purchase? And sometimes people who are not all that pleasant to deal with can make purchases. But then what does that do to your quality of life? And what does that do to your customer service people and the other people in your organization who have to interact with people like that?

So, definitely a balancing act. But when I think of ideal clients, and one of the reasons that I even use that word is to say we all get to decide what that means. So whether it’s personality based, whether it’s dollars based, whether it’s proximity, availability, all those things go into it. But it is going to be different for everyone.

Jay: Well, and again, like we talked about at the beginning, just having that thought process, because as so often before I talk to you, I think, I’ve never sat down and kind of drawn out what my ideal client is. I can tell you when my phone rings and I see the caller ID and I’m like, Oh, please, I don’t want to talk to that person.

That’s probably a good indicator that that’s not an ideal client. But on the other hand, I’ve had people that will talk to me all day. I know who their kids are, you know, I know everything about them, but they never purchase, but they love to talk to me. So on both ends of that spectrum, I don’t have an ideal client.

David: Yeah, but you probably are forming an idea even now because just based on what you said, it’s like, Oh yeah, there’s that person that talks a lot and doesn’t buy. There’s that person that’s rude and obnoxious and does buy. Neither of them are ideal clients. So where’s the middle ground? There are very likely clients that you have.

I think a good way to do this, this is something I’ve recommended to my clients a lot, is to print out a list of your clients, people who have spent money with you, in dollar order, from the most down to the least. Take a look at the top people on your list and ask yourself, how many of those meet the criteria of, you know, I like interacting with them, they’re a good client, they’re willing to communicate.

Chances are a lot of them are going to be that way. And some of them might not be, but very often the ones who cause you to flinch when you see their name come across the caller ID, very often they’re not the ones that are at the top. They’re down lower and they’re taking up a lot of time. They’re not generating a lot of revenue.

And at that point you can start making some of these determinations about what does constitute an ideal client from your standpoint?

Jay: Yeah, I love that. Being very deliberate. One of the other things you might find is one of those clients that you really like working with, you find out they’re not really spending a lot of money, but they’re taking a lot of your time because they love to chat and you have a great relationship.

So you may, in your mind, think this is an ideal client. When you actually put in the numbers and take a look, you may realize… It’s not really working out the way I thought it was.

David: Yeah, you may also realize that somebody that you think of as an ideal client is actually a former client. Like they might not have purchased from you in years, but you like them so much that you tend to want to think of them as a client. And…

Jay: Yeah.

David: That’s an important distinction to make. Because if you just like talking to them, that’s great. Don’t stop talking to them. But also don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re a client if they haven’t purchased from you in a really long time.

Jay: Yeah, someday, somewhere in the future, they’re going to purchase again and they’re just not planning on it. They’ve moved on or they needed your service one time and you built a relationship with them and that’s it. That’s all you’re ever going to have is a relationship, but not a financial one.

David: Yeah. And as salespeople, we’re all prone to this. There are people we like, people we enjoy interacting with. It’s like, Oh, well, at least I’ll be able to have a nice conversation here.

And even if we don’t think that objectively, it’s going on in the back of our mind. “Oh, I like talking to this person. And if it doesn’t result in business, well, that’s okay. Cause I like this person,” or whatever.

But it’s just good for all of us to have a really clear idea of what is our purpose for picking up the phone, for visiting the person, for texting them, or emailing them, however we’re getting in touch?

What’s the purpose of the communication? If it’s just to have a nice conversation, that’s fine, but try not to think of that as actually being a business call.

Jay: Well, yeah, because most of us, if we’re on the phone, if we’re taking the time to pick up the phone and dial somebody, we have a goal and that is to close a sale.

David: Right.

Jay: And if we’re spending a lot of time doing other than that, because it’s more comfortable and it’s more fun, right? It’s more relaxing and you don’t have that anxiety of the cold call, but it’s not going to get you anywhere.

David: Exactly. And so when we think about this topic, letting ideal clients know you’re alive, it starts with reaching out to people.

So some of the things that you should start with are. How am I doing that? How do I want to reach out to people? Am I going to be doing it in person? Am I going to be doing it on the phone, via text, via email? What are the different methods of communication that I’m going to use? And how often am I going to be doing that?

How many of these outreaches am I going to be making in any given day? And it’s always a good idea, whether or not your employer requires it, to have a goal in mind for yourself in terms of how many outreaches you’re going to make to new prospects and to existing clients. And that alone can make a huge difference.

Because if we go with the original tenet of what we’re talking about here today, it’s that if they don’t know you’re alive, they can’t buy from you. So our goal is to make people aware of the fact that we’re here, that we can help, and determine whether or not they’re interested in having us help them.

If they are, that’s great. You continue the conversation. If not, you can disqualify that person and then be on to somebody who could potentially be an ideal client, maybe as soon as your next conversation. But that’s really what it boils down to.

And a lot of salespeople make the mistake of thinking that their job is to continue to reach out to the same people over and over and over again. Even if those people have pretty much determined or demonstrated that they’re not a good fit, that they’re not likely to buy. And sometimes that just gets into a comfort area too. I feel more comfortable making the call, even if it’s not going to result in the business. And ultimately, if the goal is to find people who are a good fit for you, people who understand the value you bring to the table, people who are ready, willing, and able to spend money with you.

Or even if they’re not ready, they’re willing and able, just not right now, but you have some idea of when they’re going to be doing it. If you’ve got a reasonable expectation of business, then it makes perfect sense to follow up. What doesn’t make sense to follow up on are people who have demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to buy, and you keep going back to that same well over and over again, and each time you’re surprised when it turns up dry.

Jay: Yeah, yeah, and I talk about this a lot, having a good system to track when did you call last? What was the outcome of that call? And to have a funnel that you move them through? Like, in my business, the text is always the most Now, the direct call is the least effective now, and I can get a response from a text very quickly, and then the email is the second, and then the call is really the call of last resort, right?

But once I’ve gone through all of those and I’m not getting a response, then if I’m keeping my records properly, I’m like, okay, it’s pretty obvious they’re not going to respond. I throw them into a drip program where they’re still getting regular contact from me, but I’m not getting on the phone or spending my physical time or effort.

Because they may not be ideal today, but three months from now, they may have a huge project come in and they need you again. So you do want to still keep in touch with them, even if they’re not ideal today.

David: Right. And even if we accept the idea that we’re going to interact with people who are not ideal clients. I think one of the other things that causes salespeople trouble is when they’re afraid to disqualify a prospect. To say, okay, I’m no longer going to follow up with this person.

I’ve always viewed it a little like the game musical chairs, you know, that you played as a kid, you got a certain number of people going around a certain number of chairs, and when the music stops, everybody scrambles to get a chair. If you don’t have a chair, you’re out, right?

I kind of view prospecting that way in some respects, where you have to, at some point, start to prune the list. You have to start to get rid of the people who are not likely to become clients. And if you’re afraid to do that, then you will continue to leave the same number of chairs and the same number of people.

Jay: Yes.

David: And if none of them are buying, it’s not going to work well. So I believe that part of identifying your ideal clients is eliminating the ones that you’ve determined are not, not just ideal clients, but are not worthy of you, worthy of your time and attention.

We’ve talked in the past about the idea of worthy clients. Are they worthy of your time and attention? And if you can make that determination that they’re not, then it frees you up to be able to approach some new people who could potentially qualify as ideal clients for you.

Jay: Yeah, just a quick note, I never feel bad putting somebody in a long term drip program. Because I know that’s one less person on my list that I’m going to be trying to call fruitlessly. And I know they’re still going to get contacted.

So I’m like, yeah, long term drip, move on. And I know that that will save my time. So that’s kind of my mentality. How do people find out more, David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. And if you’re in a situation where you’re trying to attract more of the ideal clients that you need to operate your business successfully, schedule a call. TopSecrets.com/call. We’d love to have the conversation.

Jay: Absolutely. It’s great talking to you as always.

David: You too. Thanks Jay.

Are You Ready to Let More of Your Ideal Clients Know You’re Alive?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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When we talk about the idea of effective sales follow-up, what does that mean? It’s effective in terms of making sure that we’re on the same page with the person, making sure that our conversations are moving forward, making sure that their questions are being answered, and ultimately getting to a decision.

Are we going forward with this? Are we not? And if so, when is that going to happen?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing effective sales follow-up. How much is too much? Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thank you, David. Such an important question. And again, something that I struggle with. You know, I have a customer management system, and it shows me I talked to them three days ago.

And it comes up on my tasks and it says it’s time to talk to them. And I find every time I go through this emotional thing. Are they going to think I’m bugging them too soon? And a lot of times I’ll say, let’s give them three more days or let’s give them two more days because I guess I’m not ready to talk to them or I’m afraid I’ll be a bother.

David: Yes, and you’re not alone. Because it’s pretty much impossible to know exactly how often to call any one given prospect, let alone all of them. It’s not like there’s one rule where you say you must call every other day or you must call every three days or every week or whatever your thing is. I mean, there are rules that have been put in place for salespeople to do that, and maybe it’s not a terrible thing, but a system like that pretty much guarantees that you’re going to be wrong as often as you’re right.

And so, if you understand that going in, one of the things that I think it’s important to recognize is that people are going to sort of telegraph how annoying you’re being, or how often they want to be in touch, want to have you in touch. And if you ask them more directly, they’ll be a lot more inclined to give you an honest answer.

If we make up our minds that we’re going to contact this person every so many days, and that person doesn’t want to hear from us that often, then obviously we’re setting ourselves up for failure.

So a lot of times, if we can find out from the prospect roughly how often they would like for us to be in touch with them, and it’s easier to do with established clients, where you know them, they know you. With prospects, it’s not as easy.

But in the early stages with a prospect, we need to be in touch more frequently in order to get to decisions about qualification levels. Are they actually qualified to buy from us? Do they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, the interest?

Do they have any of those things? And if we can’t determine that in the first conversation, we need to have a second conversation. But of course, their level of interest in that first conversation will also help us to determine, well, how much time should I give this person?

And when I think about how much is too much, one of the things that I’ve seen a lot, and I saw it myself, in my own behaviors in the earlier stages of my sales career, and then in a lot of other people along the way, is that since we can’t know how much is too much, many of us in sales tend to err on the side of too little contact rather than too much.

And we talked about being a pest in a previous podcast. I don’t want to be a pest. Therefore, I’m not going to pick up the phone and call. And the problem with that is that if we’re not in touch with them, when they’re ready to move forward, then someone else is going to get that business.

So we have to find this balance of, yes, I don’t want to be a pest, but also I’m not going to abandon this person so that somebody else can get in there and get that business while I’ve been working to cultivate it over a long period of time.

Jay: Yeah, and it could be that depending on what type of product, there’s a time limit as well. So if they don’t get their order in within three weeks, you’re not going to make their deadline. So that could affect how often that you’re going to talk to them.

One of the things that I’ve found in my business is to just flat out, ask them to schedule a follow-up appointment. You know, we’ve just had a discussion. I’m going to send you the information. Would you mind if I reach out to you on Friday at this time? And I find that that works very well.

I’ve got that relationship going. You know, we’re friends now after 20 minutes. And they’re more than happy to set a follow-up appointment. If you’re in a situation where you can do that, that’s ideal.

Because once I lose that scheduled appointment, now we’re playing phone tag or text tag or something else. So that’s always my first attempt anyway.

David: Yeah, and I think that’s a really great point. And it’s critical, particularly these days, because reaching somebody when they’re not expecting you is very difficult.

The other thing that it does is when you schedule a follow-up call on a certain day at a certain time, If they’re going to ghost you, you’ll find out sooner rather than later. Right?

Because if you leave it open ended, “Oh, I’ll give you a call in a couple of days,” or “give me a call after you’ve had a chance to review the information.” you don’t know what to expect.

Because if you say, “give me a call after you’ve had a chance to review the information,” it could take them 10 minutes. It could take them a month. You just don’t know. So by doing exactly what you just suggested, suggesting or scheduling a time for your next contact is really the smart move.

I think at this particular time in history to not do that is really setting yourself up for failure.

Jay: Yeah, and it’s hard. I mean, at first I’m like, you know, I’m feeling pushy again, you know, but I do that after we’ve had this great conversation, they’re saying they want to use me, there is no better time that I’m going to find to schedule a follow-up appointment.

If I let them off the line and then later on text them and say, “hey, can we set up another time?” I’ve probably already missed the opportunity. So there are moments to strike that, if you don’t do it, you may never get again.

David: Right. And we can ask them, “when would be a good time to get back in touch?” If they need to review that, when would be a good time to get in touch?

And then if they say, well, you know, why don’t you give me a week and it’s Thursday, you can say, Oh, okay. Well, should I give you a call same time on Thursday?

Jay: Yeah.

David: And they can say yes or no. They can schedule something else, but at least you’ll have an idea. And that way it also sounds like their idea because you ask them, when would be a good time to get back in touch?

They tell you a timeframe and then you just pin them down to a time that’s based on the timeframe that they gave you. So now it’s not you being pushy and trying to schedule a call. It’s you listening to what they said and delivering what they asked for.

Jay: Yeah, I like that. Again, anytime you can avoid being a salesperson and get them to initiate is so important.

I’ve also come to realize that it’s not something that I should fear. It’s actually something that makes me look more professional and more interested in them. Right? And say, let’s set up a time. You’re interested right now. When can we talk so that we can get this process started?

It doesn’t make me look pushy. It makes me look professional. And it took me a while to come to that realization.

David: And professional is the key word right there. Because if you think about the way that actual professionals behave… A doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, whatever — anybody that the world considers to be a professional — they’re not just going to say, “oh yeah, well give me a call later,” or whatever.

They’re going to schedule an appointment, if an appointment is warranted. They’re going to determine the timeframe. You’re going to get agreement, you’re going to agree on the date and the time, and you’re going to follow up. Because that’s what professionals do.

Leaving it open-ended is very often comfortable for salespeople who are afraid to ask for the commitment.

But then, for the little bit of anxiety that could be created by asking for a date and time to follow up, they’re creating a world of anxiety because they have no idea what the next step is, when the next step is, or if that person is going to be available to take it with them.

Jay: Yeah, and then the other thing I find is that because people can schedule on my calendar without me there, I may fill up, and now when I should be following up with that client, I’m taking new calls, and as we’ve kind of talked about before, suddenly that person could be getting pushed to the background. And they’re the one that I could make the sale with instead of these new clients.

So I found that I have to be very purposeful about scheduling that follow-up. Even if they won’t set a time with me, I set a time so that it’s blocked out on my calendar. Otherwise it’ll disappear.

David: Yeah. You know, something else I find in sales, in particular, is that the term follow up, it’s a term that we use freely, we speak of it very often. But it’s not an ideal term to use with prospects and clients.

Jay: Agreed.

David: Because it is seen as such a salesy kind of term. And so when, even if that’s what we’re doing, if we know that we’re calling to follow up with someone in a week and we schedule a time, when we get on the phone with them, it’s probably best not to say, “I’m calling to follow up.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: It’s “okay, hey, we scheduled a time, looking forward to continuing the conversation.” Something other than those words. And it’s a small thing maybe, but I find that it’s a small thing that really helps to set the stage for what the conversation is ultimately going to be.

Jay: Yeah, we say something like, “looking forward to get started on your product, so that you can start saving money as soon as possible.” Because follow up conveys no urgency. Right? No urgency whatsoever. It’s more like calling your friend and saying, “Hey, what’s up?” You know?

David: Right.

Jay: If you can build some urgency into that call, like, “Hey, I need to get you started in the next couple of weeks, or you’re going to miss another month’s worth of tax savings,” or whatever it is, then that urgency from the first call carries over to the second call.

David: Right. And just the idea, keeping in the back of your mind that the goal here — when we are communicating on an ongoing basis with a prospect or client — the goal here is to have it be effective.

So when we talk about the idea of effective follow-up, what does that mean? It’s effective in terms of making sure that we’re on the same page with the person, making sure that our conversations are moving forward, making sure that their questions are being answered, and ultimately getting to a decision.

Are we going forward with this? Are we not? And if so, when is that going to happen? So, to me, that’s pretty much the definition of effective follow-up, is that it’s goal driven, it’s mission driven, and we’re staying on course. We know what the next step is.

And a lot of that needs to take place in your conversations, and in your contact management system, so that you can pick up the next call exactly where the last one left off.

Because if you just call to say, “Hey, I’m calling to follow up.” Well, what’s the context? What was the last conversation? So if you can bring them back to that last minute of that last conversation, you’re going to have a much better chance of moving things forward.

“Hey, Jay, when we last spoke, you said that you were interested in this particular product. You have an event coming up on this date, and you weren’t quite sure if you wanted to go with this particular one or that one. What do you think? Have you given it any thought? Which way are you leaning at this point?

And then that way you can literally pick up that conversation right where it left off. You don’t have to say, what’s your decision? Because that could be too harsh. Which way are you leaning? You could ask him something like that.

“Well, I was thinking about this one, but then I wasn’t sure about this other thing.” And then you can have the conversation that will allow them to come to the right decision so that you can then ideally take the order and move forward.

Jay: Yeah, and an important part of that? Copious notes when you have them on the phone. Write down everything, whether they were on vacation, whether they talked about their son or daughter, write down everything.

So like you said, you can just pick right up. Cause they’re not thinking you have the system in front of you. They’re like, “wow, this guy really remembers me.” It calls up the conversation and the emotion of that conversation. So write it down, even if you don’t have a system, and it’s just. Index cards, write that information down. It’s incredibly valuable.

David: It really is. And so few people do it, and I think people who consider themselves to be great salespeople, but aren’t, tend to wing it. right?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: They think they’re so good. I’ll just wing it.

Jay: Yeah.

David: But the truth of the matter is, even if you’re a great salesperson, if you do what you just said, if you take notes, if you reference back to previous conversations, if you pick up the conversation right where the last one left off, you are still going to be a hundred times more effective than if you’re just winging it.

So the core of effective follow-up is pretty much what we were just talking about there. Know where we’re going. Know how we’re getting there and then take those steps toward the goal every step of the way. Pay attention, listen to what they’re asking you, get them the answers to their questions, and ultimately that’s going to get us all where we need to be.

Jay: Hundred, hundred percent. How do people find out more, David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re in a situation where you’re looking to bring more clients through the door consistently, like clockwork, TopSecrets.com/call.

We’d love to have a conversation with you and help you to get to the point where the follow-up that you’re having is going to result in more sales.

Jay: Well, as always, I love our conversations. Have a wonderful day.

David: Thanks. You too, Jay.

Are You Ready to Create More Effective Sales Follow-up in Your Business?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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If you want to create desire in sales, it has to be about them. Their wants, their needs. The things that they’re looking to accomplish from the relationship, because that’s where all their desire comes from.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss creating desire with your communication in sales. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. It’s great to be here, as always. read this title and I’ve been thinking about it, but I’d love to hear your perspective up front. What do you mean creating desire with your communication?

David: Well, I think if we’re In the business of conveying value and providing products and ultimately selling something to someone else, the only way that happens is if there is enough desire created in the other person to make them want to move forward. Without the desire to move forward, it’s never going to happen.

It’s kind of a funny word, particularly in sales. We tend not to use words like desire a whole lot. We tend to think in terms of qualification and segmentation, and we keep it all very clinical. But without the component of wanting it, if the prospect or client does not want what we’re selling, then absolutely nothing is going to happen.

And the only way that desire is either created or channeled is generally with our communication. Now, if we’re offering something that they already want, then the desire is already built in. But if not, if they don’t see all the benefits, if they don’t see what it can do for them, then they might not be feeling it enough yet to pull the trigger.

And at that point, it becomes our job to say, all right what do I need to do in terms of my communication with this person to help either create some of that desire or ideally uncover the desire that’s already buried inside there?

Jay: Mmm. That’s great. I think about my own sales process. One of the things we do in our company is we offer a free consultation, and that’s my job. I give the consultation.

And there’s nothing I hate more than when somebody says free consultation, and what they really meant was free sales call, right? And so the minute you get them on the phone, they’re pitching you their product, and I don’t.

I listen, I ask questions, I tell them about their circumstances, I tell them what steps they can take to make their life better. And I always start the call saying, “just so you know, this is not a sales call. My goal is to give you the information that you need.”

It never fails. I’ve never had a call in my life, and I’ve done probably a thousand of these. At the end of the call, they say, “well, how much do you charge for these services? And I’d like to move forward with you.”

I never, never tried to sell them on anything. And to me, if you can do it, you can’t do it with every situation. But to me, that’s just ideal. They’re asking me how much I charge. I’ve created that desire in them without one word that sounds like a sales pitch.

David: Right. Because if you go immediately into sales mode, if you start out with that, if you lead with a sales pitch, it’s not going to create desire in anyone. Because a lot of the desire that we’re going to be able to uncover in our prospects is going to come from the answers we get to the questions that we ask them.

And so, you know, the whole diagnostic approach to sales, just like the diagnostic approach in medicine. First, you have to examine the patient to find out where it hurts. Examine, and then diagnose, and then and only then can you prescribe, right?

So you have to examine the patient, find out where it hurts, find out what their needs are, find out if they need what we have to offer. If they don’t have a need for what we have to offer, then yeah, there’s no need for a sales pitch, right?

And once we’ve done that examination, then we make the diagnosis. Based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like you’re looking to accomplish this, and this, and this. Is that correct? And if it is, and then if we have something that can help them with that, then the prescription would be, this is how we can help you if that’s something that’s of interest to you.

But you’re exactly right. That desire is not going to be created in the pitch portion of the presentation.

Jay: Yeah, that’s right. And in fact, I hear from a lot of our potential customers. They’re like, “I talked to three of your competitors and all they wanted to do was sell me on product and they confused me even more.”

In fact, I think their tactic is if I can confuse you enough, you’re going to feel like you have to use me ’cause there’s no way you could possibly understand what we’re talking about.

Of course, I’m in the tax business, so it’s pretty easy to, you know, convey to people that you’re ignorant, you need us, whereas we spend the first 20 minutes educating them and then they’re like, “wow, this is somebody who knows what they’re doing. I want to use you. How do I use you?”

And then it just comes down to price. Can they afford us? And can I convey to them why paying our price is absolutely the benefit that they need.

David: Yeah. And what you just described there, from competitors who lead off with the hard sell approach, that is so common in so many industries. And it is absolutely deadly to sales.

Jay: Yes.

David: And unfortunately, a lot of the sales tactics that people are trained on are things like overcoming objections, which is not a bad thing, right?

But, if you’re on the defensive for the whole call, it’s like if you ever watched a boxing match, you don’t want to be on the defensive through the whole match. You can’t do that, right? And if you’re in a situation where that’s what’s happening, where you’re just trying to get in there and make your point and have them understand it and have them buy it, then you’re at a disadvantage right from the beginning.

But when you’re able to create a situation where people are free to ask you questions, disagree with something that you’re saying, question what you’re saying, and find out if there is a good fit there, that’s what’s ultimately going to create the desire.

Because until they feel like, and this goes back to the whole know, like, and trust thing, until they feel like they know enough about what it is that you’re talking about, and they like you enough to pay attention to what you have to say, and they trust you enough to say, okay, maybe I’ll give this a shot, none of it’s going to happen.

There’s not going to be any desire created, if you’re interacting with somebody that you don’t know too well and don’t like a whole lot and don’t trust very much.

Jay: Yeah, and in fact, it’s a funny thing. People tell me, “well, thanks for the call. I want to check in with some of your competitors first.”

And I’m like, ” yeah, go for it.” Because I know they’re coming back to me. ’cause I know how all of them act. And. They always do. They always come back to us because we didn’t give them the hardcore sales pitch.

We actually educated them, which made them feel like we were really experts in the field. So I think sometimes taking the whole feeling of the sales process out of the equation, if you can do it, it’s not always possible depending on your product. But if you can find that formula, wow, can it be more successful.

David: Absolutely. And when you’re looking to communicate with someone in a way that is designed to ideally create desire in the mind of the person, in the heart of the person that you’re talking to, assuming they have a need for the products and services you offer, a good way to do that is to make sure that the conversation is primarily about them.

Jay: Yes.

David: If you’re talking about yourself the whole time, and you’re talking about me, me, me, and I, I, I, and we, we, we…

Jay: Yes.

David: That is not the kind of conversation that’s going to lead to that desired result. If you want to create desire in them, it has to be about them. Their wants, their needs. The things that they’re looking to accomplish from the relationship, because that’s where all their desire comes from.

Jay: Yeah. and I, think that if you do spend that time talking about them, they will come around to the point where they realize they want to work with you. And they’ll start asking you about your pricing and your services. And then there’s oftentimes now where they say, “well, what is your pricing?” And I’ll say, well, I just try and make this a, consultation call.

Let me send you my list of pricing and I’ll follow back with you in a day or two. And even that takes them back that I don’t jump right in to the sales process. I give them time and space. And I realize in some sales cycles, you want to close them when you have them on the phone because you may never get them back on the phone and you may have to reestablish that relationship every time.

So you really have to decide what your own sales cycle is going to be. But in my situation, I’ve found that’s the most successful way to never feel like a salesman. I always feel like a friend, a consultant, somebody who cares for them and just wants to provide the best product for them.

David: Yeah, and that’s what’s going to lead to those levels of desire to work with you when they are actually able to feel that.

Jay: Yeah.

David: You know, when we talk about a word like desire, I mean, a lot of times in sales, we think in terms of interest. Are they interested in what we have to offer? And obviously, interest has to come first. I’m not going to desire something until I first express interest in it.

And this also leads back to the idea of disqualifying people as well. If you’re having a conversation with someone, you’re asking a lot of questions and they really have no interest in what you’re talking about. They appear to have no desire for it at all. They have no desire for the results that it’s going to get them. Then that’s probably a disqualified prospect.

And when you’re able to identify that relatively early in the conversation, you can save yourself and the other person a whole lot of time by recognizing this is not a good fit, and then not wasting the time to try to convince or persuade someone to become interested or start to desire something that they’re just never going to want.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. One of my favorite things to hear now, and I hear it a lot because I’ve really kind of mastered this system, is people say, “I really want to work with you.” And they’re not saying, “I want to work with your company.” They’re not saying, “I want to buy your product.”

I will literally in 20 minutes have had established a relationship where they’re saying, “I want to work with you, Jay.” And in fact, we pass them on to our other accountants and they’re like, “Oh, you mean I’m not going to be working with you?” And I’m like, “well, I’ll be involved in the process.”

But in 20 minutes, to come to that level of relationship, you know, I think it’s because I never once felt like a salesperson to them. And we have a relationship in 20 minutes. It’s pretty remarkable if you can get there.

David: It is. And the two key words at the beginning of that sentence describe the desire element. “I want.”

Jay: Yes.

David: I want to work with you. I want this. I want that. I don’t want this. I don’t want to have a situation… Whenever someone is telling you that, when they’re telling you what they want, that’s their desire.

When they tell you what they don’t want, that’s their desire as well. My desire is not to have this situation. So anytime you’re able to elicit words like I want or I don’t want, you’re finding those desires.

Jay: Yeah, and some people hear the “I don’t want” and they decide I’m going to push through that somehow to where I’m going to make you want by pushing through what you don’t want. And that’s the beginning of the end as far as I’m concerned.

David: Yeah, I agree.

Jay: All right. How can people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re interested in creating more desire among your prospects to learn more about you, to learn more about what you do, and to get more of them to express interest so that you can ultimately sell to them, schedule a call. We’d love to have a conversation with you.

Jay: All right, David. I love it as always.

David: Thanks a lot, Jay.

Are You Ready to Create Desire in Sales with Your Prospects and Clients?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Last week’s discussion about The Zero Accountability Salesperson seemed to resonate with a lot of people. And the biggest questions I got were related to how to fix this. How can I help myself and/or my salespeople to be more conscious of the actions we need to take, and to take those actions on a consistent basis?

Hi and welcome back. In our last episode, we touched on a lot of important points related to what I would call The Zero Accountability Salesperson Culture:

1. Most businesses don’t deliberately create a zero accountability culture. It just happens when systems and processes are missing.
2. When salespeople say things like, “It’s going great, I’m having a lot of good conversations. I’ve got a lot of people in the pipeline,” that tells you nothing. Without metrics, it’s just wasted words.
3. Accountability is not punishment. It’s about providing clarity on what’s working, what’s not, and how to fix it.

If you haven’t thoroughly reviewed that episode, I encourage you to go back and check it out now.

But today, I’d like to give you a quick, bullet-pointed list on the things you can do right now to start creating a culture of accountability for yourself and your sales team.

To get started:

1. ✅ Start with one key metric. Don’t overwhelm your team. Begin by tracking a single activity, like the number of new targets acquired or prospects qualified in or out each week. In our Total Market Domination program, we have an Activity/Results Audit that our clients use to track the ten most important activities that lead to sales. But even starting out small will begin to create a sense of accountability for yourself and your people.
2. ✅ Define what counts. Be clear about what “initiating contact” means in your organization. Making a phone call and not getting an answer doesn’t count if no contact is initiated. Real contact, conversations, and interactions count. The rest is meaningless.
3. ✅ Add one metric at a time. As you start getting consistent application on the first key metric, introduce the next one that flows from there. What are steps you and your salespeople need to take to move a new prospect from total stranger to paying client? Those are the activities that need to be taken and tracked in your business.
4. ✅ Create a cadence of accountability. Establish a weekly rhythm where salespeople report on the metrics you require. Make it consistent, like a drumbeat. Miss just one or two and the whole thing will be forgotten in no time.
5. ✅ Build accountability into your systems. Use your CRM or even a simple shared Google Doc to capture and share activity. The easier it is to track, the less resistance you’ll face.
6. ✅ Focus on metrics that matter. Don’t waste time with busywork stats that don’t impact sales outcomes. There are a lot of those, so be sure to measure only the activities that truly drive sales results.
7. ✅ Link activity to outcomes. Help salespeople understand how improving even one single metric (like initiating new contacts) drives the next step (like getting those prospects qualified in our out as quickly as possible.) When you do this correctly, accountability feels more like a reward than a punishment.
8. ✅ Frame accountability as support. Make sure your team understands this isn’t about a lack of trust. It’s about you helping them to systematically identify and eliminate the bottlenecks that keep them from selling up to their potential.
9. ✅ Stay consistent. Don’t let reporting slide over time. The moment accountability becomes optional, the culture of zero accountability will come roaring back to life.
10. ✅ Adapt for individuals. High performers might require less oversight, but everyone benefits from clarity. Make sure everyone in your organization knows that you’re there to help them thrive. This means customizing expectations of your team, without ever lowering standards.

The best salespeople want to succeed, and they’ll be open to any of your efforts to help in that regard, as long as they don’t come across as controlling or manipulative.

If you’re serious about creating a culture of accountability inside your organization, download a copy of our free Shift Report today at TopSecrets.com/shift. It will explain how you can connect the dots between the work you’re doing and the results you’re getting from that work. So if you ever feel like you’re actions aren’t producing the desired results or you’re not yet earning up to your potential, download a copy now at topsecrets.com/shift.

Ready to Start Helping Yourself and the Zero Accountability Salesperson?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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The zero accountability salesperson is at a big disadvantage. Selling is all about being able to produce. And the only way you’re able to produce is if whoever is doing the selling has some level of accountability, whether it’s to themselves or to a sales manager, or to your spouse, whoever it is, right?

If you get home from work, and you didn’t sell anything as a salesperson, you might get in more trouble at home than you got in at work.

So accountability is always big.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the zero accountability sales person.

Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: Good to see you. Zero accountability salesperson. What does that look like in a sales team?

David: Salesperson? Salespeople? It’s not pretty, man. It is not pretty. And it’s nothing that anyone deliberately sets out to do. In most sales organizations, the problem is that the company itself does not have the systems and processes in place to allow their salespeople to become more accountable to anything.

I mean, a lot of times salespeople are held accountable for sales. Are you hitting your numbers? Are you generating the sales that you need to generate? But if they’re not tracking other things, then they really have no idea what it is that’s going to get them to the numbers that they really need to reach.

Kevin: So how does that lack of accountability affect the overall sales performance of the team?

David: Well, it’s not good because it’s just erratic. It’s all over the place. You’ll have some salespeople who are very good and very consistent because that’s the way they’re wired, and you’ll have other salespeople who are all over the place.

And the reason I thought this was a good topic to have, is that I was having a conversation with someone earlier today, someone who’s considering joining our Total Market Domination program, and she was talking about the fact that she’s got a number of salespeople in her organization, and she doesn’t feel like they’re all sort of on the same page.

They’re not doing the same things. And when I started talking to her and asking her about what sort of accountability was in place, she was sad to admit that there wasn’t a whole lot of it.

And what happens when you’re in this situation, as a business owner or as a sales manager, if you find that you’re having conversations with your salespeople and you’re saying to them, so what’s going on?

How’s everything going? And they say, oh yeah, it’s going great. Having a lot of great conversations. Got a bunch of people on the fence or people I’m working, got a lot of leads I’m working and everything like that.

That tells you nothing, right? It tells you nothing.

It’s feel good talk, but it’s wasted words. Because until you are able to provide any sort of metrics, any sort of numbers, any sort of accountability that turns those comments into something real, you just don’t have anything that you can even help them with.

Kevin: I think a lot of times salespeople have their methods. They love their methods. That’s their tried and true, understandably so. Is it hard to get sales teams on the same page when it comes to accountability when people want to kind of do it their own way?

David: Well, it certainly can be, and if you’ve got a sales person who is a high performer, that person may just want to do it their own way, and they might not be open to a whole lot of conversation or a whole lot of interpretation

Kevin: And you might not worry about it.

David: Exactly. And that’s very true. And I’m not saying that you should have different standards for different people in the organization. I’m just talking about what actually happens in the world.

And so when you’ve got salespeople who are very good at what they do, and they don’t need to provide you with some of the additional data that would allow you to help them figure out where things might be going wrong, then that’s a decision that you have to make.

But I think it’s very important to have those procedures in place for the people who are not the superstars, who might not be generating everything they need to be generating.

We hear the term culture a lot when it comes to businesses, sports teams, organizations, whatever. You know, zero accountability, it seems like it could be kind of a culture in a lot of companies.

Culture is not easy to change. It’s not an easy thing to shift. How can a business owner or a sales manager try to shift the culture without alienating their teams?

It’s a great question. The first thing I’ll say about culture is that there is no organization that defines itself as having a zero accountability sales team.

They don’t talk in terms of we have zero accountability salespeople. That’s not something that’s in their brochures. It’s not something that’s discussed internally. It’s a deliberately provocative title, because for a lot of business owners, they look at that and they’re like, oh man, my salespeople are pretty unaccountable.

Kevin: That’s my situation. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

David: And that’s the reason I thought it would be important for us to have this discussion. Because, it happens. And it doesn’t happen because people set out to do it.

No business owner decides in advance, I want to create a culture of non accountability. Nobody does that.

You want to have a culture where people are enthused about going to work each day. They know that the people that they’re working with have their backs, that they’re going to do whatever they can to help.

And so when I talk about accountability, I’m not talking about it from the standpoint of punishment or making salespeople do things that they don’t necessarily want to do.

It’s just a matter of saying, okay, do I have, in this organization, enough procedures and processes in place that conscientious salespeople will be able to sort of latch onto a few key metrics and say, okay, if I improve this, I’m very likely to improve the next thing.

We talked about bottlenecks in a previous podcast, and this is a great example of that. When I’m able to identify those early bottlenecks, then I can move on to the next one.

So for most salespeople, the idea of being accountable is not terrible, as long as people aren’t asking for stupid, unrelated, ridiculous information, right? And some businesses go that way, too.

They’re asking them for all kinds of things that may not make any difference, and that’s a waste. So you have to find the balance of being able to ask your people about the things you need to know about, so that they can document this stuff in a way that it’s useful to you and useful to them, because that’s what will provide a level of accountability that makes sense.

It makes sense to the business owner, it makes sense to the salesperson, and people are actually happy to do it.

Kevin: What are some practical ways that someone could introduce accountability, in a small way to help kind of build it without just like changing everything right off the bat?

David: Well, you could do it one step at a time. I mean, you could ask for one metric from your salespeople initially. I’d like to know how many new contacts you made this week. How many brand new prospects did you initiate contact with this week? And you would have to define what that means, initiating contact.

Does it mean I made a hundred calls and I didn’t reach anybody? Because that’s kind of zero, right? But if I initiated a hundred contacts and I actually interacted with 10 people (or whatever the number is,) that’s a solid metric.

It’s not hard to track, and it’s an important one to track. Because if you are not getting that information as a sales manager or as a business owner, that is the beginning of zero accountability.

You’re just assuming or hoping or waiting for them to bring in the sales each day or each week or each month. And if you just start earlier on in the process and say, all right, what about this? What about this metric? What about that metric? Then you can follow from there.

Because if you start out with how many new people did you introduce yourself to, or how many new people did you interact with this week? Then you could follow it from there.

It’s like, okay, well I initiated contact with 10 new people. I went to a networking function. I met 10 new people there. It’s like, okay. Then a next metric could be, how many of those were you able to get qualified in or out?

How many of them are actually qualified to do business with us? That would be a second metric that you could track. And then you can start to track the stuff down the line and eventually you’ve got sort of a cadence of accountability. I think I’ve read that in a book by, uh, Stephen Covey, I believe.

But it makes a whole lot of sense. It’s sort of a drumbeat, right? I’m keeping a cadence where I want to know what’s going on, sort of here and here and here and here.

Each step of the way, you’re giving me some clue as to what’s going on out there, as opposed to, yeah, things are going well. I’m talking to a lot of people. I got some people in the pipe, right?

Kevin: To have really good accountability, it’s going to take consistency Because it’s probably a very easy thing to let slide or let slip over time.

Your salespeople are probably not going to be accountable without some level of oversight. How can business owners, sales managers reinforce the idea of accountability without coming across as annoying or nitpicking or micromanaging?

David: Well, ideally you build it into the process upfront. Now, of course, if you’re just doing this now, you’re going to have to build it in later. But if you simply have slots in your CRM for where this needs to be entered, how many new prospects this week? How many people did you initiate contact with? How many were qualified in or out?

It can be maybe four or five different metrics. It’s just a number. I just have to enter a number into this box. Anybody who’s doing this can do that, and it’s not hard to do.

I’m not talking about creating advanced spreadsheets with all kinds of crazy calculations. It’s kind of like the question, what did you do this week?

And I think we’ve learned, some people really don’t like that question.

Kevin: Yes we did.

David: But in sales and in marketing, we kind of have to know, right? Your salespeople need to know what they’re doing. They need to be able to track what they’re doing. Your sales managers need to know that. The business needs to have some idea of that, particularly if you want to be able to grow it.

If you want to be able to hire more people and have them produce at comparable results to the people that are already in there, you need to know what they’re doing. You need to have some of these benchmarks along the way, so that you can know what to do in order to replicate the results.

Kevin: Do you find when you help businesses rethink their accountability strategies and all this, are the salespeople grumpy about it a lot of times? Are they resistant to it or are they generally pretty open to the idea?

David: Well, some are resistant to it. I think it is kind of natural for most employees to be resistant to any kind of change. Doesn’t mean that everyone is. Not everyone is. But it’s hard, because a lot of times if something is changing, people will wonder, is this something I did?

Am I the only one who has to do this? Do other people have to do this? So a lot of it is going to be about how you explain it to people. And you just let them know, listen, we need to get some of these procedures and processes in place, so that we can track the results. We can try to find the bottlenecks for you ,right?

Because that’s what you’re doing is you’re helping them to find the bottlenecks in their own sales process.

Kevin: Right.

David: So getting them to buy into the idea that this isn’t so that I can yell at you. This is so that we can both know where the gaps are in our process.

Kevin: So we can both make some more money.

David: Yeah, exactly. And most salespeople are very interested in doing that.

Kevin: Yes. I’d say all. I would think all, at least. For a business owner who might know their salespeople might be coasting a bit, but just have no idea how to address it, is there a piece of advice that you have for starting the conversation?

David: Well, I think it begins by asking them about their activities, as it relates to their results. I noticed over the past couple of weeks, you seem to be struggling with some things. What’s going on? I mean, just as simple as that. And they might tell you about some sort of personal thing that they’re dealing with or whatever.

It’s like, okay, if you understand that and they’re working their way through it, then that’s what that is. But if they don’t have basic answers to basic questions like the people they’re interacting with, the number of people they’re initiating contact with, the number of existing clients they’ve reactivated this week, things like that, that are very easy to know and very easy to document, then. that’s a good way to sort of get them back into it.

You could say to them, okay, listen, I understand it might be tough to maybe do some new prospecting this week with everything that you’re doing. Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you just reach out to some of our existing clients, get them requalified, try to figure out where they are and what they have coming up. That might be a little easier, it’s more comfortable.

Why don’t you do that this week? Focus on that. And then it lets them know that you’re not just out to hit certain numbers. You’re trying to help them. You’re trying to help them get results in a way that’s going to be doable for them while they’re dealing with other stuff.

Kevin: For business owners who might have a smaller business that have a sales team and the business owner themselves is the one that kind of manages the sales team, do you try to tell people to get a sales manager? Do you encourage business owners to have someone kind of overseeing the operation?

David: Well, you have to be at a certain point before you can do that, you have to be generating enough sales from the salespeople or from the business owner. And a lot of times in smaller businesses, the business owner is the main salesperson.

Kevin: True.

David: So if that person is generating sufficient revenue that they can then hire someone else to sell, then they can move to the position of sales manager for a while. And if they hate that, as long as they’re generating enough sales, they can then hire a sales manager to get in between them and the sales person.

But it’s all about being able to produce, to begin with. And the only way that you’re able to produce, is if whoever is doing the selling has some level of accountability, whether it’s to themselves or to a sales manager or to your spouse, whoever it is, right?

If you get home from work, and you didn’t sell anything, as a salesperson, you might get in more trouble at home, then you got in at work.

So accountability’s always big. Yeah,

Kevin: That’s true. Where can people go to learn more about these ideas of zero accountability?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/shift. Pick up a copy of our free PDF. That’s TopSecrets.com/shift.

Kevin: Awesome. Thanks so much, David. Great conversation. Really enjoyed it.

David: Thank you, Kevin.

Ready to Get Some Accountability in Place in Your Business?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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There’s always going to be a bottleneck in sales. There’s always going to be something that is not working as smoothly or as ideally as it could or should. And our job is to constantly identify, what is it now? What is it today? Now that I got this other thing fixed, what’s the new thing that’s slowing us down?

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss your biggest bottleneck to sales. Welcome back Kevin.

Kevin: Great to see you, David. And this is definitely one that I think anybody can relate to no matter what business you’re in, but you’re talking about your biggest bottleneck to sales.

Let’s not bury the lead. What is it?

David: In every business there is generally, more than one bottleneck, but there’s one big one that is going to keep you from hitting the next bottleneck, or the one after that, or the one after that.

And if you don’t tackle that first one correctly and get rid of it, then you never get to down the line.

It’s like an assembly line. If you think about a factory that’s manufacturing something and there’s an assembly line, if there’s a problem at the first station in the assembly line, everything stops, right?

Because you can’t move to step two until you’ve done step one. And so for most of us, when it comes to sales, there is a bottleneck.

And it might not be at the very beginning. It might be towards the middle, or it might even be near the end.

But until you identify what your biggest bottleneck is, you cannot apply the appropriate resources necessary –the time, the energy, and the focus –to blast that thing out of there, so that you can then move forward with everything you need to do.

Kevin: All right, so you couldn’t just give me the one thing. That’s fine. Can you give me some of the more common bottlenecks that you see when it comes to sales?

David: Well, sure. When you’re in a selling situation, what are the biggest bottlenecks you run into? Well, I’m having trouble reaching the person that I need to reach, right?

They’re not responding to me. Or some people, toward the end of the sales process, they get right up until the point of closing and then they choke.

So that’s an example of a bottleneck where if you don’t get that one nailed, you can go all the way through a sales process, then get to that point and then not be able to close the sale and everything is kind of wasted.

So looking at the steps along the way, what are you going to look at?

You’re going to look at the people that you’re interacting with, the conversations that you’re having with them, the timeframe that it takes you to get them from point to point. Because for a lot of people, that is a big one.

Not being able to set a pace, set a tempo that allows you to be able to get to that sale sooner rather than later, that could be a big bottleneck for people.

A lot of times we have an idea of how we would like the sales process to go. But if the client has a different idea, we’re going to have to follow what they’re going to be willing to go along with.

So in those situations, if we say, alright, I’m going to try to do everything I can here to advance the process to get them to the next step.

Maybe it’s just a matter of, in the promotional products industry, will they send me the art?

They may have agreed to the sale, they may have agreed to the quantities, they may have agreed to the colors and the Pantone color matches and the tight registration.

They’ve agreed to all that. And you can’t get them to send the art. That’s really frustrating. And it can be a bottleneck that holds up everything.

And these bottlenecks that I’m referring to are the things that hold up everything that comes past it.

So by simply taking some time to identify what are the biggest bottlenecks, because if you find in your business that it’s, “I can’t seem to get art from the client,” then you need to make sure you put a process in place that is designed to handle that.

Ideally, it’s something that you’re going to be able to delegate to an administrative assistant, or perhaps delegate to technology to some extent, where it sends them reminder messages that they need this or that your administrative assistant can follow up and make the phone call, whatever it takes.

Putting those procedures in place is the only thing that’s going to blow out those bottlenecks.

And for most of us, there’s something that’s driving us crazy. There’s one thing that is frustrating us. For some it might be, okay, I’m having a problem getting my orders delivered. You may have a problem with the suppliers you’re dealing with.

If that’s your biggest bottleneck, you got to fix that one, because each of these is a business killer.

Kevin: So do you think of your sales process from start through to the delivered product, if you will, till the end in that entire cycle you really have to kind of analyze how that is going?

Is there a strategy that will help them identify those bottlenecks?

David: Yeah, and you have to start way before the order gets placed. You have to start very early in the process, even in terms of when you’re thinking about who you’re going to be talking to. If you decide that you’re going to be going to a networking function or something like that, you want to try to get leads from that.

You examine that part of the process. How did that go? When I went there, were there people who were interested in what I had to offer, or was everyone there trying to sell instead of trying to buy, right?

So you can look at those kind of things. What’s the quality and the caliber of the prospects that I’m meeting at this particular event, or with this particular approach?

If I’m taking out an ad and an industry publication to try to get people to express interest in what I have to offer, what’s the result I get? What’s the response that I got?

Every time we do anything to bring a new customer through the door, we’re putting out energy, we’re putting out effort, we’re doing something to make that happen. Whether it’s a social media post, whether it’s a direct mailing, whether it’s an ad, whatever it is, we’re doing something. And that something needs to create a result.

Sometimes the result that it creates is nothing. And so what you need to do then is to say, okay, was it just a one time thing? Or if I test it again, is it still producing nothing?

Can I change it? Can I tweak it so that I can blow this bottleneck out? Because whatever it is, whatever the issue is, whatever the thing is that’s slowing you down, you have to first identify it and then you have to systematically blow it out.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. How do these things form, you know, like I, I know every situation’s different, but does it come down to complacency? Is it not looking at numbers, analytics? What do you find that is the biggest reason why these bottlenecks happen?

David: Well, it could be that, but I would say nine times out of ten it’s just life.

It’s interacting with other people who don’t always do exactly what you want them to do when you ask them to do it, right? So that is likely to be a thing.

But bottlenecks happen in every business, in every industry. I mean, when I gave the example of an assembly line, that’s a very obvious one.

And most of us, in business and in sales, we don’t think in those terms because we generally don’t operate in those terms.

We’re not putting hubcaps on a car when it’s ready to roll off the line. We’re not thinking in terms of all the other steps that had to happen along the way. And as salespeople, we are very often involved in all of those steps, in each of those steps.

And if we’ve never taken the time to learn the best way to attach the windshield and attach the windshield wipers and whatever it’s I’m doing to build a car. I’ve never built a car, but whatever those things are, if I haven’t taken the time to do those things right, then it’s going to slow down my process, it’s going to mess things up, and it’s going to become a bottleneck.

So when it comes to sails, it’s the same kind of thing. There are very specific things that need to happen in terms of the people we’re interacting with and how we’re communicating with those people, and the frequency with which we’re doing that, and the efficiency with which we’re doing that so that we’re not wasting time, their time as well as ours.

I mean, I think that’s an important aspect of this, is none of us like wasting our own time, but wow, you start wasting a prospect’s time or a client’s time, they are not going to sit still for that.

Kevin: As far as removing that bottleneck, as far as blowing it out, clearing it out, what is the best way to do that? Because there might not always be an easy answer, right?

David: Exactly. Yeah. Well, once you’ve identified it, that’s a big step. Sure. because a lot of times we don’t even see it. We’re just so busy doing all the things that we need to do on a day-to-day basis that we’re not even paying attention to all the minutia of the things that we’re doing along the way.

So once you’ve identified it, that is a big, important part of the process. Then it’s really just a matter of looking at what is happening in there? And is that happening consistently? Am I doing that the same way with each person that I interact with?

And if I’m doing it the same way with each person that I interact with and I’m getting not so good results, that means I need to change that process.

If I’m doing it the same way and I’m getting results that are all over the place, then I have to look at, all right, well, what kind of people am I bringing into this process? Because if it works for some and it doesn’t work for others, I know my process is the same. I know that what I’m communicating is the same. Is it then related to the people or is it related to the way that I’m saying it?

If I’m talking to you and I’m like, oh, I’m lethargic, and I, I’m, I’m not having a good day, but I say all the things that I would normally say, that’s going to have a different impact than if I am engaged and I’m right there with you.

So looking at the different points of communication, all those interactions with a client, every single one of them counts. And the more engaged we are and the more we’re right there with them providing the solutions they want when they want them, the fewer bottlenecks we’re going to run into.

Kevin: There’s a lot of tools out there to stay organized. CRMs, different sales softwares and all that. The people who use these, you got to use them in order for ’em to work, right? Like there’s a lot of people like, “oh, I have this, I have that, I have that.”

“We’ll do you put stuff in there?”

“Sometimes,” you know?

So it is a lot of times just even just looking at your process and making sure you’re doing the things that you set out to do in the first place.

David: Yeah, that’s a big part of it and I think that A CRM is one of the most important things you can have in your business. If, as you said, you actually use it.

Because it allows you to store information in there that makes you appear like a genius, right? Because when you’re able to go back to a client that you talked to a month ago and you’re able to refresh them on what you talked about, where you left off and what the next steps are, they feel like you’re paying attention.

Right now, all you had to do is pay attention long enough to log it into your CRM. Remember to schedule an appointment with them a month later and then reference your notes.

That’s all you had to remember. You didn’t have to remember all the nuance of the conversation. But if you’ve got that sort of thing in place, it’s going to be a huge help.

And that’s one aspect of a bottleneck. But I think the other reason it’s so important to consider this is that very often, salespeople and business owners are focused on growth.

“I want to grow my sales. I want to grow my profits, I want to grow the business.” And we’re thinking in terms of the potential. What could I potentially do? How could I potentially get there?

And potential is great. Potential is essentially unlimited, right? My potential is enormous. But what comes in the way between where we are now and our potential, are the bottlenecks.

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

David: Those are the only things that keep us from reaching our potential.

So when we’re focused on we want to triple sales or we want to quadruple sales, or we want to 10 x our sales. Okay. We can certainly do that, but the only way that’s going to happen is if we’re able to identify what are the things that are holding us back right now so we can eliminate those and then move on to the next.

Because there’s always going to be a bottleneck. There’s always going to be something that is not working as smoothly or as ideally as it could or should.

And our job is to constantly identify what is it now? What is it today? Now that I got this other thing fixed, what’s the new thing that’s slowing us down?

And when you do that systematically and you just get into a groove where you’re looking to identify these things, it becomes a lot easier to identify them and to clear them out.

Kevin: And to your point earlier, a lot of salespeople are doing everything, or certainly a lot of different things, so their minds can be a bit scatterbrained in trying to stay organized and without good structure, if you will, the bottlenecks are just going to be bigger and more plentiful.

David: Yeah, especially if they don’t realize all that they’re doing, and if they don’t have processes for doing it all consistently, if you’re just doing it however you feel like on any given day, that’s going to create results that are different for each client.

So when you’ve got that going on, you don’t necessarily know, well, what do I have to do consistently going forward to create the kind of results that I want day after day as opposed to what I’m getting here and there.

Kevin: It’s not always easy to look inward and go, how can I improve this process? What can I do?

What do I need to do? For anyone who’s listening to this, watching this and saying, man, this speaks to me, but I don’t know where to begin, what’s the best way for them to get some more resources from you?

David: I would say just go to TopSecrets.com/shift. Pick up a copy of our quick two page PDF, our Shift report.

It’ll help you with some ideas, and then you can take a look at that and if you’ve got some interest in having a conversation after that, you’re welcome to do it. In the meantime, TopSecrets.com/shift.

Kevin: Awesome, David. Thanks for the advice. Great stuff. Good to see you.

David: Good to see you. Thanks, Kevin.

Ready to Blow Out the Biggest Bottleneck to Sales in Your Business?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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It’s one of those nuances that when you’re transforming the leverage points in your business, the prequalification follow up is different than the post qualification follow up, but they are both very important leverage points.

David: Hi. Welcome back in today’s episode, cohost. Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss transforming the leverage points in your business. Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: Hey, David. Great to see you. I’m excited to find out what you mean by this. So can you just start by sort of talking about what you mean when you refer to leverage points in a business?

David: Yeah. I think particularly for salespeople and business owners, there are certain specific leverage points that make a huge difference when you’re interacting with clients, and a lot of it starts with who you’re going after. You know, just the targeting aspect of it.

And a lot of people will take anyone who can fog a mirror, you know, they’ll take anybody who stumbles in the door. And if you want to be a little more proactive about things, and if you want to really leverage that aspect of it, just the targeting part of it, that’s one of those small hinges that swings big doors.

And so. When we look at leverage points, that’s a really good solid first one. Because you could spend time going after a certain group of people in a particular niche or a particular market location and get to a lot of the wrong people and waste an enormous amount of time just by doing that.

So one of the things that we do with our clients is we look at, okay, what are the biggest leverage points that we can go after? Tackle those upfront so that our clients are able to get more done in less time and earn more money while they’re doing it.

Kevin: Okay. So I’m guessing there’s multiple leverage points that you might refer to.

How could a business owner identify where they need help? What leverage points are being underutilized or need to be transformed?

David: A lot of it, you can figure it out based on what problems you’re having. If you are interacting with a lot of poor quality prospects or clients, that’s a pretty good indication that it has to do with your targeting.

If you’re getting to the right people –in other words, if you’re getting to people who have the ability to spend a lot of money with you –and they’re not converting, then you have to look at it and say, okay, well what am I doing wrong?

What am I saying to these people that is getting them not to buy? And a lot of times, salespeople go into sales situations and they’re just winging it. They’re just saying the things that they normally say, or they’re saying things that they think are likely to work.

And if it works for you consistently, then that’s great. You’ve probably got something that works. But if you find that you’re interacting with a lot of the right people, but you’re not closing those sales or you’re not able to move the sales process forward fast enough.

Like if it takes a lot longer to close your clients than it should, that’s an indication that it’s probably not related to the prospects at that point. It’s probably related to what you’re saying to them or the ways that you’re saying it to them.

Kevin: Can you share an example of a leverage point that when improved can have a dramatic effect on sales?

David: Yeah. Well, it’s really the things that we’re talking about and things that we’ve talked about in previous podcasts. If you think in terms of the MVPs that we’ve discussed in the past, the MVPs of marketing and sales, what’s the message that I’m communicating?

If you’ve got an okay marketing message and you’re communicating it to a high value prospect, you could really be wasting an opportunity.

If you are reaching those high quality prospects using a combination of marketing vehicles that they’re not happy with. If you just keep calling them on the phone and they don’t want to take phone calls, then again, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. It’s a big leverage point when you’re able to identify how they are willing to interact with you, and then gear your approach accordingly.

And then of course, as we discussed first, the people. The people that you’re going after. Those three things are the first three that always leap to mind, because it’s probably the thing that we talk about most, but the reason we talk about it most is because there are so many important ways that you can mess things up if you don’t do it right.

And of course there are more.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. And so is it fair to say that leverage points need to be, it’s not something you can do quickly to change ’em. You kind of have to work on ’em over time to figure out where it works. Like to your point about how do people like to be contacted. You need to kind of do a little bit of trial and error AB testing to figure out where you can alter or improve your leverage points.

David: Exactly, but you can do it quickly if you recognize that there are these very specific leverage points that you want to focus on. And so if you are concerned that you might have a marketing message, you can test out a couple of various approaches and see how they work.

Of course. When you’ve got good clients, if you’re able to interact with them and just ask them questions directly, a lot of them will tell you what they like and what they don’t like.

Very often, if you’re interacting with a client for the first time or a prospect for the first time, you can find out how do they like to interact, how do they prefer to communicate? And it’s very direct, but it also saves both of you a lot of time, so that you’re not communicating with them in a way that they don’t like.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. Okay. Are these leverage points pretty universal across industries, or do they vary from industry to industry?

David: Well, I think there’s nuance within different industries, but in addition to the MVPs, things like how do you qualify your prospects in or out as quickly as possible? Do you have a qualification procedure in place where you could ask them a couple of simple direct questions to determine if they are a good qualified prospect for you?

If the answer is yes, then you follow up with them. If the answer is no, then you don’t waste that time with a prospect who is not a good fit for you.

Kevin: Okay. And we’ve talked in previous episodes about shifting mindset. It’s always about, for a lot of times for business owners, they might be stuck in their ways. They might not have time, they might not be good at delegating, whatever that is.

Is it another mindset shift here and what kind of recommendations or advice might you give to someone to help them get to a better mindset?

David: Yeah, the mindset component is pretty big with everything, because if you don’t buy into it, you’re not going to take the necessary actions.

But I think this one is relatively easy in the sense that if you just recognize that there are very specific things that you can focus on to change the results you’re getting for the better, then it becomes a lot easier to get yourself in the mindset of, okay, I just need to do this. Right? It’s not like I have to motivate myself to do something I don’t want to do.

When you’re able to identify these leverage points and fix them so that they perform better for you, it’s exciting. You want to do it so you don’t have to sort of overcome any sort of hesitation or anything like that.

Kevin: Yeah. Especially if you seeing results when you see, when you kind of, or even just when you see some areas that you could really improve on.

Like if you’re like, man. I keep doing this, but this is going to be a better way. It kind of can get you a little jazzed up, get you a little excited.

David: Yeah. And if you look at things like follow up. Follow up is such a small amount of words for such a big concept, but the way that you follow up is an incredible leverage point for your business.

And when you do it strategically, instead of just haphazardly, the results just change like that. And those are the types of things that I’m referring to when I talk about these leverage points.

I’m talking about things where you can make a very small change and create a very big result in your business.

Kevin: Any other ones that we haven’t talked about yet that you feel that businesses often overlook?

David: There are a number of them, but it’s not like it’s unlimited. A lot of things are sort of subcategories of other things, the problems that you have with whatever, your targeting, which is something we did talk about.

There are specific ways to get to that so that it’s fixed. And so once you’ve got that stuff dialed in, you don’t really have that problem anymore.

Same thing with the qualification procedure that I mentioned. When you’ve got that sort of thing in place, you can use it each time. Now you can continue to tweak it and adapt it and test it and see what’s working well and what’s working not as well.

And you can make tweaks to it. But when you’ve got these things in place and you know that they’re working, you know that you’ve got them dialed in, then you don’t have to really focus on a lot of other things.

Because once again, most sales experiences are communications between a couple of people. If you and I are talking, we’re having a sales experience, there’s a limited finite number of things that need to happen.

A lot of it is related to conversation and the way those conversations happen, but also making sure that I know what I’m doing enough to be able to respect your time, get you qualified in or out as quickly as possible, focus on those things so that I’m not wasting your time or mine.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We have so many ways to communicate now.,We’ve talked about this on other podcasts, it is crazy how many different places you can communicate with someone. Does that make it even harder for people to identify these leverage points, do you think?

David: Well, it does if you don’t recognize that there are a lot of different ways to communicate. And that you can be using more of them than you’re probably using. Once again, you want to make sure that that resonates with the people you’re interacting with.

That’s an important place to focus. So when you’re able to do that, it’s going to help you a lot. I mean, another leverage point would be things like closing the sale, right? I mean, that’s another, it’s three words, but wow, there’s a lot behind it.

But when you’ve got procedures and processes in place to deal with these things, to be able to present your best foot forward early on in the process, so you don’t have to like think about it a lot or try to wing it, it just makes everything a lot easier and better for you and your clients.

Kevin: Okay, so I own a business. I’m identifying the leverage point. I’m identifying that I need to transform it or I need to alter it in some way. Is there a general first step to being able to do that and do it efficiently?

David: Yeah. There are a number of steps, and actually that’s what we do in a lot of work with our clients is we identify the steps and we tackle each one of these in order.

We start with the targeting, the people that you’re going after, and that’s one of those changes that our clients can see an immediate result from that. Because if they’re sort of targeting anyone and everyone, and they don’t have a solid procedure for getting to the right people, they waste enormous amounts of time going after people who are not a good fit for them.

That also ties to the qualifying aspect of it. So each of these leverage points allows you to do what you do a lot better and a lot more efficiently so that it saves you a lot of time. And I imagine we’ll be talking about that in a future podcast.

Kevin: Yeah, for sure. And we’ve talked about it already a lot of times, is just the idea of qualifying good leads. Having good leads versus having, like you said, just anyone with a pulse, basically, as your ideal client.

Do you find that improving these leverage points can also help you zone in on your ideal client?

David: Well, yeah, it does all of those things. I mean, the targeting is going to help you find those ideal clients up front. Your messaging behind that is going to allow you to connect with those people faster and more efficiently.

Utilizing the right combination of marketing vehicles to reach them will also get you in touch with them more efficiently and more effectively, and in ways that they’re happy to interact with you.

When you’re qualifying them correctly and you’re doing it well upfront, that is going to make a big difference as well.

And the strategic follow up element that I mentioned, you know a lot of times people just think of follow up as follow up, but there are nuances within that.

Like there’s prequalification follow up. A lot of times, let’s say you meet somebody at a networking function, you talk to them, you exchange business cards, and you agree that you’re going to get in touch or remain in touch.

And you try to follow up with that person. Well, if you didn’t get them qualified in or out at the networking function, then the first thing you have to do, is you’ve got to follow up with them just to see if they’re qualified to continue with additional discussions.

Once that happens, when you know that somebody is qualified to interact with you, then the follow up comes to the point of providing quotes, getting feedback from them, all that sort of thing.

But that’s a different type of follow up. And once again, it’s one of those nuances that when you’re looking for leverage points, the prequalification follow up is different than the post qualification follow up, but they are both very important leverage points.

Kevin: It’s an interesting topic. I haven’t really thought of it as leverage points like this. For anyone listening who wants to kind of dive in a bit further, get some more information, what’s the best way to reach out to you?

David: I’d say the first thing to do is pick up a copy of our free PDF. You can go to TopSecrets.com/shift.

We call it our shift report. It helps you to shift some of the things in your business that you need to shift in order to get better results.

So I’d start with that, TopSecrets.com/shift.

From there, if you’d like to schedule a call with us, you’re welcome to do that as well.

Kevin: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, David. Great chatting with you as always, and we’ll see you next time.

David: Okay. Thanks a lot, Kevin.

Ready to Start Transforming the Leverage Points in Your Business?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Here's a quick message for printers and promo product distributors who would like to grow their businesses and dominate their markets starting in as little as 22 minutes a day.If you own a such a business, even if it's a small one, that may sound impossible to you, but give me just 45 seconds and I'll explain why it's not.First, it never occurs to most business owners in our industry that they could dominate their market. For that reason, they never even try.Instead, they set small goals and often struggle to achieve even those.Second, even if it DOES occur to them, they don't know how to do it. They don't know the exact steps. They don't know what to do. But with the right steps, they can start small, and grow and dominate from there.Third, 22 minutes a day. What's up with that? Well, that's the difference between doing nothing each day and doing something.Most business owners spend roughly zero minutes a day focused on market domination. So even a small amount of focus, like the sun through a magnifying glass, can make a huge difference.If you'd like to learn more, go to TopSecrets.com/22. That's TopSecrets.com/22.Ready to Start Dominating Your Market Fast?If so, download this PDF. Then check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just starting out 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.

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David: Hi, and welcome back to today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the lead quality matrix. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Good to be here. Excited to chat about this, because I don't know what you're talking about.Kevin: So what is this lead quality matrix and why is it important?David: Well, a lot of times in my work with clients, we're talking about leads. "I need more leads" and "I got to get more leads," everybody's always talking about leads, which is very important. But as we're getting these leads in the door, sometimes it's a good idea to say, "okay, well who do I actually want to bring in?"Now, in our work with clients, we are very big on qualification. We want to make sure that the leads that we bring in are being qualified as quickly as possible. Because if they're not qualified, we don't really want to spend a whole lot of time interacting with them.So when we're bringing new leads through the door, obviously we're going to try to disqualify the not so great ones in the early stages.But also when we're putting stuff out into the market, whether it's a social media post or an email or we're meeting somebody for the first time at a networking function, whatever it is, we want to try to get an idea of the quality of the lead as early in the process as possible.When I talk about the lead quality matrix, if you just sort of imagine a graph. And going across the bottom is Willingness to Communicate. Are they willing to communicate? And so the farther you go to the right, the more willing they are to communicate with you and then going up and down is money to spend. Do they have money to spend?If they have a lot of money to spend, that goes up. If they don't, it's at the bottom. So if you think of that as being the matrix. You start off in the lower left hand corner, you've got people who have no money to spend who are not communicative. That's kind of easy, right?Kevin: Yeah. Those aren't ideal.David: Right. We know what we're doing with those people. We're going to jettison them as soon as humanly possible. In the upper right, we have those who are highly communicative and who have money to spend. So what do we call those people? Like ideal clients, I would say, right, high quality leads. This is the sweet spot. This is where I want to be. This is what I'm looking for, right?Kevin: Right.David: So that's kind of obvious. What's less obvious, and in some ways more interesting is the other corners, right? If you look at some of the other corners and you say, okay here are a bunch of people who are extremely communicative. They'll communicate all day, they'll talk to you till they're blue in the face, but they have no money to spend. Huge time wasters.Many people will go to networking functions and talk to people like this for hours on end, weeks at a time, because they never take the time to just do the simple math on it and say, okay, highly communicative, unable to spend. So that's an interesting group of people.Then we have the other extreme, which is people who have a lot of money to spend, but they're just not talking to you. So if they have a lot of money to spend, if it's a big client, big company, very self-important, but they won't return your phone calls, and they won't talk to you... You decide how long you want to deal with that sort of thing.Kevin: Yeah.David: And those are just the four most extreme points. But it really is obvious when you look at it like that.Kevin: And we've all chased the white whale or whatever that has all the money and you're wanting it so bad to get them as a client. Because you know it'll be lucrative. But I don't know. Those people tend to be very difficult to deal with too if you finally do land them.David: Well, yeah, particularly if they're not communicative. I mean, we could do another grid, that has good people, bad people, right? It's a similar kind of thing. Yeah.

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When it comes to getting referrals proactively, that's another thing people do as well. They think they have to wait until they have already sold something and the client is happy. And that's not the case. I mean, when you're talking about asking about referrals, you can do that at any stage, and at every stage, I mean, ask always, right? Why not?David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the topic of getting referrals proactively. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Great to be here, David. How you been?David: Been doing great. and you?Kevin: I can't complain. I'm doing well. Yeah, this is a good one. This is a good topic because anybody in any business can get a lot from more referrals. So, why do so many businesses sit around, waiting for referrals, instead of actively generating them.David: I have no idea.Kevin: Oh, thanks for joining us..David: No, I do have an idea. Because I think we've probably all done it at one point or other over the years. The reason that I really think it's important to talk about referrals is so often, I mean, I've done presentations at trade shows all over the country and actually around the world.I mean like Australia and in Europe. I mean, I've done this with a lot of people, a lot of times over a lot of years, and very often when I talk to people and I ask them the biggest way that they grow their business, they tell me referrals.And when I hear that, I think, "okay, that's great, but how much business are you leaving on the table?"Right? Because a lot of times they are doing exactly what you just described. They're just sitting around waiting for those referrals to come in. Now, they don't say that.They won't tell you that. Right? What they'll say is, yeah, referrals. They got a lot of business from referrals. And I'm like, that's great.And when you get business as a result of referrals, just because you're doing a good job and somebody hears about you, that is wonderful. But that is also extremely reactive. So that's why we're talking about, in this podcast, the idea of doing it proactively.Because when you add that component to your referral-getting, you can very likely double or triple the results that you're getting as a result of just waiting around to see who shows up at your door.Kevin: Is it a mindset shift that needs to happen to get better at asking for referrals or feel more comfortable asking for referrals?David: It could very well be a mindset shift. It could be that it hasn't even occurred to people, right? It's like, okay, referrals are like a bonus. I get referrals. I'm happy when I get them, and I don't think about them.But when you're looking to grow proactively, you need to think in terms of all the different methods that you're using to make that happen.So if I'm doing any sort of outreach, whether it's social media, whether it's on the phone, whether it's emails, whatever it is that you're doing. You say, okay, well how can I do more of this?And when it comes to referrals, a lot of times people say, oh, well, that's when stuff comes in. But it's like the old saying, I think it was Zig Ziglar who said, don't wait for your ship to come in if you haven't sent one out. I always love that quote.Kevin: Really good.David: And so, yeah. So if you're looking to get referrals, what are you doing to make that happen? It's just like anything else.Social media. If you post something on social media and somebody responds to you, you've initiated a conversation. You don't have to wait for someone else to initiate a referral. You can do it more proactively.So yeah, I think a lot of times it doesn't really occur to people that they can really get good at doing it proactively. I do think there is a discomfort level that comes with it sometimes. I'm like, yeah, I feel funny about it. I feel weird about it. Are they going to think I don't have much business?

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Here's why tariffs aren't the problem. Because there's always someone who's buying. Sometimes it's harder to find them. Sometimes it's easier to find them. So if, as a result of tariffs or anything else, it's going to be harder to find people, we understand that. But it doesn't mean that business is over and it doesn't mean that we can just sit and stew, because that just doesn't work.David: Hi. Welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I'll be discussing the fact that tariffs are not the problem. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Good to to see you, David. How you been?David: Been doing great. Great to see you as well.Kevin: Yeah. We're talking about a topic that is in the news a little bit these days. You introduced the topic as tariffs aren't the problem. What do you mean by that?David: Yeah. I mean, if you're watching the media, you would think they are, but...Kevin: Yeah, I would say so.David: What I mean by that, and I'm not saying they're not a problem. What I'm saying is they're not THE problem. Okay, difference in the title. Tariffs aren't the problem. Okay?The reason this came up is I was having a conversation with someone in the promotional products industry who was talking about some of the issues that she was dealing with, and she mentioned the tariffs, and how the tariffs really had her very concerned.And I said, well, it's understandable because it creates a level of uncertainty that people are generally not happy with. I said,Kevin: Sure.David: How many orders have you actually lost as a result of the tariffs? And she said, well, none. I'm like, okay. Well that's a good start, right?If you haven't lost any orders so far as a result of it, that's a great way to start. And we just talked about the fact that everyone is dealing with this, everyone in the United States, anyone is dealing with this. And so, we're on an even playing field with any competitors, right? Because any competitors that we have are likely dealing with this as well.When we focus on things that are not the problem, like the thing that's actually keeping us from getting clients or getting reorders, or getting referrals, when we focus on those things, we're going to be a lot more productive in terms of being able to accomplish more things in less time, without focusing on the things that are not the immediate problem for us.Kevin: I mean, are business owners using tariffs or other external factors as as an excuse, if maybe they're having poor sales or things like that?David: Probably not consciously, I don't think they're consciously using it as an excuse. But it's easy to see it happen. And it's not just tariffs. Anytime anyone is concerned about the growth of their business, not being able to get enough new orders through the door, not able to get enough new customers through the door.Whenever they're not doing that, they're looking for reasons. And when you think of it logically, you'll look at the reasons that are actually happening. Well, what are the reasons this is happening? But when there are any sort of scapegoats in the market, people are likely to look at them, or point to them, or express concerns about them.Very often the concerns are about the things that could happen, that might happen, that could potentially happen, as opposed to what is actually slowing them down right now?Kevin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think, it's dangerous to blame outside forces, like tariffs, instead of addressing in ternal issues. Because if you do that, you're going to potentially either ignore or downplay maybe some internal issues that you might have within your company. Is that a fair assessment?David: Yeah, and it's just not productive. When we're having interactions with clients, and let's say a client does raise the issue that they have concerns about pricing or they have concerns about how tariffs are going to impact their pricing and all that sort of thin...

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It’s no fun when clients shop your ideas. If you ever came up with a brilliant idea for a promotion, only to have a prospect think it over, say they’d get back to you, but then ghost you and buy it from someone cheaper, you know the pain of being the unpaid consultant in the room.Being the brains behind a competitor’s sale is not ideal.You’re the one who did the work, thought it through, created the ideas, sourced the products, and made the recommendations only to have someone else place the order and cash the check.What’s up with that?Why are some ideas purchased immediately, while others are stolen, ghosted, shopped around, or just ignored completely?That’s what we’ll explore in today’s episode.If your best ideas keep ending up on someone else’s commission report, you may think you have a pricing problem. But it’s more likely you have a positioning problem.And it starts with the way you build out the experience of doing business with you.You're Not Just Selling Products—You're Selling a Process and an ExperienceYou already know that prospects and clients can buy promotional products from ANY of a never-ending lineup of distributors, both online and off.That’s not what sets you apart.What sets you apart is the experience you create for them, from your First Contact through every other aspect of dealing with you and your organization. This includes: The clarity you bring to the project The confidence they feel in your guidance and The relief of not having to think through all the moving parts themselvesThose are just a few of the differentiators, and none of them happen by accident.Instead, they’re the result of: The Messaging you use to position yourself as a valued resource, instead of just another product peddler. The marketing Vehicles you use to reach, impact and motivate recipients to get the desired response from them, and of course… The People you are proactively choosing to engage with. Not just anyone, but those who are less likely to shop and more likely to buy.If you don’t have those three pieces firmly dialed in: Your Messaging, your Vehicles, and your People, then the right experiences are far less likely to happen.Why the Experience You Create Beats Product Alone Every TimeLet me ask you this. What does it feel like to work with you?Years ago, salespeople had a much easier time getting away with selling features and benefits. “Here are the features of what the product is, and here are the benefits of what the product does for you.”But in the information age, that doesn’t begin to cover it.A spec sheet can do it adequately. They don’t need you for that.So what are your best clients actually buying from you?More often than not, it goes way beyond features and benefits. It also goes way beyond branded merchandise. It’s: The confidence they get from the recommendations you make The trust they have in your ability to deliver what you promise The experience they have when interacting with youUltimately, it’s the emotion they feel as you bring all that together for them, taking the stress off their plate and knowing you’ll make them look like a star to their target audience.It’s very difficult to shop that, because so few businesses deliver it consistently.But that’s what they’re buying from you. Clarity. Confidence, and Certainty.If your messaging doesn’t communicate that, then your value is invisible.Without that, you end up with people asking for ideas, shopping them around, and awarding the business to the lowest bidder.Not Every Prospect Wants or Needs Your Full Process, and That’s OKOf course, not every prospect needs a full consulting experience.Some just want a quote on a pen. Others want pricing on 50 business cards. Still others will just ask you to put together your best ideas and tell you they’ll get back to you.All of that comes with the territory.

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Want to stop undercharging and get paid what you're worth? In our last episode, we talked about the dangerous disconnect between effort and results. How being busy isn’t the same as being profitable, and why aligning your actions with your outcomes is the only sustainable way to grow.But what happens when you do align your actions…You do deliver real value…And you’re still not making what you feel you're worth?That’s what we’re getting into today. It's a big blind spot related to pricing and undercharging.So if you already know your work is worth more than what you’re charging for it, this episode could be the game-changer you didn’t even know you needed.The Hidden Problem: Undercharging Isn’t Just About NumbersMost business owners don’t consciously undercharge for their services.No one wakes up in the morning thinking, “How can I leave money on the table today?”But undercharging is not usually about neglect. It’s also not about generosity.More often than not, undercharging is related to fear. Fear of losing to lowball competitors. Fear of being seen as too expensive or greedy. Fear of not getting the order.It's also about perception: Their own perception, and the market’s perception.Many people base their pricing on what they think their clients can afford… or what competitors are charging… or worse, what a particularly cheap prospect once told them they were worth.But consider this:Pricing isn’t just math. It’s strategy.If your price doesn’t reflect your expertise, your results, and the transformation you create for your clients, it’s not just undervaluing your work.It’s sending your market a message that says: “The work I do isn’t really worth all that much.”Your Pricing = Your Market PositionIn business, price signals value.So when you charge like a commodity, you get treated like a commodity. And when you price like a strategic partner, you tend to get treated like one.It’s not just about numbers, it’s about how your prospects and clients see you.Are you the kind of person they value and are grateful to work with?Or are you just someone they’re trying to squeeze for discounts?That gap often comes down to three things that many business owners tend to overlook: How they define their work. Who they present it to. What they allow themselves to charge for it.It’s not about buzzwords or branding jargon. It’s about clarity. Are you describing your work in a way that makes prospects lean in or glaze over? Are you putting it in front of people who already get the value—or those who need convincing? And are you pricing it in a way that honors the transformation you deliver… or just typical industry pricing?In a free market system, everyone gets to set their own pricing. We all get to decide.By saying this, I’m not suggesting you should overcharge for the products and services you offer. I’m just encouraging you to consider what your time, effort, and life energy are worth to you when calculating your prices.Clients Are Willing to Pay More When They Understand WhyYou already know that in every market, there are price-shoppers who always make their buying decisions based solely on price.They’ll get ten quotes. That means ten people will do all the work of pricing out the job, only to lose that order to the one person who is willing to work for the least amount of money.Are those the people you want to be basing your pricing on?Another important consideration is that in every market, there are always people who are willing to pay more.You just need to target them, know what to say to them, and be able to reach them effectively.That’s the essence of the monetization strategy that is missing from most businesses. So when you have it, and others don’t, you win.When providing a reason for your ideal clients to choose you, it can’t be the usual, “we do great work.”

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Busy doesn't equal profitable. We got a lot of great feedback from our last episode, in which we talked about how many business owners still cling to outdated methods that used to work, but don’t work anymore.We addressed the hard truth that more of the wrong activity won’t fix a broken approach.We looked at the reasons typical performers feel stuck, waiting things out, hoping for a turnaround that may never come…And we pointed out how smart, focused professionals adapt and move forward now, in a way that differentiates them from less-profitable, average businesses.Today, I’d like to pick up that conversation by talking about one of the biggest sources of frustration that I hear from business owners and salespeople across the board:Why am I working so hard and still not making enough money?If you're grinding all day, doing "everything you're supposed to do," but still not seeing results, you’re not lazy, and you’re not crazy.But it’s likely you got caught in a trap that drains your time, energy, and income.I’m talking about…The Effort Trap: Busy ≠ ProfitableAt one time or another, we’ve probably all bought into the idea that if we just work harder, the results will come.More hours, calls, emails, and outreach.In some cases, it works. But not always.More effort does not automatically equal more income. Sometimes it just means more exhaustion.You can do all the things you think you need to do: chase leads, follow up, create quotes, juggle accounts and still feel stuck.Because it’s not always about how much you’re doing.It can also be about how well you do those things, and how well you communicate your value.Effort alone doesn’t create income.So it’s not just actions that create value in the eyes of your clients, and revenue for your business. Only aligned actions can do that.When that alignment is missing? You can work 24/7 doing everything you think you need to do, and still come up short in the money department.The Illusion of Progress: Mistaking Motion for MomentumAnd that leads into the second trap—the illusion of progress.This is where the to-do list becomes a badge of honor, and the packed calendar provides a false sense of security.It feels productive, but at the end of the month, you still might not have enough in the bank.Because movement alone is not progress.It’s like the rocking chair, or the hamster wheel. It may keep you moving, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.Same thing with being busy. It doesn’t guarantee forward momentum.And that can be extremely demoralizing.You’re checking all the boxes, showing up, doing the work… and you may still feel stuck in the same place.That’s where burnout sets in, doubts creep in, and even really good people can start to wonder whether all of it is worthwhile.Because even when you do great work, you still might not get paid based on your worth.Value vs. Revenue: When Great Work Goes UnrecognizedLet’s say you’re someone who’s not just spinning your wheels.You’re producing results, making your clients happy, and solving real problems for them.If your income still isn’t where you feel it needs to be, it’s one of the most frustrating disconnects in business:Doing valuable work… but not being paid in proportion to that value.There’s a reason this happens.It’s because the market doesn’t reward effort. And it doesn’t always reward value.In fact, it’s more likely to reward perceived value and perceived results.Meaning, that If your clients don’t understand the value you provide, and the results you create for them, then your revenue can still fall short of your value.It’s not a reflection of your talent or the work you do. It’s a reflection of how your prospects and clients perceive that value.And much of that is about your communication.The Strategic Shift: Replace Hustle with Alignment

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Time for a shift in your business? There was a period of time when getting print and promotional product clients was a lot easier.People loved and appreciated your work. They answered and returned your phone calls. They placed orders proactively. Sometimes they even referred enough new clients that your customer base practically grew all by itself. Sounds like a fantasy! But does that still happen?It can. But nowadays? Not so much...Today, too many people in our industry are fighting against reality. They're pounding away on activities that used to work, but don't work anymore. Instead of changing their actions, they blame the prospects, or the marketing method, or the economy, or the tariffs.You'll see them complaining in industry groups, saying things like "People aren't answering their phones." "Social media's a waste of time." "No one's returning phone calls." "Networking events are worthless." "This economy stinks!"And while people may be experiencing those things, the people who are making money in our industry right now are not doing any of that. They know that all the whining, blame-shifting and scape-goating is not going to fix problems that are partially caused, at least,  by taking wrong or ineffective actions that no longer work.So instead, they're adapting their approach, refocusing their efforts, eliminating ineffective tactics, and engaging in the tested, proven, strategic methods that work right now.You know, the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be is not going to magically fill itself. And you can't count on the actions that used to fill those gaps to continue to do so in the future. Because they won't. They can't. It is literally impossible.Of course, very few motivated people will sit around willingly and do nothing, as the things that used to work for them continue to lose their effectiveness. But very often, they just double down and try to do more of it with brute force effort. Putting in more time, more energy, making more calls, and overcoming more objections, while continuing to fall behind.It's exhausting to watch, and it's even more exhausting if you have to do it!So why doesn't that work?Because taking ineffective actions more aggressively does not create the results you want.Yes, in business, particularly when you're facing challenges, speed of implementation is critical. But that only works when you're taking the right actions in the right order.Doing the wrong things faster won't get you to your goal. It's like speeding off in a racecar that's going in the wrong direction.So while TYPICAL businesses try to fix the problem by running faster, working longer, pushing harder, and sacrificing more -- to try to make the hamster wheel turn faster, and faster, and faster, while still getting them nowhere -- smart, focused business owners are changing their approach to suit the times.You probably already know that if your business is struggling, and you don't change your approach, your results cannot possibly change. It's like Einstein's definition of insanity, doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result. And since so much has changed in such a short period of time, you can't even expect the things that DID work well -- even a few months ago -- to work well now.So what do you do?Well, it's likely that if you knew what changes to make -- if you knew exactly what to do, and exactly how to fix it -- you would have done it by now, right? Because, who wouldn't?What I'm talking about today is not for the majority of typical business owners who are just going to sit it out, wait it out, or worse yet, whine it out on social media.It's also not for average performers who take average actions to create average results. That's going to happen by default. When things get tough, average sales inevitably decline.Those of us who have been through these cycles before?

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Arguing with reality in business is a huge waste of time. If you've got clients who are in that head space where they're sort of scared, they're not quite sure what to do next. If you call them and you're in that same head space, then you're not helpful to them. But if you call them with some thoughts or ideas on how you can help them to accomplish the things they want to accomplish, now you have value, and they're going to be happy to talk to you.They're going to want to talk to you because they understand that you may have the solution to some of the problems they're facing.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I ask the question, are you stuck arguing with reality? Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Good to see you, David. Normally, I feel like I'm stuck arguing with virtual reality these days. With Chat GPT or the like. What are we talking about when you say "argue with reality?"David: We touched on this in a previous podcast, and it's a quote that I heard from Byron Katie. She wrote a book called Loving What Is, and she had this quote in there where she said, "Whenever I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time."And I loved that quote because it just seemed so completely true.Anytime we argue with whatever is actually happening, whatever's going on in the world, whenever we argue with that reality, we lose.And if you go to social media, any social media platform, you will find millions of people, every day, arguing with reality.They'll be talking about things they have no control over, that they wish weren't the case. And you can waste so much life doing this, that I thought it would be good for us to have a conversation about it.Kevin: Well, we talked a little bit about controlling what you can control and accepting what you can't control, so it kind of fits into the same category. And it feels like we tend to resist what's happening, instead of adapting to it. Is that fair to say?David: Yeah. I think a lot of people do that, and not that we're even doing it intentionally. A lot of times we don't even consider this idea of what is reality versus what am I looking at on a day-to-day basis?We tend to go into experiences, whether it's conversations with people, whether it's posting something on social media or replying to someone on social media, doing any of these things, and we just feel like we're having a conversation and we don't necessarily take into consideration what are the things that are just real and true, that I might be arguing against, right?Kevin: Mm-hmm.David: So when people go online, particularly now, and they're on there and they're talking about tariffs and all the terrible things that are going to be happening to their business, I look at that and I'm like, okay, well, the tariffs, that's true. The uncertainty in the market, that's true.Everyone is dealing with that. But if I talk about that without looking for solutions, without looking for the ways to get around those problems, then why am I even doing it? Isn't that not just wasting time, but wasting our lives and other people's lives?Kevin: Mm-hmm. What other ways, you know, we mentioned tariffs, there's plenty of big stuff out there that's happening that affects the business world.But as far as, you know, just getting into the sales process, the business process, what other ways do you find that people argue with reality?David: Ghosting. Sales in general? Cold calling. I mean, every aspect of sales requires us to deal with different aspects of reality every single time. Right?"These people won't call me back." Okay. That may be a reality with those people.Another part of reality though, is that there are people who will call you back. There are prospects who are responsive. There are people who need to buy your products and services right now.All of those things are also true.

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We'll say things like, "oh man, there's just so much going on. I'm so busy. I'm just busy, busy, busy every day." When you're saying that sort of thing, it's a strong indication that you've got a bunch of unfinished business. You've got open loops, and maybe you're not capturing it.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I will be discussing the topic of no more unfinished business. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Good to see you, David. How you been?David: Been doing great. And you?Kevin: Good, good. So unfinished business. What do you mean when you say that?David: Well, I learned this somewhere, a number of years ago, and when I first heard, I was like, "oh man, this is me."They were talking about the fact that in business there are starters and there are finishers. And very often they're not the same person. Right? There are some people who are very good at starting projects and other people who are very good at finishing them. A lot of entrepreneurs, and some salespeople as well, are very good at starting projects.We're all excited and we're very happy to dive in, and then we tend to lose interest as we go.Kevin: Mm-hmm.David: And what that creates is a lot of unfinished things all around. And when you've got these unfinished things, they weigh on you. Right?And so when I talk about the idea of no more unfinished business, what I'm saying is that we should look at the things that are out there, that are stuck in the back of our minds. It's like, "I know I need to do that. I know I need to finish it. I haven't done it yet, but I don't feel like it," or whatever it is that's keeping us from getting it done.Kevin: Is it possible that you need to look at it and say were these things really that important in the first place?David: That's a great way to approach it. Right? Because there are things you just say, you know what? I started that, but no, that's not worthwhile.Kevin: There's a reason I didn't finish it. Yeah.David: Exactly. And it's good to eliminate that sort of thing. Whenever you're able to do that. If there's something that you're working on, you decide, look, this is not generating the results I'm looking for.Yes. Just make sure that you don't cancel it because you don't feel like doing it, right? You got to cancel it for the right reasons. If you're going to eliminate it, make sure that you evaluated it first.One of the things that I've talked about a lot in terms of just the things that we do in our projects is looking at things, I refer to it as the RADD method, RADD.It stands for Remove, Automate, Delegate, or Do. Okay, so we start with the R. Remove.And there's a reason these are actually in this order, which I'd nearly forgotten. But the reason is that if you do it in this order, you're going to end up a lot better off. If you start by removing the things that don't have to be done, then wow, that's a big relief.You're able to, essentially,Kevin: Your list just got smaller. Yeah, yeah.David: Yeah. You just eliminate it before it even becomes a problem, so that's the first step. You basically remove it.Second step is if you can automate it, right? If it's something that can be automated, then you don't have to do it. You don't have to have anyone else do it, and it will happen automatically going forward.So simple things like email autoresponders can allow you to create responses to something once and then have them happen again and again and again. So anything that can be automated, ideally should be automated.Third step is delegating. Can I delegate this to someone else? Can I delegate it to someone else in my organization? To a virtual assistant? Can somebody else do this effectively?And then the fourth one the second D is Do it. Then you actually do it. And if you go through this in that order, you remove things first. You automate them second,

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I've been having conversations over the past couple of weeks about this very topic of creating certainty in uncertain times. So much of it boils down to the specific steps I can put in place in my business. Reach out to the right people, say the right things, in the right order, consistently. That will not only improve your confidence in yourself. It will improve their confidence in you and their certainty that you can do the job for them.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing creating certainty in uncertain times. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Great to see you again, David. Wow, uncertain times. There's an understatement of the year, huh?David: Yeah. There's been so much discussion on the forums and inside the social media groups and everything like that. A lot of people are uncertain about a lot of things, and that does not generally bode well for businesses.Kevin: No, no, it definitely doesn't. So what does it really mean to create certainty? When everything around you feels unstable.David: Yeah. We had talked in a previous podcast about our circles of influence. Like the things we can control and the things we can't. It really does circle back in a lot of ways to this.When we talk about creating certainty, we can only ever do that within the realms that we control. We can create certainty in specific aspects of our business.So when we're talking about things like tariffs, which obviously is a big topic these days, a lot of our clients are in the promotional products industry, and a lot of that product tends to come from overseas. Much of it is coming from China.So in those situations, we're not able to create certainty with that, right? That's not within our sphere of influence. So what we can do and what our clients can do is to look at the specific things we can create certainty around.Can we identify suppliers who are can provide products for us that are not impacted by that?Can we look at more domestic suppliers? What are the specific things we can do to create a level of certainty for our customers? Something our competitors might not be able to provide?Kevin: And I think there's a level of authenticity too that has to go with it, right? Because certainty you can sort of project certainty. but you don't want to pretend to have all the answers when you don't. So how do you balance that?David: Yeah, you can't really fake certain, well, I guess you can fake certainty.Kevin: You can try. Yeah,David: You can pretend you're certain, but I'm not really talking about that.I think there's certainly an air of confidence that you want to be able to convey to your clients, and sometimes when you're conveying confidence, you may still not be certain about things.But in this conversation, I'd like to look at, okay, what are the things that we can do? What can we be certain of? You know, are we certain that we can help our clients? And if so, how are we certain that we can help our clients?What are the things that we know that we can do that will help them? And if it's about sourcing things that are more in line with exactly what they're looking for, trying to get around the obstacles for our clients.If we're certain we can do those types of things. Just identifying the very specific steps that we can take, what can we be certain about, and then focus on those things.Kevin: You mentioned that, a lot of our listeners are in the promotional product space. There's still a lot of uncertainty that's coming our way. A lot of flipping and flopping going on with tariffs and whatnot. What do you recommend businesses do to sort of like help prep?David: Well, first thing you should do is recognize that your clients are not unaware of this. Like they are aware of the fact that this stuff's going on.Kevin: Right.David: And I've talked to a lot of business owners recently who are just really conc...

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Anytime there is any sort of issue in your business that’s not quite going the way it should, don't sabotage your sales success. Instead, just ask yourself, is this because the process that I have in place is not working? Or is it because the person who is supposed to be following the process just didn’t do it?David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and will be discussing How Businesses Sabotage their Sales. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Good to see you, David. How you been?David: Been doing great. It's good to see you too.Kevin: Yeah, for sure. I'm excited to talk about this. So, sabotaging sales, what do you mean by that, when you say businesses are sabotaging their sales?David: You know, I had some experiences recently and I'm like, did they intend to do this? Is this what they were trying to do? Did they set out to do this when they were doing it. One of the experiences I had recently was I was going to buy a pair of earbuds, right?And there's a particular brand of earbuds that I like. It's not the ones that would normally leap to mind. It's another one. But a good brand, they work really well. And I got a text from them saying that they were having a sale. And I was like, okay, cool. Maybe I'll buy an extra pair of earbuds even though I don't need them.And so in the link that they sent me, they said, click through and you get 35% off. I'm like, cool. So I click through the link and it takes me to a picture of what I think are the earbuds that they're selling, and it says 20% off, with a certain promo code.And I'm like, okay, well I'm looking for the 35% off, but there was a different promo code in the text, so I'm like, okay, I'll just plug the correct promo code and it'll work. Right?So finally figured out how to do that. No, it said this is not applicable to this particular product. So I'm like, okay. But they had some sort of chat person or chat being or chat AI, I don't know what it was.Kevin: Chat AI agent. Yeah.David: Yeah. Something not quite what I thought it might be, but. I thought, okay, well I'll ask the question. And none of the answers that I got were relevant to what I was asking. And I was like, I'm here. I've got my wallet open.Kevin: I'm ready to buy!David: I want to buy exactly the thing that you sent me a text to, and you're making it hard. Why are you making it so hard?Kevin: Yeah.David: And it replied quickly to a lot of questions and then, it was just like ghosting. It's like, okay, I didn't hear anything back. So I'm like, I'm like, are you AI? And I didn't get an answer. I thought if it was AI, it would at least tell me it was AI.So, I didn't get to order that day. The next day I tried again. I actually reached out to their customer support, had another non-experience there. But eventually I was able to figure out that apparently there were two sets of this earbud in a similar color, and the link took you to the wrong one and applied the wrong link. And so that's why it was saying it was wrong.And I didn't care about the color. I was like, I wouldn't have normally bought this color, but it was 35% off, so I was like...Kevin: Yeah, yeah, whatever.David: Right.Kevin: Earbuds.David: Anyway, long story short is what should have taken three to five minutes and been an exceptional experience took a whole lot longer and diminished my passion for this particular product.So I thought, you know, there are a lot of businesses that do this sort of thing, and the words that leap to my mind is that they're sabotaging their own sales, which is kind of the purpose of this conversation.Not for me to vent, but for us to talk about what businesses can do about it.Kevin: Well, I'm glad you got that off your chest, David.David: Thanks.Kevin: It's probably something you needed to do.David: I feel a lot better.Kevin: Good, good, good. Well,

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It's not always easy to get information from clients. If you're in a situation where you have good relationships with your clients, but you're struggling to get the information you need from them, there are very specific things that you can do that will help you to accomplish that a lot faster and a lot more organically. It'll just feel better when you're doing it right, and they'll be a lot more likely to help you with it.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing getting information out of clients. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Hey, welcome back to you too. I'm really excited to talk about this because let's be honest, like we're all very conscious of the fact that everyone wants our information, so it's a bit of a struggle sometimes.David: Yeah, it really is. And when we're looking at trying to extract information from clients, sometimes it's like trying to pull teeth. Or trying to get the information that we need to either advance the sale or to be able to get an order completed and that sort of thing. And it can definitely be challenging.Kevin: Yeah, no doubt. How much of it do you think is how people ask for the information? Instead of saying like, give me this. Is it better to kind of think about it in more of a storytelling narrative kind of way to pull things out?David: That's a great question. I think a lot of it depends on your personality and the way that you communicate with people.Many salespeople, many of the best salespeople, I think are natural storytellers. You ask them what time it is and it starts with a story. Right? So...Kevin: Well, it all started back when I was eight.David: Let's talk about time, shall we?Kevin: Yeah.David: Yeah, so I think it can take that form. I think there are also situations, a lot of times, where we know what we need to get from them, and sometimes if we're just going for it all the time, that can come across as a little too pushy in some ways.So I think there's a natural give and take that needs to happen, so that people can feel engaged with us.If they feel engaged in the conversation, if they feel that we're listening to them, paying attention to what they need, and that's woven in with getting the next piece of information that I need without coming across like an interrogator.Like I'm going to shine a light on you. It's like the third degree in the cop movies. Right? If it feels like that, they're gone.But when you're able to just engage them and let them know that you care about getting them a result, then they're a lot more likely to be free with the information.Kevin: Obviously at the front end of a sales cycle, it's more basic information and it keeps going, getting more detailed as things go on. Should people change their approach as they go on from first contacting someone to maybe having a warm or even hot lead?David: Definitely, and I think you raised exactly the right point there, which is that it does generally start out more general and then it gets more and more specific as you're getting down to it.Sometimes salespeople will lead with things like, what's your budget? Right? Which is kind of intrusive, right?Kevin: Yeah. That's the one, right?David: You don't need to ask me about my budget if I'm not buying anything from you, right?Kevin: Yeah, yeah. What's your budget? What's your timeline? Right? Isn't that what everybody always says first?David: Yeah. And that's not the kind of thing that generally needs to come first.Initially, what needs to happen is they need to feel some sort of connection. They need to have a clear idea of what you do, how you can help them, and all that sort of thing.So I think a lot of times, in the early stages of a relationship when we're first meeting a prospect, it is information gathering from us, but it's about trying to find out what they need, what they're looking for,

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When we discuss a step-by-step approach to the sales process, we're taking a scientific approach, which most people don't do. They just keep going out there and getting in front of people, smiling and dialing, whatever it is they're doing. And when you take a more strategic approach, you just get far more consistent results.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing a step-by-step process to the sales approach. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Great to see you, David. Excited to talk about this.David: Yeah, it's great to see you as well. This actually came up because I saw this question going through a Facebook group. I thought it's an interesting topic because everybody's got their own idea of what that is, what that should be, and very few people actually have what they would describe as a step-by-step approach to the sales process, which I believe is critical if you want to be able to create consistent results.Kevin: Why is it you think that people don't implement a step-by-step process? Is it just because they just like to shoot from the hip a little bit more or what is the reasoning?David: Well, there are a lot of salespeople who do just like to go with the flow and they go with the conversation and everything like that.And there are some people who can do that extremely well.Kevin: Sure.David: But my feeling is that even those who can do that extremely well are essentially harming themselves, by not having at least a framework that they go back to again and again and again, so that when prospects or clients inevitably get them derailed, they know exactly where to come back to so that they're not missing any steps.That's why I think having the sales process in place is pretty important.Kevin: Obviously, there's no universal sales approach for every industry because you know every industry is a little different, so how can a business lay out a good step-by-step sales approach that is suitable for what they do?David: Great question. So in our business, one of the things that we help our clients with is exactly this. And a lot of our clients are in the print and promotional products industries, but this also applies to any other B2B business. It actually applies to a B2 C business. I haven't really found an industry where it doesn't apply.And so when we initially laid this out in a program called Top Secrets of Customer Acquisition, we basically laid out six steps to customer acquisition. I'll put up a graph here to sort of demonstrate it as we're going through.But the first step that we've identified is the targeting. Who exactly is it that I'm going to go after? Because if I don't know who I'm targeting, I've got no one to sell to.I've got to have a really crystal clear idea of who the people are that I would like to go after. And so for me it always starts with that, who is it that I want to sell to?Kevin: And in this day and age, we have so much data, we have so much information that there shouldn't be any reason you can't figure out that pretty precise target.David: Exactly, and a lot of times people want to feel like they sell to everybody. But the problem is that, as the saying goes, if you feel like you're selling to everybody, you're probably not selling to anyone.Because people don't always get it. They don't resonate with something unless they feel like the messaging is actually directed toward them.So, it's a really good idea to. target small, Aim small, miss small, as they said in the movie the Patriot, right? Aim small, miss small.You want to be able to do that with your targeting because when you do that, you can be more consistent in what you're saying to the people that you're approaching.It'll make a lot more sense to them, and you'll be able to get a lot more traction with what you're doing.Kevin: All right, so after targeting the right people, what's next?

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What are the things you can control in your business? What are the things that we can look at? Identifying the very specific companies, the very specific industries that we need to be able to interact with, to be able to get our customers as close to what they need as possible.We might not be able to get them exactly what they want at the price they want it. But most of them are going to understand that. Most clients are not going to blame you for the fact that the economy is doing certain things, or that there are things happening in the world.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, cohost Kevin Rosenquist and I will be discussing focusing on things you can control. Welcome back, Kevin.Kevin: Hey, it's great to be here, David. I always am a big preacher around the house of "control what you can control." You know, I can't do everything. So control what you can control. So I'm excited to talk about this.David: Yeah, it's a really good topic, both from a personal standpoint and from a business standpoint. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day of what's going on outside our own environments. Especially with the news. Everybody's talking about different things that are happening regarding the economy, the stock market, all kinds of things that are happening.When we focus too much on the things that are outside of our control, we basically abdicate the things we can work on that move the needle for us.Kevin: Do you feel like people are even more focused on stuff they can't control? Like what's happening in the world and in the news now because of how much news is thrown at us in so many different ways with social media and whatnot?David: I think so. Yeah. I think it's always been like this. But yes, it does seem to be more of an epidemic lately, than maybe it has been in the past.I remember being exposed to this concept, I think it was in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.Stephen Covey was talking about your sphere of influence.Kevin: Mm-hmm.David: Where you basically draw a circle and you say, okay, inside this circle is what I can control. And everything outside. It is what I can't control, which is basically the world and everything else. Right.Kevin: Which is, which is a lot of stuff.David: It is a lot of stuff. If this is the circle, then everything outside the circle off into infinity is the stuff you can't control. Exactly.In a situation like that, the more you focus inside your sphere of influence, the bigger it gets.So when you're focusing on the things that you have control of, you end up having control of more things.When you focus your attention outside the sphere of influence, the smaller it gets. That's because you're not working on the things you can actually control.And so for those of us in business... When we are able to really pay attention to that, you can grow your sphere of influence. You can control more of your own environment to accomplish the things you're looking to accomplish.Kevin: Absolutely. So let 's get a little specific here. Let's talk about sales for a second. 'cause one of the things I think about with sales is that sales teams can get really tied up with market conditions and what competitors are doing and all that.How can sales teams kind of focus on what they can directly influence.David: That is such a brilliant example because it's so true. In sales meetings very often you'll have conversations. "Well, this person's doing this, or this person's doing that. Or these people are cutting their price." It's all valid.Those are all things that may actually be happening in the marketplace that we have to respond to.But the first thing to do in that situation is to say, how can we flip the script on this?How can we turn this into something that we can do that is going to be better, different, and received by the market in a way that makes what they're doing less important...

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We'd love to help you to get from here to there in terms of eliminating waste in your business. When you're focused on getting those things done and when you've got processes and procedures in place to allow you to accomplish it more quickly, then everything gets a whole lot better.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing eliminating waste in your business. Welcome, Kevin.Kevin: Great to see you. David. Excited to be here.David: I'm excited to have you here.Kevin: Yeah, so we're talking waste, obviously waste in business. There's different kinds of waste.A lot of people will immediately think of money, but that's not really what we're talking about, is it?David: Well, some of what we're talking about, I guess. Yeah. There's been a lot of talk about finding and eliminating waste in the news. So I thought, how does that really apply when you're operating a business?Kevin: Mm-hmm.David: Anyone in business, particularly small to medium sized businesses, must be aware of the fact that there is always likely to waste in the business.And as you pointed out, I mean, very often it starts with money. We're afraid that we might be wasting money, and in many cases we are.Kevin: Sure.David: But for most businesses who are reasonably run well, that's usually not the biggest thing.Kevin: What would you say is the biggest thing, or can you give me like your top three?David: Okay, sure. Yeah. I think for most of us it probably starts with time.Kevin: Yeah.David: Because the time that we waste is something that we can never get back.I think I heard Brian Tracy say this years ago. If you lose money, you can always make more, but if you run out of time, that's it. All the money in the world won't help you. That's pretty much how it went.Kevin: Yeah. I mean, there's no going back. So far they haven't figured out a way.David: No. We have not figured out a way to do that.So when we look at our days, weeks or even hours, we look at things like meetings. Are our meetings productive?Are our processes organized or disorganized? What are the distractions like during the course of a day? Because when we're focusing on one thing and then we're distracted and we have to switch back and forth, it requires flipping the switches in our brains and getting ourselves adjusted to the new thing that we're thinking about.All of those things consume time, which is, in many cases, even worse than money when we start wasting it.Kevin: You brought up a good one, meetings. And I think that's something, especially in this day and age of Zoom calls and all that stuff. I have a lot of friends who are in the corporate world or in the business world, and they talk about the needless meetings, the constant need for them, for people to feel like you got to get the crew together.Why are small businesses and medium sized businesses so focused on that and how can they like pull back?David: Yeah, it's a great question. I think there are some people who just feel like it's necessary. I think there are some business owners, some managers who feel like their presence in everyone's day-to-day life is criticalKevin: Right.David: And that's true more of some people than others. Some employees are happy to be able to just do their own thing and get everything done. Others do need more interaction.So it is an individual kind of thing. I think most business owners have to take a look at that and say, how much of me do they need? How much of their sales managers do they need?But being aware of the fact that each time we force everyone to get together, the clock is running. The clock's running on everyone. And when you have a bunch of people on one meeting, that means that all those people are tied up for that period of time.And if it's not productive for everyone on that meeting or in that meeting,

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If we look at the idea of reactivating your client base in as many ways as possible, it means interacting with the people who have spent the money with us and doing that at a personal level, building the relationship, that’s about the best thing we can do.David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing reactivating your client base. Welcome Jay.Jay: It’s good to be here. You know, it’s funny. I hear this everywhere I go now. If I watch Shark Tank or anything else, I hear this term CAC. You know, what is your CAC? And it’s your customer acquisition cost.And I have to believe that your CAC, for a customer you’ve already worked with, has got to be lower than trying to bring in a brand new customer. Am I right?David: Oh, absolutely. And I think instinctively as business people, we probably already know this. We’ve probably heard it a hundred times, but the purpose of this discussion is not to have you hear it again. The purpose of this discussion is to ask, “are you doing this?” And if so, how well are you doing this? How much better could you be doing this?Because as you pointed out, once you’ve invested that money to acquire a customer, now you want to be able to leverage that relationship as much as possible to provide them with additional help, additional solutions so that you can generate the revenue. They can get the results they’re looking for, and you’re not spending more money to attract people. You’re able to just expand the relationships that you have with the people who you’ve already acquired that first time.Jay: Yeah. And I think it’s disappointing if you spent that money for customer acquisition and then you don’t have a system to retain them or keep them online. And so now it’s almost like you’re spending the same money twice. If you’re trying to get them back again.David: Right. Yes. And so when we think about reactivation, there are a couple of aspects to it. One is just people who haven’t bought from you in a little while, to touch base with them again, to reengage those people and to see what they want, what they need. Essentially, requalifying them to find out where they are in that process.Are they ready to buy more things? Do they have a date in mind when they want to buy? Are they ready to go now? Or are they just not ready to do anything? Are they sort of disqualified for the moment? Are they unresponsive to you?Because they’ll generally fall into one of those five categories. They’re either ready to buy. They have dates in mind when they want to buy. They’re open to the idea, but not sure when. Or they’re disqualified, or they’re not responsive.When you are able to go back and sort of requalify your existing clients, you can reactivate the ones who are ready to go now. You can schedule the ones who know when they want to go next. And the ones who are generally receptive, you can just stay in touch.Jay: Yeah. Or what about the ones who were disappointed, but they didn’t take the time. Right? So many customers will never tell you that they had a bad experience. They just move on and…David: Yeah.Jay: you had no idea. So you’re not improving your customer service and your chance of reviving that customer is very low.David: Yeah. And that’s an excellent point, too. Because as you indicated, if you don’t know that, but you’re reaching out to them to see how you can help next, and you find out about that problem, then at least you have the possibility of restoring the relationship, if not doing anything about the previous order.Jay: Yeah. So what are we talking about here? Like good drip campaigns? Is that kind of where you would start? So you’re in constant contact? What do you think is the best way to go about this?David: Well, I do think it starts with engaging your people. You can engage your people in a lot of different ways. It can be done via email with a drip campaign.

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There are reasons people buy from you, and reasons they don't buy from you. Today I'd share a presentation I put together for my clients in the print and promotional products industry that reveals many reasons why clients don't buy from you, and the one solution that addresses them all.Hi and welcome to today's presentation Why Promo Clients Don't Buy from You and the One Solution that Addresses Them All.I am so happy to have you with me today. This is a topic I find extremely interesting and extremely powerful. It's information that I've shared with my Inner Circle clients and our Total Market Domination clients. But I wanted to give you just sort of an overview of some of the things that you might be addressing. And when you address them correctly, you can actually create amazing solutions inside your business.So with that said, let's take a look at why promo clients don't buy from you, and then what we can do about it.Well, first of all, why don't they buy from you? One of the first, primary reasons that people don't buy from you is that they have no idea that you're alive. If they don't know you're alive, they can't buy from you.Next is that they don't know what you do.Obviously, if people have no idea of what you do, they're not going to come to you for solutions. This also ties into the next one, which is that they don't know how you can help them. If they have absolutely no idea how you can help them, no one is going to seek you out.Sometimes they may know you're alive, they may know what you do, they may know how you can help them, but they don't yet trust you.Another reason is that they don't know if they should trust you. Even if they can, they might not know if they should.Many of your prospects aren't going to know why you're different, and if they don't know why you're different from what they already have, or what they've already tried, then they have no incentive to try you.Next, they don't know if they can afford you. Obviously, they're not going to know what you charge or any of the above until you first overcome the problems that we addressed earlier.They won't take your calls. Obviously, if people aren't going to take your calls, then you're not going to be able to sell to them.Same thing if they won't return your calls. If you're calling people again and again and again, and they don't return your calls, they're not going to be able to buy from you.Next we have, "they already have someone." Have you ever heard that one?The answer, of course, is yes, you've probably heard that quite a lot, unless you have not been in business very long.They view you as a commodity. In the promotional products industry, this is relatively easy to do, because they look at it and they say, "Okay, if everybody has access to the same products and services, then why should I choose you?" Right?And one of the problems is that many distributors don't have a good answer to this either. If you don't know why they shouldn't view you as a commodity, you can't convey it to them, and so they're never going to know either.They're on social media and you're not. I've heard distributors tell me this. The reason they won't buy from me is that they're on social media and I'm not. I can't reach them. Okay, we'll talk about that, but the reverse is also true.They're not on social media and you are. "Oh yeah, they're not on social media. I'm trying to reach them and I can't." This is true. It's objectively true. If either of those scenarios are the case, if you're on social media and they're not, or they're on social media and you're not, then yes, you're not going to be able to reach them there and get those customers to buy from you.They don't know if your recommendations are any good. How can they possibly know that until you have an opportunity to really communicate with them?They don't know if your recommendations are going to work for them.

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Disrupting sales relationships is tricky. When you go into a sales presentation, if you recognize that it's likely they're going to have someone, and if you've got an arsenal of responses that you can come back with to demonstrate to them why you are obviously the better choice, then they're going to be a lot more likely to at least give you a shot at that business, than if you don't have those things in place.David: Hi, and welcome back in today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of disrupting sales relationships. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, David. It's a pleasure as always. I don't want to do it.  Don't want to disrupt sales processes. I refuse. Don't want to do it.David: Okay. I refuse to participate. Yeah, it's a tough one. The word disrupt is a tough word. But the reality of the situation is that when we're approaching a new prospect, a new client, and that person already has a business relationship, perhaps with a competitor of ours -- the only way that we're even going to get a shot at that business is if we can, in some way, disrupt the existing sales relationship.Now, I'm not talking about trying to drive a wedge between people. I'm not talking about anything nefarious. I'm just talking about the idea that to disrupt an established sales relationship, particularly one that is going reasonably well, requires you to be significantly better and different than the option that they're already looking at.Jay: Yeah, I agree. and I think that this starts way ahead of trying to disrupt any particular process that's going on right now. We've talked about, in the past, do you know your competitors at all? Do you know their sales process? I mean, how would you disrupt anything if you didn't know the process of what was going on?David: Yeah, exactly. And if you think in terms of business relationships versus personal relationships, when you're in high school and you first start dating, and the person that you like is already attracted to somebody else, like, oh, okay, well, how am I going to position myself as a better alternative, a better option, right?So it requires strategy. It requires persistence. It requires some sort of advantage, right? Some sort of, what we would call in business, a competitive advantage.And we need to think through those things, because it's the same in a business relationship. If they've got a great business relationship, it's going to be a lot harder.In those situations, we have to determine whether or not it even makes sense for us to try to provide a better solution.But here's the thing, if we truly believe that our solution is better than whatever they're currently receiving Then we kind of owe it to them to let them know that, don't we?Jay: Oh, yeah, I absolutely agree with that and we talked I think in the last podcast that we're a company that loves it when you talk to our competitors. We love it when you're in a sales process with somebody else, cause we know how unique we are in our presentation, in our initial consultations. We know.And so the key for us to disrupting an existing sales process with somebody else is just, how do we get them to call us?How do we introduce ourselves to them mid process? Because we know if they can find us or we can find them, our chances are pretty good.David: Exactly. And so in your situation where you're using online resources like pay per click and things like that, it's a matter of getting some sort of messaging in front of them that has them questioning at that point, whether or not there is a better alternative out there for them.And so the only people who are going to schedule a call with you are the ones who have determined that they are at least open to exploring that sort of relationship.I think it's interesting that a lot of times in business loyalty is often based on inertia, right? It's just easier to stick with what I have rather than to try to fin...

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Getting to your ideal prospects involves identifying what our ideal prospect looks like in terms of the type of customer we’re looking for, the type of industry they’re in, the number of people in their organization if we're selling B2B. All these considerations that are going to add up to the ideal prospect, because until we know who it is we're going to go after, we have absolutely no idea where to go to find them.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of getting to your ideal prospects. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, thank you so much. Another great topic. We could call this one the Holy Grail of Sales.How much time does everybody spend talking to people who would never be their client in the first place? What would you do with all that extra time?David: It is an amazing amount of time. When we work with clients, that is one of the biggest ways that they get back time that is otherwise spent. Very often, when people are considering the idea of working with us to help them grow their sales and profits, it's like, “well, am I going to have time to do this?”And nine times out of 10, they don't have time not to do it. Because they're wasting, in many cases, so much time with poor, unqualified prospects. And simply by taking a few specific actions, you can pretty much eliminate a lot of that right up front, save yourself enormous amounts of time, and better still, being able to then interact with the types of clients you actually want to do business withJay: But I'm a new company.I need money to pay my bills. I need to try and close everybody. Isn't that what you would hear?David: In the early stages, everybody says that, and after they've been in business for a while, they try to figure out, now how do I undo what I've done? How do I untie this knot that I've tied for myself over the past however, many months or years?But yeah, in the early stages, we just want to take anyone who's willing to do business with us. But eventually, when our true selves kick in -- when we find ourselves in a conversation with the wrong client, somebody that we took on a while before, and we recognize, wow, this was a mistake -- that's when you start thinking, Okay, well, maybe what I need to do going forward is to not just take anyone.I need to identify who are these ideal prospects. How can I identify and initiate contact with the right people up front so that I'm not wasting a lot of time with the wrong people down the line.Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I have a business partner and he's this sage old business partner. He's built several businesses on his own over the years and I didn't know he was even doing it, but he has this list of people who he doesn't want to do business with anymore. He calls it the naughty list.And, somebody came around and they were repurchasing our services. He just, with no emotion said, “nah, I don't want to do that.”And I'm like, what are you talking…? I didn't even remember the customer. And he's like, “no, they're on the naughty list. They were a pain. They didn't provide what we needed soon enough and they harassed us on our pricing. The answer is no.”And so he's got this Santa Claus naughty list, and I was like, “but they want to give us money.” And I've just come around to his way of thinking. I am not emotional about it anymore. They're on the list. Forget it.David: It's a lump of coal for you, baby. That's how it works. Yeah. I mean, it is a strong argument for the fact that you don't need more prospects, you need the right prospects.You don't need more customers necessarily, you need more of the right customers. Because life is too short to do anything else in my view.Jay: Yeah. Let's say that you spend 10 hours a day working with customers are doing sales for potential customers, and five of those hours are spent on people who are not the right fit.

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In order to turn the tables on rejection in sales, there are very specific steps you can take, and we work with our clients to help them do that every day of the week.David: Hi and welcome back in today's episode co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of turning the tables on rejection in sales. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey Dave, it's always good to talk with you and I love these topics. They're so important I think more than anything, at least for me, rejection, fear of rejection stops me from doing a lot of things that I know I should be doing.David: Yeah. And you are really not alone. I think we've all felt that way at one point or other. I know there was a period of time, a lot of years ago, where I was so frustrated by this that I'm like, okay, what can we do? To not just try to overcome it, not just try to overcome the fear, but to actually turn the tables on rejection in sales.And essentially what I came up with is that in order to make that happen, we have to take the initiative in terms of identifying the types of clients that we want, the types of clients that we will accept. And by leading with that strength, going into each prospecting opportunity with the idea that I may accept this client, I may not.They may accept me, they may not. If the two of us agree that we want to work together, we will. And if one of us doesn't want to work together, we won't. And being okay with that, Once I embraced that idea and that concept, everything became a lot easier.Jay: Yeah. So just a paradigm shift. I will tell you, and this is no joke, before we dive into your concept a little bit more, I went to a doctor and I said, just give me a drug that makes me not fear rejection. He didn't have it, but hey, I was willing to try anything.David: Yeah, it's funny because you would think there'd be something for that. I guess maybe something that might relax you or make you not care as much about the rejection, but, short of medication, I think the idea of sort of reframing it in some ways and saying, all right, I'm going to do what I can on my end in terms of identifying the clients that I want to work with.And just by doing that, you can actually eliminate a lot of rejection when you decide in advance that there are some people you're going to talk to that are probably just not a good fit for you.Jay: Yeah, I love this and I feel like I've been doing this, but not purposefully like you're talking about. I get to the point now where when I talk to somebody and they're not interested, I almost feel glad.Because through the conversation, I learn they're not really a good fit for me. So we both kind of decide that on our own. We wish each other well. I add them to our drip campaign and it's done. I can hang up the phone call and do other work or move on to the next call.David: Yeah. It's so much better when you're able to take an approach like that and feel good about the fact that we really weren't born to do business with anyone who can fog a mirror, right?It's not an ideal scenario for either of us. I also realized at some point or other that rejection in some ways can actually be a tool to help you find better clients, whether you're the one who's rejecting them, basically saying, okay, this isn't a good fit.Or even in a situation where if you decide you would potentially like to work with them, if they decide they don't want to work with you, if you view it as essentially a way for you to be able to find better clients, that also makes it quite a bit easier to take.Jay: Yeah, I think I told you in the past, my dad was a salesman his whole life and I asked him how did you deal with rejection and he said I look at no's as a positive.I know what my close rate is. I know how many cold calls I have to make. And so every time I got a no, that means I was one step closer to the yes. So, changing your outlook, your mindset, it actually made him feel good.

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"You have to create value in the sales process, create value in all the communication that you're putting out there. When you do that, you're already positioned better and differently. So when you think about the idea of what you say about what you do, you're doing it in a way that is actually appealing to people rather than repellent."David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic "what you say about what you do." What it is, Jay?Jay: Hey, David, how's it going? Once again, it's a pleasure to be here. I think, how we view ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, what is that inner monologue?Those types of things, they matter a lot, and they're probably things that we never think about.David: Yeah. And it's interesting you should bring that up. Because when we talk about what we say about what we do, yeah, there's what you just mentioned, what we're telling ourselves in our own heads. And then there's also the idea of what we're saying to prospects and clients about what we will potentially do for them.Essentially the communication, the messaging that we are putting out into the world, that will allow someone to decide whether or not they want to do business with us.Jay: Yeah. And this is so important because if you over promise, you're setting up for failure from the beginning, right? If you under promise, then they may find a competitor who promises something faster or better. So there is a strike zone there somewhere that you have to find.David: Exactly. And our messaging is very likely either going to attract the person we're talking to, or it's going to repel them. Probably the worst case scenario is if it does neither. It's just totally boring and they're not even paying attention to what you have to say.But when we recognize that, particularly in the early stages, what we tell them about what we do or what we're planning to do for them is going to determine the nature of the relationship.If we communicate something that sounds appealing to them, It's like they'll be interested. If we communicate something that does not sound appealing to them, then it's likely they are not going to be interested.So we don't want to go into these situations and wing it, particularly when we're going from prospect to prospect.We want to make sure that we're creating a consistent experience so that each person we talk to is getting the best of what we have to offer, up front, so they can make an intelligent decision.Jay: Yeah, we've really started using, I learned it from being in the media, process language. Like, if you are out doing a news report somewhere, you didn't just say, well, I'm standing on the street corner and this is what I'm seeing. You instead say, "well, we got here about 20 minutes ago when we rolled up, this is what we saw. This is what we're seeing, right? You bring them with you to wherever you're at. And so we kind of do this process language, not just about how we got here.And process questions. Like I want to know what drove you to call me. So that's the first thing I want to know, "what drove you to call me?" The second thing I want to know is, what is your expectation from this call? Like what are you hoping to gain from it? And then we can get to where we're at.And then we'll start talking a little bit. If you use our services, this will be the process moving forward. By the time we've shaped this whole thing, it's like we've been friends for years, you know what I mean? So, it's something that I love doing and it makes the potential client very comfortable.David: It makes a whole lot of sense and it's really about being present in that moment with the prospect or client, and having them be there with you at that point as well. Where one person is not talking, another person is totally tuned out.It really is about creating that level of communication where you are interacting the way that...

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Reimagining the essentials is different for everyone. And I hear both sides of that from people. I hear people who are like, ” oh yeah, you know, I’ve been doing this forever. I know exactly what I’m doing and all that sort of thing.”And then I have people on the other side who are like, “Hey, I’m doing all the things that I’ve done before. I’m doing it more aggressively. I’m doing much more of it. I’m doing it with more people and it’s not working.”And so for the people who are struggling with that… again, it’s not really a matter of saying, “well, now instead of prospecting, we need to do something different.”No, you’re still going to need to do prospecting. The question is, “can we now do it in a way that is going to reach the people that you need to reach, communicate the things that we need to communicate and allow us to advance our communications and close the sales?”David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing reimagining the essentials. Welcome, Jay. Good to have you here.Jay: It's so good to be here once again. I'm very excited about today's topic.What's the Point of Reimagining the Essentials?David: Yeah. I mean the whole idea of the essentials to some people it's like, "oh, essentials, that's boring."Right? But it seems to me that in current times we really need to look at the essentials and say, "okay, how can we tweak them or fine tune them or change them around so that they're going to be more effective in a 21st century post-COVID economy?"Jay: Yeah. When I think about essentials, I think about foundational type things. And once you take away the foundation, other things that you have in play don't work as well.So what type of essentials specifically are we talking about that we want to, that we might look at in one when everybody looks at it that way, but we're going to reimagine or rethink about them in a different way?David: Well, I guess when I think of the fundamentals or the essentials, I tend to think of the real basics, prospecting, presenting, following up when it comes to sales. And sometimes you start talking about those things and people's eyes glaze over like, "oh, I know all that stuff." And yeah, we all know we need to do it.Knowing and Doing are Two Different ThingsWe all know we need to do prospecting. We need to make presentations. We need to follow up with prospects and clients. But knowing it, knowing what to do, is really not the issue at all. It's how are we doing it? How well are we doing it? How much better are we doing it than our competitors? How frequently are we doing it?How consistently are we doing it? There are all these different nuanced aspects of it that completely change the results. And when we look at things like prospecting now versus five years ago, 10 years ago, it's completely different. Same thing with presenting, same thing with following up. In the past, it was basically phone and in person.Well now phone and in person are a lot less popular than other methods of communication. So that's really what I'm talking about here.Jay: Yeah, I think again, it's so important, you know, it's so easy to just fall into that trap of I've, you know, we've done it this way forever and it's always worked. I think it's hard for people to break free from those things, because it's hard to know what type of impact you really can have.And I think part of that is even understanding what your baseline is before you can make changes to understand if you're making any progress, right?What Happens When Everything Changes?David: Yeah, absolutely. And I hear both sides of that from people. I hear people who are like, " oh yeah, you know, I've been doing this forever. I know exactly what I'm doing and all that sort of thing."And then I have people on the other side who are like, "Hey, I'm doing all the things that I've done before. I'm doing it more aggressively.

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Don't be invisible to your target market. Do they even know you're alive? This goes back to the idea of money versus time. Because one of the advantages of social media is that if you have more time than you have money, you can spend more time posting and contacting people directly on social media.If you have more money than you have time, then you can run ads and you can get your ads in front of people without having to sit in front of the computer all day. So there are definitely different ways to accomplish this.If you want to become visible though, you have to have one or the other. You have to have time or money. You can't be out of both.Well, I have no money and I have no time to do this. Well, at that point, you're out of business.David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of, Are You Invisible to Your Target Market? Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Thank you so much, David. This one is tough for me because when you know you have a product that people want, you just know it. And you know if they could just learn about you, that you would be able to sell this product and you just know they don't see you. It's a frustration. It really is.David: Yeah, we've talked about this topic before. I've talked about this topic in live presentations and probably in previous podcasts, and one of the reasons that I keep coming back to it is that it really resonates with a lot of people in business, a lot of sales people, a lot of business owners, because it is so important.The idea of being visible or invisible to your target market is going to directly impact your ability to make things happen. And what I find kind of fun about this topic, to the extent that it can be fun, is that a lot of times in the movies or in television, invisibility is generally viewed as a big advantage.It's an asset, you know, Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if I'm Harry Potter and I've got my invisibility cloak, and I can do all sorts of things that are cool and fun. But in business invisibility is just deadly. Because, as you indicated, if the people who could benefit from what you're offering don't see you, don't hear you, don't know you're there, don't know you are alive, then you have absolutely zero possibility of selling to them.So in evaluating that question for yourself, are you invisible to your target market? It's probably a good idea to really think it through, and don't assume that you are more visible than you might actually be.Jay: Yeah, we know about assumptions, right? But I think this is also important because a lot of people will only focus on advertising that gets them leads or some type of returns.There's a whole nother level of advertising where it's just brand awareness. You're probably not going to generate clicks, but if you can be one of the options in their mind, you know, if you're a plumber and you're not necessarily getting a lead every time you send out a postcard or something, but when that toilet finally goes down, if you're one of the three that they think about, then you're so much closer. And so that's a part of advertising that I think a lot of people miss.David: Yeah, I completely agree. I think another problem that people run into sometimes with this is that they're trying to be everywhere at all times with everyone. And unless you have an unlimited budget, that just doesn't work. So you can get in front of a whole lot of people who have absolutely no capacity to buy from you.I've worked with businesses in the past that were running radio ads and they were business to business businesses. And they're running on music stations, and I'm like, okay, well, it's possible that there are some business owners or some people who could buy from you who are listening to that station, but the majority of people listening to that ad don't own businesses.They can't use what it is that you're selling.

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When we're doing business-to-business or business-to-consumer outbound calls, the truth about call reluctance is that it can seem very real. Those fears can be founded.They might very well say no. Or they might be rude, obnoxious, belligerent. It's possible they say all kinds of things that you don't want to hear. So that's all true. That could happen.One of the things that helped me a lot though, is recognizing that we are not doing it for them.We are not doing this for the people who react like that. We are doing it for the people that we are ultimately going to help. And we can't get to the people that we are going to ultimately help without having to go through some of these people sometimes in between.David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Is Call Reluctance Real?Jay: Listen, it's a pleasure to be here, David, and let me tell you, this is one of my biggest issues. I know it's real because I have a job where I spend a lot of time on the phone and man, there are days where I just do not want to do it.And what's funny is it's actually something that I enjoy, but it requires a certain level of energy. It requires that you are prepared and there is the occasional call that turns in a direction that I don't want to go. And so this is me to a T. I experience this on a regular weekly basis.David: Yeah, and the title is kind of provocative and I guess I sort of did that on purpose. Because anyone who has experienced this, that feeling of, "oh, I just don't feel like picking up the phone," is going to look at this and say, "well, yes, of course, it's real."And I think that when we just look at it as call reluctance, then it's easy to say, yes, it's real. What do we do about it? But the reason that I wanted to raise the topic is that I don't believe that call reluctance is actually the issue. if you boil it down, what does it mean?When I did this for myself and for other people who were struggling with it, it all really just boils down to fear, right?It's some type of fear. It's not that we're really afraid of picking up the phone. That's the easy part. It's not that we're afraid of dialing. The issue is what's going to happen next. It's about that unknown. And I think that's what people struggle with, without even realizing that that's what they're struggling with.Jay: Yeah. So I mean, for me, fear of rejection, fear of the no, and I mentioned fear of the negative experience. You know, the guy who's asking the questions that I can't answer or wants to spend two hours on the phone and I only have 20 minutes for him or those kinds of things. You're right, it's all born out of fear.David: And what's interesting, too, is that today, if you have to pick up the phone and call somebody and you don't have an appointment with that person, the likelihood that they're actually even going to answer, that you're going to get to a live human being is probably what? 30%? 20%, right? 10%. I mean, most of them are going to go to voicemail.And so voicemails are kind of easy as long as you know what you're going to say when you get a voicemail message. So a lot of it, I mean, at least 80% of it, it's like, well, there shouldn't be any fear here because they're probably not going to answer. Right?But as you indicated, it's the fear of rejection. In some cases, it's the fear of success. And some people are like, "I've never had fear of success. I love success."Well, we all love success, but sometimes getting to that success can be a little frightening. It can be a little bit of a struggle. And sometimes it's just, hesitation is born out of fears that just haven't even manifested yet.Jay: Yeah. They're not real. And, for me, it's asking the question, "what if?" And this is again, something that my parents taught me. I would tell them that I didn't want to do something or I was afraid of doing something and ...

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When you're creating demand for your products and services to the point where they really want it, "listen, yes, I want to do this. I want to move forward with you." That is extremely powerful.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss creating demand for your solution. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, David. Thank you so much. Once again, a great topic. If we could all do that, if we could all accomplish this simple goal, then none of us would have to worry. We'd have all the business that we would want, correct?David: It sure seems that way, doesn't it? I mean, when we are able to succeed in creating demand for our products and services, selling becomes so much easier. It's not quite unnecessary, but it gets darn close to it. When somebody just really wants what it is that you have to offer, everything gets easier.Jay: Yeah. I think may be a little bit counterintuitive, right? Where like, I need to find a demand that people have, and then I need to create solutions for that demand. And I think that's entirely appropriate, but it's not enough, right? It's maybe only half the battle.David: Right, because there's a certain amount of demand that can be found, but there is probably a lot more that can be mined with a little bit of effort.Now mining, that sort of implies that you've got to do some digging. You've got to do a little more work and just sort of saying, well, I found this, this, and this. These are the three things I'm going to talk about, and these are the three things I'm going to lead with. But when you recognize that there are things that we can say, there are things that we can do that will not just create demand for our products, particularly if we're selling commodity products.Because creating demand for our products isn't going to be helpful unless it's creating demand for the products that we're selling. Because if they can get it anywhere, I can create demand for something that they can then go buy from someone else.So part of this has to be the ability to create demand for not just the products and services you offer, but the way that you offer those things. All the little differences in the way that you do things, there needs to be demand that is created for that.And you're the only one who can do it because you're the only one who knows what those differences are.Jay: Yeah, I agree, and back to the idea that I'm going to create a business based upon a certain demand, can that demand actually support and sustain a business? You know, just because there's demand doesn't mean that you can survive off it, especially if you're only going to get a certain market share of that demand.So it better not be your only solution, right? And so I think with your website advertising, with everything that you do, you should be thinking, how do I convince people who may happen to my site or happen on my business? Wow, I didn't even think that I needed this person, but I really do.David: Yeah, and a lot of that goes to getting past the what, in terms of the product, and getting to the how. The way that you are better, the way that you are different, the reason that If they don't choose you over every other option available to them, they're shooting themselves in the foot. And that's what most people tend to miss in their messaging.They talk about products, they talk about speed of delivery, they talk about pricing, all the usual things. But so many of those things are common to everyone, that those can't be the things that you focus on. Because if you do, you're just creating more demand for the products and services, as opposed to creating demand for your method of providing those products and services.Jay: Yeah, you know, I think about our own business model. A lot of people call us and talk to us in the consultation. They're not even sure if they need help. So our first step is to convince them they absolutely do.

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To hit the ground running in 2025, 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 up and running and get started. 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. And the goal is to constantly be trying to close that gap. And 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.

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Today, we'll discuss a simple framework you can use this week for New Year Success Planning. Very often we say we're going to prioritize time with our family and our loved ones. And we do this every year, January 1st, going to spend more time with the people we care about, the people we love. And then by March, it's back to life as usual, right?So if we decide what we're going to prioritize, who we're going to prioritize, and again, the flip side, what am I going to deprioritize? Who am I no longer going to prioritize in terms of allocating time?Those things as well allow you to live a far more proactive life. And it allows you to really start living the kind of life that you want to engage in. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to use this week for New Year Success Planning following a simple framework I call The Big A.P.E. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Well, I'm so glad to be here. David. I have to tell you, after Christmas my number one tendency is just to kind of want to detox, you know, because of all the shopping and everything else.But I know it's also, because there's not a lot going on business wise. It's probably a great time to kind of start thinking about the next year.David: Yeah, and I think detoxing is also a really good part of that. It's nice to be able to use this time, it's sort of the eye of the hurricane, a little break in the action before the new year starts and everything gets rolling again.It's just a great time to be able to do that, to be able to take a breath. Take a moment. Sort of think through how things went, what we liked, and what we didn't like about the past year and what we want to do better and differently in the coming year.And for me, I think it's just a great time for planning, for making notes, and really considering the things that we'd like to accomplish. Because, there's something magical about a new year where everybody wants to start fresh and turn the page.I mean, there's no reason you couldn't do that any day or every week. Reminds me of the expression, "today is the first day of the rest of your life." People hear that and they go, "yeah, that's right." And then we never do anything about it.But boy, January 1st rolls around and everybody wants to do things. We've got different resolutions, and I'm going to do this better. I'm going to do that better. Lots of people join gyms and they go for two weeks. Then that's the end of it, right?So there is this tendency to get really excited and really focused about a new year, and then perhaps let it fall away. So if we use this week to just really think through, okay, what do I really want?What am I trying to get out of my life, my business, you know, my relationships? What is it that I'm looking to accomplish? It's just a nice sort of quiet time to consider those sort of things.Jay: Yeah, and I think, you gave the example of the gyms. My wife goes to the gym all the time and she can't stand January and into February because she can't find an open machine to use, because everybody has set this new goal and it's going to last at most six weeks and then everybody returns.I think that that's kind of a microcosm of our goal setting for the new year and for resolution. So it has to be important too, as you're being mindful to be specific I think, but also to be reasonable with yourself, achievable, right? And trackable are all things that I think would probably be important in this process.David: Absolutely. There's another thing that I tend to think of, just in terms of planning and thinking things through. I refer to it as The Big Ape, A.P.E., the Big Ape. And it stands for activities, priorities, and expectations.So what are the activities that I want to engage in in the new year? What are the activities I no longer want to engage in in the new year?Right? And that's big.

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I think the best holiday gift is to make the most of ourselves, when it comes to personal development, whether that means sales and marketing training, whether it means personal training, whether it means meditation, whatever it is for you, prayer, whatever it is that allows you to get to a place where you can really focus, really be present, and be your best for yourself, and those around you, is really important.David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Thank you so much, David, for the opportunity to be here. And I love this question. It's a little off track from some of the things that we normally talk about. But I think as we talk about running your own business and the amount of time that it takes, taking a little bit of time out to think about your family and how you can make their holidays special, I think it's a critical topic.David: Yeah. And of course, because of the nature of the things that we talk about, what I'm really thinking about when it comes to the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family, I tend to look at it as "a better you," right?If you can provide yourself and your family with a better you, a smarter you, a more motivated you, a more inspired you, that is going to really make a huge difference in your business life, in your personal life, and the life of the people that you care about.And of course, this time of year a lot of people are focused on actual gift giving, which of course is a traditional thing as well.But when we think about what really is going to help ourselves, our family, our loved ones most, it's going to be, you know, a healthier, happier, safer, more productive you, generally.Jay: Yeah. I love this line of thinking because you could give them all the presents in the world, but if you're stressed out all the time, if you're angry, because of what's going on at work and those types of things, you can't buy their love or their gratitude with gifts.Maybe they're a little bit happy in the morning, but by the end of the day they still remember what kind of circumstances you've left them in.David: Yeah, I remember when the kids were really young and we'd have gifts in the morning and by afternoon , it was like everybody was kind of cranky because you kind of get what you wanted out of the day and have too many sweets and all that sort of thing.But again, I think if we think really more in terms of what we're going to be doing and how we're going to be living and interacting with each other. A great example of this about a week or so ago on social media, Charity Gibson, who is involved in the promotional products industry in a lot of ways, and is just really inspiring for a lot of people.She posted something on Facebook about what happens when, at some point, you're doing everything for everyone else and you're not doing anything for yourself. You're not taking care of yourself. And I think it's such a great point, because a lot of times people can fall into this trap of thinking, well, I don't want to be selfish.But there is a big difference between selfishness and what I refer to as rational self-interest.In other words, rational self-interest is what keeps us from stepping off the curb and into traffic, right? The desire to look both ways before we cross the street. That's rational self-interest.Nobody would really look at that and say, oh, you're being selfish.But I think a lot of times people tend to, for themselves mostly, think, well, I should be doing more. I could be doing more. They want to help everybody else. And if you don't put gas in your own tank first, you're not going to have any energy left for anyone else.Jay: Yeah, such a good point. In fact, I saw a study just yesterday and it was talking about the high levels of anxiety in our youth,

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If you're just copying what everyone else is doing, and 80 percent of the market is doing that, you're just going to be seen as part of that group. So stop following the followers! If you want to differentiate, it starts with that. How am I communicating my strengths to an audience that actually needs the strengths that I'm able to deliver?David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Stop Following the Followers. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, David. Once again, a great topic for our discussion. This one is hard. Sometimes we are sheep and we're not following a leader, right? We're following everyone else who's following that leader.Why are we doing that?David: Yeah, great question. Why are we doing that? I know in the early stages of my business, I did that all the time. When you don't know what to do, you're basically looking around to see what other people are doing, and very often they don't know what they're doing either.I particularly remember in the early stages of my business where I would look at somebody who I saw as a competitor in my space, and I would say, okay, well, what are they doing?And sometimes I would do that pretty indiscriminately, not even realizing that they may have been in worse shape than we were at that point, and I'm looking at what they're doing.Now, fortunately, I've always been able to learn as much from bad example as I have from good. And to me, that's like a superpower.If you're able to do that, it is extremely helpful. If you look at something that someone else is doing and you say, you know what, I am not doing that. And you see something that you like and say, well, I am going to do that. That's extremely helpful.But very often we don't know who's doing extremely well and who's not doing as well.And we see something we like, and we may imitate it. We may try to copy it. But, it may not be working for that person, and it very well might not work for us either.Jay: Yeah, or I think understanding what is making them successful and what you're seeing them do, that doesn't mean that's what makes them successful.I mean, there are many people out there who are successful in spite of all of the mistakes they're making. And that really frustrates me, David, when I see that, because here I am busting my butt to try and do it right, and I see other people that are... it's like they'd have to work hard to mess things up.They just fall in a bucket of gold everywhere they go. Drives me crazy. It's like when I was in the radio business, we had a consultant who was paid incredible money and we're like, why does this guy know what he's doing?Well, he happened to work for somebody who achieved major syndication. Well, just because he worked for that guy doesn't mean that he's the reason that guy was successful. And that doesn't mean we should listen to everything that he says.David: Absolutely. I've got similar radio horror stories. I think we've all had experiences like that. We've also probably had experiences where we see someone, and our impression is that that person is successful, is smart, is doing things right, and is doing things well.And that's not always the case. Because we don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. In our work with clients, one of the reasons we have the brand we have, TopSecrets.com, is that there are things that people don't know that can help them.Whether you want to consider them secrets or whether you just want to consider them things that somebody's never learned, doesn't really matter. But it's a fact.And I've had conversations with people who say, "oh, there's no such thing as secrets in business." And I'm like, "I completely disagree with that."I completely disagree because while there are a lot of things that are common in business, and a lot of things that everybody knows. For every one of those,

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I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, "no is a complete sentence." have you ever heard that one? It's interesting because it's very hard to just say no in business when someone asks you something. That was an old Nancy Reagan thing, right? "Just say no." Say no to drugs. Just say no. But when somebody asks you to do something, you just say "no." I think there was an episode of Seinfeld like that...David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss the need to say no in business. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I think this is one of the hardest things to do in business because we feel like we can answer every question and that we should.And the reality is, that's not the case.David: Yeah, and it's such an easy trap to fall into because there are so many people that we feel like we need to say yes to, right? We've got business associates, we've got clients, we've got prospects, we've got family, we've got friends, everybody coming to us with things.And the agree type of person inside us wants to say yes to most things. We want to be agreeable. We want to do the best of our ability. But sometimes we can really get in over our heads when we don't at least start to say no to some of the things that are not going to allow us to get where we need to go.Jay: Yeah, and I agree. It's in your personal life. It's in your business life. If you have a sales cycle, it's which customers you choose to deal with. I mean, you can let your entire life be dominated. And I know people like this and I've looked at him and I said, how do you ever get something done? I mean, I love you because you want to help everybody and you're so serving to other people, but your family might be neglected. Your business might be neglected. There's got to be balance in the force, right?David: Yeah. And sometimes, during some stages of life, it's easier than other times to say no. But there are periods in there, man, where it's just like you feel like you have to do everything.You have to say yes to every opportunity. You have to at least explore it. You want to try to help everyone you can possibly help, which is a great thing, but we all have a limited, finite number of hours in a day. 24 hours is fixed. It's inflexible. We can't change that.And everything we say yes to means that we're saying no to something else, even if we're not physically saying no.We're not giving ourselves the ability to accomplish additional things, which creates sort of a huge opportunity cost if we're not careful.Jay: Yeah, and how many of us are careful? That word careful, right, David? What does that mean? Is it identifying the things that you have to get done? I think yes, the things you want to get done, the priorities? And I don't think we're saying no to everybody, right?It's understanding yourself and what's most important and saying, I'm actually going to say yes. to so many people, but after that, I'm booked. I can't. I've got to be with my family. I've got to be at work. I've got to be, with these other priorities.David: Yes, and I think for a lot of us, it's inside of work where we often have the most difficulty saying no. Because when you're dealing with family and friends, in a way, it's easier to say, well, I can't because I have to do this. I can't because I have to work, right?We're not saying no I'm not doing it. We're saying I can't. When in fact, we're either prioritizing incorrectly or prioritizing poorly or we're just making the decision that no, I'm going to do this insteadAnd it's very difficult to do that to actually say no to someone as opposed to presenting the excuse instead of the actual no. Saying I can't as opposed to I am choosing to do this other thing. That's tough.Jay: Yeah, it is tough or find what I'll do is because I don't want to use the word no, I'll put it off till later. Like, I'll say, well,

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Working harder won't cut it, and breaking the Effort to Outcome Myth starts with understanding that it's not going to be a 1 to 1 thing. You're not going to put in more effort and just immediately generate a corresponding amount of result. That's why it's necessary to look for points of leverage -- in the form of systems, technology, and delegation.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the Effort to Outcome Myth. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I've got this figured out. All I have to do is spend so much time on something and that guarantees me that I'm going to have the exact outcome that I want, right?David: Cool. This is going to be the shortest episode ever. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it kind of falls along the line of what people always say about "you get out out of life what you put into it." And I like the sound of the expression, but what I found personally in my life is that it's just not true. It's not accurate.It's never really a direct correlation. You never really get out of life exactly what you put in. You never get out of business exactly what you put in. You get out some sort of multiple, at least that's been my experience. Now, if your multiple is one to one, okay, then you're getting out what you're putting in.But I'm sure you've had the experience as well, where you put a whole lot of work in on something, and it didn't create the return that you wanted. You've had other things that maybe you didn't have to put a lot of work in on, but they happened to work out well and created great results.So I think sometimes when we make that connection in our mind saying, I have to push harder. I have to work more. I have to do more things in order to get what I need out of it. We may be missing some elements there.Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. As you know, I've studied a lot of these billionaire types. I think a lot of people do, and I was looking for some commonality. And I do see commonality in how they think about things, how they look at things, but I don't see commonality in scheduling and how hard they work.Some people like Bill Gates, his schedule, I mean, I get exhausted just reading it. But other people are like, no, I work smarter, not harder. And I work because I want time off. I want to enjoy my life. So I don't see a correlation between how much they work compared to what their results are.David: Yeah, definitely not a one to one correlation. Now, some of it also is common sense. If you think in terms of people engaging in busy work, as opposed to impactful actions, things that actually move the needle. There's an example of where you can start to create some leverage for yourself.If you look at your day to day actions. And you recognize that many of the things that we might be doing are not actually moving the needle for us, then it's easy to say, Okay, well, what can I eliminate? And what can I focus more attention on so that I can get the results that I'm looking for?Jay: Yeah, and I think it's really difficult. We talk about this a lot. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?Especially as a small business owner, the idea of working smarter sometimes is the hardest thing that you can do. Because you're putting out fires and those fires need to be dealt with. That's why they're called fires, right?So finding a way to do that but still move the needle forward can be a very difficult process.David: Yeah, and I think when we look at things in terms of applying a brute force solution to what could be a strategic or a planning problem, that's also where we kind of run into trouble. Thinking, okay, well, I have to do more. I have to push more. I have to push harder. And what that doesn't take into consideration is the law of diminishing returns, right?There are more hours that we're working, but that can often lead to burnout. It can lead to a lack of focus.

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If you want to reduce or eliminate cold calls, you need to recognize that there are other, and very often more effective ways of doing this. More leveraged ways to be able to do this. More ways of being more focused, more specific...David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to reduce or eliminate cold calls. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey David, I'm so glad we're talking about this. I hate cold calls and who loves them? Right? I mean, if anybody comes on and says they love cold calls, wow.I mean, maybe if you do it enough and it's successful enough, I can see how you would love them, but I'm not to that point yet.David: I've always been skeptical of that too, Jay. I've always been skeptical of people who say, I love cold calls. But I know they exist. And I've had conversations with people like that, and they tell me why they love them and how great they are at them.And when I hear that, I'm like, congratulations, that's awesome. I'm extremely happy for you.I've never actually learned anything from them, though, that I could really share with other people that would get other people to change their minds. And so for that reason, I've never been one, at any of our trainings, to sort of teach cold calling.Now, have we done it over the years? Absolutely. But it's not something that I feel like, oh, okay, I'm going to put together a course on cold calling because I feel that strongly about it. I don't.I feel more strongly that there are other, better ways of getting recognized and getting noticed, and that's why nearly everything we do in our material is focused on allowing people to do that without necessarily making cold calls.And it's not even really just cold calls. There are certain things that some people hate. Cold calls, posting on social media, engaging in paid advertising, different people hate different things.Now, if you hate all of those things, if you're not going to do anything, then it's going to be more of a challenge to get clients.But generally speaking, you don't have to do everything and it's very likely there are things that you don't like to do, that you won't have to do if you take the time to think things through and come up with a strategy that works better for you.Jay: Yeah, and I think you made such a good point there. There may be somebody who loves cold calls, there may be somebody who's successful, but that's really like a character trait. That's like an individual skill set.So if you think Oh, because this person can do it, then that means I can have five people doing it. I don't know if that's reality, finding five people who love cold calls and are successful at it.And the other thing is that because there are so many other ways to contact people now, a cold call is very surprising to me.It's like, if you didn't send me an email first, that's very strange in today's world. It's changed.David: It really is. You touched on something and this is a bit of an aside from what we're talking about, but I think it's important, which is that there are some people who are wired to do things.There are some people whose personalities are geared toward doing things extremely well. There's a sales trainer that I've known over the years. I met him in a number of trade shows. He's kind of a bigger than life character. He's tall and he's really good looking, very well spoken, very smart, makes excellent presentations.And every time I've seen him, I thought, this guy is made for this. He is built for this. profession. But what I've also noticed is that not everybody's him, right?Not everybody's as tall, not everybody's as good looking, right? Not everybody is, and the list goes on.So I think for the rest of us, for those of us who just need to be able to generate clients, qualify them quickly, get them sold into our process, and keep things moving in our businesses,

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Dealing with qualified prospects only is the best. Try to get rid of some people as early on in the process as you possibly can. If you found out that you invested some time with them and you later discover, okay, this person is no longer qualified. Cut the cord, move on.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Qualified Prospects Only. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Thank you, David. Wow, this is the dream, right? This is the dream. If you could spend all your time only dealing with people who want your services, need your services, and then, wow, that's what we're searching for every day.David: That's it, man. We are living the dream. And I think for a lot of people, the reason they don't live the dream is because they don't make it a priority. They don't build it in to their processes. They don't say to themselves, when I am in touch with a prospect today, this needs to be one of the very first things that I do.Is to get them qualified in or out as quickly as possible so I can move forward and not waste another nanosecond of my life energy on an unqualified prospect.It's doable, if you prioritize it as one of the first things that you want to have happen in a conversation with any new prospect.Jay: Yeah, and I do want to point out there's qualifying your leads and making sure that new leads fit in, but then there's what we're talking about.Okay, you've got somebody new, you're talking to them. In that process, you don't want to spend more time with them than you have to if they're just not going to fit what you have to offer. Now, I can usually do this in about five minutes, with somebody on the phone, and it's because I've learned what to ask.So, normally I'm like, I really don't think we're going to be able to serve your needs. And then I get to move on to the next call. And I think you're sending a message to them and they may circle back to you eventually, because you were upfront with them.David: Yeah, and we want to be upfront with people about that. Because we don't want to waste their time any more than we want to waste our own time. One of the things that I've said to people so many times in so many conversations is, "Look, I respect your time as I respect my own, which is to say a lot."And it is so true. And the older I get, the more true it becomes. Although it's been true for decades now, right? I've always looked at it as, I think I heard this from Brian Tracy originally, in one of his recordings, he said if you run out of money, you can always make more, but if you run out of time, all the money in the world won't help you.And I thought that is brilliant, because it is so true. When we invest time with unqualified prospects, when we spend too much time chasing down people who don't have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend. It means we are not in front of people who have all of those things.And I did learn this lesson fairly early in my business, but I didn't immediately implement it. It took me probably another several years before I finally got all the processes and all the procedures in place to try to strain those out, before I ended up in conversations with them.And so often in my conversations with our clients, I'll be talking to them about their procedure for bringing new clients through the door, like clockwork, because in my mind, everybody has to have that.If you don't have a procedure, in your business, for bringing new customers in like clockwork, then you're going to be struggling. You're going to be missing out. And during some of those conversations, I've had people say, "well, yeah, I've been trying to get an appointment with this person for months."And sometimes I'll say, well, does this person even deserve an appointment? Have you qualified them? Have you asked a couple of qualifying questions to find out if they have any of the things, the need,

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Each time we're handling objections in sales, we should get better at it. Every sales call you have, every objection you ever receive, if you're able to document the primary questions and objections and concerns that you get, and you can properly document your best responses to that -- the ones that have gotten you the best results -- now you build up an arsenal of material that allows you to stage those responses up front, make them part of the presentation, part of the reason to buy from you rather than your competitor.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss why salespeople struggle handling objections in sales. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Another great discussion. I feel like we get into just kind of the same old responses, or we feel like at the first rejection, "Oh, that's a no. So I move on to the next person."David: Yeah, I give up when in fact, most objections indicate interest. And sometimes salespeople forget this. A lot of them know it and they forget it, but some don't even realize it.They think, okay, if they object, they don't like it. They don't want it. They reject me. They hate me. All these types of things. Most of which are not true. And maybe none of them are true.But when somebody objects or raises some sort of objection to what you say, it means, "okay, you have me interested enough to ask the question. Otherwise I would say, no, not interested at all. Thanks."So that's one important aspect of it, is that if you struggle handling objections in sales, part of it might just be your mindset. If you believe that an objection means non-interest, then you kind of shoot yourself in the foot to start out with.Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think you have to convert your thinking a little bit and look at rejection or questions as an opportunity.This is kind of side thing, but you know, in the restaurant business where I started out, people were always afraid of customer complaints. And I always felt like these are an opportunity. They create an opportunity to build loyalty because none of us expect anybody to be perfect. Well, some people do, and some people you can't please, right?But they do expect you to resolve it. And so, I always felt like if I can really resolve this situation well, I build loyalty. Because they know that if they come here, they will be treated well. And I think rejections are the same depending on how you handle them.David: Yeah, no question. And what you talk about, rejections, especially if it's after they've received the service, right? If you come to a restaurant and you had a bad experience, that's an after the fact, then it's remedial. You have to fix that.In a sales situation, they haven't tried the food yet, right? So this is up front, this would be like, well, why should I even come into your restaurant in the first place? And that's where you've got to be able to have your messaging dialed in to the point where it makes such perfect sense for them to choose the right option, as far as you're concerned. To come into the restaurant or to take advantage of whatever it is that you offer, that they will give you a shot.So when people struggle handling objections in sales, in some cases, it's that they haven't documented the objections they've gotten in the past. And if you don't come up with answers, to the things that come up again, and again, and again, that is really a bad sign.I've seen this recently on TV. I try never to talk politics on this podcast, but sometimes people ask the same question over and over and they never come up with a good answer to it.Jay: Yeah.David: And that doesn't make sense. What you need to be able to do when you sell yourself, when you sell your business, when you sell an idea, is you need to be able to identify what are the most common questions I get?What are the most common complaints or objections that I get ab...

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If you're in a situation where you know you need to get more leads -- you need to generate more and better leads -- there are very specific ways of doing it.One of the things that we do with our clients is we focus on, what are the different methods of lead generation that they're currently using? What are some of the methods they could be using, if they're not already using those.And then testing those out as quickly as possible to find out what actually works and what doesn't. Some people spend months or years trying to perfect something that isn't working. And simply by switching to another method, you can get incredibly better results in a much shorter period of time.David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to get more leads. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, it's so good to be here, David. What an amazing topic. I mean, it's got to be the question on everybody's mind, how to get more leads.David: Yeah. And I think a lot of people look at it and they think, well, they know leads are the lifeblood of our businesses.Now, if we're not constantly getting new leads in the door, then your pipeline dries up, everything gets bad. It's not an ideal scenario. Obviously, it's a very important consideration. There are lots of ways to get more leads and there's no shortage online of people who will try to sell you different methods of doing that.And, this is why I value your opinion on this as well, because I know that you do quite a bit of lead generation in your own business, and lots of people pushing lots of different things. I'd like to get a feel from you, if you don't mind, to start out. sort of the types of things that people have told you are going to help get you leads and which ones seem to work better and which ones didn't seem to work as well.Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. This is something that we rely on heavily. Our entire business model is getting people to sign up for our free consultations. And so, how do you do that? How do you make sure that they're the best leads? We started out relying heavily on Google Ads, pay per click.But even that, can be so tricky. I don't want to spend my time talking to a lot of people who really don't need my services. So, not just leads, but qualifying leads. We're going to talk about that in an upcoming podcast. But, I'll tell you, David, we don't want to pay for every lead.So our question has been, how do we get leads that we don't have to pay for, right? And then also, how do we make sure that we have the best close rate on leads? But, we get email marketing, we get people contacting us every day saying, we can do this for you and we can do that for you.And you want to try some of those, but at the same time, I'm like, oh, we have a system that works. And so I have a hard time breaking away from that and spending a lot of time on those other things because you really don't know what's going to work until you try it.David: Yeah. We've probably had a bit of this discussion in the past as well.The idea that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So there are people who like generating leads on Instagram. And so they'll put out information on here's how to get leads on Instagram, or here's how to get leads through Facebook groups, or here's how to get leads on LinkedIn, or through LinkedIn direct messaging.And so everybody's got their own little tiny slice that they're looking at to say, this is it. This is exactly the way to get leads. And in my experience, not only in our own businesses, but also working with other people's businesses, what I found is that it's very easy for people to get sold on the idea of like one particular, tiny niche solution that is going to be the solution to all of your lead problems.And I mean, I spend a lot of money on my own training, my own education, exploring, what's available, what works, what doesn't work.

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When I say "get over being scared of selling," that doesn't mean that you have to engage in methods of contact that you're really, truly uncomfortable with, right? That means finding a path, finding a path that works for you, finding a path that works for your people. Finding a path that works for your prospects and clients, right?And there's always a path. There is always a path to get there.David: Hi and welcome back. Are you scared of selling? If so, get over it. Today, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing that very topic. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: Hey, it's a great Halloween topic, right? Being scared. My kids are watching scary movies all of this month and I participate in a scary movie all day long when I have to pick up the phone and I have to talk to people who I don't know and convince them why my services are what they need. Please write me a check.That is a scary prospect when you think about it.David: Yeah, entrepreneurs basically are facing Halloween every day. In a lot of cases, a lot of ways, whether it's making phone calls or making payroll or making decisions, making rules, it's always about making something.And the whole idea of being scared of selling, I hear this from so many people that I thought we needed to address it. And when I say get over it, that sounds very insensitive, and perhaps it is, but it's also very necessary.Jay: Yeah, I mean, it's the reality. If you're in a business model where you have to sell, then you have to get over it. It's just that simple, and if you don't, then you're going to constantly be struggling.And it's not something that you're going to do from day one, but it is something that you have to be determined to do.David: Yes. And when I say this, I don't mean to put anybody down, right? There are a lot of really good people who have really good reasons for being scared of selling.Certainly in their minds, they've got really good reasons for it. And I'm not taking any of that away. It's a fact. The fact that there's a term called "call reluctance" indicates that there is a level of fear based here to the point where they had to create a term for it.So, what I find is helpful -- particularly if I'm interacting with salespeople who are running into this situation -- and a lot of times they won't even say they're scared of selling, but ultimately that's what comes out. One of the things that we have to look at first is why are they scared?Why are they scared of selling? Is it fear of success? Is it fear of failure? And a lot of times we hear blanket terms like that and they're like, "Oh no, it's not that." But sometimes it is.Sometimes it's variations of that. I'm afraid that if I call and they say no, it's going to hurt my self esteem. That's fear of failure. I'm afraid if I do too well, people are going to resent me and think ill of me, right? Some people think that way. So any of those preconceived notions that we have about what our sales success will do to us, for good or for bad, are going to impact our actions.And that's why I say we need to get over those things, right? We have to get past those things and once again, deal with reality. I've been on a sort of truth quest lately in terms of let's not look at what we think about. Let's not look at what we fear. Let's look at what's true. Let's look at what's real in the market right now.If there is somebody in the market right now who is afraid to interact with prospects or clients, it's going to impact their performance because it's going to impact what they actually do.If you're scared to pick up the phone, you won't pick up the phone. If you're scared to send an email, you won't send the email. Or if you do, it'll take a lot longer than it should.And then that's four other emails that you wouldn't have sent in the meantime. So we have to get over it. And a lot of it starts with the why.Jay: Yeah, the why is important.

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Change is coming... because change is always coming. And we need to try to stay ahead of it. And we're not always going to be able to do that. But we do have the ability to anticipate things that could potentially happen in the not too distant future and say, okay, if this happens, then what am I going to do? How am I going to adapt to that?David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Change is Coming. Don't Make it Harder. Welcome back, Jay.Jay: It's good to be here, David. Change is hard. Change is not easy in life, in business. We like comfort zones. We like to get in a groove. And I am the first to admit it. If I could find a way to not have to change in business and just cruise, I'm not opposed to just cruising.David: Yeah, well, status quo can certainly be comfortable until it's not, right? It's very comfortable until it's not. And when I say change is coming, I mean, so much of what we've been hearing lately is about all the potential changes that could be coming. And regardless, and I'm not going to get into politics ever at all on this podcast, but regardless of the outcome, there is going to be change coming, because it always does.It's the nature of life. It's the nature of business. Change is always coming. And so, When we try to fight it, when we try to avoid it, we make things harder on ourselves, right? The change is going to come. Now, we're going to have to change our approach very likely.We're going to have to do things differently. We're going to have to plan differently. There are all types of things that we are actually going to have to do. But if we focus on that, rather than the indignity of the fact that change is coming, we make it a lot easier on ourselves.Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right.I think about a change that we all had to go through, and that's the pandemic. And how that was all a change that we wondered if we were going to survive. It was going to destroy our businesses, our workplaces, our way of life, everything. You think about, we're home office now. And we're going to stay that way.And if you had asked me before the pandemic, I would have said, no, that wouldn't work. I look at my friends in the restaurant industry who pivoted to drive through only, and when the time came back to open up their dining rooms, they didn't want to do it. They really liked the drive thru model or the delivery model so sometimes being forced to change and being ready to change.You're going to discover, things that you would have ruled out otherwise, and you're going to be better for it, ideally.David: No question. That exact example, there's a restaurant that we go to in our area a lot, and when the pandemic came and you were no longer able to go into the restaurants, they started a pickup service.And it had never occurred to us to pick up from that restaurant before. We always went in, sat down, enjoyed the meal, and that was it. But after a while, you're like, well, I could really use some of that food. We don't feel like cooking. Okay, I'm going to give it a try. I'll go pick it up. And all of a sudden, that door was open for us as well.And so after you were able to go back into the restaurant, there were still a lot of times, and there are times now where we'll still pick things up and bring it home because now we know that it's possible. So what it gave them is a new revenue stream, right? At the time they had a new revenue stream, but they didn't have their primary revenue stream. So they were hurting.But then after things opened up again, they got the regular business back and now they have this takeout service that people are using more and more, it actually allows things to grow. So it's a perfect example why our topic is so appropriate.Change is coming. Change is inevitable. It's happening all the time. And the more we resist reality, the more problems we have.Jay: Yeah,

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

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

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We get results from social media when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, and identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to have them raise their hands and express interest. When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where nearly everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing getting results from social media. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. This is a big topic. Talk about opening a can of worms. It’s something everybody wants, and we talked, last podcast about learning online and what great resources there are.

This is a place where there may be such an overload of information and different ideas that I don’t know if you’re going to find the answer online. I really don’t.

David: You’ll find a lot of answers online. Yeah., Right? Whether or not it’s the answer you’re looking for, whether or not it’s the answer that solves your problem, that is the big question mark.

But I feel like this topic is so important because everyone’s on social media. Everyone’s trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. And the reason that I believe the word results is so important is that it narrows your focus. It forces you to think in terms of, okay, what is the result I even want to get here? What am I trying to do?

Because as we talked about in a previous podcast, you can go on social media and it’s nothing but distraction after distraction. And if you just turn it on and go in there without a really strong focus in terms of what you want to accomplish, what result you want to get, you’re not getting any sort of result, except you’re going to get pulled into other people’s experiences.

So from my standpoint, the first thing we need to do is to identify what is the result that I would like to get from social media? And then you can look at how much time that I spend on there is actually allocated to getting that result. That’ll tell you a lot right off the bat.

Jay: Yeah, and I think that there is a misguided focus that you need a large audience, right?

Like if I can get up to 10, 000 followers or whatever, that’s not true. it could be better to have a thousand dedicated followers who are potential clients than having a hundred thousand people who may just clog up your pipeline and who really never are going to be your clients.

David: Right. And if they’re not responding to what you do, if they’re not liking, if they’re not replying, then the algorithm says people aren’t interested in this. So you’re exactly right. If you just had the hundred people or so who are going to click today’s link on there. You’d be seeing everybody, everyone would be seeing your stuff. But of course it’s impossible to do that.

So you’re exactly right. It’s about saying, all right, well, how can I get to more of the right kind of people who resonate with the material that I’m putting out? And I am not speaking as an authority on social media. Okay. I want to be really clear about this. I’m not coming to you and saying, oh yes, I’m the guy for social media.

No, not saying that. However, what we have been able to do is to identify specific things that our clients have wanted to accomplish, and we’re very good at helping them accomplish it, once we decide exactly what those results are.

Jay: Yeah, I’ll tell you where we’re at right now in our company.

As you know, we offer Tax Services to a very specific group, so, I’ve told you in the past, we have spent two years identifying keywords for paid ads, and it’s been a constant process where we’re refining, I do the consultations, And so when I see that we’re getting consultations that are not in the strike zone, I go back to our keyword, you know, the person doing our Google ads, and we refine, and we refine, and refine.

And I’ve told you, We’re to a place now, it’s kind of like our secret recipe, where we don’t get a consultation that is not in the strike zone anymore. We’ve been that focused.

But it costs us a hundred dollars per consultation. That’s what we’re paying. And that’s a pretty steep fee. So obviously we’re like, okay, how do we get organic people to come to our website from social media, where they’ve seen something that we’re providing, and they’re clicking through and that doesn’t cost us anything, right?

So that’s the goal, that’s the dream. But now we’re in another problem. We could probably get tons of people coming to our site. But now I don’t want everybody clicking on the schedule a consultation.

Because I’d be back in that same problem. I’d be talking to a lot of people who I can’t help. So this is the dilemma. This is where we’re at in our company right now, moving to social media, but we have to be very strategic about how we do that.

David: Yes. But you’re very clear on the results you’re looking for. Yes. You’re looking for a very specific type of client.

You’re looking for a very specific criteria. And for you, you know that even though a hundred seems expensive, you know that it’s worth it because you know that each client is going to be worth quite a bit more than that. If the service that you were offering cost 50 dollars, you could not do what you’re doing.

And that’s something else that I think is important for people to understand. Not every product, not every service is going to work in terms of social media advertising, no matter how great you get at it, because there’s always going to be competition for various keywords.

There’s going to be a number of factors that go into it. So if you don’t have a product that justifies that kind of investment, if you’re selling a pack of gum at a time, right? When you go into a grocery store and you check out, there’s a pack of gum, they’re like, Oh, I’ll have a pack of gum. You take it as an impulse buy, right? That sort of thing. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to run ads on social media and sell a pack of gum, right?

I mean, just the shipping costs on it, it’s not going to work. There’s some things that don’t work. When you understand that, then you can recognize that if you want to sell something that doesn’t sell particularly well on social media, you need to find other ways to do that. And of course, that’s the subject of a totally different podcast.

But when we think about the results that we’re looking to get. There are a number of different ones, right? The first one is, in your case, it’s about getting someone to have a conversation with, who is qualified. Getting a qualified person to raise their hands and express interest. And you’re talking about your secret recipe.

And I’ve always maintained that any business that does not have some secret recipe in it, is not going to last very long. And I’ve had people argue with me about this a lot. It’s like what are you talking about? You know, we’ve got a commodity business, essentially, like if your business is a commodity, that’s going to be a reflection on your sales, right?

If it’s just a total commodity, it is going to reflect in your numbers. There’s got to be something special, something different that you bring to the table, either in terms of the product or service that you’re offering, or in terms of the way that you sell it, right?

Because if you’re selling a commodity, Then you need to be better at attracting the type of clients who want to buy that commodity.

We do a lot of work in the promotional products industry, in the print industry, and a lot of people view that as a commodity. I sell print services. I’m an offset printer. Everybody sells offset printing. It’s like, that is correct. But what are the types of clients that you really want to bring in, right?

Who are the kinds of clients who are going to spend the kind of money with you that you want to actually encourage, right?

You don’t just want to take anyone with a pulse, anyone who can fog a mirror. You don’t want to just take anyone who comes through the door. When you’re building a business proactively, you’re deciding who you want to work with and who you want to choose to leave to your competitors.

So again, I want to stay focused on our topic, which is social media. We need to recognize that there are specific results we want, and then once we’ve identified what those results are, we can start to figure out what the specific plan is for getting those things to happen.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ll tell you, I don’t say this very often, but I really think this is a situation where you may be better off not trying to learn it yourself.

You know, I’ve watched videos, I’ve taken online courses, and everybody’s like, even down to the thumbnail you put on your YouTube videos and the, you know, what do in the video where I’m pointing at the, you know, taking all these pictures, I’m, looking like surprise and look, this is amazing and the clickbaity titles and all of those things,

but that’s always changing. That target is always moving, right? I’ve used something as simple as Fiverr, right? Where somebody who charges me 50 bucks a week, but this is what they do. I’ve gotten more results from that than I have ever gotten from trying to follow somebody on YouTube, and so I’ve just decided I’m not going to learn it. I’m paying somebody else to do it because I want to focus my time on what’s most important.

And that’s what we’ve found. Again, I’m not saying everybody that’s the solution for you, but we have spent a lot of time in this arena, and that’s how we’ve gotten results.

David: It makes perfect sense. I think it was Dean Graziosi, who I originally heard this from, he was talking about the fact that when you have the money to solve a problem, you no longer really have that problem, unless you’re too cheap to spend the money, right?

And so if you can pay somebody 50 dollars and you can get ad results that allow you to multiply your ad investment, it’s silly not to do that.

That also goes to the topic of “who, not how.” Dan Sullivan wrote a book about that. If you’re looking to do everything, every aspect of your business, you shouldn’t, because there are going to be things that you’re not going to be naturally good at.

But I think the core of this particular topic, when we talk about getting results from social media, The biggest problem is not social media. The biggest problem is people don’t know exactly what result they want, right?

They may think, “Oh, I just want to get more sales.” Well, yes, you do want to get more sales, but there are steps to that. And the first step, particularly if you’re using social media is going to be figuring out a way to somehow identify who those people are, whether you’re doing it organically, whether you’re doing it with paid ads, there are specific things that you need to do.

If those things don’t happen, you’re not going to get more clients. And whether it’s you coming up with the how on how to do that, or whether you’re paying someone else to do it for you, you’ve got to be able to convey to them what you want, and that’s where a lot of people get stuck.

They’re just so unclear on exactly what they want to have happen that they can’t get it done because they can’t even convey it to someone who can help them do it.

Jay: Yeah, such an important point. I mean, I’m just sitting here thinking, if you imagined our business with a storefront, you would think I want to line out the door and down the block.

I don’t. Right? I want the door locked and I’m buzzing you in, once I’ve decided that you fit in a specific category. That seems to go against everything. that we’ve learned about business, but we know that because we’ve spent so much time defining exactly what you’re talking about.

And what I think is the core, if anybody takes away from this podcast, and that is, if you don’t know what you want, how are you going to craft social media or any type of marketing towards that specific thing? That’s got to be job one.

David: Yeah, and the truth of the matter is that that situation you described about buzzing people in versus having the line, anyone who has been even remotely successful at identifying their audience and identifying ways to attract the right people into their organization would much rather have the buzzer, right?

Because otherwise you’re having to swat people away, and that is time consuming and it’s difficult. So when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to get them to raise their hands and express interest.

When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where you are, where nearly everybody you talk to or everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you.

Jay: Yeah, I mean think about it. We’re literally saying how do we get fewer leads? You know what I mean? It just seems like it’s such a different approach.

And I want to add one more thing. We’re about out of time here. And I think we should talk about this in another podcast. People who do have successful social media programs, you don’t want to rely on social media. They change their algorithms all the time. And your goal should not be just to get a sale.

It should be to offload them onto one of your properties. Your mailing list, your website, something else. Because you could spend all this money and have a great system and then an algorithm changes and you’re sunk.

So I’d love to dive into that a little bit more in the future.

David: Yeah, that’s a good one. And also the fact that the people who do this extremely well are not just running one ad forever. It’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. There are constantly going to be changes that are necessary because either the market has seen it and it’s gotten stale or there are approaches that work better and differently, or as you indicated, the algorithm could change.

There are a lot of different factors that go into it. So if you think you’re going to come up with one magic thing that’s going to work forever, it’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. But when you’re aware of the factors that you need to be able to focus on, you’re going to be a lot more likely to get the results you want.

Jay: Yeah, eventually competitors are going to steal that secret recipe. And what are you going to do then, right? How do you define yourself? David, as always, it’s a pleasure. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call. Check out the video. See if it makes sense to have a conversation with myself or our team.

We love having conversations with really sharp, motivated entrepreneurs, salespeople, those who are looking to grow their sales and profits in a way that is sustainable. You’re not looking for just the next new thing, the next whatever it is that somebody says is going to get you the business you’re looking for.

It’s unique to everyone, and we need to be able to recognize and utilize your unique strengths in your solution. Otherwise, if you say, well, the solution is Instagram, the solution is Facebook, the solution is this, it’s that. No, the solution is identifying what is going to work best for you, and that’s what we do with our clients.

So, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: Fantastic. David, as always, a pleasure. Thank you.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Start Getting Better Results from Social Media?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
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David: When we talk about learning from failure, it doesn’t just have to be our failures. We can learn from the failures of others.

Jay: Oh yeah.

David: We can learn from the failures of our friends, our family, our parents, our children. We can learn from any type of failure that we meet along the way. And when we do that, when we learn from other people’s failures, we are saving ourselves a lot more aggravation.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing learning from failure. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Once again, it’s a pleasure to be here. This one, again, another important topic. I think we have a tendency, when we have failure, to not want to try that again, as opposed to saying I don’t know who said it, but fail forward. Right?

So like it or not, we’re a result of our failures, and we’re probably going to fail more than we win. So defining what we do in failure, I think, is very important.

David: Yeah, I think this particular topic for myself, I know, has been absolutely critical in every aspect of my development from the time I was a child.

When I was in grade school and I wasn’t always the most motivated student because I wasn’t interested in some of the topics, I would not do well in certain areas. And that wasn’t great. I mean, what I should have learned from that is do a better job of it, anyway,

I didn’t learn that at the time. And maybe that’s why I’m an entrepreneur today, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs start out the same way.

It’s like you’re on a path. There are specific things that just really interest you that you can focus on diligently. And there are other things that you can’t.

But also just an example, I know throughout my own life, you’re going to be able to learn something from everyone you meet, whether it’s positive or negative. So you might as well take advantage of that.

And if you recognize that you can pick up on these things fairly early on in most relationships and decide to learn from them, everything gets a whole lot easier.

Jay: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. Once again, I think all the podcasts we’ve been doing recently self awareness. So important. Personal inventories, so important.

Do you even recognize the failure? Are you deliberate about what your response is going to be? And if so, I think you can turn it around and make it a positive. If not, I think it’s just by nature going to become a negative.

David: Yeah, and whenever we’re going through something in business that we would categorize as a failure, and that varies widely in business, as you know, to a complete business failure, I mean, that’s something you’ll learn from for a really long time, when that happens.

It can be small things, it can be large things, but if we look at each of those things as an experience, there is very likely a lot that we can learn from that.

What was it that caused this problem to begin with? I know in business for myself, most likely cause of issues and ultimate failure has always been, In some way related to communication.

We weren’t communicating properly with the other people, or they weren’t communicating properly with us, or they weren’t communicating honestly with us, or however it worked out.

But a lot of it, for me, boils down to communication failures. And when you’re aware of the areas where these failures likely happen, you can then pay closer attention going forward so that you don’t repeat those types of things.

Jay: Yeah, I grew up kind of in the retail industry and, when a failure happens, you have managers who want to just find the closest person and, yell at them and blame them.

But then you have others and I’ve learned that usually it’s not like you said, a person problem. It’s a systems problem.

So is it your communication that’s bad? What is it? And if you can fix it, is it your training? You didn’t train, you know, whatever it is, and that goes for yourself as well.

Finding and identifying that you’re actually going to accomplish something, as opposed to just the visceral, you know, I got it off my chest, but now I’ve destroyed somebody.

David: Yeah. And when you’ve got the right processes in place in your business, it becomes a lot easier to determine was the problem with the process or was the problem with the employee not following the process.

Jay: Yes.

David: Right? Because if the problem was with the process, it gives you an opportunity to fix the process so that it doesn’t happen again.

If the problem is with the employee not following the process, then you can encourage the employee, and you can train the employee to follow the process more closely next time.

And if you have an employee who continues to not follow process after process, then you’ve got a hiring problem, most likely on your hands.

But it’s a whole lot easier to identify when you’ve got the systems in place and you’ve got the people in place following the systems or not following them to identify where things are going wrong.

Jay: Yeah, and the danger is if you do this wrong, and again, I think it happens in our internal persona and also with other employees, if you’re constantly blaming people and it’s really a system situation, what happens is you create a “why try” or “you can’t win” atmosphere, right?

So if employees are constantly being blamed, when they weren’t trained, when there wasn’t a good system, they’re going to start saying, well, why should I even try?

It’s something I call minimum expectations mode, right? I’m going to show up, I’m going to do as little as possible, stay under the radar, and collect a check. I think we do that personally as well.

If we keep hitting a wall and we’re not aware of it, we’re not trying to learn from it, we’re not deliberate about it, we adopt a “why try” attitude as well, right? Well, every time I try something, I just fail. So I’m not gonna pursue this anymore.

David: Yeah, I agree. I think if most people in an organization take personal responsibility for their actions, whether it’s the employer, whether it’s the employee, doesn’t matter.

If an employee has something go wrong and they take personal responsibility and say, “okay, what could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? Oh, I should have followed this procedure better,” or, “oh, I missed this,” or “I missed that.”

If they recognize that there’s something they could and should have done better, then they are learning from that failure.

Same thing if you’re the employer. If something goes wrong, you look at yourself, you take personal responsibility and you say, “what could or should I have done better? Should I have taken a longer amount of time to train this person? Should I have made the instructions more clear?”

Because if everybody is looking to themselves in terms of what they could do better, then you’re not doing the whole blame game thing. You’re literally taking responsibility for yourself. And when everybody takes responsibility for themselves, Everything’s better.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And when nobody takes responsibility for themselves and everybody’s finger pointing and I’m blaming you and you’re blaming me and we’re blaming other people, it just doesn’t accomplish the result.

So learning from failure is something I think that we all have to try to concentrate on? To say to ourselves, all right, if this didn’t work, what can I do better? What should I do better? Who else has helped me? Could I have asked for, should I have asked for? And you may go through something and say, you know what?

I really feel like I did everything I could possibly do in this situation. And sometimes you’ll do that and things will go wrong anyway, but at least you’ll know, and then you can get feedback. Well, listen, this is what I did. This is the process that I followed. What else could I have done? What else should I have done?

And if you can get positive input on that, then it’s helpful because it allows us to grow. And I think the whole idea of learning from failure is that it does allow us to grow. It allows us to advance, allows us to get better, and ideally it prevents us from failing again the next time.

Jay: Yeah, one thing I know for sure, failure is going to happen. It’s going to happen.

And so having a system, having a recognition, okay, failure just happened. If it’s in an organization, this is how we handle it. Let’s look at our systems, our training then our individuals, or if it happened internally, okay.

You know, you’ve talked about writing things down. What did I learn from this? What should I do next time? Because a lot of times like you said, you did everything you can. And so sometimes you don’t need to beat yourself up. You don’t need to make changes. It just, it’s going to happen. that’s the reality.

David: It is. And when we talk about learning from failure, it doesn’t just have to be our failures. We can learn from the failures of others.

Jay: Oh yeah.

David: We can learn from the failures of our friends, our family, our parents, our children. We can learn from any type of failure that we meet along the way. And when we do that, when we learn from other people’s failures, we are saving ourselves a lot more aggravation.

I remember growing up as a child and noticing things in adults, where I would say, “I don’t want to do that. When I grew up, I never want to do that.” And you see things in other people where you go, “I want to do that. That looks good. I’d like to be more like this person or I’d like to be more like that person.

And if not doing that, if you’re only noticing, “Oh, I’d like to be like this. I’d like to be like this. I’d like to be like this,” and you’re missing out on the things that you don’t want to do. Those are the biggest traps, right?

Those are the things that are most likely to mess you up. So, when you’re able to recognize failure at a relatively early age, recognize that you don’t want to go there, and then determine the steps that you can avoid, to not fall into those traps, you’re going to be doing much better.

Jay: Yeah, I love this. I love this.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. In today’s world, I mean with resources like what you provide with YouTube, I mean, I see somebody in my house and they’re trying to fix something and they’re just trying to figure it out and I’m like, have you gone on YouTube yet?

Because there’s gonna be 50 videos on how to do this. I have a plasma television in my house. It’s gotta be 20 years old. The screen is still spectacular. I had two of them. They both died after I had them for three years. And I’m like, these are expensive. I don’t want to…

So I went on YouTube and I found out first you can solder new capacitors into the board. And I’m like, I’m not soldering anything. But then I found another website that said you can buy the PowerBoard for 50 bucks, and it just plugs in.

I did that to both TVs. They’ve gone on for another 15 years, each of them. And I’ve fixed a washer, I’ve fixed our fridge, I’ve replaced shocks, I’ve learned how to code.

I’ve learned how to do all of these things because people have put together these systems and you’ve put together resources where you should be able to fail less, or be more focused or more advanced before you get to those places.

David: Yeah, no question. And I’ve said this to so many audiences over the years when I’ve done presentations.

I would say the reason I’m standing up on this stage today is not because I’m particularly smart. It’s because I feel like I’ve made every single stupid mistake you can possibly make. And if I can keep you from making just one or two of those, you’re going to be light years ahead. And so, so much of what I teach to my clients, is based on the potholes that we want to steer around, the things that we want to avoid, because it can save you years.

It can save you decades of your time. And that’s what I find so rewarding in our work with clients is that when we’re able to identify specific things that they can avoid doing or specific things that they can do that will allow them to advance their goals and their outcomes and what they’d like to accomplish for themselves and their families, it’s incredibly rewarding.

Jay: So how do people find out more about how you can possibly help them out?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call. Check out the video on that page and see if it makes sense to schedule a call with us. If it does, great. You can schedule a call right on that page. If it doesn’t, at least you’ll have a good idea of what may be possible for you. Some things that you might not have considered in terms of the growth of your business.

There are things that you either don’t yet know or don’t know the intricacies of that could be slowing you down, right? Because it’s not always about, “well, I didn’t know that.” It’s about, “oh, I didn’t know exactly how to do that.”

Those minor details make a huge difference. Could be something like that. Or it could be that you know a lot of what you need to do, but you’re not doing it consistently.

Our work with our clients is designed to address both of those things. What to do and how to do it is one part of it, and then actually getting it done is the critical part. Because that determines what’s working for you and what’s not.

Jay: Such a great service that you provide, David. As always, it’s a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Learn from Other People’s Failure so You Can Succeed?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Investing in yourself isn’t always easy. It is a matter of finding the time to make these investments in ourselves and to say, “okay, if I can’t go to a cabin for a week, what can I do? When can I do this?”

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarlane and I will be discussing investing in yourself. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey David. It’s so good to be here. I feel like lately we’ve been going after things that I really struggle with. We talked about controlling your internal monologue. Now we’re talking about investing in yourself.

It’s really easy for me to invest in other people. That is very easy. But taking time to invest in myself… when I need something, I will go and find it and I’ll learn how to do it. But being proactive about it. I’m reactive, just about in every way.

David: Interesting. So when you think in terms of investing in yourself, you mean investing what? Time, money?

Jay: All of it. you know, investing in myself when it comes to just taking time to learn new things, or I think investing in yourself can be just reading on a regular basis, or instead of watching social media, be listening to productive podcasts, or, taking a walk, those kind of things.

We talked in the last podcast, controlling your internal monologue. Those are all things that require proactivity and honestly, I don’t know if it’s pride or stubbornness or whatever else. I’m like, oh, I’m good. You know, I’m good.

David: That’s interesting because we are actually on completely opposite ends of the spectrum on this one normally we’re agreeing with each other not that we’re disagreeing here, but I am at totally the other end of the spectrum.

I’m constantly reading stuff. I’m constantly investing in programs and audios and videos and courses. I can’t tell you, and I’d be embarrassed if I could tell you, how much I spend on that type of thing. Just because, I don’t know if that is like a FOMO element of mine, where I’m afraid I’m going to miss something, but I’m conscious of it to the point where I recognize that you don’t want to invest in everything, right?

There’s looking at investments that are designed to help you with right where you are now. If you need help getting over a particular challenge, that’s where I find the investments most worthwhile.

And then there are investments that sort of just in case learning. I’m learning this skill just in case. I’m going to learn how to do whatever, something related to social media that may or may not help. Or that sounds like the catchy thing of the day.

Because when you’re online, you will hear all kinds of people talking about all kinds of different things that are the solution to your problem.

And one person is going to tell you that it’s Instagram. And another person is going to tell you that it’s Facebook ads. And somebody else is going to tell you that it’s organic. And somebody else is going to tell you that it’s something completely different than those things.

Everybody’s got a solution. And it reminds me of the old adage that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

So depending on who you’re listening to, who you’re paying attention to, you may end up investing in things that are not actually designed to get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

Jay: Yeah. And I guess I have to clarify a little bit of what I’ve said. If it’s something I need or want, I’m a dog with a bone. For me it’s the difference of, do I learn how to do exactly what I want, or do I go to college and learn all of these broad subject matters, and then focus.

I think both are important, and I’m never the broad subject matter guy, right? I mean, Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve learned how to make video games and released over 100 apps. I got into talk radio. I started several businesses. I have training courses. So, I certainly invest in myself, but unlike you, you’re kind of like, this is the world that you live in.

I only do it on very specific things and I only do it when I feel like this is something that will help me or my business or my family immediately.

David: Yeah, well, I think that’s a great way to approach it, because otherwise you can go down a lot of different rabbit holes, and you can end up following other people’s priorities, as we talked about in a previous podcast.

So, when I think about the idea of investing, it’s What are we investing? Is it our time? And in a lot of cases, it’s definitely going to involve time. Is it money? And in some cases it can involve money and it can involve quite a bit of money depending on what you’re investing in.

I know I’ve done online courses that have cost a lot of money and some of them have been really worth it, and some of them have been kind of worth it, and some of them… they just weren’t worth it for me at all.

It doesn’t mean the product was bad It may just mean that it wasn’t suited to my personality or whatever.

But I think as business owners or as salespeople, we consistently have to take the time, take the energy, take the money in some cases and invest in ourselves to be able to say, if I’m at a particular point and I need to get to a different point, a higher point, a better point, I want to be able to provide more and better for my family, as you mentioned, then what’s it going to take to get there?

Because in a lot of cases, what we know now has gotten us to the point where we are. So if we want to get further, we can either just try to keep doing more of what we already know, pedal faster, essentially, pedal the bike faster to get farther, or we can say, “well, what can I do to shift gears?”

And a lot of times that involves looking at the things that we don’t know and correcting that and saying, “well, if I fix this one problem, then I’m going to be able to go a lot farther and a lot faster.”

Jay: Yeah, so often, when we do these podcasts, we end up with self awareness as being such an important element here, right?

If you are going to invest in yourself, well, are you aware enough internally to know what you need, right? Where you stand? And you kind of mentioned this, I think what happens is, every once in a while I’ll get on this thread of self improvement or things like that, and I want somebody else to tell me what I need.

And I want them to just give me the secret sauce, right? And so that’s what I’m looking for. It’s like a get rich program, but for self improvement or for task management or goal setting, right? I want the quick and easy. And I think so often investing in yourself is not quick, nor is it easy.

David: Right. Particularly if you end up investing in the wrong things. And I think, to some extent, It’s really important to identify the areas where we’re stuck. To say, “okay, this is the specific problem that I’m trying to overcome.”

So with our clients, we work with primarily business owners and sales people who are at a certain level of sales and profitability in their business, and they’re looking to get to another level.

And they recognize that there are things that they are not doing, and they’re not quite sure what those things are. And so when we have conversations with people like that, and we’re able to identify those areas and say, “okay, is that something we can help you with?”

And if it is, we’ll tell them that. And if it’s something we can’t help with, we’ll tell them that as well. When we do that, It’s better for everyone. Because at that point, they either have a solution or they have to keep searching for a different solution. And we’re totally fine with either of those things.

We’re not looking to try to be the end all solution to everything. But because there are so many options, it’s important to be able to have conversations to find out exactly where the people are stuck so that we can determine If or how we can help them.

And that goes for myself, that goes for anybody who is offering you any sort of investment in yourself. You want to make sure that it lines up, not with what they want you to do, but with what you want to do, with what your objectives are, what your outcomes are.

And a lot of times in the conversations that I’ve had with people, I’ll ] talk to people who will say, well, I don’t like doing cold calls. And there are some programs where it’s like, well, you have to do cold calls.

And it’s like, well, that’s not going to be helpful to me if I don’t like doing cold calls, right? Or social media. ” I hate doing social media.”

Well, if you hate doing social media, you definitely don’t want to sign up for a course that requires you to do social media. And so in our work with our clients, one of the things that we’ve looked at is to say, “okay, let’s look at what you actually enjoy doing, what you’re naturally great at doing.”

And can we create a curriculum for you that is based around your strengths and your areas of interest, so that you’ll be a lot more inclined to do it?

In an earlier conversation, I’m not sure if it was this podcast or I think it was the previous podcast, you were talking about sort of the difference between school learning and business learning, right?

And in school, we’re forced to take subjects that might not resonate with us. Whereas once we get out, and once we get to call our own shots, we can focus on the activities and the skills that we want to develop, to get us to our next desired benchmarks and our next goals.

Jay: Yeah, I think it’s so important what you talked about, and that is, if you are going to use somebody to help, If they don’t take the time to get to know you and where you’re at and your strengths and your weaknesses, then, I’m not saying it’s not going to be helpful because I think anything that causes you to reflect and look at your own systems and kind of do an inventory, I think there is value to those things.

But I think we also fall into the trap of looking at somebody who’s successful and assuming we can do exactly what they do the way that they do it.

Like, I looked at Elon Musk and Bill Gates, and I look at the schedule they run, and how Bill Gates, once a year, locks himself in his cabin away from his family, with just all of his books, and he just reads and reads and reads and reads, and I’m like, I need to tell my wife I’m going up in the mountains for a week, and I’m gonna do this thing, right?

They’ve found ways to make it work for them and to invest in themselves. if you’re living by comparison and not really finding out about yourself, that’s a difficult road.

David: It is absolutely difficult. Yeah. And not everybody’s going to be able to do that. Not everybody can afford to take a week or two weeks or a month by themselves or even have a cabin. Right?

So, there are all those elements. I know for myself, what I find helpful is I’m able to take in a lot of information while I’m on the treadmill in the morning. I’ve got a Sony speaker and I just crank it up so that I can hear it over the noise of the treadmill and so I can take in information while I’m exercising.

So that’s kind of a twofer. And I’ve got a little digital recorder so that when I hear something that I need to remember, I’ll record it.

So I’ve got endless recordings of myself panting and recording messages to myself about things that need to take place. But it is a matter of finding the time to make these investments in ourselves and to say, “okay, if I can’t go to a cabin for a week, what can I do? When can I do this??

For me, again, early morning is great because it’s a quiet time. I’m able to focus on it. And it also gets my brain in gear for the day.

I’m not thinking about other stuff. Like if I watch TV? I don’t. I haven’t done that in years. But if I were to watch TV at the beginning of the day, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s entertainment, then that’s in my brain. If it’s news, that’s the worst, right? Definitely never want to do that at the beginning of the day.

So I find that when I’m listening to something that’s helpful to the business, in the morning, it allows me to get myself into gear a lot more quickly.

Jay: Yeah, I love it. Great discussion, David. How do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team, or just check out the video on that page and see if what we’re talking about makes sense for you. If it does, schedule a call. We’d be happy to have the conversation. If not, that’s fine too. We have lots of resources available on our website. Feel free to have at it.

Jay: All right, David. Always a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Take Control and Start Investing in Yourself?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Your internal monologue is critical. The worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your internal monologue. What’s going on in there, Jay?

Jay: Hey, David. I’m not sure what’s rattling around up here, but I think this is an important topic. I think that often we are a result of what we allow to rattle around in our brains.

And if we’re not aware of it, if we’re not conscious of it, then that can kind of define who we are and what we do each day.

David: Yeah, it really does. And I’ve read a lot about this topic over the years. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts on the topic. Of course, we all live this on a day to day basis. I remember reading in one of Michael Singer’s books, he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul and he was talking about your internal roommate and how basically you’ve got all these thoughts going on in your head and half the time you don’t know where they’re coming from and what they’re saying to you.

And a lot of times we tend to interpret what’s going on in our heads as us. We think that’s us dictating that stuff. And he says, no, it’s basically, our brain generating thoughts, but it’s not really. necessarily us.

So when something goes through our minds and we’re like, what on earth made me think that? It’s just your brain. Don’t take it personally.

Jay: Yeah, it is random, right? I mean, your mind’s gonna just be all over the place. And until you kind of do an inventory of what you’re thinking, And I don’t know that we’re necessarily talking about affirmations.

I think that some people are like, look in the mirror and say these things to yourself.

I don’t know if we need to go that far, but certainly be aware of what you’re thinking and take control of it. Because you are what you think.

David: Yeah, and taking control of it starts with just being aware of it. Recognizing the different things that go flashing through your brain on any given day and how that then impacts our actions.

Because in business, if we’re not aware of that, if we just sort of go along, thinking we’re on autopilot and just doing things as they come up and not paying attention to what’s going on in there, we can find ourselves either distracted, or maybe doing the wrong things, or taking the wrong actions, or responding inappropriately.

Lots of different things can go wrong if we’re not aware of what’s going on in our own brains.

Jay: Yeah, for me it’s a matter of demotivating myself. My brain is very good at identifying the reasons not to do something. I don’t know why that is, But I think that I’m not alone, right? So, I have something that I want to do today or that I’ve scheduled today, and my mind will just tick off the reasons why I can’t do it, why I shouldn’t do it, why I should be doing something else, why I should be doom scrolling on TikTok instead.

And I don’t know why that is, but I feel like my brain always defaults to the here’s why you shouldn’t do it mode.

David: Yeah, and it’s good you’re recognizing that. I remember I was listening to a podcast, the Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo, and she was talking about the fact that our brain generates sentence fragments.

So it might just be a few words that go by in your brain and you internalize it. It might be that you’re looking at a project and you know that you need to be working on it. And you might get a sentence fragment like, “I don’t feel like it,” or “I don’t feel like doing that.”

And if you have the kind of job where you can determine what you do and what you don’t do, that can significantly impact your actions.

But when you recognize these little sentence fragments going through your brain and you identify it, you can then choose how to sort of reprogram.

So if you catch yourself saying, “I don’t feel like it,” you can then say, “yeah, well do it anyway” and start on it. Right? Take some initial action toward that.

And at that point, you’re very likely to continue because once you get yourself engaged, you’re a lot more likely to move forward.

Jay: Yeah. I love that you brought up for those that are responsible for their own schedules. You know, for years, I had a job where I had to be there at a certain time, and I was there at that time.

I mean, I didn’t have a choice. And now, I’m in complete control, and I’m only accountable to myself. And this is where those thoughts are just completely magnified.

David: Yeah. That’s why I think when we pay attention to what’s going on in there, and try not to take it too personally, because again, going back to the original thought where that’s not really, necessarily you.

I mean, it’s your brain. Sure. It’s our brains generating that stuff. But it doesn’t mean that’s who you are. It just means that your brain’s job is to generate ideas to come up with different things that you can then decide whether or not to take action on.

So when it comes up with things that are counterproductive or unhelpful, and you’re able to recognize that, then you’re able to take far more control of your life than you will any other way

Jay: Yeah, one thing I learned from my parents is the “and then what” game, right?

So instead of telling myself what’s gonna happen? I ask myself, because, you know, I still have fear and anxiety and those kind of things, and I don’t like rejection, and I don’t like failure, and so a lot of times it feels easier not to try. But if I ask myself about that fear and say, okay, let’s say you do it, and something negative happens, and then what?

And you kind of play that game, and you just keep asking yourself, and then what? And you get to the end, and you realize, the reality is nothing is going to happen, right? Something positive can happen, but the fact that something negative is going to happen is not very realistic.

David: That’s true. I think sometimes taking notes for ourselves is also helpful, particularly when you’re in a place where your brain is trying to take you in different directions than you actually want to go. To be able to just sit down, jot down some notes about either why the thing that you need to work on is more important, or just writing down the thoughts that are in your head, writing down those little scraps of dialogue that are derailing you, and then coming up with alternatives to those, so that when you notice them appearing, you can then proactively create your own responses to that, to get you to take the actions that you want to take.

I think one of the things that’s most interesting about this is, very often, it’s our best selves, our plans. Well, today I’m going to work on this, this, this, this, and this, right? Those are our best laid plans versus the impulsive part of our brain, which just wants to run off in all kinds of different directions, and to be able to stay focused on the things that are most important to us.

One of the other things that’s helped me a lot is going back to the why. Why do I want to do this? Why was this important to me at the beginning of the day and seems less important now? And when you’re able to reconnect with the why of why you’re doing it, you’re going to be a lot more likely to stay on course.

Jay: Yeah. You mentioned the word reprogramming. I think that you can eventually get to a point where it’s automatic. That when you hear these thoughts, you’ve got something there to replace them with. And that can be just as subconscious as these negative thoughts coming up, right? Your brain can start to recognize what’s happening and you’ve reprogrammed yourself to replace that negativity or whatever it is with something positive.

David: Yeah, it reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer’s in a meeting and somebody mentions the word chocolate and all of a sudden you’re inside Homer’s head. He’s going, chocolate, right? And he has these fantasies about chocolate going on in his head, and it really demonstrates how things can go very wrong, very quickly, if you don’t notice what’s going on in there and take positive actions to change it.

And once again, as business people who have some flexibility sometimes with our schedules, it becomes so much more important to us than people who may have less flexibility, whose jobs are more dictated. “You must get this done in this amount of time,” because even if you have a thought like that, you’ve got to figure out a way to get it done.

And particularly when you’re talking about small business owners, or you’re talking about salespeople who do have some flexibilities with their schedules very often, this can come into play a lot.

And as you mentioned, if you’ve got alternatives to that, or if you’re, first of all, able to recognize it and notice that you’re not happy with the way that it’s going, you’re going to be a lot more likely to be able to fix it.

Jay: Yeah, I also think in today’s world that controlling your thoughts. might be a little bit more difficult because we have so many distractions readily available. And I tell myself I’m an incredible multitasker.

And so I have, Dave, I have like eight screens in front of me because I don’t want to miss an email. I don’t want to miss a text. I’ve got the news going. I’ve got all these things. And I do find myself in a place where I’m kind of the chocolate thing, right? Or the squirrel thing, right?

I’m like, “squirrel!” And so I’m starting to implement these focus modes, these do not disturb modes, because there are very few emails that I have to answer right away. There are very few texts, and how are you going to control that inner monologue If you can’t even control where your attention is going.

David: Yeah, and when you talk about something like that, which essentially is input versus output, and you recognize that you’ve got all these distractions set up, and in many cases, it’s just an organizing system for other people’s priorities that you’re seeing. Your inbox, right, is what other people want of you, what other people want you to do.

I want you to read this, and it could be anything. It could be spam and what they want you to do is see the subject line, be enticed by it, open it up, read the email, click on whatever it says, whatever it is they want you to do.

Now, you’re no longer even in your own head. Now you’re getting somebody else’s internal monologue forced into your brain and accepting it.

And that’s about the worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust.

Jay: Yeah, yeah. And for me, it’s like, I have a fear of missing that thing, right? A FOMO, like, maybe if I don’t respond now, that’s going to fall off of my to do list, and then I’ll have some accountability there or something.

And so, you do want to have a good system. I think that’s another part of what we’re talking about, having a good way. Remembering things, offloading them from your brain, but they’re still tracked so that you can, still focus and those kinds of things.

Again, in today’s world, this is not the easiest thing to do.

David: No, it’s definitely not. Sometimes I think it’s good for us, when we’re getting a lot of input, to maybe put the phone in airplane mode to disconnect from the web, so that if we have to focus on writing something that is not web connected, we can just do that without those distractions.

Because it’s like a casino. You’ve got the dings coming in on the phone. You’ve got things coming through on your computer. And every time that stuff happens, if we’re not aware of it, and if we’re not proactively focusing on our own thoughts and what we want to do and what we want to take action on, then the likelihood that we’re going to stick with what we originally intended is pretty much slim to none.

Jay: Yeah. Or you’re going to be, you know, pushing a rock uphill, right? Making it hard on yourself. David, how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself and my team. Actually when you go to that page, even before you schedule a call, there’s a video there that you can watch.

You can get an idea of what we do and how we do it. You may watch that video and say, “I don’t want to schedule a call.” That’s perfectly fine. Or you may watch it and you may say, “Oh, now I really do want to schedule a call.” Go there, watch the video, see what you think. If it makes sense for you, let’s have a conversation.

We’ll basically take a look at where you are now versus where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits. We’ll take a look at the markets that you’re looking to go after. Who you’re looking to sell to, those types of things. Regardless of whether or not we ever work together, the conversation will be very helpful in allowing you to put together a proactive vision of what you want your business to be.

So if it makes sense for you, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right, David, thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Take Control of Your Internal Monologue?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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For me, in identifying and attracting ideal clients, I need people who have the motivation, who have the desire, who have the discipline, and just the willingness to move forward. People who are decisive enough to be able to say, “yes, I want to do this. Let’s move forward on it.” Because the people who just take forever to make up their minds and who don’t respond to calls and all that type of thing? Been there, done that. No longer my ideal situation, or even close.

David: Hi and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be dealing with the topic of attracting ideal clients. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey David, thank you so much. Another great discussion here. If we could all only deal with ideal clients. I think that would be ideal. See what I did there?

David: I think so too.

I love the idea of ideal clients. I love the concept of it. And in nearly everything that I do with our clients, I try to keep that the focus. It’s not about bringing anyone in who can fog a mirror. It’s not about bringing anyone in with a pulse. It’s about saying, okay, how do I put together a situation, an environment in which all the very best prospects for my products and services know who I am and know what I do so that they can make a thumbs up or thumbs down decision about whether or not they want to work with me.

And along the way, can I identify whether this person is my ideal client or something very close to it?

Jay: Yeah. And part of that process is learning to exclude, right? Not include, but learning to exclude. I think sometimes we, especially when we’re first starting out, we think I want to cast the widest net possible.

And you know, I’ve learned just the opposite. I want to be as finite as I can be in who I’m trying to attract.

David: Exactly, because it determines everything. It determines what you’re going to say to people, how aggressively you’re going to pursue them, how hard you’re going to work for them, when and if they decide to do business with you and you decide to do business with them.

I think sometimes, in these podcasts, we say things like this, and it probably alienates a segment of the market who feels like, “Oh, no, you have to really do more things for customers, and the customer’s always right,” and all that type of thing. And I’m not saying that that type of thinking is wrong. I’m just saying that that type of thinking creates a different result.

And if your goal is to attract clients, any clients, then yeah, that can work. But if your goal is to attract ideal clients, the right clients, people who fit with the way that you do business, people who are going to respect you, respect your time, be willing to honor their investments, be willing to reply back to you when you need a response, then.

The rules become different.

Jay: Yeah. I’ve stepped away a long time ago from the customer is always right. I think that in certain industries, like maybe retail, that’s more applicable. But so often, I’m like, I can’t help you or , this has come to a point where neither of us are being satisfied, so we need to kind of cut ties.

Like you talked about in the last podcast, being direct and learning how to identify when you should be direct, you’re going to help them and you’re going to help yourself.

David: Absolutely. And if you want to do this, if you want to attract the type of clients that resonate best with you and that you resonate with and that are going to result in long term great experiences, the first thing we have to do in that situation is to clearly identify or define what an ideal client means to us.

And I know for me, their ability and willingness to communicate is really high. And that’s one of the things that we also talked about in a recent podcast.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is one of those things that warrants more of your time than so many other things that you think may be important.

Because if you can streamline who is coming to you, your close rate is going to go way up. I mean, in my business, we’re paying for an online lead and it costs us, our cost per lead is high, David, it’s high. But it’s okay because we’ve honed that process so well that I never talk to somebody who is outside of somebody who needs our help.

That doesn’t mean that they can afford our help. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to close that deal, but I do not spend time on the phone with people who are not directly in our strike zone. And that is magical. And it’s such a key to our business model.

David: Yeah, because that then allows you to have a conversation to determine if this is not just something you can help them with, but whether or not this is an ideal client for you. This is the type of client that you’re going to be able to create exceptional value for. They’re going to appreciate that value and be willing to pay for it.

So I think all these things just tie together really nicely in a neat little bow when you are aware of the fact that this really can and should be a goal of your customer acquisition efforts.

Jay: Yeah. And a constant refinement, right? We just identified some new products that we can offer to our clients based upon the relationship and the calls that I’ve been taking and what people have been asking for.

So now I’m going to expand my net a little bit more with some additional keywords and things like that, but I’m not being haphazard about any of this anymore.

I’m being so careful and so specific, because I’m spending my dollars, you know, whether I get these leads or not, the money is spent.

David: Yeah, exactly. I know when I think in terms of my ideal clients, the people that I enjoy working with the most, the people who get the best results. Every single one of them is an implementer. They take action. They’re not constantly in their own heads thinking about what they might do or what they’ve done in the past or how smart they are or how, whatever they are.

They’re in there, taking action all the time. On our website, we have our Wall of Fame page, TopSecrets.com/results. And on that page are page after page of video testimonials, audio testimonials, written testimonials of people who have taken action and gotten results. To me, everyone on that page is an ideal client because they do it.

They take the action, they get the result. And as a result of that, we have a great relationship. Because when we take on a new client, we are making a promise to them. We are promising them that we’re going to be able to help them get to where they need to be in terms of their visibility, their sales, and their profits.

And we take that promise. extremely seriously. I can tell you, there are times where I’m talking to a prospect and I can recognize in the call that this person isn’t as serious about it as I am.

And in those situations, I’ll usually up the call quickly and say, okay, you know what? It doesn’t sound like we have a good fit here because guess what? I can’t want it for them more than they want it for them.

And so for me, in identifying ideal clients, I need people who have the motivation, who have the desire, who have the discipline and just the willingness to move forward.

People who are decisive enough to be able to say, yes, I want to do this. Let’s move forward on it.

Because the people who just take forever to make up their minds and who don’t respond to calls and all that type of thing? Been there, done that. No longer my ideal situation, or even close.

Jay: Well, I love this point. It’s so profound. You’re exactly right. When I’m doing a consultation with somebody, I know in the first five minutes what type of person they are.

Are they calling me in a panic because they’ve just learned something? Because we’re in the tax business, and so When, people just found out, they just saw their 1099 or something, and they’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know anything. That’s typically not going to be the client that is ideal for us.

Another type of client, where they’re being proactive, they’ve been doing research, they’re taking their time, that’s the type of customer that I’m going to close. That’s the type of customer that is ideal because when I’m requesting documents from them, or when we’re setting up something for them, they’re in that, active mode, that doing mode.

So I could tell right away, you know, I really want to work with this person. This is going to be a great relationship. And the other ones I’m like, okay, you know, we may end up signing you up, but I can tell right now it’s going to be a little bit more painful.

David: Yeah. And sometimes we have to make those decisions. Am I willing to exert the extra effort? Or am I going to say, no, you know what? This isn’t a good fit.

And maybe it’s an age thing. I don’t know if the older I get, the more likely I am to say, I want to make sure that fit is there ahead of time. But I find that it just creates a much better environment for us, for everybody who works in our organization, for the client, for the people they work with.

When everybody’s on the same page, it flows. So if you’re thinking in terms of your business and growing your business and wanting to have the type of business that you’re going to want to live in for a long time, then I would really strongly encourage you to consider what is my ideal client and how do I have to adapt what I’m doing to make sure that I’m attracting people like that and repelling those who are not a good fit for what I do.

Jay: Yeah, we’ve got a customer, we’ve, no, he’s not a customer. In fact, he’s not even a prospect anymore, but we’ve been dealing with him for the last five days. He reached out to us, he made it sound like he wanted our expertise, he was gonna use our services, but what he was really looking for is somebody to confirm something that he had already decided.

So every single time, we’re giving him free advice…

David: Free consulting.

Jay: Because, that’s right, free consulting. And he’s arguing with us about the result and he’s already decided what he wants. He’s not going to do business with us until we tell him what he wants to hear. And you know what?

That is fraught with legal situations for us. But my partner and I, after four days, we’re like, what in the heck are we doing? You know, we just need to tell this guy, look, you have received way more, that you didn’t pay for and go and find somebody who will give you the yes you’re looking for.

David: Yeah, because the moment we compromise our own integrity to try to appease someone who is a non-client to begin with, now it’s like, okay, why are we even in business? Because none of those things are compatible.

Jay: Yeah. You said something a couple of podcasts ago that really resonated with me. And that is that if they can bully you a little bit, if they figure out that they can get you to compromise, they’re going to latch onto that, right?

They’re going to say, look, I know if I push a little bit, if I’m more of a pain, if I’m a little bit more of a squeakier wheel, then they’re going to abuse that. Not everybody. I mean, we’re talking in generalities. People are generally good, but there are these types of…

David: We’re talking about non-ideal clients.

Jay: That’s right.

David: That’s what we’re talking about. Those are non-ideal clients.

Jay: Yeah, and identifying that quick and both of you getting on with your lives.

David: Exactly.

Jay: How can people find out more, David?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you.

If you’re in a situation where you’re trying to attract ideal clients and you maybe don’t even know where to begin, or don’t know how to identify who they are, or where they hang out, or how you can reach them, or what you should say or how you should say it in a way that gets results, let’s have a call. TopSecrets.com/call. We are here to help.

Jay: All right. Once again, it’s been a real pleasure, David.

David: Thank you so much, Jay.

Ready to Identify and Attract More Ideal Clients?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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When we think about prospects who can’t or won’t say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don’t reply back after they’ve gotten all the information, it’s basically two pieces of the same puzzle. When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can’t drive them to the yes. Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing prospects who can’t or won’t say no. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. You know, there’s so much to cover about how to deal with prospects. You really have to be thinking in depth about, who are these clients who can’t or won’t say no?

Do you even recognize that? Because that’s going to affect how you spend your time. Will you be working with them? Are they worth the time? Things like that.

David: Yeah. And it ties back exactly to our last podcast where we were talking about prospects who don’t respond to you.

We’re actually talking about clients who don’t respond to you. And then we got carried away with clients. We said, okay, we’ll talk about prospects in the next episode. And this really ties together nicely because in many cases, the people who can’t or won’t say no to us are the very same people who end up going radio silent and just ghosting us.

When we’re trying to get a sale closed.

Jay: Yeah, and I think it’s, again, we need to track and keep records. We need to be able to know, like, I have a system where I get a reminder. Hey you know, it’s my CRM. The last time I spoke with a potential client, I made a note. Remind me about this client in five days, if you’re running through a lot of potential prospects, you’re not going to remember your last conversation.

You’re not going to remember, are they one of these clients that we’re talking about? So tracking and, searching for this particular concept, are they saying no? Can they say no? A very important part of the process.

David: Yeah, and that’s where I think the notes that we keep for ourselves inside our CRMs or wherever we document that stuff are so important, because if we’re just saying follow up, follow up, follow up in our notes, that tells us nothing.

So a lot of times it’s really good in our next set of notes to say, spoke with Joe yesterday, he indicated he’d have a decision by such and such a date, so that when you contact him on that day, you say, hey, listen, when we last spoke, you said you have a decision today at 1230. What are you thinking? Right.

And you can move forward from there. But when we talk about people who can’t or won’t say no, I think this is where I’ve had several epiphanies along the way, because I think in sales, our desire is always to get them to say yes. But, in reality, sometimes we are better off getting them to say no. Because these non decisions are just killers.

And sometimes people, they just can’t bring themselves to say they don’t want to do it. Whether it’s fear of missing out, or they don’t want to hurt our feelings. I don’t know what it is, but I know that whenever I run into it, I find it extremely frustrating, because I’m a pretty direct communicator.

If you and I are having a conversation, I will tell you exactly what I think. I mean, I won’t be rude about it. I won’t be obnoxious, in most cases, right? But I’ll be very direct because I feel like I owe that to every person I talk to.

If we’re talking about working together, I want to make sure that people are extremely clear on what we’ll be able to do and what we won’t be able to do. And we can’t do anything until we get to that agreement.

I mean, I say this all the time, whenever two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they’ll figure out a way to do it. If one of them doesn’t, they won’t. And very often the one who doesn’t is the prospect.

And when they’re too afraid or timid or shy to say no, it is a huge time waster.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And you can’t be wasting time, right, on people. You just can’t be doing it. So, we’ve identified progress points, right? So I’ve had an initial discussion with them. I’ve followed up. Have they responded to my follow up or are they ignoring me?

First follow up is an email. Second follow up is a text. If I’m not getting any communication on those first two methods, they’re going into my drip program, right? I mean, instantly. I’m not going to waste my time with those people. I can’t waste my time with those people.

David: Yeah. And there are multiple steps to this as you indicated.

If we haven’t even made a sales presentation to the person yet, if they don’t know what we offer and how we offer it and what it costs and all that sort of thing, that’s very early stage stuff, and we have to decide our tolerance for pain in terms of how many times am I going to reach out to have those conversations?

Once we’ve made the presentation, once they have a clear understanding of exactly what we’re offering, and they’ve expressed interest in it, when they start not responding then, then I tend to make more efforts than I would in the early stages, because now I just basically want them to say, “yes, I’d like to do this” or “no, I would not like to do this,” right?

Because those are really the two best answers. Those are the answers that allow everyone to move forward one way or another. When people just don’t respond or they can’t or won’t say no, they can’t bring themselves to say no, but they can’t bring themselves to say yes. Then where do you go with that?

Right? You’re scheduling out appointment after appointment. And I think at that point, it’s really important for us to understand what is causing that delay. What’s going to happen between now and two weeks from now that’s going to change the situation. And sometimes It will be a money thing. They’ll say, “okay, well, I’m expecting something to come in so that I’ll have the money to be able to do it in two weeks. Contact me back in two weeks.”

And sometimes you do that. And then it’s like, “oh, well now it’s going to be another month or two.” And they keep putting it out. And at some point you have to determine whether or not what they’re saying is even viable anymore, or if they just can’t say no, won’t say no, have no idea of what their cashflow is actually like.

And that’s important too, because if they don’t know what’s coming in and when it’s coming in, then that creates potential friction, not just for them, but for you as well.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I do sales calls every day now. And I’ve just been thinking about my interaction with those people.

We’re a premium product. We’re not trying to be the low cost. We’re like the Mercedes of our industry. We have more knowledge. We’re very focused on our niche. And so people get very excited when they’re on calls with me. And then I’m like, yeah, let me show you our pricing model.

And there is typically some sticker shock. Right? And when that sticker shock happens, I can tell, they don’t want to tell me that they were shocked by our prices.

There’s a pride thing. And so they’ll be like, “yeah, let me look this over and I’ll get back with you.” And they’ve already decided, and I know they’ve already decided that they can’t use us. They’re not going to use us, but they’ll follow up with me. They’ll do all those things, cause you know, I feel like I’m good enough that in 20 minutes we’ve established kind of a relationship. And so now it’s a little bit more personal. And so like you pointed out, they don’t want to hurt my feelings saying, “Hey, you’re too expensive,” when that’s exactly what I want to hear. Just tell me, and let’s both move on with our lives.

David: Yeah, I’ve had situations where I’ve given someone a price and then there was this real quiet silence. And I’ve said to some people like, did I scare you off with that? I mean, I’ve literally used those words. Did I scare you off with that? And nine times out of 10, they’ll say, “no, I wasn’t expecting that, but…” and then you continue the conversation from there.

Again, I think just being very direct in our communications, and just being very clear. Because I think when we try to couch what we’re saying and like I’m afraid to ask if they think the price is too high and they’re afraid to tell me if the price is too high, it’s not good for communication.

So I find that just by asking them questions and just being really direct, does that sound like a lot to you? Does that sound like too much? Does that sound like too little? And “well. It doesn’t sound like too little,” yeah, and they’ll tell you.

And you’re far better off having that conversation rather than saying, yeah, let me think about it for two weeks, because there’s no thinking going on during those two weeks.

I had a conversation with someone that I had spoken with previously, and we had made arrangements to talk two weeks later. And I didn’t even want to do it at the time, because I thought this is futile. But, you know, we all make mistakes, right? And sure enough, two weeks later, when I called back, he said, “Oh, I thought we were going to be talking at the end of the month.”

He didn’t even know when we were supposed to be talking again. And I basically said to him, I said, yeah, I had a feeling there wasn’t going to be a lot of thinking going on during those two weeks. I said it sounds like we probably don’t have a fit with this. And then at that point, since I kind of said it for him, he was able to agree.

And I like that. I mean, I prefer that because if I schedule another call in two weeks and he spends another two weeks not thinking about it, and I spend another two weeks thinking I’m having a conversation that could lead to a sale, then all of us are wasting our brain energy and I’m just not about that anymore.

Jay: Yeah, I really love this idea of being direct. It’s something that is hard for me. But being direct, like you said, will save you both some time. And look, they call me for a free consultation, but they fully expect that at some point during that call, we’re gonna enter some type of sales process. Right?

And so me thinking that I can’t go there is, like you kind of mentioned in our last podcast, there’s some fear there, I think on my part.

David: Yeah. And for me, it also boils down to a respect issue. Respect for our own time, respect for the other person’s time. And if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t respect their own time and they don’t respect your time, for me, that is a huge red flag.

I mean, if I’m able to pick that up early on in the conversation, I’ll tend to wrap up those calls pretty quickly because, when somebody treats you like that as a prospect, how are they going to be after they have paid you money and they’re expecting you to operate on their terms and their terms about the way they do things is terrible.

You just don’t want to put yourself in that position.

Jay: Yeah, this is a great point. And I think it’s a good point for another podcast. It’s like, do you really even want to close that sale? Right? Because you can identify early on sometimes in the process, this person is going to be difficult. So is it worth the money?

We have discovered that when we give, and this is the weirdest thing, and we should talk about it further, that when we give people a discount, they’re more problematic along the way. And I don’t know why that is, David.

So we’ve decided for our own sanity, we don’t give discounts. Because we’ve learned that that type of customer, the whole way, it’s going to be difficult, and they’re paying us less money for us to deal with that nonsense.

David: Yeah, and I think it can be that, it can be a discount, or, in some cases, it can just be any sort of compromise that we make in the process that is really different.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because they look at that and they go, “oh, okay, I can do whatever I want now.” And when you run into a situation like that, it’s just not conducive to good business.

Now there are other people, and I’ve had situations recently where there was somebody who really wanted to work with us,was really y determined to do it, but was struggling with the financial component.

And we were able to put together a payment plan that made sense for him and he was able to move forward with it and he’s been great. And I’m so glad we did that.

We’ve had other situations where I’ve done something similar for somebody and then they ghost you, right? It’s like you’re basically trying to work within the parameters that they’re setting up.

And sometimes I do this as a bit of a marketing experiment. Because if somebody says, “I can’t afford this,” and it’s like, “okay, well, let’s say we put together payment terms in place that will work for you. You know, would you do it then?” “Yeah.” “Okay.”

And then you put it in place and then they don’t move forward. So, some people are full of it. You’re just going to have that. I mean, that just happens in business.

Some people are going to be great and they’re just going to be honest with you up front. We don’t always know the difference until we have those conversations and we either offer what we’re thinking about offering or we don’t offer it. And then everything flows from those decisions.

But when we think about prospects who can’t or won’t say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don’t reply back after they’ve gotten all the information, it’s basically two pieces of the same puzzle.

When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can’t drive them to the yes.

Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time.

Jay: Mmm. Powerful. Driving them to the no or driving them to the yes. I love that, David. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have these conversations with you. And if you’re in a situation where you’re looking to grow your sales and profits and you’re stuck somewhere along the line, if you have a lot of people who are ghosting you, there are things you can do to keep that from happening.

If people aren’t saying no to you, and you know they should be, there are ways to do that as well. Sometimes I look at it almost like musical chairs, where the music stops. Somebody is going to be without a chair. Sometimes you have to stop the music and find out who’s not sitting down so you can continue to interact with those who are going to be better suited to working with you.

So TopSecrets.com/call. Let’s have a conversation.

Jay: Great analogy. Thank you, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Need to Get Better at Driving Prospect to the Yes OR the No?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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When dealing with unresponsive clients and prospects, we have to make sure that we’re doing everything on our end to be as responsive as possible. If somebody takes a week to get back to me, that doesn’t mean I’m going to take a week to get back to them. Because if I start to fall into the trap that they’ve laid out, then that’s not good for anybody.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing unresponsive clients and prospects. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Once again, great topic here. I think all of us are guilty — anyone who’s involved in sales — of thinking, this client is going to turn into something, but really, if we looked at it, should we be spending time on somebody else instead of trying to push people through who are not ready or not able to do so.

David: Yeah. And I think, as you said, everyone in sales deals with this, and that’s when you’re dealing with prospects, right? That’s when you’re dealing with people who have not yet spent money with you. This is even harder for some people when you’re dealing with clients, people who have spent money with you and who are not getting back to you with the information that you need in order to do the job that they paid you to do.

Jay: Yeah, I actually have a client right now that is driving me crazy, because we’re in the tax business and they were like “we need to get this done because we have an extension.” And so at some moments they’re like pressing me like this is so important. And then they’ll ghost me for like three or four days.

So right now I’m in the ghost period. I’ve emailed them, I’ve called them and I’m like, where did they go? And I just know like tomorrow they’re going to be, “Hey, we need to get this done.” It’s driving me crazy, David.

David: Yeah. And again, you are not alone. I think everyone in business deals with this, and every time it happens, we’re like, why is this happening? I don’t get it.

And that’s why I think it’s important for us to take the time and sort of examine this and try to determine, okay, what are the reasons behind it?

If it’s a client, why are they not getting back to me with the information? So in a situation that you just described, maybe they don’t have access to it as quickly as they thought.

Obviously, they’re just probably distracted with other things. They’re working on other projects. They know it needs to be done, but they’re not able to do it as quickly as they’d like.

Every excuse in the book, some of them valid, some of them not. But when we are tasked with getting things done on somebody else’s behalf, and then they refuse to live up to their side of the bargain. That’s when we start to run into trouble.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I’m guilty of as we talk about this, is feeling like if I put any pressure on the client, it’s going to like affect our relationship or something like that.

So I treat people with kid gloves. And I really kind of find out, no, if I’m, I don’t know if stern is the right word, but at least,

David: Maybe firm?

Jay: Yeah, firm maybe is a better term.

David: Yeah, because I think there is a difference between stern and firm. Firm is basically like…

Jay: They sound the same.

David: Yeah, exactly. Listen, I’m trying to help you here and I need this in order to move forward.

And in most businesses, when you’re interacting with someone, particularly in a service business, it comes up a lot. So the rapport obviously is key. We have to be able to have the rapport with people to be able to say, “listen, this is what I need. Otherwise I can’t move forward on it,” and have them be able to come back and say, “yes, listen, I understand. I’ll get this taken care of for you.”

But it doesn’t always flow like that. And that’s why I think if we start to look at what are the reasons for it, we may be able to have better ammunition in terms of dealing with it.

For some people, and I think this goes more to the prospecting aspect of it than for clients, there’s a fear aspect.

I’m afraid of doing this. I’m afraid of taking the next step. I’m afraid of moving forward. And it could be with a client as well. I’m afraid that once I do this, then there’s going to be something else you’re going to need that I’m not going to have. And I’m afraid I don’t have the time or I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to pull it off.

So there’s a fear element that enters it into sometimes. Is that what you’ve noticed as well?

Jay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in one of the other things that I’m experiencing right now, talking about current clients is like, they’re not responsive and they’re slow. And then at the end, it’s like, they’re blaming me.

So it’s like, they think that somehow it was my product or my service. And so, there is a danger in not being firm, in not helping them along, that the product won’t satisfy them in the end and you have to guard against that.

David: Yeah, and I think part of that is reminding them along the way that when you’re waiting for them, reminding them that, “hey, if we want to make this deadline, you know, please get back to me and let me know where you stand on this.”

Because even if they say, “okay, it’s going to take me 48 hours to get this to you,” then at least you know, and you’re not sitting there going, “where is this stuff,” and wasting your own mental energy and your own time not knowing what they’re doing.

I think communication is so key when we’ve got a business relationship with someone.

And every single time I’ve had a problem with a business relationship, it always boiled down to communication. Somebody stopped communicating. Or they were really slow in communicating, or they communicated in sentence fragments instead of actual responses.

I remember having a relationship years ago, we were doing business with a really large customer in New York. And I would send out an email that was maybe a paragraph long with several different questions.

And they would come back by answering part of the first thing I asked, and none of the rest of it. And when you see a pattern like this, it very often indicates a problem. And that’s where we have to then go back to our people and say, “listen, I want to get this done for you, but in order to do this, I need A, B, and C. Can you provide that to me?”

And they either will or they won’t.

Jay: Yeah. one of the other things that I see happening is if they’re not responsive, I kind of become less responsive, that’s a mistake. I think that even if they’re not communicating, we need to be communicating.

So I’m still sending them emails. I’m still letting them know that I’m working on their project or whatever else, so that they feel like they’re getting service, even though the breakdown is on their end.

David: Yeah, and I think you’re exactly right. You need to maintain that communication and it’s tempting not to, to say, “okay, we’ll leave it to them if they’re not going to do it.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: But that’s not what we’re being paid for. In some instances we are being paid to continue to nurture that relationship and to continue to ask for the things that we need in order to be able to help them.

Because. If we do get to the point where things don’t get done that need to get done, then obviously it’s going to be a reflection on us.

So we have to make sure that we’re doing everything on our end to be as responsive as possible. if somebody takes a week to get back to me, that doesn’t mean I’m going to take a week to get back to them.

I’ll still try to get back to them within an hour or two, or as quickly as possible, because if I start to fall into the trap that they’ve laid out, then that’s not good for anybody.

Jay: Yeah. One of the things that we’ve learned, talking about communication, is setting the expectation up front with the customer.

So, right after they sign up, or even before they sign up, we’re like, “okay, here’s what’s going to happen.” Then they sign up and they get an email. “Here are the steps that we’re going to go through. Here’s what I need you to do, and here’s what I’m going to do.”

That way when they’re falling down or whatever, you can remind them, “Hey, remember we talked about this? I really need this to provide the product or meet your deadline.”

And that way it’s much easier to remind somebody than to kind let them know halfway through, you know what, we need to make changes here.

David: Yeah, and that’s great. The fact that you’re laying it out in advance, letting them know what you need and when you need it in advance, because that’s something that you can then keep pointing back to.

Jay: Yes.

David: You know, another thing that I think we fall into, another trap that we fall into sometimes is we’re used to one particular method of communication.

So if it’s email, we just keep sending email after email. Or if it’s telephone, we leave message after message. And I think in some situations it’s better to mix that up a bit.

We talk a lot about the MVPs of Marketing and Sales. What’s the message, which combination of marketing vehicles am I going to use to communicate the message? And then who are the people or prospects we need to reach?

Well, in this case, it’s the V aspect of it. Which marketing vehicle are we using to reach them? Because if they’re not responding to email, then maybe we leave a voicemail message. If they’re not responding to voicemail message, then if we’re connected with them in social media, maybe we message them via social media, right?

There are different ways that we can potentially get to them so that we can get a response. If they have an assistant, we can try to reach the person’s assistant and ask them to give us a call back. Right? So it’s three different methods of communication that may result in getting a response.

Jay: Yeah. And we kind of talked about this in the last podcast to kind of keeping track, keeping notes, cause you may have different people on your staff who will interact with that person in different ways or through the process.

So putting in your CRM or in your notes, “Hey, this person is better reached by text. This person is better reached by phone.”

I find more and more text is what everybody wants, but you can’t use text for long form communication or attachments or things like that. And I think it also depends on their technical skills, right?

They may not be using certain types of communication because they’re our generation, right? You know, who knows?

David: Yeah, exactly. And you hit the nail on the head because basically if you’re sending email and they’re not responding, you can then follow up with a text and say, “did you get the email I sent you yesterday at 2. 42 pm,” right?

Jay: Mm hmm.

David: And then they can respond to that. They’ll be more likely to do that. So you’re able to use these different elements in combination, to be able to get the result.

We talked a lot in terms of what clients need to do when we’re trying to communicate with them and they’re ghosting us. When it comes to prospects, maybe we should save that for a whole other episode.

Jay: Yeah.

David: it’s big, huge when it comes to prospecting, because so often you can have a great conversation with someone and then they go radio silent on you. And where do you go from there?

In fact, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s save that for another one.

Jay: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I was just thinking, if we’re not keeping track of how we’re communicating with them, we may be frustrating them, right? Because I’m trying to get a hold of them one way and they’re expecting another way.

So listening, processing, keeping track, very important. David, how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re struggling with this, where you’re having trouble getting clients to respond, we’ve got different methods that we use to stir the pot a bit, get the response back that you’re looking for and keep you engaged in the conversation because that’s the only way that sales move forward.

It’s the only way that business moves forward. So TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Repair Issues with Unresponsive Clients and Prospects?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Knowing vs. Doing in sales is all about implementation. Implementation connects the knowledge you have to the results that you’re going to get. And without that key element being implemented again and again and again, you’re never going to get to the results, the sales, the possibility that you have in your entire career.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing knowing versus doing in sales. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. I love this topic because I think so many of us are just doing what we think we should do, but we’re like, squeaky wheel gets the grease. And so, are we really focusing and fine tuning and honing our sales.

David: Right. And doing what we know.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because a lot of us can get trapped in input, rather than output. And I know I am guilty of this myself because I am a chronic learner. I am always reading books and studying stuff, watching videos, learning from courses, I spend a whole lot of money educating myself every year.

What’s the newest, the latest, the greatest, the things that I should be paying attention to? And sometimes when we get too focused on input, we don’t engage in the output necessary to get the results we’re looking for.

Jay: Yeah, I’m exactly the same. Like I have all this technology. I’m always trying to hone my systems, but like we hear garbage in, garbage out, right?

I spend so much time on that, maybe I should be spending time on actually closing sales, meeting with clients, you know, those types of things.

David: Yeah, and keeping track of what we’re doing, keeping track of our output, I think is really important, and a lot of us lose sight of this. I’ve actually created tools in my training programs that allow people to start to capture that.

Because when you boil it down, the things that we need to be doing on an ongoing basis involve bringing new prospects through the door, getting them qualified in or out as quickly as possible. Engaging in presentations with the people who are worthy of presentations, making offers, closing sales, all those things are key.

And a lot of that is just about engaging in conversations with people. So simply by tracking what we’re actually doing on a day to day or week to week basis, we can have a crystal clear idea of where things are going wrong in our business.

But if we just sort of think in the back of our mind, “Oh, well, yeah, I know that, or I’m doing all that,” we can really be misleading ourselves more often than we think.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about tracking, I’m looking for the perfect software to track or things like that. And often a notebook, you know, start simple and work your way up. A spreadsheet, something and just reviewing your daily activities can be a very powerful thing.

David: Yeah, whatever you’ll actually use is your best contact management system, whether that’s a full blown CRM software system, or whether you’re just good at being able to keep track of your appointments and notes on a calendar or in some sort of notebook. As long as you have it all in one place and you know what’s next, that’s huge.

Knowing what’s next for each prospect and client. When do I have to reach out to them and what am I going to be reaching out to them about?

If I know that somebody has an event coming up in November and I need to be in touch with them by early October, I want to make sure that I’ve got a note for early October that says, be in touch with this client, early October, about their event mid November.

So that when I reach out to them, I’m not just calling and saying, “I’m just calling to check in” or “how’s everything going?”

No, I’m calling, “Hey, listen, I wanted to give you a call. We were talking about this event you have coming up in mid November, wanted to see where we are with that,” so that we’re able to continue the conversation where the last one left off, which is also pretty critical.

Jay: Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I tell you about an experience we’ve just had, the past few weeks, because we upped our game in tracking and kind of identifying the different categories and the conversations.

We’ve identified two new products that our customers absolutely need. And we’re excited to offer that. And we would have never caught it, if we weren’t tracking the calls and taking notes and those types of things.

David: Yeah, it’s so important to be able to listen to clients, but a lot of that doesn’t happen when we’re not taking the daily or weekly actions necessary to make sure that that’s going forward.

Years ago, I put together what I referred to as a continuum of knowing versus doing. And in the lower left corner of the grid, people who know nothing and do nothing.

It’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing. As a result, I take no action. And people who know nothing and do nothing in sales are actually not doing any harm. So they’re obeying the first law of good doctoring, you know, first do no harm. Right? So they’re not really an issue in the marketplace.

The people who know a lot and do a lot are the ones who typically get the best results.

So ideally we want to move from knowing nothing and doing nothing to knowing a lot and doing a lot. But what’s really interesting are the other extremes on the matrix because There are people who know a lot, but do nothing or do very little. They’re not taking action.

And when you’re in that situation where you’re like, “Oh yeah, I know this, I know that. I’ve known that for a long time,” It’s like, okay, but are you doing it?

Not just are you doing it, but are you doing it as, as well as you need to be doing it? Are you doing it better than your competitors? Are you doing it as well as it can be done?

Because until you get to the point where you are implementing as well as you can, based on the things you know, there’s no way you can possibly get to the money. Because implementation tells us if what we know is actually true, right?

Because a lot of times we’re taking action based on what we know and we try things and they don’t work and we’re like, why didn’t that work? But you don’t even know it’s broken until you’re actually implementing.

And that’s why in our work with clients, we are laser focused on identifying what’s taking place, what is being done, and as importantly, or more importantly, it’s how it’s being done.

Because in a lot of cases, people are like, oh yeah, I knew that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation with prospects and with clients where they’re like, okay, well, yeah, I know how to do that.

And I’m like, look, I know you do, right? Prospecting, presenting, and following up. Everybody does that in sales. It’s not about the what. It’s about the how.

How are we prospecting?

How are we identifying the targets we’re going after?

What specifically are we saying to them? Are we saying things consistently from one prospect to the next? Because if we’re not, then we don’t know what’s working and what’s not. So, the how part of it is absolutely critical.

Jay: Yeah, and I also think the assumption that you’re good enough, right? Our systems are good enough. That’s very dangerous.

I’ve been watching the Olympics and watching things where they’re separated from their competitors by one tenth of a second, right? And when they’re training, they’re not saying, well, I’ve reached this point and I’m done. They’re saying,

David: Good enough

Jay: Right. They’re watching videos about their technique. They’re training in a different way. They’re watching what their competitors are doing. So I think just the realization that you can always improve, always, is so important.

David: Yes, and implementation is key to that because implementation is what connects the knowledge you have to the results that you’re going to get.

And without that key element being implemented again and again and again, you’re never going to get to the results, the sales, the possibility that you have in your entire career.

Jay: Yeah. And I also think the understanding, cause this can feel really overwhelming for people. And I think it’s important to simplify, but I also think it’s important to know you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

There are people who study this type of stuff. You, who are always looking into this, always improving, always looking for systems implementation, and you’re passing this onto your customers. So don’t think you have to do it alone.

David: Yeah, exactly. And it’s not that I’m some particular genius, but when we’re working with our clients, we’re working with their specific situations, their specific issues. So when they run into something, it’s not a vague generality where we’re saying, “Oh, make more calls,” right?

We’re looking at what is the specific situation? What’s the bottleneck, and what are the best possible solutions to blowing through that bottleneck.

But that requires two way communication, right? It’s not about me saying, go make more calls, go do this, go do that. It’s about saying, okay, what are you doing? What are you currently implementing? How are you taking action on this thing?

Where are the bottlenecks that you’re running into? What are the specific situations that are keeping you from being able to get more people qualified in or qualified out? What’s slowing you down in terms of being able to make more presentations and making more offers so that people have something to say yes or no to.

And those basic points along the continuum are what’s really critical. So if you feel like, “Hey, I really know a lot, I should be making more.” It goes right back down to implementation.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So how can people find out more about implementation?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team.

We love having these conversations, because the first thing we’re going to do is take a look at where you are now in terms of visibility and sales and profit, and where you’d like to be, and then see about helping you to connect the dots between here and there.

That’s all just part of the diagnostic. That’s just part of the call. So you don’t have to buy anything for that to happen. We have these conversations to help you think through your current situation so that you can determine what are the best next steps? So if you go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s the best place for you to go.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Fully Monetize What You Know and Implement Like a Pro?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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A lot of people just think broadly in terms of expanding their market, without asking themselves a really important question, which is why? Why do you need to expand your market? Am I not doing things well enough in my existing market that I haven’t been able to mine that as effectively as I could?

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Expanding Your Market. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Once again, I’m excited for this conversation. I know we always kind of learn from each other. We’re in a process in our business where we’re trying to expand from the inside, from our current customer base.

Like right now we have a great Google Ads program, but we don’t have an organic program, right? So that’s one area that we’re looking at right now. How do we get those organic leads? So we’re right in this process right now.

David: That’s really interesting because there are so many different ways we can talk about expanding.

I mean, the first thing you mentioned, just expanding inside your own customer or prospect base, right? You could just look at your Excel spreadsheet of all these people say, how can I expand within the people on this sheet, right? Or you could be talking, like you mentioned about an ad campaign.

How can we expand this ad campaign to reach more of the high quality prospects that I need to reach in order to have those conversations, in order to do business together. So yeah, lots of different ways to do it. I think the appeal of a topic like expanding your market is that a lot of people tend to want to do it.

I want to have more customers. I want to have more clients. Not quite sure where that’s going to come from. That’s sort of the generic thought, I think, for a lot of people. I want more customers. How am I going to do that?

And a lot of it boils down to this. minute stuff that we’re talking about, identifying who these people are, how we’re going to reach out to them, and how we’re going to get them on board with us.

Jay: Yeah. And I think that’s something that a lot of people fall prey to, and I catch myself sometimes as well, is thinking that movement is doing something, right? I’m busy. I’m writing a check. We’re doing something and we’re just moving. But ultimately, are you getting results and are you monitoring those results and fine tuning them?

If not, you’re kind of wasting your time.

David: Yeah. Confusing movement with progress and they’re two different things. You don’t even realize you’re doing it, but you’re like, Oh, I should really do this, I should really do that.

And we’ve also talked about the fact, in previous podcasts, that many business owners suffer from entrepreneurial ADD. Where you’re working on one thing and then the whole squirrel, squirrel, squirrel! and we’re doing that. And now we’re off on something else.

I think a lot of us have to reel ourselves back in when it comes to that, because there are so many different ways to expand your market.

So many different ways to get in front of different groups of people, and so many different things we can say to those people. And there are too many variables. And I think when you’re looking to expand your market, you can’t be changing all of the variables.

You can’t say, okay, now I’m going to go after a totally different group of people with a totally different message and promote a totally different product or aspect of my product, right?

Or a different approach to describing my product, because you will have absolutely no idea at that point of what’s working and what’s not. I mean, in some cases we can do some minor tweaking of maybe one of those variables.

If we’ve got a sales presentation that has worked historically for us, for a long time, then it makes perfect sense to test out that presentation in front of a different group of people who have never heard it.

Because you have something that wins and you’re matching that up with something that has not yet won, right? So you’re seeing does this work over here as well. That goes to the basic essence of what’s referred to as split testing, where you want to test approach A against approach B. And when you’re doing that, you just have to make sure that you’re only testing small aspects of one thing.

Cause like I said before, if you’re testing two completely different things against each other, you’re not going to know the answer to much of anything.

Jay: Yeah. And we’ve talked about movement that we go through, but there’s also a sense of, I’m generating all of these leads.

Well, what if 90 percent of them are junk, right? And so we confuse that with a successful program. And it’s not. It’s actually costing you money on both ends, right? And so, coming up and honing it, and doing your A B testing, you’re not just looking at does it bring people to ask questions.

What is the close rate? What is the cost per click or whatever it is, right?

David: Yeah, it’s not about quantity. And I think people try to take a simplistic approach to this and in sales, this has been going on forever. It’s just make more calls. Right. And that’s the same thing. Okay. Run more ads, get more leads in.

But if those leads aren’t any good, then what’s the point of bringing more of them in? I’ve always believed that it’s got to be a smart process. When you’re going after prospects and clients, it has to be a smart process, meaning that you’re evaluating things along the way. You’re evaluating the target group of people that you’re approaching.

You’re evaluating what you’re saying to them and the responses you’re getting back from them. You’re evaluating things like your closing ratios, and your conversion ratios.

Of the leads that I get, how many of those are qualified in or qualified out? If I talk to 10 people, how many of them are in and how many of them are out?

And those numbers should be relatively consistent as you’re doing that. And then if you know that three out of 10 are good quality prospects for you. Then you ask yourself, okay, how can I get that to four out of 10? And that might be related to getting to a different group of people, perhaps a higher end group of people who could spend more money.

It could be related to a lot of different things, whether it’s getting to different people or whether it’s a matter of what you’re saying to those people that would get more of them qualified in. There are always things that we can do. But I think in a lot of cases, if we want to expand, which sounds like we’re going big, we really have to focus and go small.

Jay: think that’s such an excellent point. I think there’s a danger when you say, I want to expand my market, to say, well, in order to do that, I’m going to have to add products or add services to attract a different group.

And then what happens is you become the restaurant that has every type of food on the menu. And they don’t do anything well, right?

And they have this massive menu, but so what. You haven’t really expanded your marketplace at all. So I love that idea of going small, going finite could be a much better way to expand your market.

David: Right. Cause again, sort of getting back to the idea of. Expanding the market doesn’t just mean quantity.

Jay: Yes.

David: It’s not about just more people. Can you expand your market that way? You probably can, but too much waste is associated with that in a lot of cases.

Expanding your market could mean, okay, if I’m dealing with this certain particular niche, whether it’s a geographic one, whether it’s an industrial one, whatever your group of people is that you’re targeting and you want to expand beyond that.

A lot of the thinking is to just go wide. But what if you were to say instead, okay, of the group that I’m going after, what if I were to target just the top 20 to 30 percent of that group and see how that goes. And then go wide with that.

Find more people like the ones who are your most successful clients and then expand that way. Expansion does not mean ignorant expansion. It doesn’t mean just blowing things out. It means identifying. really where you want to expand and how you want to expand and with whom.

Jay: Yeah, I love that concept. I told you in our business model, we rely so much on Google ads. We don’t want to spend a single penny on some type of ad that is not going to attract the right type of customers.

We want to spend a considerable amount of marketing dollars. So like you said, expand wide, right? That you have a large net, but on a very specific type of customer.

And that actually is the secret to our success, right? I mean, it’s like having a secret recipe, you know, that restaurant owner who doesn’t want anybody to know their recipe.

That’s how I feel about this keywords, you know, situation that we come up with. That’s more important than anything else we do in business at this point.

David: Yeah, and every business has to have things like that, that are going to allow themselves to differentiate themselves from anyone and everyone else who offers similar products and services.

I’m really big on the whole secrets thing, as you know, it’s our brand. So I feel like if you don’t have secrets like that in your business, then you have nothing proprietary. You have nothing that is going to differentiate you enough for people to want to buy it.

Another thing that I think is important to consider is that a lot of people just think broadly in terms of expanding their market, without asking themselves a really important question, which is why?

Why do I need to expand my market? Am I not doing things well enough in my existing market that I haven’t been able to mine that as effectively as I could?

And in some cases, that’s what’s happening. It’s like, we’re feeling like we’re not getting the progress we need here. So maybe I need to look over there.

And sometimes that will work, but sometimes, once again, it’s a matter of really honing in on what are the things that are working best with me now and can I even expand those things within the market that I’m currently interacting with?

Jay: Yeah, you bring up such a great point. If you’re trying to expand, but you’re not doing a good job with your current product that you’re offering, you’re going to kill yourself because you may be able to expand, but your consistency, your ability to serve your customers is going to go down exponentially with that plan.

David: Right. And if you’re running off to one place and the next, you’re essentially starting over each time and you’re setting yourself up for failure because it’s hard to get established and then to be able to continue to thrive in a particular area.

So it is often very tempting to say, well, I have to get to people outside of the city that I’m currently servicing, or I want to expand and I want to open up offices in different areas.

All of that can work, but it’s overhead. In most cases, it’s overhead. And you have to determine if the problem is really that, or if the problem is with your processes that are allowing you to not generate enough to begin with.

Jay: Yeah, I have a good friend. She has established kind of a unique clothing brand. It’s a vintage clothing brand. She does it all on Facebook. And she just went and opened a local retail store. She wants to expand.

And I’m like, like you said, I’m just sitting there going, what? You want rent, right? You want, payroll? You want all of these things when you had already established this great business model?

I understand the temptation to do that. But now she’s like, how do I get out of this? She signed a lease, right? It’s like clearly she’s regretting the decision at this point.

David: Been there, done that. Years ago we had retail mail order catalog businesses and we decided to open up a retail store. It is exactly like what your friend did. And… totally different business models, total distraction, not a good choice, not a good decision. Hopefully you realize it sooner rather than later, and you can adjust quickly. But expansion, but smart expansion.

Jay: Yes, all expansion is not good expansion. And that’s why it’s nice that there are people like you who people can talk to. So how do they find out more?

David: Yeah, they can learn from all my stupid mistakes along the way. I’ve said that to so many audiences over the years. The reason I’m up on this stage is not because I’m particularly smart, it’s because I’ve made every single stupid mistake you can possibly make in business. So if I can keep you from making just one of those mistakes, it’ll be time well spent.

Jay: Our podcast is a lot about the mistakes we’ve made over the years.

David: It is, right, because it’s so easy to learn from poor example, as long as you realize that’s what you’re doing. So that’s why we do it. We share the good, the bad and the ugly, because it’s not about, wow, you know, we’re so smart. It’s about, we’ve had these experiences. We’re happy to share our experiences with you and hopefully they’ll help.

So to answer your question, TopSecrets.com/call. You can go there, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have the conversation with you. If you’re thinking about expanding your market or expanding your business, getting to more or different people, let’s have the conversation.

We’ll look at who you’re targeting now, maybe who you could or should be targeting, where you are now versus where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits, because if you’re not visible, if they can’t see you, they can’t buy from you.

If you’re not generating sales with them, then being visible isn’t helping you.

And if it’s not profitable, then there’s no point in making the sales and being visible. So we really like to hone in on the most important aspects of what will allow you to really grow your sales and profits, in a thoughtful manner.

Jay: Absolutely. David, as always, it’s a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Expand Your Market?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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When you’re able to deliver what you say you’re going to deliver, that will start to motivate buyers to want to do business with you. And particularly for repeat orders. Because the first time they’re buying from you, they don’t really know exactly what you can do. They’re basing it on what you’re telling them, the conversations you’re having.

But then after they have that first experience with you, and they know what you’re like, and they’ve liked that experience, then they are going to be motivated to buy again. Because at that point, they know those things. And it’s not just based on what you’re saying.

David: Hello and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing what motivates buyers. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Yeah. Hey, it’s good to be here, David. I kind of think, why would you need to know or have a discussion about what motivates buyers?

I think it’s because we assume everybody’s like us. And that assumption, can be completely wrongheaded, right?

David: Yeah. I know Tony Robbins, in some of his material, talked about the fact that he’s not motivational. His goal isn’t to motivate people. And I thought that was a really interesting takeaway because you look at somebody like Tony Robbins and you’re like, well, that’s what he does.

He’s motivational. He motivates people. But his goal is to educate people and to encourage people and nurture them and provide services that are going to help them in their lives. Like the rest of us, most of us in business, that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to provide products and services that help our customers.

So when we talk about motivating a customer, there are a couple of different aspects to it, because one aspect of it is motivating them to buy, right?

Once they have all the information, sometimes it’s difficult to get people off the fence. So there’s that aspect of motivation, but even in the earlier stages, what will motivate a customer to want to even have a conversation with you?

What will motivate a customer to even go to your website to investigate what you have to offer? So my feeling is that motivation, at lots of different levels, is pretty much critical in business and in sales.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And also a recognition that people are different, right? I remember walking into one of my program director’s offices and he had a cardboard cutout and it was divided up and all the things that he felt the listeners wanted and I looked at it and this was not based on research.

This was just, you know, what he felt. And I looked at it and I’m like, I don’t think that’s accurate at all. It’s nice that you have this cardboard cutout, but I think you need to put a little bit more thought into it.

David: Yeah, that’s a great point. And a lot of us go into every situation with our own preconceived notions about situations.

And so it’s the same thing in sales. If we think that a customer is looking for X, Y, and Z, then that’s all we’re going to be talking about. But that’s why I think the whole consultative aspect of selling is so important.

Asking questions, diagnosing, finding out what the actual need is. And when it comes to motivation, you’re going to be a lot more likely to motivate people based on what they want than what you think they want.

Jay: Yeah, I think about people who create the product from the product side instead of from the customer side, right? And we just assume I like it, right? See it on Shark Tank all the time, right? These people are just so invested and they mortgage their homes and they do all these things and they don’t have any sales, but they’re just so convinced that this product is going to be something that everyone will love and they’re shocked to find out that nobody does.

David: Yeah. It’s like the old adage, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. He was like, look at this. This is the greatest thing in the world. Like, I don’t want that. That’s not what I’m looking for. Right. So yes, when you take an approach that is product centered instead of client or customer centered, that’s not likely to motivate people.

So if you’re thinking about how am I going to motivate a buyer to action? I think it really has to start with the diagnostic and understanding and determining what they really want.

Jay: Yeah. And I also think, once you’ve done that, taking pride in what you have to offer. And this is something I see people struggle with and I’ve struggled with it.

You know, I have people oftentimes will ask me for a discount now and I understand the ask, but I’ve really come to a place where I believe that we’re offering a great product. for a fair price. And I feel very confident in that. So I just tell them, look, we’re gonna do this and this and this, and our competitors are not.

You can reach out to them. We encourage you to research. But I know when you’re done with us, that you’re gonna feel like you underpaid, right? I just put it that way, you know, up front. And it really sends a message to them.

David: Yes, and that is very motivational when we’re able to transfer our own enthusiasm for our products and services to the buyer.

And I think I’ve heard sales described as something like that in the past. It’s a transfer of enthusiasm from the salesperson to the prospect or client. And I think there’s definitely an element of that that has to go into it because if we don’t have the courage of our own convictions, if we’re like, ” yeah, yeah, it’s okay. I mean, I think you’ll like it,” that’s not going to motivate anyone. It’s not very likely at all to get them to take action. So in terms of the motivational aspect, yeah, we kind of have to sell ourselves on whatever it is that we’re offering before we can ever sell anyone else.

Jay: Yeah. And again, get customer feedback and make sure that you are fulfilling promises and those types of things we went into in depth in the last podcast.

But when I first started out in our current business model, I kind of was hesitant. I felt like, you know, are we overcharging? And I’ve come to learn over the past two years, we might even want to charge more. You know, that’s how confident we are in the product we’re offering.

David: Yeah, and that’s really about creating value, right? You’re creating enough value for your customers that it makes sense for them to make the investment. That’s also highly motivational too.

When you’re able to deliver what you say you’re going to deliver, that’s going to motivate people to want to do it. And particularly for repeat orders.

Because the first time they’re buying from you, they don’t really know exactly what you can do. They’re basing it on what you’re telling them, the conversations you’re having.

But then after they have that first experience with you, and they know what you’re like, and they’ve liked that experience, then they are going to be motivated to buy again.

Because at that point, they know those things. And it’s not just based on what you’re saying.

Jay: Yeah, it’s that example I gave about the car salesman, right? Or the mechanic. Once you find somebody you can trust, it’s like okay, I’m never going anywhere else. And I would say I’m motivated, right?

Instead of being hesitant, “oh, I’ve got to go find somebody and I’m not sure if they’re going to be fair to me.” I’m like, “call them up,” right? There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever. I’m excited to call them. I know I’m going to get an honest shake and that’s really all I want.

David: Right, that’s all we’re looking for. And if you think about it, the idea of motivating buyers goes so well with what we were talking about in this most recent series of podcasts where last time we were talking about building trust in sales. Well, trust motivates buyers, right? If they have that level of trust, that’s going to motivate a buyer.

Prior to that, we were talking about crafting a customer experience, giving them an experience that is positive, that is memorable, that they’re going to remember in a good way. That also is extremely motivating.

When you don’t have those things, when you have a lack of trust, a lack of a good experience, a lack of enthusiasm from the salesperson, then it’s very unlikely that they’re going to be motivated to do much of anything, other than get away from you as soon as possible.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ll also add to this. You’ve mentioned this over and over again that you will tell potential customers like I don’t think that you’re a match That, I think is part of the motivation process.

Because if you’re in tune enough with your own products and services to where you can be very enthusiastic with the ones who are a match. And they talk to you and they know that you are a match together, right? It’s like, “Oh, I’m so excited. This person is going to solve my problems.”

David: Yeah, and in those situations, authenticity is so important. You never want to say to somebody, “I don’t think we’re a good fit” for the purpose of trying to convince them to convince you that they are a good fit. And then you say, “well, okay.”

Right? That’s just manipulative BS. And if I say to somebody, “listen, I don’t think we’re a good fit for this.” That means I’ve already determined that I’m not going to be able to help you to the extent that I’m going to need to be able to help you to get you the outcome you want, that I’m going to be happy with it, right?

So it’s not about the money at that point. It’s not about anything other than being really honest with people about who you can help and who you can’t. I think that’s also pretty motivating to people.

When I say to somebody, if I’m on a call with them and we talk about, okay, listen, I think this is going to be great. Here’s how I think we’re going to be able to work together. That’s how I honestly feel.

If I feel like I can’t, I’m going to tell you exactly the same thing. So for people who share that enthusiasm, you’re going to be able to work together.

Now, if I’m really excited about working with somebody and they’re not excited about working with me, it’s still not going anywhere, right? That’s not going to happen.

And at that point, if whatever it is that I’m saying doesn’t transfer that enthusiasm, then at that point, for that person, we don’t have a good fit. So we’re not going to work together.

I’ve always said over the years, and I learned this one the hard way, like you learn most things, but I’ve always said over the years that if two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they’ll figure out a way to do it. And if one of them doesn’t, they won’t. Right?

So if just one party to the agreement wants to do it and the other one doesn’t, it’s not happening. Both people have to want to engage in order for that business relationship or even a personal relationship to be successful.

And talking motivation, that’s also pretty motivating.

Jay: Yeah, both sides motivated to come to the same outcome. I mean, what better situation can you have in a business model? I mean, that’s the strike zone, right? That’s where you want to be. All right, how can people find out more, David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team.

Love to have a conversation with you to see if we are a good fit to work together, if we can help you in any way, even on the call. If we don’t end up working together, a lot of people are just helped on the call.

We’ll talk to you for roughly 45 minutes or so, walk you through where you are now in your business and where you’d like to be in terms of visibility, sales and profits, the markets that you’re going after, where you’re successful with that, where you’re not.

We’ll talk you through some things that will help you to operate your business better on the other side, regardless of whether or not we ever work together. So if it makes sense to have that conversation, love to talk with you.

Jay: I love it, David. Once again, it’s a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Motivate Buyers to Do Business With You?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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I mean, you have a podcast called Building Trust in Sales, you say, “yeah, be trustworthy.” That’s pretty obvious. But it’s also necessary. It’s necessary to be that, and to be able to convey that, and just to be authentic with it.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing building trust in sales. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, it’s such a pleasure to be with you. Sales is a huge part of our business model, trusting that system. And, a lot of times it’s like crossing our fingers that it will work.

I think a lot of people would like to have a little bit more surety than that.

David: Yeah. And trust is absolutely critical to the whole experience. If they don’t trust you, there’s no way they’re going to buy from you. Now, there are some people who are untrustworthy and people should not buy from them, right?

So if you’re untrustworthy, this is not a podcast about how to appear trustworthy. I’m assuming that everybody who’s paying attention to this is coming from a place of honesty and fact of being about who we are. Because trust is going to be built on that.

The trust is going to be built on the conversations that we’re having, how those conversations are taking place.

Are we being candid? Do people feel like we are providing them with honest answers to questions? And sometimes in sales, that can be hard for people.

There’s a balance between wanting to put our best foot forward in sales, and being completely truthful and honest. And I feel that when we’re weighing that balance, being completely truthful and honest is absolutely the way to go.

Because if you start sugarcoating things, and if you start exaggerating your abilities, and that sort of thing, that’s going to end up badly. And so I think in order to build trust, it has to start with ourselves. Are we trustworthy? And if we are, then how do we convey that to the people we’re interacting with?

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And one of the things that, you know, looking at it from a consumer that really bothers me, and we’ve talked about this in other podcasts, is where I’m on a website, which is often the storefront now, and they’re offering me a free quote or something like that and I go through the whole process, and at the end it says enter your email and we’ll send you the free quote, and I’m like You freaking lied to me, right?

And the last thing I’m going to do after that is reach out to you or give you my email address.

David: Yeah, I think if people are clear about what’s going to happen up front, that’s usually better. I’ve been in situations like that myself. Now, if I see that somebody’s asking questions and I start going through that series of questions, I’m kind of expecting it at the end.

But, There are a lot of sites like that, where it’ll start out and it’ll just ask for your zip code, right? If you’re trying to find a professional in a particular area, you enter your zip code, and then they ask what you’re looking for, and when you’re looking for it, and how soon, and, all that sort of thing, and they do exactly the same thing.

You get there and then they want your information, and then some of these sites will pass it on to a hundred different people, and now instead of finding the one solution, now you’ve got a hundred people annoying you.

To me, that’s a business model problem. Which creates a trust problem because now, we don’t trust anybody who’s asking us for any information.

So a lot of times the worst players in the market set the tone, set the stage for what we have to go through. And when you’re having an honest conversation with someone, talking to them about working with them, they’re viewing us through the lens of someone who is not trustworthy. And then we all have to jump through additional hoops just to get back to zero, essentially.

Jay: I love this point, but I also think there’s another way to look at it, and that is that it’s easier to stand out when you don’t do that stuff, right? So we, in our business, we offer a free consultation. And I can’t tell you, like eight times a day, customers will say, wow, I’m surprised that you actually gave us a consultation instead of a sales call.

And so I’m instantly building trust. Because we have all been programmed. “Oh, I got a free consultation. I know what this is going to mean,” right?

But I’ll take a chance. So I think in a lot of ways, it’s easier to stand out today.

David: Absolutely. as long as you’re doing exactly what you described and we do the same thing.

If somebody schedules a call with us, the whole purpose of the call is to find out, does it make sense for us to work together? Can we help you? And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s okay too. You know, we’re fine with either decision, but that’s really the essence of trust, isn’t it?

Is that you have two people. who willingly want to enter into a conversation about whether or not they can work together to achieve the result that they’re looking for. And if they can, that’s awesome.

But, the real disconnects come from those who don’t do exactly what you just described.

Jay: Yeah. And I’m sure this is obvious. I hope it’s obvious, but if you can’t overcome that trust barrier that we’re talking about from the beginning, You’re done. You’re cooked before it even starts.

David: Yeah. And sometimes it might depend on what you’ve done and what you’ve said. And sometimes it might not have anything at all to do with you. It may have to do with what’s going on in their head, the experiences they’ve had.

You know, sometimes people are just scared or they’re reluctant. They’re afraid to move forward with something because of other experiences they’ve had. And when your conversation is being compared to other conversations they’ve had in the past.

Something that you say, the way you move your hands could trigger something in them that makes them think, “Oh no, I’m not buying this” or “this doesn’t make sense for me.”

So those types of things are outside our control. But what is always in our control is being as authentic as possible when we’re interacting with people, being as truthful as possible with them, obviously.

I mean, you have a podcast called Building Trust in the Sales, you say, “yeah, be trustworthy.” That’s pretty obvious. But it’s also necessary. It’s necessary to be that and to be able to convey that and just to be authentic with it.

I think also when other people are trying to get information from a salesperson, they tend to phrase their questions in ways that might be not as direct.

I find that the more direct we can be in our answers, the more completely open and completely candid we can be with our answers, the more that’s going to build trust.

When we start hedging and we start using, well, this and well, if that, then that doesn’t breed confidence either.

Jay: Yeah, this just jumped into my mind because I remember we’d do this all the time. When you’re interested in a new car, we would never go on the lot while the dealership was open because we didn’t want that salesperson experience.

So we’d wait, sometimes we’d wait until the middle of the night and we’d go on the car lot and we’d look at all the cars.

Not until we’re absolutely ready did we want to, you know, interface with any of their people, because we’re all expecting that same experience. Nobody’s doing anything different.

David: Yeah, and that’s an industry that has basically created that impression in the minds of so many different customers. It’s legendary. You say car dealership, people go, “oh.”

Now I know there are car dealerships that don’t operate that way and they have a distinct advantage, but the challenge for many people is finding them.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And you know, we have a guy who was referred to us And, we’ve used him for the last 10 years, anytime we’ve had anything.

His name is Lance. We’re like, man, we’re so glad that Lance can help us and we never want him to leave. We’re like, you can’t retire, you know, because otherwise we’re starting from scratch. It’s like when you know a good mechanic, right?

Because there are certain industries where, from the get go you’re going to have trust issues.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I think another important component to building trust is doing what you say you’re going to do.

Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, I love this quote. He said, basically, if you want to be successful in sales, but basically in life, you want to do three things: Show up on time, do what you say you’re going to do, and say please and thank you. And I thought, that is brilliant

And the “doing what you say you’re going to do” is just so integral to that because there are so many people who don’t. “Hey, I’ll get back to you tomorrow” or “let’s have this meeting at this certain time” or whatever it is that they say. And then it doesn’t happen.

There was a guy that I did work for a long time ago. He had a repair kind of shop, sort of a fix it man kind of thing. And he had a rubber stamp on his desk with. Three big letters. It said DNH, which stood for did not happen. If somebody was supposed to do something that they didn’t do, he stamped it in red with this DNH, did not happen.

And I was like, That’s good. You know, that lets people know, okay, I’m actually paying attention to what you said, and I’m expecting you to follow through on it.

Jay: I love that. A big, you know, message for everybody to see. You mentioned this a little bit earlier too, and there is a danger to over promise. Especially in the sales process, right?

There is a real danger of doing that.

David: Yeah, over promise and under deliver is something that people talk about a lot, and they, well, they talk about the opposite. They talk about you want to under promise and over deliver.

I still think that’s a little misguided. I think we’re better off promising what we’re confident we can do and not underselling it or overselling it.

Because once again, if you want to breed trust, you have to just be honest about things. So, you’re not going to want to under promise and over deliver. You’re going to want to promise what you know you can promise.

If you end up doing more than that, great. But you also don’t want to sell yourself short. Because if you’re not telling them everything you’re capable of doing and they end up not buying from you because they were expecting that thing, then you’ve lost the business. They’ve lost the opportunity to work with you, and it was your own fault.

Jay: Yeah. we talked in the last podcast about self awareness. Do you really know what you can offer? I mean, some business is very clear what you’re going to offer. Others, not so much. So do you really know what it is?

Because if you don’t. You’re asking for trouble.

David: Yeah, absolutely.

Jay: Alright, how can people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We can have a conversation, see if it makes sense for us to work together.

Or just to take a look at where you are now in your business, where you’re looking to be in terms of visibility, sales, and profits.

We will walk you through that process and have the conversation because even if we don’t end up working together, I’m sure it’s going to be of great value to you.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. Just like it is talking with you during these podcasts. David, it’s a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Are You Building Trust in Sales?If you could use some help, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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What do we want the overall customer experience to be like? How do we want this person to be welcomed if they happen to walk into our business? Because we want that experience to be consistent.

That’s another important aspect of this. The businesses that really consider their customer experience want to make sure that it is absolutely consistent.

David: Hello and welcome back in today’s podcast. Co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing crafting the customer experience. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. And I feel like here once again I’m going to learn something from our discussion because I don’t think a lot about crafting the experience. For me, it’s like, Hey, we had a sales call. Now you’re a client and we’ll just fake it until we make it, I guess.

David: Right. And that is certainly a way to do it. It’s certainly valid. I believe it’s probably what many businesses do, perhaps most. The thing that actually got me thinking about this was a trip that I took to Disney World a number of years ago.

And I thought about how every aspect of the experience is crafted. It is thought out in advance. It’s planned. It’s choreographed. There is very little, ideally, that happens there by accident. And at the time, I thought, “wow, as a business, if we were able to craft a similar sort of experience for our customers, what would that look like?”

I’ve done presentations on this topic over the years. It’s something that a lot of businesses tend not to think about, but when I raise the issue with them, they seem to feel that it’s pretty appealing and interesting.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny you bring up Disney World or amusement parks. I remember being a little kid and going to an amusement park, and I thought even the staff members were installed as part of the experience.

I was amazed when I realized they actually went home after work. And then I ended up working at that very same amusement park on the backside, you know, where all the employees walk? It’s so disappointing!

David: It’s got to be.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely, and I think this is one of those topics where we’re not talking about, boom, one day you’ve got the customer experience defined. I think this is a process. It’s going to be very different from when you first open your doors, so to speak, because it is something that you should always be fine tuning, correct?

David: Yeah, and we can’t even fine tune it if we’re not thinking about it. If we basically show up for work every day and do what we do, then we’re doing what we do. We’re not considering what the customer experience is.

If you just take the title of this podcast to heart and say, “okay, what if I did want to craft the customer experience? What would that look like?” What happens if somebody calls our business on the phone, what happens?

Is it a person who answers? Is it an auto attendant? If so, what does that auto attendant say? Is it encouraging to help people get where they need to go? Is it discouraging? Is it likely to put them off? Something as simple as that, that’s one aspect of the customer experience.

This is what happens when someone calls us on the phone. This is what happens if someone visits our physical location. This is what happens when I meet someone on a Zoom call or in an in-person situation.

Every single aspect of the experience, if it is considered, if it’s even thought about, is likely to be a whole lot better than if we’re just winging it.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And I think one of the problems, David, is self-awareness. I think about this in sports. Like when all my daughters played sports and there were players and parents of players who didn’t really understand their individual skill set and they thought they were much better than they were.

Because of that, they didn’t ever progress because they thought they had reached whatever marker that needed to be. They’re kind of prideful about it. I think that can be really true in business. If you don’t have a feedback system, if you’re not constantly analyzing, you may think you’re much better than you are.

David: Yeah. And sports is a great analogy because, in so many cases, it’s all about the athlete. It’s all about the person on the field. Am I performing my best? Am I doing what I need to be doing? It’s all about me. And in business, it can’t be all about us. It has to be all about our clients and our customers, if we want to be successful in it.

We can’t just think about ourselves. We have to think about what the customer needs and how can I provide it? If I can, I need to tell them how I can provide it. And if I can’t, I need to tell them that too, right? I don’t want to tell them I can do something that I can’t do and then not come across.

So I think a lot of that has to do with focus. When you’re talking about sports versus business, the focus on the business owner and everyone in the business has to be on the customer. That’s why I think the whole idea of an experience and the idea of an amusement park isn’t bad, because all those experiences are designed to be pleasant — a great experience for the customer — which in our case would be our customers.

Jay: Yeah, and I think back to the sports analogy. After a game the coaches go through, pick out all the plays, and make the players watch back because…

David: Smart.

Jay: Again, self awareness, right? So the real question is what mechanism do you have in your business to play back that experience? I think that’s kind of really the hardest thing to come up with.

David: Yeah. And a lot of time we’re just playing it back in our own minds, which can often play tricks on us. We remember how a particular conversation went. But we’re remembering it from our point of view. And so when you talk about something like watching a video of your performance, you’re now seeing it from the audience’s perspective, which is totally different from your experience of it, where you’re living inside your own eyes and seeing it from this angle.

So what you experience is completely different. And some people do things like recording phone calls, they record their Zoom sessions, their Skype sessions, that sort of thing, and they watch them back. They force themselves to do that. I know in a previous podcast, we talked about how we both worked in radio and how they used to do that to us, record the shows, and we’d have to listen back to what we had done.

Jay: Oh, I hated it.

David: Yeah, sort of live through it again. But it does show you and tell you what it is that the other person is experiencing. So I think there’s definitely room for that. But that’s almost like the second step. The first step is recognizing that we want to consider the customer experience, that we want to be in charge of it.

It’s very likely a matter of making a list of things that we want to do, a list of contact points that we want to firm up and say, okay, what happens in this situation? If I go to a networking function, how does that go? What’s that like? And essentially choreographing that.

Jay: Yeah. And I think it’s important to not be afraid to just ask. Ask the customers, “Hey, how’s this experience going? Is there anything else I can help you with?” And recognize that a lot of times our customers will not give us feedback, but they will go and tell other people what a terrible experience they had with you. And you don’t even know it’s happening. So asking, I think, is important.

David: Yeah, it’s definitely good to get feedback. Now, a lot of times, I go by the mantra that people vote with their wallets. So if they’re not buying from you, they’re telling you there’s something about what you’re doing that they don’t like. But in each experience, every one of us only has the ability to perceive things through our own five senses.

So if you think of it in those terms, what are they seeing in this situation? What are they experiencing? What are they feeling? If not feeling physically with their hands, what are they feeling from an emotional standpoint?

Are they enjoying the experience? Are they not enjoying it? But you know, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. How can you impact those things? Obviously, if you’re on a Zoom, you’re going to be able to influence fewer of those things than if you’re in-person. But when you consider an amusement park type of experience where they’re really focused on the entire environment, it includes all of those things.

They’re giving you certain types of food in certain areas. The smells are of certain areas, right? And the sounds are of certain areas. The music they’re playing goes with the area that you’re in. So all those types of things are designed to create the experience. Now in our own businesses, we’re not likely to go that far.

But we’ll do a lot better if we say, “well, what DO we want the overall experience to be like?” How do we want this person to be welcomed if they happen to walk into our business? Because we want that experience to be consistent.

That’s another important aspect of this. The businesses that really consider their customer experience want to make sure that it is absolutely consistent.

Amazon is a great example of this, because you don’t show up to Amazon, right? You don’t walk into an Amazon store. You go to their site. Your whole experience is happening on a computer screen. But that experience is completely choreographed.

You know where to go to look for the things you’re looking for. It comes up, it tells you if it’s in stock. It tells you how soon you’re going to be able to get it. It tells you what it costs. It tells you where you can get it from other people who also sell on Amazon, right? So it gives you a lot of different options.

And that’s one example. I’m not saying, “Hey, be like Amazon.” I’m saying, that’s a good example of a choreographed experience. And if you can do it in person, like an amusement park, and you can do it online, like an online retailer, that means you can pretty much do it anywhere. So we need to ask ourselves, how do we apply the lessons we can learn from examples like that to our own businesses?

Jay: Yeah, it’s a great example. Look around you. See what other people are doing. Don’t reinvent the wheel. You don’t have to do that. And you know, I think that that will save you a lot of time and effort, right?

We’re in this process right now in our own company. We’re establishing just a follow up email. “Hey wanted to make sure that you got everything you need. I’d love to hop on a call with you and talk about your experience and to see if there’s anything else we can do to help you out.”

So it’s a follow up feedback call, but in a lot of ways it’s also a sales call and they can be both. And I think the ultimate goal is to have the customer experience to where they want to come back and do more business with you.

David: Right. And you’re systematizing it. You’re setting it up so that each person, at a certain period in that correspondence, receives that particular communication.

When you’re doing it like that, you can make changes. You can tweak it. If you find that it would be better with this sentence instead of that sentence, you can fix it in one spot and know that it’s going to carry through going forward. So from a systematizing standpoint, I think what you said is very important.

There’s another aspect of this that I would also think of in terms of the performance aspect.

Every presentation we have with a client, every conversation we have with a client, is to some extent a performance. And I don’t mean that in terms of acting, like pretending you’re someone you’re not…

If I go to a theme park and I meet Cinderella, it’s not really Cinderella. She’s pretending to be someone else. I get that. I’m not suggesting that in our types of businesses. But what I’m saying is we need to be able to put our best foot forward. What is the version of us that should show up in a communication like that? And if we need to be seen as the authority with what we do, then we have to be able to convey that authority.

We have to bring our best game in terms of what we’re going to do, how we’re going to help, why it would make sense for them, and why it might not make sense for them so they can come to an intelligent decision about whether or not to work with us. And we can make the same decision whether or not we want to work with them.

If we have a good fit, it has to go both ways. I mean, we have situations in our business very often where I have to tell someone this is not a good fit. And I’ve had people say, “well, no, I think it’s a really good fit.” And when it’s not, it’s my obligation to tell them, right? In those situations, it might be easier to accept payment, right?

But I can’t do it. Because if I’m not absolutely convinced that I’m going to be able to help someone, then telling them you can is just false advertising. So I think that authenticity is key and that’s got to be part of your performance as well. Performance in terms of showing who you are, being clear about who you are, how you can help, how you can’t, and letting the chips fall where they may.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And speaking of not having to reinvent the wheel, how do people contact you because you help advance their situation?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That would be the traditional response. We say that at the end of every podcast, right? So there’s an example of a system.

But you know what? If you’re not ready to make that call and you want to do something else, go to TopSecrets.com/blog. That’s a little different. That will take you to lots of these types of conversations. You can get an idea of where we stand on hundreds of different topics and decide, “Hey, does this seem like the kind of business I’d like to work with?”

So, I mixed it up a little there just because you called me out on it. But I think it’s good to do that as well, to be able to say, okay, look, if you want something different, if you’re not quite ready for a call, then go to TopSecrets.com/blog. You’ll see a listing of our 10 most recent conversations that we’ve had on topics like this.

And you can go to the bottom and click and come up with 10 more, and click again and come up with 10 more and have a look. See if what we’re saying makes sense for you. And if it does, then schedule a call at TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. It’s been a real pleasure as always.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Craft a Customer Experience Designed to Get You More Business?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Over the years, I have met some exceptional performers who still struggle to get enough customers.

It’s not a function of who they are as people. It’s also not a reflection of their work. It’s not even a mindset issue. It’s about the fact that being exceptionally good at what you do, and being able to get enough customers or clients are two completely different skill sets.

I can’t tell you how many business owners I’ve talked to over the years who are exceptional at what they do, but they can’t get enough customers. I’ve met:

• Chefs who make amazing food, but can’t get enough people into their restaurants to keep the lights on.
• Real estate agents who know their markets in and out, they’re great with people, can handle all the details, but can’t get enough clients to pay their bills.
• Artists who have amazing skills, but who never mastered the art of customer acquisition, so their actual art remains largely unseen.
• Printers who have taken out loans to invest enormous amounts of money in equipment that just sits there, because they don’t know how to get enough of the customers and clients they need to feed the machines.

Recently, I heard from a life coach, whose story really touched me, because she knows she could really help people, but she’s struggling to get the clients she needs.

Here’s what she said,

“I am a good coach but there are no clients for me. I feel profoundly sad for not being financially independent. I am a good person, I do personal growth, I am a really good coach and yet I can not pay the bills and have a lovely and happy life. Why does it have to be so hard?”

In each of these situations, the most important thing to recognize is that there is a huge difference between being exceptionally good at the technical aspects of a job — like cooking, selling homes, creating art, printing stationary or coaching people who need help — and being able to get enough of the customers or clients who need those products and services.

They are two completely different skill sets.

There are many exceptional writers in the world, but as Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad once said, “On the top of my books it’s written Best-Selling Author & not Best-Writing Author”.

Two different things.

So today I’d like to share with you, what I shared with this coach. And it applies to any business that is great at what they do, but that struggles to get enough of the customers or clients it needs to thrive.

If you’re great at what you do, then you’re halfway there, but this is not a mindset issue. It is a focus issue.

So if you want to make the money you need to make, then 100% of your focus and learning now need to be on 3 things. It’s what I call the MVPs of Marketing & Sales™.

If you’ve heard this from me before, but you’re not yet earning what you think you’re worth, then please, listen again.

In sports, MVP stands for Most Valuable Player. In Marketing and Sales, MVP stands for Message, Vehicles and People.

Specifically:

• What is the marketing (M)essage you need to convey about your product or service?
• Which combination of marketing (V)ehicles will you use to communicate your message?
• And Who are the (P)eople or prospects you need to reach?

This begins with having a crystal-clear idea of exactly WHO you want to benefit from what you do. Those are your People.

When you know who your people are, then you have to consider exactly what you’ll need to SAY to engage those people. To invite them in. To take advantage of everything you have to offer. That’s your Message.

Finally, you need to determine HOW you’ll reach them, in other words, what combination of marketing Vehicles will you use to reach them? This means things like social media posts and comments, direct messaging, phone calls, email, direct mail, networking, door knocking, broadcast ads, billboards, there are thousands of options when it comes to marketing vehicles.

The list is endless. But you don’t need an endless list. You just need to decide on a few that you can use to deliver your message.

Ultimately, everything you do to get customers or clients from this point forward will only ever be a combination of those three things.

Your Message, Your Vehicles and Your People.Get all 3 of those right and you will make the money you need.

But if you get just one of them wrong. You’ll continue to struggle. And here’s why…

If you have a fantastic marketing message. A message that would make anyone in need of your products and services desperate to do business with you, but you either fail to reach those people with your marketing vehicle — like you post a message that they never see — or, if you get that message in front of people who have no need for your products and services — then the promotion is a failure.

If you have a fantastic marketing message, but you never get to deliver it because you’re using a marketing vehicle that people don’t like — let’s say cold calling, where many ideal clients will hang up on you before you get a chance to deliver your message — then that promotion won’t work either.

Finally, if you have a terrible marketing message and your reach your ideal audience using exactly the right combination of marketing vehicles to get you in front of them, then you’ll just alienate the ideal customers you need, before they ever have a chance to buy.

So if you’re great at what you do and you just need more customers or clients to do it with, that’s why 100% of your focus and learning now need to be on those 3 things:

The MVPs of Marketing & Sales.Ready to Turn Your Exceptional Skills into an Exceptional Income?If so… If you’re ready to put the MVPs of Marketing & Sales to work in your business so you can turn your exceptional skills into an exceptional income, then go to topsecrets.com/mvps. That’s topsecrets.com/mvps.

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Everybody has to make those determinations about their business when making sales and building brands. How am I going to do it? Is it going to be about me? Is it going to be about the customer? And how do I convey that in terms of my company name, my logo, my brand, and any slogans or taglines that you use, in order to communicate all that.

David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing making sales and building brands. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thank you so much, David. And again, just a great topic. I don’t know if everybody feels like they’re a brand. Like, I’m a company, I offer a service, but am I a brand?

When I think of brands, I think of like Kellogg’s or Tesla or things like that. I don’t know if I think about my own business that way.

David: Yeah. And a lot of small businesses don’t. But even though they don’t, very often, if they don’t know what to do from a marketing and sales standpoint, they will copy the big brands because that’s what they’re seeing.

You’re watching TV, you see a commercial for Kellogg’s or you see a commercial for McDonald’s or some retail brand and you say, “Oh, okay, that’s what I need to do. I just need to get my name out there.” Right? When I think of branding, particularly for small business, that’s what I think of. Somebody who’s like, “Oh, I just have to get my name out there.”

And when you’ve spent as much money on marketing as Kellogg’s has, or as McDonald’s has, or any of the big companies have, they already know what those companies are all about. They already know what they do. So they can just basically say, come in and buy from us. And they’re like, okay, I already know what it’s all about.

For small businesses to do that, to just put out the name of their company and expect people to want to wander in, it just doesn’t happen. And that’s why I think this topic, you know, the idea of making sales and building brands, I could have said making sales versus building brands, because I think sometimes people view it as two different things, but ideally we have to do both.

And even if it’s not a matter of seeing yourself as a brand right now, once You’re established enough in your market where people recognize who you are and what you do. That’s sort of building a brand in their minds. So that when they hear the name of your business, they associate it with certain things, related to what you do and how you do it.

When you think about Tesla or Elon Musk, you have a very good feel for sort of what he’s all about and how he tends to approach things. So to me, that’s an established brand. When small businesses want to establish a brand, they can spend a lot of money doing it, which is why they kind of have to be making sales along the way and focused on that first.

Jay: Yeah, great point. You know, in those big companies, they have the big dollars to have focus groups and all of those things. Talking about the very beginning of your branding, again, I think we’re coming up with another podcast topic here, though. People who just throw together their logos or their slogans, It drives me crazy because it’s like the first impression when they meet you in public.

David: Yeah, and again, with small businesses in particular, sometimes we can be too cute for our own good, too creative, quote unquote, for our own good. We think that something that appeals to us is going to appeal to everyone else.

Personally, I think that the simpler we keep it, the more direct we keep it, the more sense it makes. Now Nike spent so much money establishing what that swoosh means that they can put a swoosh up on the screen and people go, Oh, maybe I’ll go buy some shoes, right? We can’t do that. And so. Unless you have that level of funding, unless you have access to that much money that you can teach people what your logo means, then you have to be a lot more clear and direct about your communication, your logos, your branding, all of it.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And, just so you know, you do have a focus group and it’s something that is really hard for me and that is showing your friends, your family. Getting their feedback, other people. I tend to do some things on my own because I’m afraid of feedback and that’s just not good.

Everybody has a focus group, choose to use it.

David: Yeah, I also think that particularly in the early stages, your messaging is very likely to be more important than your logo per se.

Jay: Yes.

David: I’ve talked to people who have said, well, you know, I still need to get my logo developed. I still need to get my website up.

And I’m like, well, how are you paying for things until you get that done? Because the way you’re going to pay for those type of things is to figure out what you’re going to say, who you’re going to say it to, and how you’re going to say it. The MVPs, the messaging, the combination of marketing vehicles you’re going to use to communicate the message and the people you’re going to say it to.

Once you’ve made some sales, to those people using the messaging that makes sense, you’re in a much better position to be able to create your logo, your branding, your sub branding, not just the name of the business, but what is the positioning statement that you’re going to use that explains clearly and succinctly what you do.

When we make it up, up front, and we just put it out there and then we try to conform the business to that, we’re kind of doing it backwards. We need to find out. What is it that the customer needs? How can I use messaging that will position this as the ideal solution?

And then once it’s proven to work, then you can really start building the components around that.

Jay: Yeah. And I think when we talk about brand, again, it’s not all about logos and slogans and these kinds of things. To me, brand, you mentioned Nike, brand is whether or not my customers and potential customers, if I ask them, do you know what I do?

Do you know what my products and services are? If they can answer with clarity, then I think I have established a brand. And my communication and things like that have been good in establishing that brand. If they’re kind of, well, I think you do this, and I’m not sure if you do this, You don’t have a brand.

David: Right. And when you’re in the process of building your brand, I think it’s good to start thinking in terms of stories. What are the stories that we need to put out there into the marketplace about our reason for being? Why are we even here? What does it mean? We’ve got a brand called Top Secrets, well, what does that even mean?

And the way that it came about is that there are specific things that the most successful people in the market know. That other people don’t. And whether or not you want to think about that as a secret, it’s a secret. It’s at least a secret from you if you don’t know it, right? So when we originally started, we said, okay, TopSecrets, that’s what this is going to be about.

It’s, what do the most successful people in the industry know that you don’t? And when you make that switch… When you flip that switch and go from not knowing these things to knowing these things, all of a sudden, everything changes.

That’s just an example, but that’s the story. You don’t just say, okay, is a combination of words I made up, unless it makes sense for you.

Now, in the situation where Amazon started, right? They took a word, Amazon, which had nothing to do with books. It had nothing to do with selling everything, but it did create the impression of big, large, vast, right? And then they were able to put the money behind it to explain what that meant. So I think a lot of times when people are naming their businesses, they’re either going to name it after themselves.

You think about a lot of the advertising agencies in the world, they just put their own names on the business. Now it’s about us. And a lot of businesses in general, they’ll just name the business after themselves. They’ll just put their own personal names on the business. Now it’s all about me, right?

So there’s that approach. There’s the other approach, which is that you take something that doesn’t necessarily mean anything per se at the moment. And then you use your marketing dollars to ascribe a meaning to it, which is pretty much what Amazon did. So now when people hear Amazon, they don’t think about the rainforest.

They think about getting their stuff in two days for the lowest price. Walmart. Well, that was a combination of a person’s name, right? And the fact that they were competing with Kmart at the time, right? So you have Sam Walton and Kmart, you come up with Walmart. So it kind of makes sense, but everybody has to make those determinations about their business.

How am I going to do it? Is it going to be about me? Is it going to be about the customer? And how do I convey that in terms of my company name, my logo, my brand, and any slogans or taglines that you use, in order to communicate all that.

Jay: Yeah, you said something very important though earlier, and that is, don’t try and be too clever. You know, gimmicky, things like that. And even the big companies, I don’t know if you’re like me, but I looked at the FedEx logo probably millions of times over my life.

And then somebody pointed out that there is an arrow in that logo, and they probably thought they were so clever and everybody was going to see that. And. I didn’t see it. I don’t know if you saw it, but I didn’t see it. And one day I’m like, oh my gosh, there is an arrow in there. They didn’t need that arrow to make sales.

That was all accomplished in other ways.

David: Right, between the E and the X. No, I never noticed it. I heard about it from someone else. You almost have to squint to see it because it’s just the white space in between the E and the X. Is it going to make me want to have a package delivered by them more so than without the arrow?

I don’t think so. The big appeal with FedEx was their initial slogan, when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight. They connected their brand with that messaging. And that’s why I say I believe the messaging is so much more important, particularly in the early stages, because it has to tell people what you do.

Absolutely, positively, overnight. That’s about as clear as it gets.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. And so maybe that’s not your logo, but the tagline, and certainly in every single communication.

David: Yeah, exactly.

Jay: All right. How do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team.

If you’re interested in making sales and building your brand at the same time, it requires a little strategy. It requires a little thinking. And if you’re not making sales along the way, you’re not going to live long enough to build your brand. So I think that combination is very important. It really boils down to what we say, how we’re saying it.

What do you want to be seen as in your marketplace? And all of these things contribute. So TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have a conversation with you.

Jay: All right, David. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Make More Sales as You’re Building Your Brand?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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When we think in terms of creating persuasive communication, it’s really important to consider the flow. What is the flow of the communication? In what order are you asking these questions and having these conversations? Are you leading with the pitch? Because if you’re leading with the sales pitch, then that’s not going to work well at all.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing creating persuasive communication. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thanks, David. You mean all communication is not good communication? I just thought sending out emails and random texts, that’s the way to go.

David: Yeah, random communication is often different than persuasive communication.

I guess sometimes it can line up, but the stars have to all be in alignment for that to happen.

Jay: Yeah, I see this. I get emails saying, Hey, just following up. And I’m like, Oh, you know, I don’t know that that’s really how you want to approach a potential customer. There’s no energy, there’s no urgency, there’s nothing persuasive about it.

It kind of feels meh. And, I recognize that now cause I’m in that business, right?

David: Exactly. And I think if we start from the premise that different prospects have different needs, that’s a really good way to start. Because I think a lot of salespeople tend to think in terms of persuasive communication, meaning saying things that will get them to buy from you.

And that’s only the case if and when we’ve determined that we have a good fit with the person that we’re talking to, right? Persuasive communication doesn’t just mean getting them to buy. It’s about seeing if they buy into what it is that we do, seeing if we’ve got enough of a fit to have it make sense.

What I think in terms of persuasive communication, it’s the kind of thing that’s going to get people engaged. It’s going to pull them into the conversation rather than repel them from the conversation. So while the term persuasive sort of implies that we’re trying to persuade them to do something, that is true, but it’s not just about that.

It’s not just about trying to get someone to do something. It’s about seeing if what we’re talking about to begin with even makes sense.

Jay: Yeah, and I think we talked about that a lot in our last episode, getting to know that customer so that you can build loyalty. How do you expect to send out persuasive communication if you haven’t taken the time to get to know them?

And for example, I’m in the tax business, which is hard for me to say, I can’t believe that happened. But my communication is very different right now in the summer than it is in March, right? In March, there’s a built in urgency, and so it’s a lot easier to communicate to them what they need. This time of year, very different.

David: Right, and the things that you need to persuade them of now are different than the things you have to persuade them of in January, February, March, right? Because what you need to persuade them of now is perhaps thinking in advance about what they’re going to need to do rather than trying to cram it in at the last minute.

So that’s going to change the languaging. If you think in terms of who do you need to appeal to, that’s going to be happening throughout the year. What type of prospect am I looking to bring in the door, and how can I help that person to make a decision based on what we’re doing as opposed to what someone else is doing?

You know, what are they likely to want? And we can’t always know that. We can assume, okay, well, I think they’re going to want to pay less taxes. That’s probably a reasonable assumption. And for some people, for most of them, that’s probably going to be the case, but there might be some sort of extenuating circumstance that plays into that as well.

And if you’re not touching on that, if you haven’t taken the time to understand what it is they’re actually looking for, then your ability to persuade them to choose you is going to be greatly diminished.

Jay: Yeah, and in my case, a lot of times, I mean, we have other products and services we can identify or we have identified that they can use during the year. But in my case, can I be persuasive enough now so that when they’re trying to choose a tax professional, that I’m the first one that comes to their mind, that it’s already a no brainer, because I’ve been persuasive enough, or will they forget about me when the time comes?

And that applies to so many businesses when, you know, they may not be ready today, but when they’re finally ready Are you the first person that comes to mind or have you just faded into oblivion?

David: Yeah, that’s such a great point. And that really ties to the whole idea of branding, in addition to just selling, which we should actually do in a future podcast.

Maybe we’ll do that in our very next podcast. In fact, that’s a really good topic. But, when it comes to that, trying to determine what they actually need and whether or not we can deliver it, the best way to do it is simple. It’s about asking them, finding out what they want, and then adapting it.

So if we assume we kind of know, or we think we know what they’re likely to want, we can then ask them, is that your most important priority? And then they’ll tell you yes or no. And if it is, Then great, you’re on track.

And if it’s not, they’ll tell you something that you might not have heard before, at which point you can add that thing to your repertoire so that you can ask your next prospect, Hey, is this something else? is this something that is a concern for you? Is this something that you’re trying to resolve as well? And, the more of those type of things that you get from different customers, it just makes you sound smarter and smarter with every person you talk to, because you develop this big list of potential issues they could be dealing with that they might not have even thought of.

And you never would have thought of them if you hadn’t asked the other people that you talked to prior to that.

Jay: Yeah, I love it. And I will tell you two or three times a month, I find myself adjusting the questions that I’m going to ask. I have a list of them and oftentimes people are afraid to ask probing questions and I found it just the opposite.

I, before they even start, you know, before we even start the back and forth of how I can help them, I have a list of qualifying questions and I’m constantly working on that, constantly changing and updating based upon customer feedback.

David: Which is perfect. It’s exactly what needs to happen. And you kind of ask yourself as you’re going through that process, okay, what gets a response and what gets the best response?

What gets the most positive responses? What gets them most engaged? And each time you do that, when you’ve got that list and you’re asking lots of different people, very similar questions, it’s going to direct you to sort of what to say next and what to focus on.

Jay: Yeah. And the other power that we’re finding is, I can market based upon answers to those individual questions, right?

When an idea comes up, I can go back to those questions and I could say, Let’s zero in on this type of customer who was asking about this or who answered this way. And I’ll tell you, David, because my systems are so much better now, I’ll go back to a client back in December or November. And I’m like, crap, I wasn’t asking this question back then.

And, so I can see how much I’ve evolved over the months.

David: Yeah, but that also gives you good fodder for follow up with some of those people. The ones that you didn’t ask that question of originally, you can then go back to them and say, Hey, you know what? It just occurred to me, I don’t think I ever asked you this.

And then you ask them the new question, and it’s just another opportunity to get them engaged, and to eventually, you know, persuade them, or at least find out whether or not they are still worthy of persuasion, whether or not you want to continue to interact with them.

Jay: Yeah, and I think we’ve also talked about after the interaction.

Do they get some type of survey? Do you have an assistant who calls them back whether you close the deal or not? Hey, how was this interaction? Did we answer your questions? Those types of things. And certainly after the sale, you want to do that as well.

David: Absolutely. think also when we think in terms of creating persuasive communication, it’s really important to consider the flow.

You know, what is the flow of the communication? In what order are you asking these questions and having these conversations? Are you leading with the pitch, right? Because if you’re leading with the sales pitch, then that’s not going to work well at all. In a previous podcast, you had mentioned the whole idea of if you go to a doctor and they start trying to get you to do stuff. You know, the diagnostic approach to sales, just like in medicine, is the same when it’s done correctly.

It’s you examine the patient first, examination, diagnosis, and then prescription. So we’re asking those intelligent probing questions up front to make sure that we’re on the right track.

We’re then diagnosing the issue. We’re saying, okay, based on what you told me, the problem you have is this, this, and this, is that correct?

And then once they’ve agreed to that, Then you can make your prescription and say, yes, listen, I have something that can help. Would you like me to explain what that is? And they’re going to be a lot more likely to want to hear your answer than if you lead off with, oh yeah, I can help you and here’s how much it’ll cost.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ve got an idea for a future podcast as well, but I’ll kind of bring it up here. I have this fear. Everybody’s worrying about AI taking their jobs, artificial intelligence, and I feel like a lot of people are going to use AI for their communications, not voice to voice, but for their emails and things like that.

And I would just caution against that, especially in light of what we’re talking about. They’re never going to get real world experience. I’m sorry. They’re never going to get the sum total of your experiences, both with other customers and your personal experiences. You’re just not going to replace that.

And I think we talk a lot about using technology in your favor. I think you have to be aware of using it to your detriment.

David: Yeah, it’s certainly no replacement for your own experience and your own feel for what is likely to appeal to people. And you’re right, we should say this for a future podcast, but if it’s being used to help you generate ideas, but it’s still going through your cognitive processes first, then I think it can be helpful as an assistant, but not as a replacement.

Jay: Yeah, perfectly said, and I do want to dive into it a little bit more, but for now, how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re in a situation where you are having to create persuasive communication, and you may be struggling with how to do that more effectively, or if you find that your messages are not getting responded to, if you post a lot of stuff on social media and you’re not getting a response, if you’re leaving voicemail messages that are not being returned, That’s a strong indication that your communication is not persuasive enough.

And very often, there are small things that we can do, minor changes that we can make, that will actually turn that around and get people to respond to the things that you’re putting out.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. David, as always, it’s been a real pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Create More Persuasive Communication?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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When I think in terms of turning leads into loyal customers, what is that first contact? And I know we’ve talked about that in a number of podcasts. And then from there, what is the desired path that we want them to take with us, that we want to take with them, right? Without some sort of basic path to get from here to there, the likelihood of making that happen is pretty much slim to none.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing turning leads into loyal customers. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Such a great topic again. I love our conversations cause I learn so much and I feel like there’s a tendency to say, okay, I got the lead. I closed them. Now I’m going to move on to the next lead.

And I think we would save ourselves a lot of time and money, if we were able to turn that customer into a returning loyal customer.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And you raised a great point because I was thinking in terms of just new leads that come in, turning them into loyal customers.

But I think what you pointed out is probably even more important, that we already got someone and we’ve already turned them into a customer. And now how do we make that customer more loyal to us?

I know in a lot of presentations that I’ve done over the years, I’ve talked about these sort of different layers of recognition in terms of what do people think about us? And I’ve often drawn it out like a target for archery practice. And outside the target is the area where it’s total obscurity. They have absolutely no idea who we are or why they should do business with us. And at the center of the target, it’s complete customer loyalty.

And you don’t get from, “I don’t know who you are,” to “I’m completely loyal to you” in one step. It’s got to happen in a series of actions. So what you’re talking about there, you make that first sale. That doesn’t even happen very often in the first contact. A lot of times it requires intelligent repetition of contact to even get to that.

We go from obscurity. I don’t know who you are, to recognition, I recognize you, but I’m not sure if I love you yet, right? I don’t know enough about you. To comfort, and then once we get to comfort, once they’re comfortable enough with us to place that first time order, like what you were talking about, then they’re going to see how we do.

And if we did well, they might give us another chance and come back again. And if we do well on that second one, they might come back and give us a third chance. And then As long as that continues to play out, that’s going to lead to that level of loyalty, but it sure isn’t likely to happen in one conversation or one transaction.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. But I kind of like where you started off, too, before we dive into that a little bit more. And that is thinking about making the loyal customer out of the lead . Where do you start? Because a lot of people are like, I can’t make them loyal until they’ve purchased a product. That’s not true, is it?

David: Well, I think if you recognize that when I attract a lead into my organization or when I’m even just trying to attract a lead into my organization, the goal is to turn that person into a loyal, longtime customer or client.

So when you start with that perspective, you become a lot more discerning about even the people that you’re approaching. You have more skin in the game, because it’s not just about, “hey, can I make a sale to pay my bills for today?” It’s about, “do I want this person as a loyal customer?”

And this goes back to a lot of what we’ve talked about in previous episodes about qualification and that sort of thing.

But if we start out with the idea that we want to turn our leads into loyal customers, I think it positions us better, because it makes it more relational and less transactional.

Makes it more about creating the kind of relationship that will result in a loyal customer, as opposed to just making that sale.

Jay: Yeah, and I think first impressions are everything. When I first started out and I wasn’t the best at returning calls, because I didn’t have a good priority system, I had somebody say to me, “well, if this is how you treat potential customers, then that tells me a lot about how you treat existing customers. And so I’m going to find somebody else.” And I’m like, “okay, wait a minute, I’m doing something wrong here!”

David: Ouch. Yeah. That’s tough when that happens and it can happen to us, even when we think we’re doing our best and when we’re trying our hardest and we just miss something. That’s a tough one when that happens.

So. It’s another reason that being very conscious of what we’re doing, what we’re saying, how we’re saying it, who we’re saying it to, are all going to contribute to this idea of building in that loyalty.

You know, not all leads are created equal. If we attract five, six, 10 new leads into our business, they’re all likely to be very different people in very different circumstances.

They’re going to have some similarities, particularly if the product that you offer is very specific. But, the different personality things can be big, and the different goals can be big. Because if one person comes in and they’re a perfect fit for what you do, and somebody else comes in and they’re not quite a perfect fit, but you’re thinking, well, they might be able to be a good fit, then a whole different level of communication and nurturing is necessary to see if that person is ultimately going to be the appropriate type of customer that you want to have in your business.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And again, using technology and having systems, for example, before we would just have somebody leave a voicemail if they can’t get me directly and I would call them back. It’s not a good system.

So now on our website, they can schedule an appointment with me and that syncs with my calendar.

And when they schedule an appointment, it asks what would you like to discuss? So now I have a description ahead of time.

So I can go through my calendar at the beginning of the day. And I can prepare for those calls. And if there’s somebody who doesn’t fit perfectly, I can email them ahead of time and say, you know, this really isn’t a service that we offer.

Something like that. So it clears up my schedule. I’m more prepared for the call and they feel like I’m providing an even better service.

David: Yeah. And it also brings up a great point, Which is context, having an understanding of what they want to talk about and how that fits in with what we’re trying to accomplish.

Jay: Yeah, context is everything. I know ahead of time what that potential customer wants to talk about, and I can be super prepared for it. And I mean, come on, there just couldn’t be a better situation than that than going into every single call blind.

David: Right. And then also thinking in terms of, you know, what does my nurture process look like once I brought that lead in the door?

What are the very specific things that I want to communicate to that person about what we do? And ideally, in what order do I want to communicate those things? What’s the most important thing they need to know about what we do and the way that we do it?

And how can I communicate that in a way that is understood early on so that if they say, “Oh, that’s not what I’m looking for,” that you’re not wasting your time or theirs.

Jay: Yeah, I love that word nurture. I don’t know that I’ve thought about it in that regard, that I’m nurturing them along. Going back to the lead generation process, one of the things that drives me crazy is when people offer a free consultation, and it’s really a free sales call, high pressure sales call.

When they have talked to my competitors and they got the sales call and then they land on me, I’m already ahead of the game because I’m not, they never feel like I’m a salesperson to them. And I think that’s the beginning of nurturing, right?

I’m already establishing a different relationship with them than my competitors ever will.

David: Yeah. In our work, we frequently think in terms of creating value in our communications with prospects and clients. And a good way to short circuit that is to offer to help and then turn it immediately into a sales pitch.

In our conversations with clients, and we have conversations with prospects and clients all the time, we’re very clear upfront that our goal in the conversation is to have a discussion to see if, or how we can help them to try to help them determine what’s where they are now versus where they need to be in terms of visibility, sales and profits.

We’ll make recommendations on how they can do that. And if, at some point into the conversation, it makes sense for us to talk about working together, we can have that conversation, but it’s certainly not going to start out as, “okay, now that we’re on the phone, you want to buy what I have to offer?” Because it’s just a recipe for disaster.

And once again, It’s contrary to the whole idea of qualifying the right people in and the wrong people out.

But even in the situations where when someone contacts us and they’re not the best fit for what we do, our goal is to make sure that they get so much value from the conversation that when they hang up, they’re like, wow, I’m really glad I did that because that person could then refer us to somebody who maybe is a better fit, and even if they don’t, they’re still going to feel good about us.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And if you think you’re going to build loyalty without finding out about that customer ahead of time, and that’s the problem with jumping in to a sales pitch. If you haven’t taken the time to find out who they are and address their needs specifically, that’s like going to a doctor and they just jump right into their prescription pad or something and you’re like, I’m not going back to that guy again.

David: Right, because haven’t taken the time to listen, let alone build any sort of trust or credibility with you. I mean, when I think in terms of turning leads into loyal customers, what I tend to think of is from the lead generation standpoint, what is that first contact? And I know we’ve talked about that in a number of podcasts.

And then from there, what is the path? What is the desired path that we want them to take with us that we want to take with them, right?

Now, As salespeople, our desired path may not coincide with their desired path, right? They may have a different idea of what they want to accomplish in the conversation, and that’s where we have to have that give and take where we’re able to try to find out, do we have a fit here?

Does it make sense for us to work together? What questions do you have that you want me to answer? What questions do I have that you need to answer so that we can get to where we want to be?

But without some sort of basic path to get from here to there, the likelihood of making that happen is pretty much slim to none.

Jay: Yeah. And I also find that often the customer or the potential lead doesn’t really know what they want and they don’t really know what they need. Right? And so, there’s a series of questions and really getting to know them.

And oftentimes, initially, you may feel like, no, I don’t have what you need. But after some qualifying questions, getting to know them, you’re like, no, you know what? I really think I can help you out.

David: Right. And for us, a lot of it boils down to when I say us, I mean, we as salespeople for a lot of us. We have to have a reasonable idea of, what are the problems that they’re likely to have that we can potentially solve? Right?

Because if we don’t know that, if we’re not clear on what types of problems we can solve for people, then we don’t even know the questions to ask to find out if they’re even a reasonably qualified prospect for what we have to do.

And once again, that is disrespectful of their time and our time. If we waste time going around in circles with people, rather than being able to determine, relatively quickly, upfront, where they are, what issues they’re interested in resolving and whether or not we have the ability to help them resolve those issues, then we can’t really help them.

If the answer to those questions is no, we can’t really help them. So at that point, we owe it to both of us to try to wrap up that call as quickly as possible.

Jay: Yeah, I love that. Respect for their time and your time. How do people find out more, David?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team.

If you’re interested in turning your leads into loyal customers, if you’re interested in learning the first contact approach and the path that will allow you to make that happen more quickly and very often more surely, give us a call. TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right. Thanks again, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Turn More Leads into Loyal Clients?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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With strategic networking, you can make some initial decisions about who you think you’d like to target. Then it’s a matter of saying, “okay, where do these people congregate?” Identifying exactly where they are. Are they online? Are they offline? Most likely they’re doing both. But if they are online, where’s the best place to find them? And a lot of times, particularly with social media, we just end up interacting with whoever we happen to be connected with. But if that part of it isn’t strategic, if we’re not connected with the people that we could actually potentially do business with, then we’re wasting our ammunition.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the power of strategic networking. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I’m really glad we’re talking about this because I think, you know, sometimes I think I’m great at networking, but there’s not really any plan. There’s not really any, like even down to storing information and how I’m going to follow up on it. I would not use the strategic word in what I’m doing.

David: Okay. And I think you’re not alone. I know that I have struggled with exactly the same thing. And even when we were thinking in terms of topics for today’s podcast, The Power of Strategic Networking. What does it even mean? Right? What does strategic networking even mean? And the way that I’m looking at it is basically that strategic networking means, not just anyone, right?

You’re not just looking for anyone who can fog a mirror. You’re looking for the people who are going to be best suited to you and what you have to offer.

I think a lot of us tend to stumble into networking situations, whether it’s with a chamber of commerce or BNI group or online in different situations, we’re online, we’re interacting with people.

We consider it networking. But is it networking or is it just schmoozing? Is it just interacting with other people, or is it designed to get a positive result from a business standpoint? So I think if we start with that, the idea of strategic networking being that we’re doing it for a specific result, which is to meet and interact with the type of people that we can ultimately do business with, then it becomes a whole different thing than just talking to people.

Jay: Yeah. Again, this is so important because we’re always talking about maximizing your time, focusing on the things that only you should be doing. And if you’re just out there collecting business cards and now you have to follow up on each one of those. individuals, you’re going to be spinning your wheels a lot and that’s going to cost you money and time in the short term and long term.

David: Yeah, especially if you’re not quite sure what to do with those business cards. In other words, if you’re just thinking, okay, I’m going to meet people, collect business cards, gather information, and then follow up with them. It’s too generic. I mean, what does that even mean in terms of follow up? What does that even mean?

And so for our clients, one of the things that we stress a lot is the idea of getting them qualified in or out as quickly as possible.

I know so many salespeople who have engaged in networking that was you meet someone, you exchange business cards, and then you keep contacting them. You try to schedule an appointment to meet with them, to try to find out what they need and all that sort of thing without ever bothering to try to find out whether or not they’re even a decent prospect for the products and services you offer.

And it can be a huge waste of time if, in fact, they are not.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. We talk about time wasting and I think that even applies to thinking about it before you go into a situation where you want to employ marketing. Like in my particular use case, just walking into a room full of business owners doesn’t cut it because I have a very niche product.

And so I have to be really careful ahead of time so that I’m not wasting time.

David: Yeah. And when you have a very specific defined niche, it’s actually quite a bit easier, as long as you take that into consideration and say, okay, well, who are these people? And where do these people gather and how can I best interact with them?

What do I need to say? How do I need to say it in a way that’s going to generate results? And. I think that’s what brings the strategic element to it. That’s what brings the strategy to it, is just thinking in those terms. And I know in previous podcasts, we’ve talked a lot about the MVPs of marketing and sales.

What’s the message I want to communicate? Which combination of marketing vehicles will I use to communicate the message? And then who are the people or prospects that I need to reach.

So if we think in those terms, then. The strategic part of it comes about from making sure that those three things line up.

Jay: Yeah. Talk a little bit more. So I’ve been strategic about how to get these leads. What would you suggest? I still have a stack of business cards. How do I prioritize them? How do I weed them out at that point?

David: Well, I think that really boils down to making sure that you’ve got a really good solid lead qualification procedure in place. And I tend to take the opposite approach of what most people do. I tend to try not to say, okay, it’s my job now to sell everybody whose business card I’ve collected. I look at it from the other standpoint, which is to say, how many of these can I discard as quickly as possible?

How many of these people can I get disqualified as quickly as possible? Either they’re not in my market as you talked about, if you’ve got a very specific market, it’s easy to say, okay, well, this person doesn’t fit in. I’m not going to follow up with this person. But if they are in your market, do they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend?

Do they have the personality type that you even want to engage with? Because some people are just obnoxious, right? They’re just awful. And Sometimes we even recognize this in a networking scenario and we follow up anyway. And I did that in the early stages and I’m like, why am I doing this? Because if they’re bad now when they don’t owe me money, how are they going to be when they do owe me money?

It’s not going to be better.

Jay: Yeah. And I think a huge part of this is tracking, right? Because you’re not going to know right off the bat. You can’t just go into business and say, I’m going to know perfectly what type of lead I want. That takes time. That takes effort, whether it’s keyword marketing or, you know, some kind of thing where in the conversation that you’ve had, you need to track those things so that you can get better and better at being strategic.

David: Yes. And I think what that means initially is, deciding who you want, having a reasonable idea of the types of prospects and clients you want. And you can break that out by, you know, what industry are they in? What level of business are they doing? What size business are they? How many employees do they have?

That type of thing. So you can make some initial decisions about who you think you’d like to target. Then it’s a matter of saying, okay, well, where do these people congregate? Identifying exactly where they are. Are they online? Are they offline? Most likely they’re doing both.

But if they are online, where’s the best place to find them? And a lot of times, particularly with social media, we just end up interacting with whoever we happen to be connected with. But if that part of it isn’t strategic, if we’re not connected with the people that we could actually potentially do business with, then we’re wasting our ammunition. We’re putting out content to people who have absolutely no ability to utilize it to be able to potentially conduct business.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think that especially when you’re starting out, there’s a fear that you might miss a potential sale, right? So it’s kind of like some FOMO and I think it’s important, you talked about having a good customer management system.

I think it’s important to note you don’t necessarily have to discard these people. You can just put them in a different category, like in a drip program or something like that. So you don’t have to worry about the FOMO. They’re still there. They’re still getting contact from you, but you’re not picking up the phone every time.

David: That’s true. And even when there are people who you don’t want to follow up with, I recommend keeping them in your contact management system as well. So you don’t inadvertently go back to them. We’ve got notes in our system from people that we talked to who were just brutal They were absolutely awful. And in the past, we would discard people like that.

But then if they happen to wander back into your orbit and you don’t have the notes on it, you could end up having more conversations with them. You’re going like, this seems familiar. I don’t really like what’s going on here. But when you know that, when you’ve identified it, and somebody happens to try to come back and you look at the notes and you say, oh, okay, yeah, this person was really problematic before.

You can then decide how much energy and time and effort you want to put into trying to reestablish or. renew that relationship.

Jay: Yeah, I had this exact thing happen to me earlier today. I got a call from somebody who I had spoken to three months ago. At that time, I thought, oh, they’re not interested.

They’re not the ideal candidate. So I mark them as a long term drip, so that my system is constantly reaching out. She called me this morning and said, “I’m ready to move forward.”

I’m like, oh no, I don’t remember her name, but I went into my system, I had all the notes and information, and I closed the deal this morning.

So, even somebody who I didn’t think was going to be a client three months ago, today they are.

David: Absolutely. And at the time you made the determination that you wanted to keep her involved in that campaign to be able to continue to reach out to her. So you didn’t make a decision three months ago that no, I don’t want to do business with this person, but sometimes we have to do that as well.

We make determinations based on our contacts with them about whether or not we want to do something and move forward. So if you had had notes in there that said that this person was really problematic in some way or another, if she had reached out to you again today, you could also then make the decision of, okay, I don’t know if this is going to be a good fit.

I don’t know if I even wanna pursue that with this person.

Jay: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I’ll give you another example. We have determined, right or wrong, that people who ask for a discount mm-Hmm. are some of the most demanding, unreasonable customers. And you would think it was just the opposite.

So we’re like, no, we don’t offer discounts on our services. And that has saved us a lot of time and effort.

David: Yeah, I agree. We had a situation recently where one of our reps was talking to someone, and they talked about getting a discount. And we explained to them our policy in terms of pricing and everything like that.

And the person said, well, they didn’t want to do anything now. They wanted to come back in a couple of months and do it. And they said, but you’ll do a discount. Everybody discounts. And I thought you got us wrong, man. You know, that is not happening.

I mean, if we’re having some sort of special promotion, like sometimes we will incentivize people who are willing to make important decisions quickly, right?

We might provide some sort of preferential pricing for somebody who is like, yes, I’m all in. I want to move forward on this. Let’s do it. But that’s not going to apply six months later because that completely defeats the purpose of what it was that we were trying to incentivize to begin with. So I think it’s important for every business to decide what you will tolerate and what you will not tolerate from the prospects and clients that you want to interact with.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. Personally, this has saved us so much time and I think part of it, and this may be the subject for another podcast. At first, it was hard for me because I was still figuring out whether or not we were providing a great service, and also figuring out, what our competitors were doing.

And now I’m so confident that we can provide such an incredible product. I’m like, no, there’s not discounts. We’re the industry leader. You’re going to get the best possible service here. And I’m not apologetic for wanting what we’re worth for that service.

David: Right. And everybody gets to make that decision for themselves in their own businesses based on what their priorities are.

I mean, not everybody can be the Walmart of their industry and not everybody should be because ultimately there can really only be one. There’s one low cost leader and you have to do a whole lot of things right to make that work. Otherwise you’re out of business. So I think that is one of the most difficult business models to make work. Because when you are the low cost leader, you’re very often the low profit person in your market, unless you’ve got some very extenuating circumstances.

Jay: Yeah, such an important conversation. How do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re interested in being more strategic about your networking, about your marketing in general, about your sales approach, whether it’s your messaging, your first contact, your outreach, your follow up.

We’d love to have a conversation with you. So just go to TopSecrets.com/call and we’ll see how we can help.

Jay: All right. Thank you so much, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Make Your Networking More Strategic and Powerful?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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There are a lot of people who aren’t quite sure where they are with the whole business growth thing vs. just maintenance. Some people are content where they are. And if you’re okay with just maintaining, then none of this applies to you. Right?

You’re not required to grow your business if that’s not where you’re going. But there are so many people that I talk to that really want to do it. They want it to grow. They want it to be more than it is.

They want to be able to create better lives for themselves, for their employees, for their families, for everybody they impact. And they know they can’t do it without growing. And when they use maintenance as an excuse, that’s a tough one to overcome.

David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing business growth versus just maintenance. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey David, once again, it is a pleasure to be here. And it’s so funny, oftentimes we choose these topics and I’m like, “man, I am right in the middle of that!” So, again, I’m excited to discuss this with you.

David: Yeah, I think the reason that I wanted to talk about it, this came to mind fairly recently because I’ve had so many conversations with people, business owners primarily, small business owners for the most part, some sales managers, who say, “listen, I really need to grow this business. I need to grow my sales. I need to grow my profits. I need to make that happen now. This is a priority for me.”

And then we talk about some of the incentives and we talk about some of the things that they’re going to need to do. we talk about some of the steps they’ll need to follow and nearly all of it is designed to save them time, save them money, generate more revenue, just make everything a whole lot easier and a whole lot better.

And one of the things that I find extremely frustrating is when I’m talking to someone like that, who then says, well, I really don’t feel like I have time to implement this because I have so much that I’m dealing with on a daily basis, maintaining the business, essentially.

I’m busy doing this and I’m busy doing that. And I’m doing all these different things that are allowing me to stay just underwater, a little bit, where my nose is just barely peeking up and down above the water, but I don’t have time to do the things that are going to get me out of the water and make sure that things are still functioning the way that they need to function.

So in most cases, I believe that growth is the solution to maintenance, but it doesn’t work the other way around.

Jay: Yeah. What is it? Winning gets rid of all the stink or, you know, whatever. Winning is the best deodorant. That’s what it is. Winning is the best deodorant.

David: That’s true.

Jay: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, this last year, I’m kind of reliving everything that you’re talking about, because of our seasonality, we have times where we have to be all growth, all the time, we have this influx of customers. We can’t be worried about maintenance at that moment, but then all of a sudden, it practically dies instantly, so now we’re asking the question, “How do we maintain our current base?”

Because we want them to be back and so what maintenance things do we need to do? But not only that, what about the people who we talk to who might be interested in the future? Can we reach out to them on a regular basis?

So now that we’ve died down, we’re talking about drip programs, we’re talking about newsletters to our existing clientele.

So we’re kind of in this process between maintaining, we still want to grow during this time so we can pay our bills. But we’re really kind of in this mode where we’re trying to do both, but a certain part of the year we can’t do one. We just don’t have time.

David: Right. Yeah, it’s hard to grow when the business is just coming in. And in seasonal businesses like yours, that’s particularly true.

We had a retail mail order catalog business and around the holiday season, that’s when a lot of the business came in. And yeah, at that point, just struggling to maintain, but it’s the growth that you accomplish in the non seasonal time of year, that is going to allow you to generate the extra revenue that will allow you to pay for the times when you are just maintaining and not growing.

And once again, with small businesses, this is particularly true. Because if we’re not growing enough to accumulate extra revenue that will help us to get through the more lean times, then we’re really going to have a problem.

So the growth aspect of it is necessary. And you raised a really valid point. It’s not always possible at every point during the year, particularly in a seasonal business. But it has to be a priority whenever it is possible.

And when it’s done correctly, it actually ends up saving time because it doesn’t always take more time to make more money. And in fact, It shouldn’t, right? When you get your processes dialed in, it takes less time.

And I’ve talked to people on the phone who are like, Hey, listen, I’d love to do your Total Market Domination program. I just don’t have the time. I’m like, “if you don’t have the time, that means that you need to do this because every hour you put into this is going to be two to three hours you’re going to get back on any given day.”

It’s just, ridiculous , well, it’s not ridiculous, because not everybody understands it. People can’t always see it, but it’s ridiculous to expect that when you get to a certain point of growth, that you’re going to be able to grow more by pedaling faster. It’s just not going to happen. You have to switch gears.

If you’re on a bicycle, you got to switch gears and switching gears means some things have to change. Your inputs have to be worth more. They have to create better outputs. And that happens when you are not just changing the volume of things you’re doing. It’s not about doing more things. It’s about doing everything you’re doing better so that it produces better results.

Jay: Yeah. You’re just speaking my language here. I’ll tell you, there’s two bad feelings in the world that really get me. The one is I have dissatisfied a customer and I know it was our fault.

You know, there’s customers that you’re never going to please. But when I know it’s my fault, that is the worst feeling to me in the world.

The second worst feeling we experienced this last peak season is when the phone is still ringing, you know you have more sales to do, but you can’t handle it. And you literally have to tell them, we’re full.

A lot of people I know they’re listening to this and they’re like, “man, I just want to get some sales, right?” And that’s a terrible problem too. But during our seasonal peak, we had to send a ton of people away.

But guess what? Every single place we had a bottleneck, I’ve got a notepad right here, I wrote it down. And so I have a list, a huge list, of things that we’re going to now create during the off season.

Our expectation is that we’ll be able to bring in twice the sales. We won’t be adding any staff. We’re just changing our system so that we can take in more people. That is a great feeling, to know that we’re ready. Will we be completely ready? Of course not.

I’ll have my notepad. Every year we’re going to get better at this. We’ll be able to take in more money. And so I have a lot of confidence moving forward, because I’ve learned exactly what you’re talking about.

David: Yeah, and I think that maintenance is absolutely required. You have to be able to maintain a certain high level of service because your customers have to be able to expect that.

So when I talk about growth versus maintenance, I’m not saying don’t do maintenance, right? I want to be clear about that. You have to do that. You have to be able to maintain that. But you also have to be able to grow.

Sometimes I talk to business owners who say, well, I’m doing all I can and I don’t have money to hire anyone.

That to me is a screaming red flag. Because if you’re putting in all these hours and you’re doing all this work, and it’s not generating significant enough profit for you to be able to hire the help you need, then there are a lot of things going wrong there.

And a lot of times when we schedule calls with people, when we have these strategy sessions with people, we can point to one simple thing that they can change, that will completely alter the trajectory of their business.

Because now it’s not about trying to accomplish the impossible. It’s about recognizing that simply by tweaking the way you’re doing this, you can get a completely different output.

Jay: Yeah, you’ve identified a very important piece of the puzzle, and that is, you have to be open to change. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. What you’ve done, there are people like David, there are people out there, sometimes just a conversation with somebody is enough to open, even your mouth moving and articulating the problem causes your brain to start moving again.

It’s those people who are so confident and prideful in their systems. They’re the ones who are going to get bogged down.

Ask for help, seek guidance and opinions. Also do the same with your customers. Ask them, okay, especially the ones that are disgruntled you know, and you’ve lost the business. Would you take a minute and at least tell me, what you saw and where we fell down so that we can solve the problem?

Get it from everywhere and be open to it. Otherwise you’re going to get stuck in a place where you can’t do the maintenance. And when you can’t do the maintenance, you’re not going to grow. Right? Just that simple.

David: Absolutely. I think one of the other reasons that I wanted to talk about this topic is that I feel like there are a lot of people who aren’t quite sure where they are with the whole growth thing. Some people are content where they are.

And if you’re content where you are, then none of this applies to you. Right? You’re not required to grow your business if that’s not where you’re going. But there are so many people that I talk to that really want to do it. They want it to grow. They want it to be more than it is. They want to be able to create better lives for themselves, for their employees, for their families, for everybody they impact.

And they know they can’t do it without growing. And when they use maintenance as an excuse, that’s a tough one to overcome. It’s a tough hurdle to overcome because some people struggle with the belief that you can maintain everything you’re doing and you can also grow if you’re willing to make those type of changes.

And when you don’t know what those changes are, you can’t even imagine it. You can’t even picture it. You just basically say, “oh, well, I can’t. I’m too busy. I don’t have time for that. I’m already working too hard. I’m not generating enough revenue. I can’t grow right now because I don’t have time to do it.”

And it’s like, “Well, I can’t help someone like that. I can’t help you. If you are absolutely convinced…” You mentioned that person’s way of doing things. If that’s your way of doing things, then you’re absolutely right. I’m not going to be able to help you because you’re in that mindset. If you’re not going to change the mindset, it’s not going to work for you.

But so many people have such a great experience when they take that leap of faith and they say, you know what? I want to try this. I want to, implement this. I want to see what happens.

And so many times when I’m working with our clients inside the Total Market Domination program, we have conversations and I mean, I tell a lot of them, listen, if it’s not fun, we’re not doing it right.

And what I mean by that is, the changes we’re making are so impactful that it’s like, “wow, all of a sudden this thing that I thought was a real big problem for a really long time is now no longer an issue.” And it’s exciting when that kind of thing happens.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And it is doable in nearly every situation. That’s why we offer these free strategy calls. Because If we can help you, we’ll tell you. If we can’t, we’ll tell you that too.

I mean, a lot of the calls that we get on, it’s like, “okay, based on your situation, I don’t think we can help with that.” But normally they get a lot of great tips from the call, and a lot of good pointers that they can implement based on what they’re doing.

So I think anyone who is really serious about making the necessary changes to be able to grow and scale their businesses the way that they want to. If you feel like you’re stuck, if you keep hitting your head on the same ceilings that you’ve been hitting your head on for a while, it’s definitely worth a conversation, whether it’s with me or with somebody else that you trust.

If you’ve got somebody that you know who can help you with this, have a conversation.

Jay: Yeah, well, such great information. How do they have a conversation with you?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. Everybody in our team is actually very nice to deal with, very fun to deal with. We enjoy what we do. We love what we do. We love our clients. And it shows.

And so when we’re talking to somebody who is considering becoming a client, we will never try to convince or persuade you to do anything. We just basically want to have the conversation, see if what we’re doing is a fit. If it is, we’ll tell you how we can help.

If not, we’ll tell you that as well. And it’s just a good experience.

Jay: Well, fantastic. David, as always, it’s been a great pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Create Business Growth Without Ignoring Maintenance?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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There are so many situations where inadequate product knowledge, damaged reputation, and inefficient or poorly executed sales processes come from having untrained salespeople.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the incredible cost of untrained salespeople. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, it’s such a pleasure to be here, David. Sometimes I think I’m that guy. I’m the untrained salesperson. So, this will be very informative to me, I hope.

David: Okay. Well, you know, there’s a difference between being untrained and untrainable. So, as long as you’re trainable, that’s a really big plus.

Jay: OK, I feel a little better.

David: No, I’m sure you’re trainable, but untrained salespeople can really cause a great deal of harm to themselves, to their companies, to their prospects, to the businesses they’re associated with.

It is really kind of epidemic and It’s largely unnecessary. A lot of it comes from, particularly in small businesses an employers desire to delegate it quickly, to get it off their plate.

Like, “okay, I’m not doing this as well as I’d like. I better hire somebody else to do it.” And they’re hoping that that person is going to know how to do it.

And if you don’t have protocols in place, like we talked about in our previous podcast, then of course that just makes it that much more difficult. But the biggest problems that people are likely to run into, the obvious ones are lost sales opportunities, right?

Cause I’m talking to somebody who could potentially buy, but I’m saying all the wrong things and I’m not positioning the company well, and I’m not finding the right needs that the people are actually looking for, and I’m saying the wrong things, there’s no way that sales is going to happen.

It’s a bad reflection on the salesperson and the company, and the prospect will walk away thinking that that company is not good at what they do because the salesperson did not do a good enough job of explaining what they do.

So, it creates a complete disconnect between what the business might be capable of and what the world is likely to think they’re capable of. So that’s a killer.

Poor communication is another one that when you have a salesperson who is not trained on what they need to ask, what they need to find out from the prospect, how they need to address those questions and issues, that defines poor communication, because they’re just going to say whatever comes to their mind or they’re going to say, “well, I have to find out, let you know.”

Now there are situations in pretty much any sales scenario where that might be the case, where you don’t have every single bit of information that they might need to know. So there will be situations where you might have to find something out.

But if it’s happening more than a couple of times at any particular sales presentation, you might want to look at the process that you’re using to make that happen.

The training that you have or have not received. Actually, this really does dovetail pretty well in our previous conversation about protocols. So if you’re seeing this podcast and you didn’t see that one, go back and watch that one as well because these things really tie together.

Jay: Yeah, a couple of things come to mind.

And the first is, how do you know you have an untrained salesperson? If they are not where you’re at, if they’re doing outside sales and they’re sitting in somebody else’s office, how do you know what they’re saying and how they’re interacting?

That can be very difficult. The second thing is if they’re on the phone making those calls, how do you assess their situation there?

Like I said earlier, we have a system that records all phone calls coming in and out. So that’s one way that we have to listen back to calls and give feedback. So maybe you have to go on those sales calls and listen. Maybe you have to have a hidden microphone, I don’t know what it is, but there’s two problems that you get with untrained salespeople.

The first is it’ll be hard to keep salespeople. Because if they’re untrained, they’re not going to perform. And if they don’t perform, they’re not going to make money. They’re not going to make money. They’re not going to be there.

And you may have a lot of potentially good salespeople, but they’re not getting any coaching. They don’t have protocols. They’re not getting training. And so you may be burning through salespeople when really, It’s on you instead of on them.

David: Yeah, and it definitely happens that way quite a bit. The first way you can know whether or not you have an untrained or a well trained salesperson is you can ask yourself, how well did I train this person? Right?

Did I train this person? Right? Because a lot of times if we’re not training people and they’re going out and they’re not doing a great job, we can assume that it either means that they are untrained or that they were trained poorly from their previous experience.

And as business owners we have to make decisions about how we want our business represented in the marketplace. Because the human beings who represent us in the marketplace, these salespeople, if they are not really crystal clear about what our organization is all about, what we do, how we do things, then they’re just not going to be able to perform at the level that we need them to perform at.

So if you’re wondering if they’re untrained, they probably are, right? Because that means that you didn’t do a good enough job of training them. I think recording phone conversations for sales managers, I think that’s an excellent thing to do.

When I worked in radio, when I was a teenager, one of the things that they required us to do is something called an air check,

Jay: Oh!!

David: Where… yeah, you worked in radio too, that’s right. You know about this. So what would happen, and sometimes they tell you they were doing it and sometimes they wouldn’t, but basically they had this setup rigged that when you would flip the microphone switch on, an audio cassette would start rolling. This is a long time ago. And it would start recording what you were doing.

So it would only record when you were talking. So you’re talking over the beginning of a song or whatever. It’s just going to record that portion. And then. What they would do as an extra treat is the program director would invite you into his or her office to share with you what you did the night before, the day before, or whenever they recorded this thing, when you didn’t know you were being recorded.

And you got to hear just the essence of what you’re doing. Now, when you’re on the radio and you’re playing songs, you’re having a vibe and everything like that, that’s great.

This doesn’t include any of the vibe. It’s you, you, you, you, you in these separate little things. Did you perform or didn’t you? Did you do the weather at the time you were supposed to do the weather or did you not?

Did you do your top of the hour station ID at the top of the hour? Did it happen at 10 after? You know, all those different things. And it created accountability. And I think that’s necessary in most sales situations.

I mean, there’s accountability for results, right? And a lot of companies do this. Okay, you’re required to generate X amount of sales in a month, right? That’s your quota or whatever. But that’s one of those lagging indicators, right? That’s a lagging metric. That’s the result.

What can you help that salesperson with before that happens? With the presentation, with the targeting, with the what to say and how to say it, the elements that need to be included in a presentation?

When you get that part of it dialed in, then the numbers will likely flow correctly. When you focus on the outcome rather than the how to get there, it’s like saying, get me to Detroit without a map. You know, you need a map.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, you just, you made me feel sick. I was in talk radio for 20 years and we had to do air checks once a week, and that’s the least favorite part of my entire existence.

Because they just randomly pick. They’re like, okay, and it’s all recorded digitally, so they’re like, all right. Just pick this segment, come in and listen to yourself and then be critiqued on what you did. Oh, it’s the worst.

David: Yeah, that’s brutal.

Jay: Absolute worst. But…

David: Yeah, we were doing like 15 seconds at a time. So…

Jay: Oh man, no…

David: Yeah, that was easy.

Jay: We’d listen to about 15, 20 minutes and I’m just like, “ohhhh.” And then I’m typically being judged by somebody who didn’t know the topic, didn’t know the show prep we did, didn’t know where I was going.

Ugh, but you’re right to liken that to sales. Because if your salesperson is not getting any feedback, then they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing. And there may be just one little thing that they’re doing, that if you could tweak that, all of a sudden the floodgates will open. Could be that simple.

The other part of this though, is if you don’t do this, you’re never going to realize that you might just have somebody who’s not meant for sales. Because not everybody is, and sometimes they need the money, times are hard, so yes, I’ll take a sales position.

But they’re not good for sales, and so if that’s the case, and you’re sending somebody out there representing your product, and they’re doing a horrible job, that’s not good for them, and it’s not good for your company.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I think there are so many situations where things like inadequate product knowledge, damaged reputation, inefficient or poorly executed sales processes, all these things come from having a salesperson that is not well trained.

And as you know, I do a lot of work in the promotional products industry, printers and promotional products professionals, and many of the promotional product businesses, even many of the larger ones, they would much rather bring in a new salesperson who has a book of business than to train the people they have.

And I have always felt that that is so very short sighted. I’ve had conversations with VPs and executive VPs of large organizations, and I say, well, what’s your training budget? And they don’t have a training budget.

They got an advertising budget to bring other people in from other companies, but they don’t really have a training budget. Or it’s so ridiculously small, they’re not going to be able to train anybody on it.

So I think if we recognize that this is not just a matter of an expense that you’re putting out to benefit your employees, your salespeople. This is something that’s going to directly impact your reputation. Some people in the promotional products industry, I’ve heard them say, “hey, listen, what if I train my salespeople and they leave?”

To which I respond, “what if you don’t train them and they stay?”

Jay: Yeah, exactly.

David: Right? Which is worse?.

Jay: What a great point. Yeah, yeah. I think the reality is, if people are going to leave you, you don’t want them there with you. I do think you can control how soon they leave and whether or not they leave.

I tell this story all the time. I could walk into one of the restaurants that I manage and I could know instantly, anything I needed to know about that manager. I could walk into a restaurant who I didn’t manage, and I would tell my wife, here’s what type of manager they have.

Because it reflects in how the employees smile. It affects how quickly they serve you, their attitude. That all comes from management and you can typically assess it instantly, knowing that that all comes from the top.

David: Yeah, you raise a great point there with just assessment, because you can’t just train somebody and then turn them loose and expect that all that’s going to stick.

It requires ongoing assessment. Are they following the protocol? Are they doing the things that are necessary, that are required as part of the job?

When business owners and sales managers, or if it’s a restaurant business and the manager of the restaurant, if those people have the protocols in place and they’re making sure that they’re being followed, it’s better for both.

It’s better for the people who have to follow the protocols and it’s better for the people who are creating them because they can find out where the problems are. Without that, it’s a crapshoot and you just don’t want to do that. It’s totally unnecessary at this particular point in time, especially.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So how do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to see if we have a fit to be able to help you to get more of the prospects and clients you need to grow your sales and profits. If you have a situation where you’ve got sales people who are not performing up to speed, it’s very likely because they don’t have the systems and processes in place that would allow them to perform at their best level.

And in those situations, your business is worth less. I mean, by getting this sort of thing nailed down, it increases the value of your business, because now, a potential acquirer has something to spend money on.

They’ve got the likelihood of future revenue, and that’s going to make all the difference.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, once again, it’s a pleasure talking to you.

David: Thanks so much, Jay.

Ready to Turn Untrained Salespeople into Sales Superstars?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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A lot of the people that I work with now are exceptional at what they do, but they may struggle to get other people in their organization to be able to do it, because they haven’t codified the success protocols that would allow them to say, “okay, this is how we perform this task. This is how we do this. This is how we do that.” And when they start doing that, they’re just amazed at how far their people can come so quickly.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your protocols for success. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, it’s such a pleasure to be here with you again. This may be a situation where I want to sit back and listen to you a little bit because I know you have a lot of experience and coming up with these protocols and things like that.

So I’m just going to say hit me and I’ll see if I can learn something here.

David: Okay. Well, when I talk about protocols for success, we talk a lot about systems and processes and the work that we do with our clients. And if you want to be able to create consistent results in your business, you need to have these things in place.

Protocols is another term for it. But the reason I like the word protocols is that it sort of establishes the fact that these things aren’t optional. This is what we’re doing. This is how we’re doing it in this organization. And when you approach it like that, everything gets a lot easier because you don’t have to make a hundred different decisions now.

It’s like, I know what the process is. I simply need to follow it. If you’re veering from it, you know it. If you’re on it, you know it. And so does everybody else. People who don’t like accountability will not like that. But people who do like accountability will know, Hey, listen, I followed this procedure to the letter and this didn’t work.

And then you can talk to the person that you’re working with to have them explain, okay, well maybe this protocol needs to be changed or updated.

It’s almost like a baseline. Most people need to start with some sort of baseline protocol that they’re going to say, okay, this is how we do this.

This is how we perform this particular task. And then you have a number of people do it and they follow the protocol or they don’t. If they follow it and they get a comparable or consistent result, great. That’s a good protocol. If five different people try it and they get five different results and they all follow the protocol, you have a problem with your protocol.

You need to clarify, you need to identify, okay, what are the problems with each of these steps? And I need to tweak that so that when I hand it to five different people, they can all get a similar result. That’s the nutshell version.

Jay: Hmm. You know, this is something that’s so critical. I think a lot of managers miss this point.

Managers are afraid to hold people to the protocol or hold them accountable, and they don’t realize that this actually robs your staff from feelings of success. Because if you don’t have a baseline, and the baseline is basically when they fall before it, it’s not a matter of getting mad at them, it’s a matter of saying, okay, what was wrong with the protocol first?

And if the protocol is good, then we probably have a training issue, right? So that’s underneath the expected line. But above the line means that they met the line or they did better. That’s the only way you’re going to feel success. If there is no line, I promise you, your employees will never feel like, man, we did it.

Because you never put a baseline on it. So that’s, to me, how you consistently make people happy. And that’s why I like the word protocol over accountability, because accountability always sounds negative to people.

David: Yeah. I mean, accountability is basically, did you follow the protocol or not? The protocol is the list of steps saying this is how we accomplish this task.

And there are probably a lot of people watching this video or listening to the podcast who have worked in a sales organization where their entire training regime consisted of “dial nine for an outside line,” back when people were working in offices with switchboards and things like that, right? That was it.

That’s not a protocol, that’s a free for all. And the big difference between a protocol and a free for all is that free for alls create wildly inconsistent results and protocols create more consistent results.

It’s not perfect. It’s never going to be perfect. But as long as you’ve got a protocol that provides a reasonable degree of certainty, in terms of the outcome that they’re desiring, you’re going to be in much better shape.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And you said it’s never going to be perfect, but it should be always improving, right? So when we see something happen, we find out, was it a person problem or was it a protocol problem?

I believe 95 percent of the time it’s going to be a protocol problem, but instead, we always look for the person to blame, right?

Whose fault was it? That’s the worst way to handle it, in my opinion. You look for what happened. And I’ll tell you, we did this this year. I spent six months last year, preparing for our peak season.

We have four months of absolute madness. And I built my systems and I was so proud and I’m like, we’re so ready to go in.

And that system fell apart within days. And I was so proud of it. So I took notes on every step. I’m like, here’s where we’re going to change this. Some changes we could make midstream. Other things we were stuck with until the offseason when we can fix them.

But I’m always taking notes. How do we improve here? How do we improve here? And the protocols did affect people because I wasn’t prepared. Now they’re not prepared. And now that goes to my customers. with a feeling of not being prepared. We’re talking about mission critical stuff here.

David: Yeah, you raised so many great points . there’s a great old war quote, It basically says no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

And so when we put together protocols like that in your business, you’re putting it together based on what you know and the things you’re thinking about at the time when you’re putting together that protocol, right?

And so it’s like, yeah, this is great. This is basically what I would do. But unfortunately, until you get that in front of a prospect to be able to hear what they’re going to be able to say, you don’t have the feedback to be able to update, adapt, and modernize that plan so that it takes into account what happens when they go this way instead of that way.

The advantage of a business plan is we say, we know where we’re going. But the disadvantage of a business plan is that everybody we interact with has different places they’re going.

And so we have to provide for that in the contingencies. You also raised a great point where you were talking about how people tend to blame the people first rather than blaming the protocols.

So naturally, if I write protocols, I prefer to think it’s not my fault, right? But the reality of the situation is that it’s pretty binary. It’s pretty easy to know if it was the protocol or if it was a person, if you’ve got systems in place for tracking.

Jay: Yes.

David: So if you are recording phone calls and you’ve got bullet points that need to be hit, if those bullet points were all hit, then it wasn’t the salesperson if that person hit all those points. And on the reverse side, if they didn’t hit all those points, okay, well, then it’s not a protocol problem. Then it’s a problem with the person who’s doing that work.

So it can be easy to track if we make sure that we have those things in place.

Jay: Yeah. And then the worst case scenario is you don’t have protocols. Something happens and what is your option? You only have one option and that’s to lay into the employee. You didn’t tell them, you didn’t tell them what the standards are.

You probably didn’t train them very well because you don’t have protocols. And so your only choice is, “why did you do this? How can you?” And I think we’ve all worked in that situation.

And what you create is an employee, a staff member, who doesn’t feel like they can ever win. Because the only time they’re going to hear from you is when it’s negative.

That person is going to slip into what I call minimum expectations mode. In other words, I’m going to fly under the radar. I’m going to do as little as possible to keep my check. Because I know I’m going to get beat up anyway. So it’s the worst way to de incentivize people.

David: Yeah. And I would say the majority of businesses that I’ve known and worked with and worked for in the past, did not have anything close to the kind of protocols that are necessary to create a consistent result.

A lot of the people that I work with now, my clients, they are great at what they do, they’re exceptional at what they do, and they struggle to get other people in the organizations to be able to do it, because they haven’t sort of codified those protocols that would allow them to say, “okay, this is how we perform this task. This is how we do this. This is how we do that.”

And when they start doing that, they’re just amazed at how far their people can come so quickly.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I would think maybe 60, 70, 80 percent of my time with my partner, we’re talking about protocols. We’re talking about how we’re going to do this better, even down to the types of forms we have, how we collect information, when we start doing certain types of work.

Fortunately he’s a systems guy too, so we get along really well. A lot of people are not systems people, so this is a very foreign concept to them.

David: Yeah, it’s a plus. It’s a real big plus when you’re both on the same page. Even if you’re not both systems people, if at least you’re both on the same page about the necessity to have them and have them work, you’re going to be in a great spot.

Otherwise, you’re just winging it. And you cannot create consistent results with inconsistent inputs.

Jay: That’s right. You know, at first you may have to wing it, but take notes, watch it. You can’t build a great system from thin air, which is kind of what I did before this last season. I projected in my mind what it was going to be like. And I was wrong most of the time.

But at least I had established a baseline, right? Here’s what I thought it would be. Okay, here I got it right. Here I didn’t. So now I’m taking notes for next time. Here I’m making midstream changes.

So I’m very confident it may take a couple of seasons, to where we’ve really honed in that system. But I’m already excited for the next busy season, because we’ve made so many changes.

I know it’s going to be so different and I’m talking about doubling our sales next year, if we can get these systems in place. We had a lot more money we could have taken in this last year, but we weren’t prepared for it because of our protocols.

David: And in fairness, you probably didn’t get most of the things wrong, you probably just weren’t able to complete it. You probably had some really good systems, some really good structure and the bones were there, but there weren’t enough of them.

And that’s probably what happened. I doubt very seriously that you put together a bunch of really bad protocols because that just doesn’t seem like you.

Jay: No, I mean if I didn’t have those protocols, we wouldn’t have survived at all, so…

David: Right.

Jay: You know, so yeah, fortunately we had those. All right. How do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d just love to have a conversation with you. If you’re at a point where, you know you need to grow the business and you want to do it sooner rather than later, let’s have a conversation.

If we can figure out a way to work together, we’ll do that. If not, it’s no problem, but we’ll both know.

Jay: All right. Fantastic. It’s a pleasure talking to you.

David: You too. Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Add the Protocols Necessary for Your Success?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Indecision comes with a high price. I think most of us in business try to make the best decisions possible, but really it becomes a matter of saying, “okay, do I have all the information I need?” And if I do, then make the decision. Say yes, say no, but make the decision.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I are back with a talk on the high price of indecision. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure to be here. And I think this is something that we all suffer with, especially in a new business, just knowing what you should do.

What are your priorities? How can you tell that? Paralysis by analysis is very common.

David: Yeah, no question. And I think some people are more wired to be decisive while others are more wired to be indecisive.

If you’re decisive, dealing with indecisive people is extremely frustrating.

And if you’re indecisive, dealing with decisive people can feel a little intimidating. So it’s a challenge.

Jay: Yeah. And I think sometimes you need both. I mean, if you’re sitting around waiting to make a decision. You could miss the perfect opportunity, right? But if you move too fast, you’re probably not going to be prepared for that situation.

So we got to find balance in the force here. How do we do that?

David: Great question. Yeah. I think missed opportunities is definitely the first thing we tend to think of when it comes to indecision. But if we’re trying to find balance in the force, then that would also mean talking about, well, should decisive people do anything differently?

And my guess is that’s kind of a quick one. My guess would be to say, all right, if you think you’re too decisive, then maybe you need to take a step back, aand consider things a little more. But in business, wow, it’s much more detrimental in most cases, in my opinion, to be indecisive. And there’s a great quote from Tom Watson that says:

“Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business.”

So there are lots of schools of thought on this. The bottom line for most of us is that you’re better off making a decision, because if it’s the wrong decision, you’ll find out sooner, and then you can change it and make a better decision.

If it’s the right decision, then you’re already past the point where you would have been if you were still putting it off.

Jay: Yeah, I think part of this though is to be decisive, but to be informed in your decisiveness.

If you don’t have good tracking of what’s going on, like, we were decisive before, and this is how we learned, and we tracked it, and so next time we can move faster because we have some knowledge, we have some key performance indicators, those things are going to help our decisions go faster, and we’re going to be more confident in those decisions.

Because for me, sometimes when I feel like we’ve acted too soon, I’m not at my best. I’m hesitant because I’m hoping it’s going to work, but I’m not sure that there’s anything backing it up.

David: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think you also sort of raised an interesting point, which is the difference between informed decisions and uninformed decisions, right? I don’t think decisiveness means just making up your mind without having all the facts.

I’m saying basically, if you’ve got all the facts and you’re failing to decide, that to me is indecisiveness. If you’ve got all the facts and then you ARE deciding, that to me is decisiveness.

But I completely agree with you. If you don’t have all the information then it’s too soon to make a decision. But in sales situations, a lot of times salespeople struggle because the people they’re talking with don’t have all the information.

They don’t want to take the time to even gather all the information and they decide “no” before they have enough information to even make that sort of decision.

That’s frustrating from a sales standpoint. So for us as salespeople, it’s incumbent on us to let them know, “Hey, listen, are you sure you want to make this decision based on the limited information you have?”

And if they do, then, maybe they’re not the ideal prospects for us.

Jay: Yeah, I do a lot of sales now. I’m the front man for our company and I’m learning all of these things, especially a lot of things I’ve learned from the podcast that we do. And a lot of times when a customer has said something to me, I hear something in my head, “you know, you really should do this now.”

And then I’m like, “Oh, do I want to chase the customer away? Is this the right moment?” You know, they say something to me and it’s a moment to say, “no, this is why our services deal with exactly what you’re saying,” and to be very decisive in my response. That’s going to make me look more confident and more knowledgeable to the potential client.

The other way around, if I’m hesitant, it’s like, “does this guy really know what he’s talking about?”

David: Yeah, exactly. And I think when we have a better idea of the facts than our client or a prospective client does, we owe it to them to say, “Hey, listen, here’s what I think you might be missing.”

Ultimately it’s going to be their decision anyway. But I do think that we have a responsibility to point out, “Hey, look, yeah, you can do this three months from now. You can do this six months from now. You can do this next year, but what’s happening in the meantime?”

And it’s particularly frustrating. I had a situation recently where I was talking to someone who is in a situation where they need to grow their sales.

They were lacking the money they needed to make a decision that they wanted to make, and they decided instead that they were going to spend their money on something that was not going to produce any ROI for them for the foreseeable future. They felt like they had to get their ducks in a row before they could make the decision to do the thing that would allow them to generate the money that would allow them to pay somebody else maybe to get their ducks in a row, you know what I mean?

It’s frustrating, but these conversations are necessary. And when we’re dealing with indecisive people, I don’t think the goal is to bully them or try to convince or cajole them into making a decision that is not in their best interest.

But if we can see clearly that it IS in their best interest, and we don’t convey that to them, we allow them to go do something that is very likely going to be detrimental to them, then that’s on us.

Jay: Yeah, and I think a lot of that comes down to believing in your product. If you really think your product is going to help them, then you can be decisive in what you tell them. You can honestly say, look, you really need to do this now because it’s going to help you get closer to your goals.

In my case, I can say, if you don’t do this now, you’re going to guarantee to lose money because I deal with taxes. And you’re close to guaranteeing you’re going to hear from Uncle Sam soon because of how you’re doing it.

I’m not hyping it up. I’m not lying. Those are absolute truths. And as you said, I am doing them a disservice if I don’t let them know those things. So in those things, I’m very decisive.

David: Yeah, and I think most of us in business try to make the best decisions possible, but really it becomes a matter of saying, okay, do I have all the information I need? And if I do, then make the decision. Say yes, say no, but make the decision.

There are some people who want to sleep on it and then they wake up the next morning and they had a good night’s sleep, but they’re nowhere closer to a decision because they haven’t actually said to myself, okay, I’m going to think about what I heard. I’m going to make the call and I’m going to announce it tomorrow. Right?

Because then everybody’s on the same page. I understand where you are. You understand where I am. If we’re moving forward, great. If we’re not moving forward, at least we both know it. There are a lot of indecisive people who can convince themselves that they’re going to do something in the near future or the not too distant future.

And they really had no chance of doing it because they’re just not set up to do it.

Jay: Yeah. And this is something I struggle with. They’re on the phone. I’ve got them excited. They’re telling them they need it. And they’re like, okay, when we get off the phone, I’ll sign up. And then I can’t tell you how many of those I’ve lost because I got them psyched up and the minute they got off the phone.

Let’s say they were a hundred at excitement. When they hang up the phone, they’re now at 95. A couple of hours pass, now they’re here. And then oftentimes they’re like, okay, I wonder if I can find a cheaper price. And it all comes from the fact that I couldn’t close them when they were at the highest point.

And the reason I couldn’t do that is I wasn’t decisive. I wasn’t confident to just say those words. And those words are the hardest to me, okay? Let’s get you signed up right now. Here’s how you do it. That’s the final step I’m still working on.

David: Yeah. And I think we don’t want to be in a position where we’re trying to push them. You have to do it now. You have to do it now.

Because the honest truth is they don’t have to do it now. But if it’s to their advantage to do it now, then they really should. Why put it off? Why put it off for a week or a month or a year, if they can start getting the benefits right away.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Any other things they can do to get over paralysis by analysis?

David: Well, some of it is just recognizing it, recognizing that, okay, I really just need to get more decisive about things. I need to practice, really.

If you’re struggling with decisiveness, make a pact with yourself, decide that you’re going to start making decisions.

So it could be something small. If you’re talking to your wife or your husband and you’re saying, where do you want to go for dinner tonight? And they don’t know, and you don’t know, and nobody knows. Pick a place, you know, just pick a place and say, okay, how about we go here, see what happens.

Jay: Yeah, except with your wife, you pick a place and then they’re like, No, not there, even though they told you let’s go anywhere.

David: Yeah, but at least you made a decision, even if it was overruled.

Jay: Yeah, here’s what we try and do, and this has been probably the most helpful for me. is fortunately we have a system that records calls.

So after calls, once a week, my partner goes in and he listens to these calls and he doesn’t listen to be critical. He listens to find better ways and he has listened and given me incredible feedback about how I do these calls.

So having somebody else who has knowledge of the company who, it could be a boss, it could be a co worker, maybe co workers listen to each other.

And if you can give constructive feedback to each other, I’ll tell you what, Dave, that has helped me out more than anything.

David: Yeah. And having the list of bullet points of the primary advantages to them doing it, the disadvantages to them not doing it, that’s going to go a long way as well.

Jay: Yeah. All right.

How do people find out more?

David: I’m starting to sound like Robert Kennedy Jr. on this. Sorry. My voice is a little fried.. Go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with our team, and let’s see what we can do to get you from here to there with the least amount of delay, the least amount of indecision, and the least amount of procrastination.

If it turns out that we end up working together, that’s awesome. If we don’t, that’s okay too, but at least we’ll both know.

Jay: All right. Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Need to Be More Decisive or Make Better Decisions in Your Business?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Particularly in the early stages, breaking through a 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.

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. It can be a monumental task to get to the next level and they’re not sure how to do it. Is 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 some sort of 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.

And there are thresholds, I believe 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.

And 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.

And so it’s really just a matter of getting stuck. It’s like, I feel like I’m stuck and I’m here and I need to be here 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 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 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 here. Right? So what gets me to level one won’t necessarily get me to level two.

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. Or something needs to change fundamentally in the business, in order to get us to that 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.

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 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?

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 getting 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.

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.

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?”

What is the single biggest contributor to the fact that I’m not there yet? 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?

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.

And, in hindsight, every time I’ve had, in business, a relationship that didn’t work out, it almost invariably came down to a problem with communication. Where the person that I was trying to help was not willing to communicate enough to allow me to do that. And in today’s society, in today’s economy, we refer to the term “ghosting,” where you’re trying to reach somebody and they’re not getting back to you.

And that’s a bad sign. When people do that to you consistently, you need to ask yourself, okay, is this the type of client that I really want to continue to interact with on an ongoing basis? Or am I better served to find clients who are open, and willing to engage, and responsive, so that we can do the things that we’re setting out to do together?

Jay: Yeah, I love that. And also the customer who is responsive to your suggestions and ideas. I love the question when there’s been an issue, “what can I do to make it right?” I just love this question. Right? Let them decide. But we all know that there are customers who, no matter what you do, they just want to be mad. They just want to be angry. They just want to vent. And they’ve already decided they’re not going to use you. You have to be able to know at some point where you’re like, okay, I’ve offered three or four solutions. They’re not biting on any of them. They just want to continue to rail on me.

I mean, at that point, you just have to cut bait and run. Because you just don’t have the time in your day to deal with those type of people.

David: Yeah. I mean, you have to do the best you can. If there’s something that you did wrong, you need to do your very best to make it right. Do what you feel is appropriate.

And if that’s still not good enough, and if you’re not able to do whatever it is, they’re suggesting. Yeah. Then you’re going to have to figure out a way to wrap that up as amicably as possible.

But also recognize that you can do as great a job as you possibly could for a person. And for whatever reason, if they’re not happy, they can still go online and tell a hundred people about you.

Jay: That’s true.

David: Right?

Jay: That’s true.

David: So there’s this balance, particularly now, where you want to do your very best for the clients that you’re working with. You want to make sure that they’re satisfied as much as you possibly can satisfy them. But as you indicated, there are people who are just not going to be satisfied no matter what you do.

And in those situations, sometimes you just have to cut your losses and take your lumps. And very often people will recognize when they hear people like that complaining, that “oh, okay. I think this is kind of what they do.”

And as long as you’re not doing that with many people. I mean, if that happens once or twice, and you’ve got people over the course of a career where you’ve had a situation like that, that’s not going to cause a problem.

Now, if a lot of people are reacting to you like that, then you got to really start looking at what you’re doing, what you’re putting out there and how you’re responding to them.

Jay: Yeah, asking yourself those difficult questions. But you know, we’re talking about sales plateaus and overcoming sales plateaus. You mentioned, I mean the ideal is to have a customer review system where people can see all these five-star reviews.

I am amazed at how much I use those, even though I know that a lot of them, I don’t know how true they are, but it has still become part of my life to look at those reviews.

And if there are negative reviews right off the top, I’m moving on to the next person. They’ve lost me instantly. So that’s an important part of this process.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I know when I’m online, I definitely look at the reviews and I try to make sure there are enough of them.

Jay: Mm-hmm

David: If there are three of them and they’ve got all five stars, I could be skeptical. If they have hundreds of reviews or thousands of reviews, and they’re all five stars, I’m more inclined to believe it.

Now that might be able to be done with bots, I don’t know. But I tend to have more confidence when there are actual comments there that look legit. And when there are enough of them.

One of the things that we have on our website is what I call our Wall of Fame, which is clients that we’ve worked with, that we’ve helped to grow their sales and profits. And they’re at TopSecrets.com/results.

If you go to that page, there are dozens or more. There are videos. There are audios. There’s text. All the people who have recently commented on experiences they’ve had so that when somebody’s considering doing business with us, I can say, Hey, listen, take a look at our Wall of Fame. I would love to see you on here. Right?

So they can look at it from two standpoints. Not just, these are people who have been helped by this company, but also, wow, I think I’d like to be on there too. I’d like to be on the Wall of Fame. I’d like to be another happy customer, getting the kind of results that these other people are getting.

And that also goes to the idea of community-building and interacting with people the way that we need to interact with them, to create the results we’re looking for. So from the standpoint of breaking through your sales plateau, it’s sort of all of the above.

It’s about saying there are things that are preventing me from getting from here to there.

It could be the quality of customers I’m interacting with. It could be the quantity of customers I’m interacting with. It could be my own internal structures, systems, staffing.

So identifying certainly the top one, but the top two or three primary obstacles, and then systematically tackling those, is really what’s going to get you there.

Jay: Yeah, I love that. But having an awareness of it. Talking about it. Discussing about it, you know, in your company and identifying those things. And, that’s what you’ll help them do as you workshop this through the week.

David: Exactly. In the Inner Circle this week, we’ll be discussing how do we start breaking through our sales plateau?

And in situations like this, it’s great to be able to interact with somebody who has a very specific situation, where they’ve been stuck at a certain point for a long time. And within a matter of a couple of questions, we can very often help them to pinpoint the area where they’re stuck so that they can apply some focus on that and start to get the results that they’re looking for.

So if you’re not already a member, be sure to go to TopSecrets.com/ic. If you’re already a member, just log into the Inner Circle website and we will see you inside.

Jay: Well, I love that. Real actionable advice that can make a difference, right away.

David: Exactly.

Jay: All right, David, it’s been such a pleasure. Thank you.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Need to Start Breaking Through a Sales Plateau?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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From a sales mindset connection standpoint, market domination starts with the idea that it’s possible. And if you’re not sure that it’s possible, ask yourself this, your very best clients. When they think about who to go to for the products and services you offer, who do they think about?

Obviously, if they’re your very best clients, it’s you. They’re thinking about you. So you’ve already achieved a level of mindset or market domination with your very best clients. That demonstrates that it can be done. So then it’s a matter of saying, okay, well, how can we do this with other people?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Bianca Istvan and I will be discussing the topic of the sales mindset connection. Welcome Bianca.

Bianca: Thank you so much, David. Very happy to be here with you. And I’m just curious, what do you say to people who think mindset is woo-woo?

David: Yeah, there are a lot of people who feel that way. To some extent, I’ve been one of them. And in fact, Bianca is our newest addition to our team here at Top Secrets. She and I actually met in a clubhouse group years ago, and we were talking about the idea of mindset there.

And I said, well, I’m not really all that much into mindset. Most of my training is about the specifics of what to do. And Bianca said to me, well, I don’t think so. Everything you talk about is pretty much mindset related. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really kind of opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah, a lot of what we do, even though it’s not geared to be about mindset, is about mindset.

So the whole woo-woo thing really kind of touches a nerve with me because I felt that way in the past. It’s like, oh, mindset, well, no, you just need to do the stuff. But the reality of the situation is that if you don’t have the right mindset, if you’re not willing to take the necessary actions, then you’re not going to be able to get there.

So it seems to me there’s always a mindset element that has to be there, whether or not you really want to think about it.

Bianca: That’s so true. And you know, for me, it’s great to see that. I mean, you have this ability to connect with people on another level and that’s, you know, congrats to you for having this mindset. Fantastic.

David: Well, thanks. And so do you. And that’s actually how we started communicating was in this clubhouse group and so when we connected again recently, I just thought it would be so great to have you on our team because I know that that’s an important aspect of what you do and your communication with people has been great.

So I’m really glad we’ve been able to put this together. But for most salespeople, it seems to me that mindset may be in the back of their mind. They may be thinking about it, but for the most part, they’re probably just thinking, How do I make this next sale? How do I make this next contact? And so while I don’t think you have to spend a ton of time thinking about mindset every day, just recognize that if you don’t at least have it going on somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re probably not going to do the work you have to do in order to get it started.

Bianca: Yeah, that’s so right. And I know you talk a lot about the first contact and what that means, but please tell me, you know, why do you think the mindset is so important when having the first contact with your potential client?

David: Well, first contact is difficult for a lot of people, and a lot of people think of first contact as just being cold calls. And that’s one example of first contact. And in those situations, mindset is really hard for some people. J just the idea of the fear of picking up the phone is an issue for people, which is all a mindset thing.

If they can’t get past that, if they can’t Overcome the mental blocks that are involved in having to pick up the phone and initiate contact with a stranger, then it’s definitely going to impact them. But it doesn’t just mean for cold calls. Some people feel the same way about a social media post. I’m posting something, I’m kind of afraid to put it out there, I’m a little nervous about it.

And until you get to the point where you can get your mindset working for you, you’re not going to be successful with it. It reminds me of that quote from William Shakespeare, who said, Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. And what that means to me is that if we’re afraid to do things, we’re not going to take the actions, and then it’s impossible to get the results because you’re not taking the actions.

Bianca: Wow. With that, I have another question. I think that’s important for people to hear as well. Like what are the mindset aspects of the Total Market Domination program? So what’s the secret?

David: That’s a fun one. Total Market Domination, because some people hear that title and they’re like, that sounds crazy. That sounds like too much. It’s over the top or whatever. But there is definitely a mindset associated with market domination. For some people, it is crazy. It’s like, oh, market domination, I want to take over the world.

That’s not what we’re talking about when we refer to market domination. What we’re talking about is creating an environment in which your very best prospects for the products and services you offer, Know who you are and know what you do so that they can make a thumbs up or thumbs down decision about whether or not they want to do business with you.

That’s it. Because if they have the ability to do that, then you at least have a shot at the business. And to me, market domination doesn’t mean that you get all the business because no one gets all the business. But what it does mean is that they know enough about you that they at least know that you do what you do so they can potentially choose you.

If they don’t know that, if you haven’t created that awareness, then you can’t dominate anything. And in every market, there are winners and losers. There are leaders and followers. And the leaders are those who are creating that awareness among the people in their market who need to be able to buy from them.

And the followers are those who are just watching what everybody else does and then trying to take action on that.

So from a mindset standpoint, market domination for me starts with the idea that It’s possible. And if you’re not sure that it’s possible, ask yourself this, your very best clients. When they think about who to go to for the products and services you offer, who do they think about?

Obviously, if they’re your very best clients, it’s you. They’re thinking about you. So you’ve already achieved a level of mindset or market domination with your very best clients. That demonstrates that it can be done. So then it’s a matter of saying, okay, well, how can we do this with other people? How can we do this with total strangers?

Or how can we do this with people who may have heard of us before, but who have never really taken on action on anything that we did?

Bianca: Wow, I’m actually goosebumped, you know, and hearing your answer because it’s so important when you work with someone, especially, you know, to connect with them just beyond of the professional level and to work with the mindset as well.

And what’s the best way for people to reach out to us? I think that would be my last question.

David: Yeah, well, best way to go is to go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with us, and let’s figure out exactly where you are in terms of being able to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish.

Some of it may be mindset, which we can certainly address, but a lot of it may be the specific actions that you’re either taking or not taking that need to create that awareness among the people that you’re looking to reach. So if you’re looking for help, TopSecrets.com/call, and we look forward to talking with you.

Bianca: Likewise. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Bianca.

Ready to Adjust Your Mindset to Improve Your Sales?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Staying in touch with prospects is required, and creating value in your communication is certainly something that will keep you from being a pest in sales. Because if what you’re saying to them is going to help them to accomplish a result, they’ll be a lot more likely to pay attention to it.

But ultimately it’s required. You can’t just skip it.


David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Bianca Istvan and I will be discussing the topic of staying in touch without being a pest. Welcome back, Bianca.

Bianca: Thanks so much, David. And wow, such a topic. Please tell us, why is it so critical to stay in touch?

David: Well, I think for anyone who is in sales, you recognize that you’re probably not going to sell something in one call.

You’re going to need to have multiple points of outreach, multiple contacts with a prospect or client before you’re going to be able to make that first sale, let alone the second or third or fourth. So staying in touch is obviously a critical part. of the process, being able to reach out to them on an ongoing basis without coming across as annoying or without coming across as what most people would describe in sales as a pest.

I think this is something that more salespeople tend to think of than prospects or clients. I mean, unless you’re really annoying, right? In which case they may think you’re a pest. What I’ve heard from a lot of salespeople is this exact thing. How do I Remain in touch with the people that I need to be in touch with without being a pest.

And so again, I think that’s why this topic is such an important one.

Bianca: Now that’s, that’s absolutely so right. And that leads me to my next question, like what do you think people mean when talking about being a pest?

David: I think the concern is what’s going on in their head, what they’re thinking about.

If I’m a salesperson and I’m going into any interaction with another human being with the idea that I want them to buy something. If that’s my motivation, then it’s likely I may be thinking in the back of my mind, oh, I hope I’m not being a pest about this, But, If you can make it about the person that you’re interacting with, then it’s totally different because now you’re not just there to sell them a product. You’re there to try to help them with whatever it is that they’re trying to do. So if you’re selling custom imprinted promotional products, you’re not just selling them something that has their logo on it, you’re selling them awareness or you’re selling them more sales in their business, or you’re selling them the idea of being in front of more people.

So when you think of it in terms of what it actually delivers for them, it makes it a lot better for you.

Bianca: Well, that’s so true. And yes, absolutely right. But what about, you know, because this is a sensitive topic as well. And what if you’re afraid to make those calls? What if you’re afraid to send that first message or you just think you can do it?

David: That goes back to mindset, which I know we’ve talked about in previous podcasts as well. But I think if you’re in sales, you recognize that you have to do it, right? There’s no alternative. You have to be able to reach out. Now, it doesn’t have to be a phone call. It doesn’t have to be a networking event. It doesn’t have to be an ad on social media. It can be lots of different things. So I think if you recognize that there are different things that you can do, and you can find out something that is more comfortable for you, that will certainly help.

If you also think about the concept that we’ve talked about in the past about creating value in your communication, that is certainly something that will keep you from being a pest, because if what you’re saying to them is going to help them to accomplish a result. They’re going to be a lot more likely to pay attention to it, but ultimately it’s required.

You can’t just skip it. So I think it’s a matter of asking yourself, what do I have to do? And how do I have to present myself in a way that is going to allow me to feel good about what it is that I’m saying to this person?

Bianca: Wow. And at the end of the day, it’s all related to the mindset. Love it. And please tell us, David, what’s the best way for people to reach out to us?

David: Well, the best way to go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with us to find out. Okay. If you need to be able to reach out to people on an ongoing basis, and you’re either not comfortable doing it, or you’d like to maybe automate some of that, or you’d like to be able to do it in different ways so that you’re not coming across like a pest, we would be happy to have that discussion with you.

Happy to help, to see if we can help you to accomplish more. So TopSecrets.com/call.

Bianca: You heard that. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Bianca.

Need to Be in Touch with More Prospects & Clients Without Being a Pest?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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There are steps involved with making prospects and clients comfortable with you. You can’t go from, “I have no idea who you are,” to “I’m completely comfortable with you and I trust you implicitly” without steps. It just doesn’t happen.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Bianca Eastfound and I will be discussing the topic of making prospects and clients comfortable with you. Welcome back, Bianca.

Bianca: Thank you so much, David.

Definitely one of my favorite topics. And please tell us, what does it take to make prospects comfortable with us?

David: Yeah, that’s sort of a magic key, isn’t it? What does it take? Well, I think it takes desire, certainly starts with the desire to want to do it, because a lot of times we’re just so focused on selling what it is that we want to sell that we don’t really think about that too much.

We just think in terms of introducing ourselves and letting them know what we do and hoping that they’re going to want to buy it. But so much of that, can never really happen until and unless we get to the point where they’re comfortable enough to even want to hear what it is that we have to offer.

Bianca: Well, that’s absolutely great. And yeah, I definitely agree with you. So who do we need to do this with?

David: Pretty much everyone, pretty much every prospect, every client we ever interact with, we need to create a level of comfort.

In some of my early training, I talked about sort of four levels, if you picture a target with archery practice it’s a series of rings and outside the rings, there’s this area outside the target. That I think of as total obscurity. They don’t know who you are. They don’t know what you do.

They have no idea why they should do business with you at all. So that’s sort of outside the target. And then the first level inside the target is recognition. They recognize that you’re alive. They recognize that you’re taking in air on the planet, but they don’t know exactly what you do or how you do it, or if they should use you at all.

They just recognize you. Okay, I recognize you. So you move from obscurity to recognition. That’s sort of the first step. And then after they recognize you, then you can start to move to comfort. Because until I even know who you are, there’s no way I’m going to feel comfortable with you. So there’s that next level.

So you move from obscurity to recognition, and then recognition to comfort. And then from Comfort, you can eventually, if you do your job well and consistently, you can get to loyalty, right? We didn’t even talk about loyalty in the topic today, but ultimately that’s kind of the goal.

And Comfort is one of the steps we need to get through in order to get to any sort of level of customer loyalty. But when we talk about making prospects and clients feel comfortable with us, it really is a process.

And in our total market domination training, we talk about different methods of interaction. In other words, we have entry level awareness.

So entry level awareness is designed to make someone aware of the fact that we exist and we do what we do. From there, we can then move on to that comfort level awareness, which is designed to expand the relationship a little more.

Okay, I know who you are, I know what you do, and now I feel comfortable enough with you to place that first time order with you.

And then once that happens, if I deliver well and consistently, and then you order again, and I deliver well and consistently, then eventually that can lead to loyalty. But I think a lot of it goes to recognizing that there are steps involved here. You can’t go from, I have no idea who you are, to I’m completely comfortable with you and I trust you implicitly.

It just doesn’t happen.

Bianca: Wow. And that’s a great answer, but I know for some people it may be like a lot. So how do we really do it?

David: How do we create that level of comfort?

Bianca: Yes.

David: A lot of it comes from our interactions and asking ourselves, how can we create value in our communications with people? If all we’re talking about is what we do and how we do it and why people should buy from us, we’re going to lose them.

It’s like, you’ve lost me at hello. So creating that level of comfort is about finding out about them, finding out what they need, what they like, what they’re looking to accomplish, and then not even trying to sell them anything until we’ve determined that they have some sort of a need. I That gets into a whole qualification procedure and things like that, which is the subject of another podcast.

But that level of comfort, it requires interaction, requires having conversations with people that let them know that you’re a human being and you’re there to help. And if you can help them, you will. And if you can’t help them, you’ll let them know that too. So that if they feel like your only purpose for interacting with them is to sell them something, you’re not going to create that level of comfort.

Bianca: And this is so true. So thanks again, David . But you know, what about people who just feel like they can’t do it? Like people who actually struggle with this.

David: If you’re struggling to interact with people in a way that allows them to be comfortable and allows you to be comfortable, You want to start by asking yourself, why is that the case?

Am I not confident enough in the products and services that I’m offering? Am I not confident enough in my knowledge about those products and services? Am I not confident or comfortable enough in the questions that I’m asking people to try to get to the heart of what it is that they really need and what they’re looking to accomplish?

Normally. It’s about your relationship with the other person. One of the first live training sessions that I ever did, it was at an ASI show in Las Vegas, a lot of years ago, and I was doing the full day new distributor training for that show. And I got up there and I was so excited to be able to present the topic that I just went at it, And it was basically six hours.

It was four 90 minute sessions that took place over the period of the day from nine to noon, and then from like one till four, whatever it was. And at the end of the presentation, somebody came up to me and they said, wow, I really enjoyed that presentation, but weren’t you nervous when you were doing that?

And I wasn’t nervous. And the reason I wasn’t nervous is because it was all about them. I wasn’t thinking about, Oh, am I going to say the wrong thing? Or, Oh, what if this happens? Or what if that happens? I was thinking, I wish that someone would have told me this when I was starting out in the business.

And so I think if you’re able to keep it about them and not yourself, you’re going to make them a lot more comfortable.

Bianca: Wow. Thank you so much for providing so much value, David. And what would you recommend for the next steps?

David: Well, for your next steps, if you’re just looking to allow people to feel more comfortable with you, ask yourself, what do I need to be doing better and differently to focus on my prospects, focus on them to try to find out what they need and how you can help them.

And be honest enough to be able to say to them, if you can’t help them, let them know that so they don’t feel like you’re just in it for the money. So, so much of that is really about creating relationships, which is probably another subject for another podcast, but it has to start with that. The only way that you create comfort with people is being open enough and being honest enough with them to let them know that if you can help them, you want to do that.

And if you can’t. that’s okay too.

Bianca: Well, thank you so much, David. And one more question for you. What’s the best way for people to reach out to us?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with us to find out, if you’re in a situation where you need to be able to bring new customers through the door like clockwork.

And if you’re not comfortable or confident enough to be able to do that, we can certainly walk you through a series of questions to try to figure out If what we have to offer is of value to you, and once again, if it is, we’ll be happy to tell you that. If it’s not, we’ll tell you that too, because we’re not trying to bang a square peg into a round hole here.

If what we can do for you will allow you to achieve the results you’re looking for, we’d be happy to do it. So once again, it’s TopSecrets.com/call.

Bianca: Thank you so much, David.

David: Thank you, Bianca.

Ready to Make Prospects and Clients Comfortable with You?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Once you outperform your competitors in terms of the way that you do things, the way that you make your presentations, the way that you interact with your clients, the way that you follow up and service them — when you’re already outperforming your other competitors in that area, then the only thing you can really do is focus on how can I outperform my previous performance?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Bianca Istvan and I will be discussing the topic of outperforming your top competitor. Welcome back, Bianca.

Bianca: Thanks so much, David. So happy to be here with you. And what are we talking about? And what does that mean to outperform your top competitor?

David: Yeah, great question. For a lot of people, we kind of feel like we need to do it. We want to do it, but we’re not quite sure how or what or even who they are. So, what it means to me is that we are doing a better job at the things that need to be done to be able to deliver a positive result for our clients.

So outperforming a top competitor means that we’re doing it better. We’re doing it differently. And we’re able to convey that to people in a way where they understand it. They understand that there’s a difference between the way that we deliver things and the way that other people deliver things.

Bianca: Wow, that’s absolutely fantastic. And, you know, thanks for bringing so much awareness because yeah, it’s a lot of confusion around this topic. And you mentioned something about who our competitor is. So how do you even determine who that is?

David: For a lot of people, when you’re out there in the market and you’re talking to people about buying your products and services, they’ll say, Oh, well, I deal with this person or I deal with that person.

So that’s a good way to find out who your top competitors are. Because if you keep hearing the same names over and over again, that’s a pretty good indication that they’re a top competitor.

Also, very often when we’re starting out in a market, we may be aware of sort of the big dog in the market, the person who is already recognized as a leader.

So, you may just know when you’re going in the person who does the most advertising or who seems to be the best known in the marketplace. That’s also a good way to determine, okay, this might be one of my top competitors.

Ultimately, we need to decide who we see as our top competitors. But that’s really just the starting point. Because I think that people make a big mistake when they focus on outperforming other people as their top competitors versus getting to the point where they ultimately have to outperform themselves, right?

So I think ultimately we want to get to a point where we are our own top competitor that we’re trying to outperform.

Because once you’ve outperformed your other competitors in terms of the way that you do things, the way that you make your presentations, the way that you interact with your clients, the way that you follow up and service them.

When you’re already outperforming your other competitors in that area, then the only thing you can really do is focus on how can I outperform my previous performance?

Bianca: Wow, that’s absolutely a great answer. And I heard there a lot of hows. So how do you really outperform your top competitor?

David: Well, a lot of it has to do with determining what is it that we’re saying to people.

How are we saying it? How often are we saying it? So it really boils down to a lot of our interactions with our clients. How often we’re communicating with them, the very specific things that we’re saying. The way that we’re performing.

Are we able to deliver what they’re looking for in a timely manner? Can we provide better quality products than our competitors? So a lot of it is really looking at the specifics of the job itself that needs to get done, and the way that we do those things.

So, I think when most people think in terms of outperforming their top competitor, they might think in terms of, I want to be able to make more money than they do, or I want to be able to have more clients than they do.

And while that’s true, the how of it is really what’s most important. It comes from the things that you’re going to be doing with them in order to create the better results so that they go to you instead of to your competitor.

Bianca: Wow, that’s such great information. And I think people just listening to this podcast are going to have more awareness of how to deal with this topic because, it’s definitely not an easy one. And I think it’s important to talk about what if you’re not convinced you can do it. And I know you talk a lot about this, so please, tell us something.

David: Well, we touched on mindset in a previous podcast. So some of it does come down to that. If you think that you can’t outperform your competitors, you have to ask yourself, what am I doing then that even makes me deserve the business, right?

To some extent, you have to feel that you can outperform your competitors. You have to feel like you’re offering your customers something that your competitors don’t offer them, because without something like that, it’s going to be very difficult to differentiate you from your competitors.

So if you’re looking at that situation saying, well, what if I don’t feel like I can do it, then look at the specific things you’re doing and ask yourself, what can I do better and differently to be able to make that happen?

So again, it’s kind of a mindset issue, but ultimately it’s going to boil down to performance.

Bianca: That’s why you’re an expert of mindset. And I really hope people are taking notes on this because it’s such valuable information. So I have to take advantage of this moment and to ask you one more question. What’s one of the next, what’s one of the steps to outperform, David?

David: Okay. Well, when you think in terms of your first step, your next step, I would start by looking at what is your initial contact with the prospects and clients you’re dealing with?

Am I meeting them at a networking function? Am I calling them on the phone? Am I sending them a message through social media? Because that’s going to set the tone for the relationship.

So if you want to start out by outperforming your competitors, ask yourself, how are they experiencing me to begin with? Because if I pick up the phone and I call you and I say, Hey, Bianca, I’m Dave, I sell stuff, you want to buy something?

That’s going to have a completely different experience, going to create a completely different event in your mind in terms of what that relationship is likely to be.

Whereas if I can create value in our communication, which is actually something we’ll talk about in a future podcast, that’s going to go a long way to outperform your competition.

Because so many of our competitors are just focused on making the sale that when you differentiate yourself by creating value, establishing those relationships, and just doing everything that needs to be done better and differently, then it becomes a lot easier to outperform.

Bianca: Wow, thanks so much for sharing this with us because this is absolutely a gold mine. So thank you. And I have one more question for you before I let you go. What is the best way for people to reach out to us?

David: Best way to do it is to go to TopSecrets. com slash call, schedule a call to find out, okay, if you’re in a situation where you need to perform better, you need to maybe get business that you’re not getting because someone else in your market is getting it.

Let’s have a conversation. We can walk you through a process to find out where the potential bottlenecks are and how we can help. If we can help you, we’ll let you know that. If we can’t help, we’ll let you know that too. So just go to TopSecrets. com slash call. We’d love to have that conversation.

Bianca: Thank you so much, David.

David: Thank you, Bianca.

Ready to Outperform Your Competitors?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Brute force selling usually comes about when someone feels like they have to sell their product or service, regardless of the needs, wants, or desires of their prospect. The alternative is better understanding, relationship building, and effective qualification.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing the idea of brute force selling. Welcome, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I know we’ve talked about a lot of different issues, you know, generating leads and those types of things. I’m very anxious to talk about this brute force. When I hear it, as a customer, I’m like “brute for selling? What exactly do you mean here?” Because I might want to run away from it.

The Case Against Brute Force SellingDavid: Yeah, well, I’m not really here today to advocate for brute force selling, okay? So, definitely not my first choice, but it seems to me like there are so many people, so many industries that tend to engage in it, that I thought we should probably have the discussion.

Jay: Yeah. I mean, nothing could be worse than chasing potential clients away. I think there’s a fine line between brute force and still trying to help customers understand the importance of your products and using good sales techniques. It’s really a fine line. Isn’t it?

David: It is. There’s definitely a balance. And I think there’s a big difference between persistence and brute force selling. But to get to the core of it. I think one of the biggest problems that a lot of small business owners and salespeople have today is that they think in terms of selling.

I have to sell this product, or I have to sell this idea. I have to sell this concept. I have to sell this customer. “I have to sell,” being the main thing.

When you’re approaching someone for the first time with the idea of, “I have to sell,” it’s easy to slip into the wrong gear about trying to push what you have onto them before you’ve even identified, whether they have a need desire, money, budget, willingness to spend, any of those things.

When I think in terms of brute force selling, to me, it’s often about people who have gotten into sales. They’ve been given maybe a lead sheet or in the old days, it was a phone book by their manager who said, “Go make sales. Knock yourself out.”

And when you don’t know how to do that well, then trying to sort of push or bully or cajole people into buying from you becomes the default.

So when the focus is just on sales as the first, middle, and end of the process, it’s kind of a lose/lose for both the salesperson and the prospect. Also for the company. So it’s a lose all the way around.

Effective Qualification is the KeyIf we can train salespeople on the idea of first determining need, identifying whether or not this person is a good candidate for what we’re selling. I mean, we’re really just talking about qualifying. And a lot of salespeople and even a lot of sales managers fail to make the distinction between qualification and selling.

When we’re qualifying somebody, we’re not trying to convince or persuade them to buy our stuff. We’re trying to find out if our stuff even makes sense for them.

And what I’ve seen over the years is that there are a lot of salespeople who waste enormous amounts of time pushing and trying to sell to people who have absolutely no capability even to buy what it is that they’re selling.

Without taking that step back and saying, okay, let’s do a little qualification first. Let’s find out what this person is dealing with, and what sort of help they need. And if I can even help them, if you do that first, then you can find out pretty quickly if somebody is a good prospect for you or not.

And if they’re not, then rather than trying to push them into buying something that they don’t want or can’t afford you can thank them for their time. And you can actually move on and get in front of somebody who has a much better likelihood of doing business with you.

Jay: Yeah. So you’re not wasting your time. I love this idea. I also think that qualifying them in advance will help you with the sales process because you’re going to be able to identify pain points.

You’re going to build a relationship with them while you’re trying to qualify them. And so that can help you potentially close the sale later on. If you just dive in and try and close instantly, you’re probably lessening the chances that you’re going to accomplish that goal.

David: No question. And I think there’s also in a lot of businesses, the element of preparation. Laying the groundwork ahead of time. Marketing. Creating an environment in which the people you’re approaching may be aware of you even before you meet them. Right?

A good example is this podcast. If somebody’s watching this podcast, if they’ve been watching it for any length of time, they feel like they have a reasonably good idea of you and me and kind of how we are and the way that we approach things. So that if they were to have a conversation with us, it would be pretty consistent because they know what to expect.

If they’ve never talked to either of us, and I’m just all of a sudden calling them on the phone, calling that same person. “Hi, I’m Dave. I help people grow their sales and profits.”

Who are you? Right? It’s just it’s not ideal from a positioning standpoint.

And so a lot of brute force selling can be avoided when we are able to create that environment first. Sort of tenderizing the prospect. It’s not a great analogy, but setting the stage ahead of time so that when we actually interact with them, we can qualify them quickly, and find out if we have a fit. And if we do, then we can get to the selling.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve always believed that it’s about relationships first.

People will be much more comfortable. They’ll be much more receptive to hearing from you. and I think, you know, even if that relationship is just them watching the two of us via a podcast for weeks at a time, they start to feel like, you know each other and

David: Right.

Jay: So that’s a great segue into the process. If you are cold calling, going through that process of interviewing them will build a relationship. If you show interest in them. If you find out what their actual needs are. Find out what experiences they’ve had in the past with purchasing products and those types of things.

David: Yeah. One of the other advantages that it has is that it allows them to feel more connected. It allows them to feel more like it’s their idea.

I was talking about our podcast, but for everybody who’s watching this, a good question to ask yourself is “what am I doing to get myself out in front of people so that they can have an idea of who I am and what I’m all about and how I can potentially help?”

It could be something like this. It could be a podcast, or it could just be an individual video. It could be audio. It could be a post on social media. What are you doing to communicate with the people who have the best likelihood of buying from you right now?

Because they’re out there. And if you don’t know them and more importantly, if they don’t know you, then there is zero likelihood they’re going to be able to buy anything from you.

Jay: And I also think part of this is creating a picture of what that ideal customer is. Because how many businesses really know what their ideal is? If you don’t know, then you can’t pre-qualify to that specific area, right? You’re just shooting in the dark, basically.

David: You are. And sometimes what can happen is when you’re putting out sort of the marketing or the preparatory material, like what we’re talking about here, some people will see it and they’ll go, “wow, that sounds like that’s for me.”

But then when you actually get into a conversation with them, you find out, okay, maybe it’s not a great fit. But you’re able to do that in a way that is so much more natural and organic.

It’s a good conversation to have because you’ll ask them questions. They’ll tell you about what they’re looking to accomplish. If you can help them with it, you will. If you can’t help them, you say, well, I can’t really help with that, but I could refer you to someone. Or here’s what I recommend you do.

And then at that point, you still have a relationship. Might not be a business relationship in terms of selling to them. But it’s a good, solid relationship that somebody will say, “Hey, you know what? These people were really helpful. I think it’s worthwhile to have a conversation with them.”

So as a result, you can get referral business. And they could potentially put you in touch with somebody who actually needs what you’re selling and is able to pay for it.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. several years ago I attended a week-long sales training and the whole week they wouldn’t let us sell our own products. We all became light bulb salespeople. And they didn’t tell us anything about these light bulbs, because they wanted us to focus on the skills of selling instead of falling back on just talking about our products.

And that’s where I think people get caught up. They think that if they just tell you enough about their product and they keep talking about their product, eventually you’ll come around.

And I thought it was very interesting when people started to struggle, they started to make up things about these light bulbs, because they rely on these things so much.

It’s much more about the relationship and how you speak to them and how you learn about their needs than your product is I think.

David: Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. When we are focused on product, when we operate a product-focused business versus a client or customer-focused business, we’re already behind the eight ball. We’re already in a situation where other people are going to perform better.

Because you’re right. In a sense, the information about the light bulbs is far less important than the ability to establish rapport with somebody, and find out if they need light bulbs. I mean, we live in a part of Pennsylvania where there are a lot of Amish people. They don’t like having electricity in some areas, right? So they’re not going to buy light bulbs.

And if I’m focused on brute force selling and I want to sell these light bulbs to these Amish people, it’s not going to work out well. And so understanding the relationship and that really it’s a perfect analogy for qualification, establishing a relationship, determining need. And when you do all that stuff, then brute force selling in effect goes away because there’s no point in trying to sell something to someone that they absolutely can’t use.

And when you have these conversations and when you establish those relationships, you don’t even want to do that anymore. It’s not about, oh, I just want to get this person to buy. It’s about, oh, okay, we have a fit or we don’t have a fit.

If we have a fit, we work together. If we don’t, we don’t. But there are so many people out there who will want to work with us if we give ’em a chance. But we can’t get to them if we’re trying to brute force, sell the people who have no interest.

Jay: Yeah. And I also love the idea of helping the customer come to an understanding that they need your product, instead of trying to force them into that understanding. Right?

It’s a hard thing to do, especially if you’re commission-only, I mean, this is your livelihood and you feel like, you know, I got to get to this and I got to get through to this customer.

But if you can take your time and help them see the importance of what you’re offering, they feel like they came to that conclusion on their own. Now you’re talking about the ability to close people much more efficiently, I think.

David: I think in terms of speed, if you’re talking about trying to make the sale more quickly, then the approach we’re talking about will work much better. Because you’re going to qualify first, which means you’ll find out if they’re not a good prospect for you. And if they’re not, you can eliminate the rest of that process and spend more time in front of the people who are going to be a lot more likely to buy from you.

So I don’t think it’s a one or the other situation where okay if they don’t need it, I have to push harder.

No, if they don’t need it, you want to get yourself in front of someone who does, and then that will save you and them a lot of time and heartache.

Jay: Yeah, and the other thing that I’ve seen happen is like, I’ll call up someplace, and I’m ready to buy. And you don’t have to sell me on it. But they don’t take the time to find that out. Right?

So now they’re going to send me through the same process they’re sending everybody through. So again, we’re getting back to the qualification process.

You may not need to spend time educating them on the product. They might be ready to go. Figure that out and capture that sale as quickly as possible. Or take the time to send them through the whole sales funnel.

David: Yeah. And you know, there are salespeople who look at the price of something and they assume, because they feel a certain way about it that everyone else does. And they tend to want to justify the price where the other person might be thinking, yeah,, that’s fine. It’s not a problem. And so it’s very important for us to get over ourselves in some ways.

And not impose our way of thinking on the other person. Find out what’s in their minds. How can we help them? And then follow through on doing that.

Jay: Yeah, and price is so interesting because you know, some people might think it’s too much. Other people might think it’s a great bargain. And sometimes if you charge more for the product, they actually think it’s a better product for them, even though it’s the same product at a higher price.

So gauging their response to that is, I think, so important.

David: Yeah, it is. And just the idea of analyzing what you’re doing, examining what you’re doing, asking yourself, “am I engaging in the type of selling that’s uncomfortable?” Where it’s uncomfortable for me, I’m trying to get you to buy and you’re trying not to buy. That adversarial relationship just doesn’t work nearly as well as when you’re able to find out what they need, provide the service and work with the people who want to work with you and that you want to work with. Everything just gets a hundred times easier.

Jay: Yeah, you mentioned adversarial, I think one of the great ways to make it not feel adversarial is just through asking questions. Ask them if they understand. Ask them if they have any questions. Even saying “here’s our pricing packages. Would you like me to walk you through them?” Instead of saying,

David: mm-hmm

Jay: “let me show you” or “here’s our pricing.” You know, helping them feel that they’re guiding the whole sales process, I find has been a great way to get rid of that feeling of it being adversarial.

David: Absolutely. And a lot of what we’re going to be discussing this week in the Inner Circle is related to this topic of brute force selling. Avoiding it, trying to figure out what we can do to grease the chute so to speak, prepare things in advance so that it’s a better experience.

If you’re an Inner Circle member, be sure to join us inside the portal. If you’re not, you can check us out at topsecrets.com/ic for Inner Circle. Join us for a month. Join us forever. It’s up to you. But if you’re looking to create the types of relationships with the type of people that you actually want to interact with, I think it’s a great place for you to start.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, I love that you’re sharing this information. I think you’re going to help people increase their sales, build better relationships with their customers and get rid of that adversarial feeling. So thank you so much for joining us today.

David: Thank you, Jay.

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2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Just the idea of initiating first contact versus cold calling is a lot more exciting. It’s a lot less intimidating in most cases. I started using that phrase after I saw an old Star Trek movie where they referred to first contact as being your first contact with an alien species. And I just thought, wow, that has a lot of correlations with sales. Where you’re approaching somebody and you really don’t know what you’re getting into. Strange new worlds and all that sort of thing….

David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of initiating first contact with a new prospect. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: I’m so glad to be here, David, and I’m excited to talk about this issue because to me, personally, this is one of the hardest things to do.

I’m fine once that first contact has been made. I feel like I’m really good at building relationships and closing.

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: But I’m terrified about making that first contact and I’m not really sure how to do it. So I find myself shooting in the dark all the time trying to figure it out.

David: Yeah, well, you’re certainly not alone.

I’ve certainly felt that way myself, and nearly everybody I’ve ever met in sales has had issues with it. And we talked about this in a previous podcast. We were talking about cold calling and the idea that cold calling is really just one form of first contact. And so the reason I thought it would be good to have a discussion on the topic of First Contact itself is to first of all, recognize that, yeah, it’s more than just cold calling.

There are lots of different aspects to it. And if you realize that, then you also realize that you can get comfortable with first contact, generally by engaging in a first contact method that is more comfortable for you. So if cold calling is not your primary thing, you have other alternatives and that should maybe give you a little bit of hope.

Jay: Yeah, that does give me hope and I think the key is to know what the possibilities are. Because like I said, sometimes I’m like, okay, my only option is to cold call, and that’s not working. So really understanding what are the other options available.

And the other thing I found is, lately I’m better at cold calling because you force yourself to do it enough and you can build a skill and you can get over the hump at least I’m finding that.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And when you are good at cold calling, and there are a lot of people who are very good at it, there are a lot of people who actually really like it. They don’t even struggle with the call reluctance and that sort of thing, but for those who do struggle with it, I think just discussing this idea of first contact is going to be helpful.

And if we think about why first contact is really so important, in my mind at least, it’s because it really helps to set the stage for the entire relationship. Whatever it is that they’re going to learn about us or think about us down the road, it’s all going to come from what that first contact is.

If it’s a great experience, they’re going to have good feelings about us. If it’s less than a great experience, then they’re not going to feel as great about it. Since it sets the tone, it’s really important that people become comfortable with it, or at least come up with a form of first contact that they can be reasonably comfortable with.

Jay: Yeah. It’s such a great line of thinking.

I hadn’t really thought about it that, that first moment, maybe the first five minutes,

David: Right.

Jay: That could determine the whole lifespan of the relationship. How they view you. How they respond to your sales pitch. Everything. It’s kind of like we do it in life. First impressions, we know, are everything. Right?

David: Exactly. And now there are so many different forms of first contact. For somebody you’ve never met, their first contact with you could be something they saw that you posted on social media. They may be scrolling on Facebook and they come across something that you posted, and that’s their first contact with you.

You may not even realize this stuff is happening. But when you recognize that it could be happening, and it very likely is happening, then you can start to really think through the communications that you’re engaged in, and how you want to utilize them so that you can create a good, solid first contact, even when you don’t even know for sure that that’s what you’re doing.

Jay: Mm, it’s really great. I think that you can do this on social media now. I always thought of first contact as a phone call, but what if first contact is, they’re watching that video I posted on YouTube. Or they’re watching this podcast that we’re doing right now. They form a friendship with you or an appreciation for you and your information long before you’ve ever talked. And so now you’re way ahead of the game once you have that first contact.

David: No question. And you’ve heard the old adage, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And my take on that has always been, no, it’s not what you know. It’s not even who you know, It’s who knows you.

Because depending on those different forms of first contact, people can know you before you ever get to know them. In exactly the example you just gave, if somebody sees this video, if they’re watching it on Facebook, or they see it on YouTube, We’ll have to put it up on YouTube. I don’t usually put ’em up there, but yeah, good point.

We’ll have to put it up there on YouTube, but that could be their first contact with us. It would not be our first contact with them, however. So when we get to that point, they’re already going to feel like they know us. We’ve already got the advantage, because they feel like they know who we are.

And if you think about music artists, the people who got rich selling records didn’t get rich because they knew a lot of people. It’s because of the people who knew them, right? You buy an album, whoever your artist is. That person doesn’t know who you are, but you know who they are and that’s what works.

And it’s exactly the same thing in sales. So if we think in terms of first contact, instead of just cold calling, then it could mean networking. It could mean getting referrals. It could mean a post on social media, could mean a video on social media. Could be an audio, could be a podcast, could be advertising, direct mail, in-person canvasing, trade shows, attending or exhibiting at a trade show. It could be self promotional items.

There are lots of different methods that we can use to initiate that first contact, to set the stage, get people comfortable with us, and then when we do eventually either pick up the phone or drop them an email or send them an instant message. They’re much more comfortable and confident with us than if we were to simply start out with that cold call.

Jay: Yeah, I think that’s so important. But it’s also important if you are trying all those methods that it’s really important to track what’s working and to figure out, what kind of percentage am I getting here?

We talk a lot about cost per acquisition, right? I think following that information so that you don’t spin your wheels in areas that they may feel like you’re doing well because you’re talking to a lot of people. But those aren’t turning into customers. So having that good system, I think, has got to be part of honing your first contact skills.

David: Yes, exactly. And another thing that you can look at is, what is a good follow up to that? So in a cold call situation, we’re calling somebody on the phone. We’re trying to establish rapport, we’re trying to qualify them in or out, to determine whether or not they can use the products and services we offer.

And at that point there’s either going to be a second call, there’s going to be an additional follow up, or we’re going to essentially qualify them out, disqualify them so that we don’t have to follow up with them.

If your first contact is something like a social media post and someone comments on that, well, now you’ve actually had an interaction.

You put something out, they they send something back to you. It’s a little bit like ping pong or tennis. You hit something across the net. Are they going to hit it back? And if they hit it back, now you’re actually in a conversation.

So if your first contact is a video or a post on social media, somebody likes or responds to it, you could then, perhaps, direct message them back and continue that conversation, which could lead to qualification and eventually having that person become a client.

And it seems a lot less threatening in a lot of ways. It’s also a lot more professional in a sense. Because you have the authority advantage. They’re looking to you as the authority because they saw whatever it was that you posted. They’re either liking it or asking a question about it.

And so then at that point, for you to respond back, it’s more like it’s their idea. Which is beautiful because technically, it’s not really their idea. You put something out there to begin with, right? But they’re responding to it. So then at that point, they’re engaging with you. It feels more like their idea, and they’re just a lot more likely to continue to engage with you when it has that sort of really organic feel.

Jay: Yeah, I agree with you, but I’ve also had the experience where I’ve watched a YouTube video. I comment on something, and I never hear back because they’re not watching their comments. They’re not using it that way.

David: Right.

Jay: Responsiveness is such a critical part of this. If somebody’s reaching out to you, you’ve got to have a way to get back to them immediately, because otherwise they’re off to the next person. Just that fast.

David: Absolutely. And I think a lot of people, myself included at times, probably don’t really think of it that way. If somebody is commenting on a YouTube video that I posted four years ago, I might not see that right away.

And if it’s not part of your plan, if it’s not part of your strategy for initiating contact and creating conversation with people, then it’s very easy for that type of thing to sort of slip off your radar and not be aware that it’s even happening.

Jay: Yeah, I’ve got a system right now that is working really well. Because we provide valuable content online and then, if they want to talk to us, we offer a free consultation. And they use a Calendarly link, and it appears on my calendar. When I talk to them initially, it’s like they know me because they’ve watched these videos. So we already have this relationship that the whole, “how are you,” all that stuff, we skip right past it and we get right to that business.

Because that relationship was formed and it’s just because I posted good content.

To me, the technology of today, if you can tap into it and use it that way, it’s fun and it’s exciting because I get to wake up every day and my calendar’s already full with calls. I just love that so much.

David: Yeah, and I think just the idea of first contact versus cold call is a lot more exciting. It’s a lot less intimidating in most cases. And I started using that phrase after I saw a science fiction movie. It was an old Star Trek movie where they referred to first contact as being your first contact with an alien species.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And I just thought, wow, that has a lot of correlations with sales. Where you’re approaching somebody and you really don’t know what you’re getting into. Strange new worlds and all that sort of thing. And I thought, for me it was a great analogy. It’s our first contact with this prospect and what’s that going to be like and how can we make it count?

How can we make it positive and memorable? Not just memorable, right? Because you could create a really terrible first impression that would be really memorable, but not good.

Sometimes when I’m doing live trainings, I talk about the fact that first contact could be a note, wrapped around a rock, thrown through a window, right?

That will definitely be memorable. But it will not be positive. And so when we can make that first contact both positive and memorable, then people can really start to make some strides.

And then, if we really look at having our follow up connect right where that first contact left off and build from that relationship, it becomes a conversation. It feels a lot more organic and you can make a lot more sales that way.

Jay: Yeah, so true. And I do want to go back. You mentioned something that I really, I don’t want to skip over, and that is helping them understand, making them feel like it’s their idea. I think this is so important with sales. The minute they feel like you are a salesman and they’re somebody you’re trying to sell, that becomes adversarial. Or it has a possibility to do so.

So if you can help them come along on that process and avoid that adversarial nature. And I think you do it in a lot of ways just by asking questions, instead of telling them things.

Just ask them questions. Get to know them. Get to know their needs. Then help them to that conclusion that they might want to talk to you about this. I think it’s easier, right? It’s a lot less rejection. And I think you’re going to get a much higher close rate that way.

David: Absolutely, and I think for anyone who’s watching this, if you’re trying to think, “okay, well how do I apply this? How can I do something with this?” What I would encourage you to do is just jot down the different types of first contact that you think you would actually enjoy doing and that you’d be happy to engage in.

Is it cold calling? If not, is it networking? Going to different networking function s and meeting people in person. Is it referrals? You know, getting referrals, but not just waiting for them to show up.

Can you put something together that would be designed to get yourself referrals proactively where people you know are providing it to you because you’re initiating contact with them. So that you’re not just waiting for them to stumble through the door.

If it is social media, if you look at the fact that when you post something on social media, other people can see it. You can post it as public or you can post it just so that your friends can see it. If you post something on social media that you want to be a good, solid first contact with you, then it should be really decent quality content.

You should make it public. Maybe some people will come along, see it, interact with it, and that can start a conversation.

If it’s advertising, what can I do to put out advertising that will make a great first impression that will actually get people to respond? Because if you’re just putting stuff out and they don’t respond, then you don’t know who they are and it’s wasted money.

Jay: That’s right. It is wasted money for sure. And one other thing that should be considered. If you’re going through all these motions and you’re still not getting a response, maybe you have a product problem. Maybe you don’t have something that people want. Maybe you need to tweak your offering or something like that. It’ s not always on your sales system. It could be on what you’re actually offering.

David: Exactly, and if they don’t even know what your product does or how it helps, it may be a matter of conveying the solution that they’re looking for. Because you may be providing a solution they don’t even recognize they need it.

I do a lot of work in the promotional products industry and promotional products salespeople are talking about the products. Well, if a client doesn’t understand that that product can get them new leads, can open doors, can introduce them to people, can create all sorts of benefits that they’re not even aware of, they’re not going to want to buy it.

And that’s where I think if we’re able to lead with a solution, find out, “do they need the solution,” and then, if you can connect the dots between the solution you offer and the products that you’re selling, they’re going to be a lot more likely to buy it than if you say, “Hey, you want to buy a shirt with your logo on it?”

Jay: Yeah. Such powerful information. How do people find out more, David?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team, and we can just sort of talk things through. Try to find out where you are, where you’re looking to be, where you’re struggling. If you need to bring more clients through the door and you need help with your first contact, that’s all part of what we do in our Total Market Domination course.

So if you go to TopSecrets.com/call, we’d be happy to have a conversation.

Jay: Unless your first contact is with aliens that’s a little bit different story.

David: That’d make a fun conversation too. I’d like to hear about that. .

Jay: Yeah, absolutely.

Ready to Grow Your Sales & Profits?If so, check out the five primary ways we help our clients to grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.

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David: Even if we accept the idea that we're going to interact with people who are not ideal clients, I think one of the other things that causes salespeople trouble is when they're afraid to disqualify a prospect. To say, okay, I'm no longer going to follow up with this person.

I've always viewed it a little like the game musical chairs that you played as a kid? You got a certain number of people going around, a certain number of chairs, and when the music stops, everybody scrambles to get a chair. And if you don't have a chair, you're out, right?

And I view prospecting that way in some respects. Where you have to, at some point, start to prune the list. You have to start to get rid of the people who are not likely to become clients. And if you're afraid to do that, then you will continue to leave the same number of chairs and the same number of people.

Jay: Yes.

David: And if none of them are buying, it's not going to work well.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing letting ideal clients know you're alive. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, so good to be here, David. And I think this is, again, such an interesting topic. I find that I'm so caught up in the daily, just taking the calls and squeaky wheel gets the grease, and some of those ideal clients kind of go by the wayside sometimes.

David: Yeah, and a lot of times we don't even know who they are until we first try to identify them. So, in a sense, the topic itself goes kind of deep because you can't know they're an ideal client until you even know that they're alive. And then you have to let them know that you're alive, and then you have to determine if they're an ideal client.

Jay: Yeah.

David: So there are actually a few steps in this.

Jay: Yeah, and I think that's such an important thing to know, kind of have a system, like you always have, of identifying those ideal clients. It's hard for me to really figure out if they're ideal up front. But I'll tell you one thing I can tell is when they're not ideal.

I was on the phone call with somebody yesterday, he's going to become a client, but I'm regretting the relationship I know I'm going to have with him because he's already so demanding. And I'm like, this guy's not ideal, but he's a customer. And so, how can I not sell him the product?

David: Yeah, that's a great question.

And it's harder for some than others, I think. You get to a certain point in your business or a certain point in your career or whatever and you weigh it. Well, I guess we all do that. We have to weigh it. How much of a pain is this person going to be? And what's my tolerance for pain essentially, right?

Jay: Yeah. Yeah.

David: But you're exactly right. You don't really know that necessarily upfront. So a lot of times when we're working with our clients, what we'll do is start with the people they think are likely to be their ideal clients. And whether that means in a certain geographic area or in a particular industry or in a certain sized company, if they're selling B2B, You can make some initial judgments based on who has been a good client for you in the past, and then say, okay, how can I get more people like that?

And then when you're introducing yourself to those people who meet those similar criteria, as you're having those conversations, you can then start to make those determinations about whether or not they are an ideal client, or if they just sort of fall in that general ecosphere of people who could potentially be ideal clients, but maybe aren't.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. And not just finding new ideal clients, turning your existing ideal clients into more business. Because if they were ideal the first time, if you can keep that to be a generating ongoing revenue source and relationship... Man, I'd rather do that every day than deal with the other type of customer.

David: Yeah, no question.

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Jay: I’m not lying when I tell you that I struggle with this idea that I’m being a pest in sales. So I think it’ll help my sales, I think it’ll help my daily attitude towards what I do.

David: Well, I’ll tell you something, Jay, many of the most conscientious human beings feel this way. I mean, if you’re one of those sales guys who, “Hey, everybody loves me,” you’re not even going to think of that. It’s never even going to occur to you. So the people who are most likely to struggle with this are people who just want to help. They’re there to provide a service.

Jay: Yeah.

David: They don’t want to be a pest. And so really, most of the people who feel this way are the ones who are least likely to be a pest because they’re not arrogant to begin with.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast in today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I’ll be discussing the topic of how to avoid being a pest in sales. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Oh, thank you for having me, Dave. This is a real problem for me. I always feel like a pest in sales, whether it’s an email, whether it’s a text, I always feel like they don’t want to hear from me.

And. it’s been an ongoing problem. I’ll just be honest with you when it comes time, okay? I got to sit down and reach out to people. I’m like, oh, do they really want to hear from me? Am I going to bug them? How do I get over that?

David: Yeah, it’s a great question. A number of years ago, I was doing a speaking presentation and Mary Lou Retton, the gymnast, was also speaking at the same event, and she told this story.

It was just so great. I don’t know if somebody asked the question, but it came up in her presentation where people were saying to her, when she was doing her routine, the person who went on before her did a really, really good routine. And so at that point, the pressure would really be on her to deliver a flawless performance if she wanted to be able to get the score that she needed.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And so the question was how do you deal with that when this person delivers a great performance and you have to go on next? Don’t you feel nervous after that? And her response, I’ll never forget it. And this was easily 10 or 12 years ago this happened.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Her response was, “you know, I watched her performance and it was great. And I looked at it and I thought to myself, wait till they get a load of me!”

Jay: Mmmm.

David: And I was like, “wow, how much does that apply in sales?”

Jay: Yeah,

David: I mean, I think it applies every bit as much in sales as it does in gymnastics. If you go in with the idea of, oh, that person’s better than I am, or they’re not going to like me, or they’re going to think that I’m annoying, or I’m rude, or I’m obnoxious, or I’m a pest, or whatever.

If you go in with that mindset, then what you are likely to say, the way that you’re likely to position yourself, all of those things are going to reflect that. But if you’re able to go into a situation with the idea of “wait ’til they get a load of me,” or at least “I have something valuable to offer.”

Now, any salesperson who doesn’t feel like they have something valuable to offer should be either in another line of work or selling a different line of product. Right?

Jay: Yeah.

David: You need to be able to feel good about what it is that you’re selling. And if you know that what you’re selling is, ideally, better than the competition. If you know that you’re going to deliver better than your competition, you know that you’re going to be more responsive, you’re going to be more concerned, you’re going to be more caring. If you know all those things, then you owe it to the client to convey all that. And if you don’t convey it to them, then you’re doing them more harm than good, and you’re doing yourself and them more harm than good.

So, If you look at it from the standpoint of, “I’m here to provide a solution, I’m here to help,” then it’s a lot easier to not start thinking of yourself as a pest and just recognize that if you’re there to help, it’s very difficult to be a pest.

Jay: Yeah, I’m not a pest. I’m a value. And I’m trying to pass that value on. It’s really interesting because, you know, I do these initial consultations and I’m going to toot my own horn. I am incredible at building that first relationship.

But in that first relationship, it’s them learning. We don’t talk about costs a lot or anything like that. And then we schedule a second follow up, and that’s where we get into the other things.

And it’s the second follow-up where I’m like, oh, now we’re going to talk about money. Now I’m going to turn into a pest. Now I’m going to do that. And I can see how what you’re talking about is, “no, I got them excited in the first meeting, and so why would they think I’m a PEs in in the second meeting?” And, and furthermore, maybe I should just get to the money in the first meeting and do it when I’ve got them excited initially.

David: Well, yeah, that’s a great point. Because if they are excited and if they’re ready to move forward, then scheduling another call and having time pass in between and they get distracted, it’s probably giving opportunities for them to fall out of the process. So,

Jay: mm-hmm.

David: I think you just asked and answer a great question for yourself.

Jay: Yeah.

David: But if you think of a pest, I mean, I think of something like a mosquito, right? A mosquito is a well recognized pest. And it’s buzzing around you and it wants something from you. It wants blood, right? And so it’s trying to get to you so that it can take something from you and not give you anything except maybe a bump of your skin, right? Which is not pleasant.

So, If you’re not doing those things, then you’re really not a pest. And when you are creating value in your communication, when you’re creating value in the relationship, there’s nothing pesty at all about that. If you’re talking to somebody about the products and services you offer and they’re interested, even if they’re not like really excited about it, if they’re like, “oh, okay, that sounds interesting. I’m open to this…”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And then you provide them the information on, okay, here’s how much it will cost. Here’s how it’s going to work. Then at that point they get to evaluate, does this make sense for me? Can I justify the cost of that for what it is that you’re offering?

If the answer is yes, you’re going to be doing business together. If the answer is no, if they tell you that, if they say, well, listen, this isn’t for me, that’s not in my budget, and if you can’t come up with another solution, then at that point the conversation is over. The person is disqualified and you move on.

The times where we’re most likely to feel like a pest is when we’re talking to somebody and they start ghosting us.

Jay: Hmm.

David: And when that happens, when they start ghosting us, then we feel like we have to follow up because they asked for information from us, right?

Jay: Right. Right.

David: They wanted to know stuff. They seemed interested. They said they were interested. Now I’m supposed to follow up on a certain day at a certain time, and they’re not taking calls and they’re not returning calls and all that sort of thing.

At that point, if you are following up, you’re not being a pest. You are attempting to deliver what it is that they asked you for. It’s like if you called and ordered a pizza and I’m the pizza delivery boy, and I come to your house and I know you’re in there and I’m ringing the bell and you’re not answering it.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Well, am I a pest because I’m trying to deliver the pizza you ordered? I think the answer is no. And it’s the same thing here. If you’re trying to provide them with information they requested, if you’re trying to follow up because they said they have a particular in-hands date on an order and they’re not responding to you, then at that point, what you’re doing is not being a pest.

What’s happening is that they are being rude. They are being discourteous. Right? They are wasting your time and wasting their time. They’re also creating frustration because you’re frustrated because you can’t reach them. They’re probably frustrated because they might see you calling and they’re like, “I don’t want to take this call.”

So they’re creating unnecessary anxiety by doing those things.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: So I put out a post on social media the other day talking about my feelings about people who ghost. And they’re not good. I don’t remember exactly what I posted. It’s up there on social media. I’ll share it below this video. But when we are in a situation where people have an interest, express an interest, we’re having a decent conversation, then as long as you’re acting with integrity to try to get them what they said they wanted from you, I don’t think there’s anything pesty about that.

Jay: No, I, think that’s a great perspective and you’ve helped me as I’ve got calls coming up after this podcast that I need to do, and I think I’m going to approach them with a little bit different perspective. And also, if somebody is ghosting you, they are systems now, right?

I put them in a drip program and so they’re still going to hear from me automatically. I don’t have to do anything about it. And. If the time comes around where they realize again that they need me, well, I’m still in their face a little bit and they’ll come around and I don’t have to worry about it until then.

David: Right. And so when we think about the topic to avoid being a pest, I mean, essentially if you are focused on them, you’re focused on helping them, you’re focused on getting them the answers they need, focused on helping them to create value to achieve the results they’re looking for then as long as you’re continuing to do that and literally just trying to provide them with the information they wanted, they should be totally fine with that.

A lot of salespeople feel this way. They feel like they’re being a pest, but nobody’s ever actually said it to them.

Right. Right.

And I know salespeople who have left messages saying, “Hey listen, I don’t want to be a pest.”

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And I’ve said…

Jay: Don’t do that.

David: Don’t leave a message like that.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because that might’ve never occurred to them.

Jay: Yeah.

David: It probably hasn’t occurred to them. And if you position yourself like that, you’re also positioning yourself lower on the scale, right? You want to at least try to be coming a people from an even level where we’re on an even playing field, “I’m here to help, you’re here to get help, let’s work together.” As opposed to, “oh, I don’t want to be a pest.”

Because if what you have is of value to them, then they should want it, and you’re the person who can help them get it.

Jay: Yeah, that’s such a valuable, valuable point. So I’m going to reassess

David: Good!

Jay: And I’m going to work on this this week and next week when we talk, I’m going to report back and…

David: Cool.

Jay: And let you know how this kind of new perspective goes. ’cause I’m not lying when I tell you that I struggle with this idea that I’m a pest. So I think it’ll help my sales, I think it’ll help my daily attitude towards what I do.

David: Well, I’ll tell you something, Jay, many of the most conscientious human beings feel this way. I mean, if you’re one of those sales guys who, “Hey, everybody loves me,” you’re not even going to think of that. It’s never even going to occur to you.

So the people who are most likely to struggle with this are people who just want to help. They’re there to provide a service.

Jay: Yeah.

David: They don’t want to be a pest. And so really, most of the people who feel this way are the ones who are least likely to be a pest because they’re not arrogant to begin with.

Jay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s a great point. All right. How do people find out more?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re looking to create actual rapport with people, get into relationships that are going to be mutually beneficial, we’d love to talk with you about that. TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have a conversation.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ve loved this conversation. I think it’s going to make a difference, David. So thank you so much.

David: Cool. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it.

Are You Ready to Create More Value and Avoid Being a Pest?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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Where are your best leads coming from? It’s an important question, because if you don’t know, then it’s impossible to know where you can go to get more.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic of where are your best leads coming from? Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thank you. And I’m just going to answer the question. I don’t know. (laughing) I’m just…

David: Short podcast. Thanks for listening.

Jay: Yeah, I’m just going to say it straight up.

I mean, I do have some systems. We do try and use Google Analytics and things like that, and that helps a little bit. But I’ve never done a deep dive yet on this is the source, this is the well or the font of where my best leads have come from. So I’m looking forward to this discussion.

David: This is really a good one to look at and to dive into a bit, because I’ve always maintained that if you don’t know where your best leads are coming from, then you don’t know where to go to get more of them, and when you are able to identify it, everything else gets a whole lot easier because now you can go fishing in the same ponds, rather than just trying to put stuff out to anyone and everyone, which is very expensive to do.

You can really tune in and focus in on what people are doing, where they’re coming from, how they’re hearing about you so that you can go find more of them. In addition to… well, a number of the businesses that I’ve been involved in over the years, one of them was a retail mail order catalog business that I owned.

And in a business like that, it’s absolutely critical to know where your best leads are coming from.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: We would run magazine ads and we would get people out of different magazines. We had ads running on television that were designed to get leads for our catalog business.

And every single one of the ads we ran had some sort of mechanism to let us know where they were coming from. If it was calling an 800 number, we had one primary 800 number, but we would give them an extension to ask for. So we’d say, call this 800 number extension 214. Right? And 214 meant that it was coming from this particular TV station or whatever.

If they were seeing something online, there would be specific links that they would click through that would tell us where it was coming from. If it was a magazine ad, it was a similar kind of thing on the back of the magazine, it would say, call this number, dial this extension, or go to this web address, and there would be a slash with a suffix on the url..

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And that would tell us where it came from. And when people would call in, one of the first things that our people were required to ask them is, “where did you hear about us?” And there was a box there that they would fill out. Where did you hear about us? Oh, I saw your ad on such and such a magazine, or, I saw your ad on such and such a TV station.

And so we would have the data that the computer said based on what they came in and said, and then we would also have the data corresponding with whatever the person said. So I was pretty pathological about it, and to this day I’m still very pathological about determining where leads come from. Even now when, you know, at the end of this podcast, when you say, how do people find out more?

And I give out a link that link tracks back to the podcast, it lets me know that the people who register on that link, Came from the podcast. And if they’re coming from some other ad, then it’s going to have a different code and that sort of thing. So it’s not that hard to do when you discipline yourself to do it.

And most people don’t do that until and unless they realize how much it is actually worth to you when you do that right.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And in today’s world, honestly, there is no excuse. It is so easy. There is so much data out there. If you want to target a specific group, you can target that group. And that’s kind of the process, right?

You’re going to send out a link for this podcast, you’ll know who you get back. You’ll know age groups and those types of things. And then you’ll be like, well, let’s adjust it this way, or let’s adjust it that way. I mean, never in our history has there been such an easy way to say, I want this age group who’s interested in this type of thing.

And then you can target that group. And then based upon that new batch of information you can target in even more. And I know we all kind of complain that we’re being tracked everywhere we go, but at the same time, we’re all asking for it.

We’re subscribing to newsletters, we’re hitting the like button. We’re feeding all of that information. So it becomes this circle, right? And I think it’s incredible personally. And if I am going to get sent an ad, I want it to apply to me.

When I get something that I’m like, there’s no way that this is something that I would ever consider. I almost get angry. Like, come on, get your algorithms together here.

David: Yeah. And what you’re talking about is probably a level or two above what I’m even talking about.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: I’m talking about simple things that most small or medium sized businesses can integrate into their own business, just so they have an idea of where the people who are paying them money are largely coming from.

And I don’t mean every site they’ve visited over the past 20 years.

Jay: Sure, sure.

David: I mean, where did they hear from us most recently? Did they hear about us from the podcast? Did they hear about us from an email broadcast that went out through an email broadcast platform? If so, which one?

If there is some sort of ad, which ad did they click on? There are some ads that we run on some websites where there’s an ad at the top of the page, there’s an ad on the side of the page. The ads say different things. We track those separately so we know which message and which ad.

Does the top position get more of a response? Does the side position get more of a response? Because that tells us where to focus our attention on getting more people. And a lot of it, in the early stages especially, is just about seeing where the people are basically coming from. But then when you see who’s actually buying, that narrows it down even more.

Jay: Yes.

David: Because you may be getting more leads from one source than another, but you find out that the leads from that source aren’t converting.

Jay: Yes.

David: At which point you can stop advertising there and put your money behind the ads that work.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when I mentioned how easy it is today, I even mean for small businesses. I mean, we started a small business and I don’t know anything about pay per click or, you know, anything like that. But I looked on Fiverr, you know, the website, Fiverr and Upwork, and I found somebody who said, I’ll do this for you for a month for 30 bucks and I’m like, it’s 30 bucks. I’ll try it out.

We did the $30 and the results were dramatic. And so we’re like, wait a minute, if we do 30, let’s do 60. And now we’ve got this guy we spend about maybe 250 a month with him, and we get constant leads that convert from him.

And I don’t know how he’s doing it and I don’t need to know how he’s doing it. Right? And so I can spend my time focusing on those leads. And the other thing he’ll do is he’ll come back and say, okay, you’ve got a lot of people who are landing on your checkout page, but they’re not converting.

And so we’re like, oh, well wait a minute, what? What’s going on? Is it the language we’re using? Is it the pictures we’re using? Are we not conveying the message? These things can be done for relatively cheap nowadays, and so even if you’re at the smallest point, I would definitely try some of those things.

David: Yeah, it’s simple enough to be able to at least get an idea of where most people are coming from to be able to go back and get more.

And obviously, we’re talking quite a bit about online, but there are a lot of offline sources. If you do networking, you go to networking functions, you may find that one networking function does much better than another.

You may find that you go to one particular networking function and you don’t get any leads from it. You go back again and again and again, and you’re not getting leads. Everybody’s just schmoozing. That happens a lot in business.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Particularly in B2B. Well, B2C as well. So in those situations you can make determinations if you’re keeping track of it. But very many small businesses in particular will just go out, go to some sort of networking function or go to something that’s supposed to generate business, and they use that as an excuse like, “I’m doing something.”

But if you go out to something like that and you’re not going out there with the idea of coming back with leads that you can follow up on, it’s really just a waste of time.

So there’s a focus aspect to this. There’s an online versus offline aspect to this. But ultimately what it boils down to is the subject of this podcast. Where are your best leads coming from?

Jay: Yeah.

David: Where can I go to find more?

Jay: Yeah, and I see this a lot and I’ve been a victim of it. Movement for the sake of movement. You know? I’m doing something, I’m going to these networking events. I’m going to these shows. I’m placing these ads. So when is it going to start working?

And movement for the sake of movement is of no value. Right? It has to have some intent. It has to be trackable. It has to be adjustable. And I think it’s so easy to fall into that trap of “I’m doing something!” And so, where’s the result?

David: Yeah, it reminds me of that Zig Ziglar quote, “Don’t look for your ship to come in if you haven’t sent one out.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: And very often we’re trying to do things that are generating results. We talked about goal setting in a previous podcast, and a lot of times we’re so focused on the goal, “I need to generate X dollars per month or X dollars per year.”

And what am I going to do to do that? And we just run around in a lot of different directions trying to generate that amount of money. Well, what we need to be doing is saying, “okay, what is going to get me to that?”

In other words, how many leads do I need to generate in a month in order to get to my number? If I know how many leads I need to generate in a month, because a certain percentage of them will convert and a certain percentage won’t convert.

If I know how many people I need to initiate contact with on any given month, then we can track those metrics and say, “okay, well today is the 20th of the month” or whatever the date is. How many people have I initiated contact with so far this month?

And if it’s less than the number that you know, you need to reach to hit your numbers, then okay, I need to initiate contact with this many more people. Because when you focus on those lead metrics, the things that you can actually control as opposed to the lag metrics, like how much actually came in for the month.

You can focus on the lead measures and then the lag measures will follow.

Jay: Yeah. And again, the focus of this podcast, the high value leads. So if you’re just not fishing in any pond, but you’re fishing in that pond where you know you’ve gotten some good leads before, maybe you won’t get as many leads, but who cares, right?

Because you’ve got quality customers who are going to come back to you. And we’d all rather have that than, you know, a hundred little minnows on our line, right?

David: Yeah, and it absolutely ties into the topic of what we’re talking about. Because when you find those really popular or those really productive fishing holes, then you say, okay, well if I go here, primarily, I can get fewer leads and know I’m still going to hit my numbers, so why would I want to waste time bringing in more leads over here if it’s not going to produce at the same level?

Jay: Yeah, maybe ’cause some people like movement. It feels like you’re busy, so that’s a good thing. It’s not always a good thing, right?

David: No. It’s an easy trap to fall into.

Jay: Yeah. Well, how do people find out more? David?

David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re looking to attract more high quality leads in your business. If you’d like to start focusing on the high value, high dollar leads that can do better things for your business, it’s probably worth a call. TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right, as always, great conversation. Can’t wait till we talk again.

David: Thanks a lot, Jay.

Are You Ready to Determine Where Your Best Leads are Coming From?If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

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To increase the value of your business, consider this: If your business burns down, you don't want that to happen, right? But if your business burns down and you've got whatever, desks and furniture and things like that, that stuff's all insured. You should be able to come back from that okay.

But if your book of business burns down, right? If you still have all this overhead, but you don't have that book of business anymore, you are really in trouble. Because if you've got desks and you've got furniture, and you've got technology and everything, and you don't have the ability to sell to the people that you need to sell to, at that point, what's that really worth?

All of that becomes overhead.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing building the value of your business. Welcome back Jay.

Jay: Hey, I'm so glad to be here, David. And once again, you hit me with another term where I'm like, do I really know what the value of my business is? And value has such a different meaning for so many, right?

Value could be. Well, it gives me free time. I hate my business, but it gives me free time. So it's of great value. Or it's of great value because I have all these shiny toys, you know, those types of things. So I think value could be very different for different people.

David: Yeah, it absolutely can. Particularly when we're thinking about business owners versus salespeople.

I mean, when I was thinking about the topic, the value of your business, meaning what would it be worth to someone else if they wanted to buy it from you? And what that means for a business owner is what someone would actually pay for the business. What it means for a salesperson is what is your book of business worth?

If you're building something up and somebody wanted to buy your book of business, what would that be worth? That's what I was thinking of in terms of value, but you touched on a lot of other great points regarding the term.

Jay: Yeah, like I said, there's so many other things. And I've talked to people who have said, yeah, I'm thinking about selling my business.

And I ask them, well, what's it worth? And they look at me like I have no idea whatsoever. In fact, I was working for Kinko's way back when, when they wanted to sell. And they wanted to go public first, and the SEC came in and said, you don't know what you own. You don't know what you owe. You don't know anything about your business.

You have the worst paperwork system we've ever seen in our lives. You're not going public. And so they went and found a private buyer, which was FedEx, who went and bought FedEx Kinko's. So just in how you manage your business can affect the value of that business.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And for a lot of people, the value of their business isn't going to be FedEx Kinko's worthy, very likely.

Jay: Yeah.

David: But still, it's good to know. And, for some it might be worth more than that. But for most people, particularly small to medium sized businesses, when they're looking to sell, they really don't have any idea of what the business is worth or what it could be worth to someone else. And in different industries, there are different metrics and multipliers that people use.

They say, okay, well, we're going to take a multiple of your net value. In other words, what is, bottom line, after owner's compensation and things like that. They have a number of different metrics that people use. But in a lot of cases, that's what it boils down to. What's it likely to be worth to someone else?

And Glen Holt, who was a professional in the promotional products industry for a long time, one of my mentors in the early days, I remember he was talking about that when people are looking to buy a business, really what they're paying for is the likelihood of future business. Because the only way I'm going to want to spend a dime on a business is if I know it...

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When you want to qualify your leads and you approach it from the standpoint of looking for relationships that are going to be mutually beneficial, then it does become a lot easier. Because it's not just about me saying, okay, I'm going to disqualify this person because of A, B, and C.

If part of that equation is I don't feel like I can help them, then you're really acting with integrity. Because you're not wasting their time and you're not trying to sell them something that they can't use, don't need, don't want, can't afford.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be asking the question, how do you qualify your leads? Welcome back Jay.

Jay: So great to be here, David. And another great important discussion for people in sales or any type of business. You know, we had this process in our company where we had set up a situation where, man, we were getting the phone to ring like crazy.

We were getting leads. We were like so excited. And then we started looking at the close rate, the conversion rates and who these leads were. And you know what, probably 10% of them were looking for the product that we had to offer. So in having what some would call a successful marketing campaign, we were actually costing ourselves a lot of time and money.

David: Yeah, and in a situation like that, but also in pretty much any other sales situation, there is a process of elimination that has to happen. Now, if 90% of the leads that you're generating are really wildly unqualified, then yeah, you definitely want to tweak your marketing to try to improve those odds. But depending on the value of the client, the value of the sale itself.

The long-term value of the client. If they end up doing business with you again and again and again, then even numbers like that could potentially work. As long as the rest of the math works.

Jay: Yeah. and actually what we did is we just kept tweaking, right? So we just kept changing our keywords and our searches, and we got to the point where I would say 98% of our calls are right in that zone.

Now, clearly we don't convert all of those calls, but if you can really build a funnel where you can know that you're at least talking to people who want what you have to offer. Wow. You have jumped ahead in the game.

David: Absolutely. Now, for purposes of our discussion today, when we talk about qualifying leads, 'cause actually that would be a great subject for another podcast where we talk about what we can do when we're trying to bring in the right people.

But regardless of who you're bringing in now, there is very likely a conversion ratio, like what you mentioned, whether it's 10% or whether it's 20% or 40% or 60%, whatever that percentage is. If you're dealing with similar types of leads, there is probably a reasonably consistent conversion ratio that you're working with.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: And if you want to improve on that, without diddling with the front end, then a lot of that is going to boil down to your lead qualification procedure. What am I saying to people? What am I asking them to determine whether or not they are a good fit for us?

Jay: Yeah. And are you even doing that or are you, like we talked about in the last podcast, are you just jumping right into the sales process or are you taking some time to really find out if you're a good fit? Because that's going to be better for them and it's going to be better for you in the long run.

David: Exactly. And it also ties back to a an earlier podcast we did where we were talking about people who are worthy of our time and attention, right? So that also gets down to this level of qualification. And each of these things that we're talking about are sort of slices or pieces of the same thing, which is why I like these podcasts when we're having an opportunity to talk about these different pieces of the puzzle.

Because having a bunch of them right,

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Most people don't consider the idea of creating value in their communication. So if you're doing this, obviously, you're not telling your customer "well, I'm here to create value in our communication," right? You're just doing it. You're adding value in the conversation. You're thinking about, "what can I say when I reach out to this person the next time to make this communication more interesting, more beneficial?" By doing that, you're going to create that in their brains and they're not even going to know why it's happening.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing creating high value communications. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, once again, great to be here with you as we talk again about a topic that I know in my business career, we probably haven't had this conversation a lot.

Communication is just something that happens. And it may depend on whether you're old school or new school. Old school, we're just making phone calls and picking up the phone. And that's high value communication. And if it's new school, we're texting and emailing. And that's the extent of the thought process.

David: Yeah, and I think the adjective here, the high value part of it may be what we're bringing to the discussion today. Because you're right, communication in business is expected. It comes with the job.

Mm-hmm.

And we're always going to be communicating. But the fact of the matter is that particularly now, as people are more and more likely to skip over communication, if they don't like what you're saying or if they don't feel like it's worthwhile to them, it becomes more important for us to ask ourselves "am I creating value in this conversation?"

Am I creating value in this email, this text, this phone call, this podcast, right? Because if we're not communicating value in the discussion, then we're doing our listeners a disservice. We're doing whoever it is that we're calling a disservice. Whoever we're emailing, we're doing them all a big disservice.

So, If we consider the idea that we need to be engaged in high value communication as much as possible, it will very likely change what we're saying at any given time.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think that most people now are engaging these new technologies that make the communication part automatic, right?

Like drip campaigns, newsletters, automatic texting or whatever. So that part of the equation is fairly easy to implement. But then the real question, as you're bringing up, is if I'm not providing value in that communication, I am training the customer or the potential customer to block me out.

Because that's the other thing that's so easy. It's so easy to automatically communicate. But on the other end, it is so easy for me when I hit delete in my messages. It says, do you want to block this sender? And that's it. It's done. It's over. So that's why you want to focus on that word value.

David: Yeah, and particularly now when people are using AI to help generate communications. And my belief is that's going to cause a lot of communications to start looking like other communications.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody's going to be saying pretty much the same things. But if you are operating with the intent of creating value in the communication that's going to be a component that you might be adding that other people aren't going to be adding into their algorithm, whether it's with AI or whether it's what they're doing themselves.

And you also raised a great point, which is the idea of if you're not doing this, you are training people essentially to ignore you. And wow, that's not what we want to train people to do.

Jay: Right. my email service now, I use Mac right at the top now, they put the unsubscribe button, like that's the first thing I see.

So it is so easy, and I just think about it. There are newsletters that I keep, that I allow to keep coming,

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When you are choosing worthy clients and making decisions about whether or not a prospect is worthy of your time and attention, whether or not they're worthy of follow up, you are bound to make some mistakes in that process. And so when you do this, you have to recognize that some of that is going to come with the territory. You may make a wrong decision that will cost you some business down the line. So you have to weigh that against quality of life issues.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing choosing worthy clients. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you, David. It's such a pleasure to be back on again. And once again, I love this topic. I feel like, personally in my experience, there is a tendency to believe that you have to take every client. And you know what? In some businesses that is true, you're going to take every customer who comes through the door. In other cases, you can be more selective and it could make your life a lot easier. It can make your business a lot better.

David: Yeah, that's one of the reasons I thought this would be a really good topic, because I believe that in many businesses they don't even consider this.

I think that in many businesses we feel like, okay, we're going to serve whoever we can serve. We want to take whoever comes through the door, and we just want to serve them to the best of our ability. And while that is noble, it's not always great from your own standpoint, from your own business standpoint.

And I wish this was something that I knew from the beginning, but it was not. As most things, we learn it the hard way and this is no exception. And at some point along the way, the idea of pursuing worthy clients, choosing worthy clients, tracking down worthy clients just really started to appeal to me. And when I started using that term with some of my clients, they were like," wow, that never even occurred to me. and what do you mean by worthy? You know, things like that. So we can dive into all of that in today's podcast.

Jay: Yeah. I think that there are some things that we hear over the years and they start to sink in. We just don't ever challenge 'em in our mode of thinking.

Like I think of the customer's always, right. I've come to believe. No, no, that's just not true. Do I want to do everything to satisfy the customer? Yes. Yes, I do. But there are customers who can never be satisfied or I can't provide what they want. So, no, they're not always right. So I love that we have these discussions. So let's start off with this word worthy. What in your mind is a worthy customer?

David: Well, I think we have to decide that for ourselves, what we determine to be a worthy prospect or client for ourselves. And some of that can go back to what you talked about, in the customer's always right or the customer's not always right.

But you can have a customer that is absolutely right about things and you can have a good relationship with them, but they may not still be a worthy client if they are taking up more time than they are costing.

So if they're not really focused on buying from you to the extent that you need them to in order to be worthy of your time and attention, it may be something as simple as that.

And in those situations, I'm not suggesting, okay, well you're just going to bag all these people. If you've got a relationship with someone and you like the relationship you have and you're okay with it, then you can deem that prospect or client worthy. You can say, "all right, well, I like dealing with this person, therefore they are worthy of my time and attention."

But for me, I believe that's where it starts. We each have to decide. Is this prospect or is this client worthy of my time and attention? Because obviously our time is the most important asset we have, and when we fail to recognize that, we can invest a lot of it,

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The idea of The Four Mores is to recognize that if you want to maximize profit but you're just focusing on bringing in more clients -- you are very likely missing out on 75% of the available profits that are going to come from these other three quadrants.

Maximize Profit with The Four Mores David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. Today, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be talking about The Four Mores: More clients, more money, more margin, more often. Great to see you again, Jay.

Jay: Yeah, it's good to be here. And I feel like there's one more more, if you can get all of those. More happiness and more peace of mind, right?

David: Yeah. That's true. There are more than four mores.

Jay: Yes. Quadrant #1: More Clients David: I think that what we're thinking of here is that these four mores are designed to increase the value of our clients and increase the value of our businesses. A lot of times when people are thinking in terms of growing their sales and profits, they think in terms of the first more. They think in terms of more clients.

“I need to get more clients, “I need to get more business.” And so many business owners focus their time and attention exclusively on bringing in more customers. And sometimes what ends up happening is they forget about the ones that they have. And they start to lose track of the fact that they could be drifting off.

Anyone who's been in business for any length of time has heard the old adage that it costs a whole lot more to bring in a new customer than it does to resell an existing customer or to satisfy an existing customer. Stop Missing Out But it's easy to lose sight of. And so the idea of The Four Mores is to recognize that if you're just focusing on one thing -- bringing in more clients -- you are very likely missing out on 75% of the available profits that are going to come from these other three quadrants.

Jay: Wow. That's very good. And kind of like we talked about last time, moving people into that center zone, that loyalty zone. Right?

David: Yes.

Jay: And then, if they're reoccurring, I mean it just makes life so much better. If you have a loyal base and then you're bringing in more clients, to me it's just the perfect pattern, right?

David: Yeah, it does. So now we've got sort of conflicting visual images, however. Because last time we were talking about a target. Now we're talking about quadrants, but it's all designed to accomplish the same thing. Which is to get more of our clients buying from us more often. Spending more money with us at higher profit margins so that we can continue to grow the business, service those people. And without the profit part of it, you're dead in the water. I mean, you cannot continue to operate without that. So each of these four components is absolutely critical to being able to grow the business the way that we want to do it. What About Quality of Life? Jay: Yeah. A good, healthy business that is making money, is growing, has loyal customers. And hopefully giving you peace of mind and maybe some quality of life. Right?

David: Exactly. Yeah. Quality of life is a nice bonus for some people . It should be a requirement, but it's not always a requirement. Sometimes we sacrifice quality of life just to reach our financial goals. Sometimes, particularly in the early stages of a business. But eventually, yeah, we learn.

But one of the things about this topic that I think is so important is that when you look at each of these four elements and you focus on them and you focus on improving them, it does improve your quality of life.

Because now you're not investing a lot of time on aspects of the business that are less important. Because if you think about the idea of bringing more clients through the door, obviously that's an important consideration. When you think of the idea of when I talk about more clients, more money, more margin, more often. More clients,

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The best way to get more responses from your prospects and clients is to sequence your communication. If I've got a sequence in place that says, all right, when I get a lead from a networking function, what I'm going to do is I'm going to initially, either same day or next morning, send out this email message, which essentially says, "it was great meeting you at the networking function. Nice having a chance to talk."

And then. you've got something that is said in that email that is designed to elicit a response. Some will initiate a dialogue, some of them won't.

So from that point, if you don't hear back, you could have another one that goes out a couple of days later saying, Hey never heard back you on this, but something else occurred to me that I didn't mention and then you add something else to the conversation that could potentially be of interest to them. So you're not just hitting them with "call me, call me, call me, call me." You're actually creating value in the communication, which is also particularly key when you're doing sequencing like that.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of sequencing your communication. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. I really love that we dive into these things that can have such an impact on your daily business.

Oftentimes people will focus on the large things, not understanding that sometimes the smallest tweaks can make all the difference.

David: Yeah, and things like this really are kind of diving deep. And many times I know other people in podcasts or in stuff that's actually going out to the public, they'll just keep it all high level and not really get into too much.

I think we've done a reasonably good job over the years of diving a little deeper and getting into things in a little bit more detail. Because it's important for people who watch this or listen to this to recognize that there are a lot of aspects to all of this.

And we touched on this in the previous episode. We were talking about sort of the high level goals, we were talking about the high level concepts versus the nitty gritty of what do I have to do on a day-to-day basis. And this really gets more into the idea of the nitty gritty.

But sequencing is something that I don't hear many people talk about in business. And I think it's a real game changer for people in the sense that when you get this and you start implementing it, it changes the way that you interact with your prospects and clients to make what you are doing better and more appealing than what your competition is probably doing.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And back to the idea of focusing on the smaller stuff.

I'm weird. I call myself lazy because I want to avoid steps and reduce steps, but in the name of that laziness, I will spend weeks trying to create a system, whether it's a software system or a planning system or something, just knowing that over the long run, it's going to have such a dramatic impact.

And I can be lazy about that thing after that. And I'm focused. I mean, if I can reduce one little step, I'll spend weeks trying to figure out how to do that.

David: Yeah. But that's smart. I don't think that's lazy. I think it's far lazier to just go into each situation, not knowing what's going to happen, not knowing how to respond to the common objections you get, not knowing how to create a system that will allow you to bring clients through the door like clockwork.

And when you do that, you're basically going into work every day with no idea of what's going to happen. So I think that's really lazy and really sloppy and I don't think what you described is lazy at all.

Jay: Well, I don't, you know, I think you're probably right, but it is something that drives my wife crazy and it's really bad.

Like when we go grocery shopping, I have a route,

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Achieving goals is quite different than just setting them. So while the first step may be to set the goals you really want, then we have to prioritize our actions from high to low. What is the most important thing that I need to do in order to get there? Because generally, you can come up with a dozen or a hundred different things that you're going to need to do to reach your goals. But there's probably one to three things on there that are going to be more important than the other 97.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing achieving your goals. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, so glad to be here, David, and once again, I'm looking forward to this discussion. We hear people talk about goals all the time, and I know for me it's something that I struggle with because what will happen is I'll set those goals.

I really haven't defined how I'm going to get there, and then when I don't achieve them, it becomes something that deflates me. So I think for a lot of people, goal setting can work against them.

David: I think it can too, because I believe there is a lot of focus on goal setting, and it's something that we do, particularly at the beginning of a new year.

A lot of people focus on their new year resolutions, which are their goals. And while there's been a lot written about goal setting, the importance of goal setting, writing things down, reviewing it regularly, having your affirmations and things like that.

All of those things are certainly helpful, but they don't actually, directly connect to the idea of achieving the goals. And that's why I wanted to title this the way that I did, because setting your goals has been done to death, but how do we go about achieving it? And I think it's interesting to explore that aspect of this topic.

Jay: Well, yeah. And one of the things that frustrates me is, when people talk about goal setting, they tend to assume that everybody's the same.

Oh, just follow this and you're great. It's like, I read seven Habits of Highly Successful People and what was never mentioned or considered in that was, it was also seven habits for highly organized people already.

You had already achieved a level where all you had to do was put these things in place and you're good.

Well, what about me? I wasn't raised with systems and those kind of things, so what about me? I didn't feel like there was any place that I could implement that.

David: Yeah. And that is very common. I mean, I think everyone probably deals with that because unfortunately, when you're writing a book that's going to be on a shelf for a long period of time, you have to include things that are essentially timeless.

And the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I mean, it's such a great book. It's a very inspirational read. But when you've got rules, like "Be Proactive," that's a big, broad rule, right? And. In many cases you can be proactive, but what does that mean? It gets down to the nitty gritty.

And we've talked in the past about Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth. And I love that book.

The E-Myth, The E-Myth Revisited. I read the original copy a long, long time ago, and I just loved it. I'm like, okay, because this was all about processes. And that book talked primarily about the fact that you have to have processes.

But then what are those processes, right? Because that's the part that people like you and I need. It's like, okay, well what are the processes and how do I do that and how do I make that happen?

And so, so much of my career has been focused on that. Okay, how do I turn this great recommendation, "be proactive," you know?

Jay: Yeah.

David: "Work on your business, not just in your business." How do I take broad statements like that? To some extent, they become platitudes, and how do I turn that into something that is actionable?

Because that is the only way we're going to be able to ach...

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I know people who have been in business for decades and they've held onto clients 5, 10, 15 years longer than they should have, because they never got this simple thing down. Declare independence from poor quality clients. If you've got a way to generate new clients consistently, like clockwork, you don't have to deal with that. You can become independent from poor quality clients, but you have to have that plan in place.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. It is Independence Day in the United States, and today co-host Jay McFarland and I will be declaring independence from underperforming business tactics. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you so much David, and happy 4th of July to you and everybody else, and once again, I love this topic because I think there's a lot of things that we're all doing that we really haven't stood back and assessed. Is that productive? Do I just do it because I've always done it. A good analysis of these things could probably save you a lot of time and effort.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And personally, I just love the 4th of July. I love Independence Day. I love the idea of independence. I think a lot of people do. And whether or not it's actually achievable on a personal or a business level, because it's probably not. I mean, we're all dependent on other people to some extent or another.

But to the extent that it is possible, I like to sort of look at what are the things that I would like to become independent of? What are the things that I'm dependent on that I'm not comfortable with? And then say, "alright, what can I do to change that?"

So I feel like that's a reasonable starting point. Understanding that, are we really going to be completely independent? Well, no, we're going to have to get our food from somewhere. We're going to have to have customers. There are a lot of things that we're dependent on.

In most industries, I mean, we're going to be dependent on suppliers, prospects, customers, supply chains, availability of cash or credit. That's not going to change. We will be dependent on some of those things, but what are the things that we can become independent of?

That's what I think starts to get interesting.

Jay: Yeah. I totally agree with you and I've, had this experience where somebody from the outside has come in, and maybe they're just new to the company or maybe they're a consultant and they look at what we're doing and they're like, why are you doing this? And I sit back and I go, Well, I'm not really sure.

And then I've had the same thing where people have asked me to come into their business and within seconds, sometimes I can identify things and we get in that tunnel vision, and we don't take time to step back and say, you know, why are we doing those things?

I would really like independence from this thing, but I feel like it's necessary. And maybe it's not.

David: Yeah. And if you consider the things that you really want to sort of separate yourself from, the things that you really want to become independent of.

Like when I think about that, for me, it's like, okay, I know that I'm going to be dependent on suppliers to some extent, but can I become independent of poor quality suppliers, right?

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: I know I'm going to be dependent to some extent on prospects. But can I become independent of poor quality prospects? Poor quality clients, right? If there are clients that I'm interacting with because they're in there and I'm afraid to let go of them, what do I have to do to change that?

What do I have to do to become confident enough in my ability to generate new clients that I'd be willing to let go or sacrifice some of the old ones?

And that's where I feel like this conversation has value.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And you know, it just occurs to me how many people got into business, started their own business because they wanted independence. And now the question is,

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Getting from Obscurity to Loyalty in the mind of the client is all about building relationships, and I'm all about that! Until I sell you something and then I'm off doing the next thing, and I forget about you completely, until and unless you call again.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. Today, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how you get from obscurity to loyalty in the mind of a new prospect. Welcome back, Jay. Great to have you here...

Jay: Thank you, David. And once again, I'm super excited about this. How Do You Move from Obscurity to Customer Loyalty? Jay: I feel like customer loyalty is the holy grail of having a business. But I'm not sure if people know how to get their customers to that point. So I'm very excited. Where do you even start with that? From obscurity to loyalty. How do you begin this process?

David: Yeah, it's a fun topic because I think again, most people don't think of it like this. It sort of ties back to what we were talking about last week. But the idea of getting from total obscurity to blind customer loyalty for most people just seems impossible. You know, "how do you do that?"

But if you think about it, one of the things that I normally do, if I'm explaining this to an audience, I'll draw a target on a flip chart. At the center of the target, the bullseye is blind customer loyalty. This is just loyal. I would never consider doing business with anyone else, but you.

And then, a couple of rings out -- outside the circles -- you have obscurity, total obscurity. I have no idea who you are. I have no idea that you're taking in air on the planet. I have no idea why I should do business with you, right? Intelligent Repetition of Contact And so you're not going to get from total obscurity to blind customer loyalty in one step. It's going to require intelligent repetition of contact, which is something we talked about last time as well. So when you think about it, there are stages you have to go through to get there.

The first step is to move from obscurity, "I don't know who you are," to recognition, "Oh, I recognize you." I recognize that you're here. I don't love you. I don't hate you. I don't know you well enough to do either of those things. But I recognize that you're alive. So recognition is that first step.

Jay: Okay. Moving from Obscurity to Recognition David: And when we think in terms of communication, the type of communication that you will engage in to let somebody know you're alive is very different than the type of communication that you'll engage in to get them to be more loyal to you and to get them to place that first-time order. So that initial step -- moving from obscurity to recognition -- that's step one.

Then from recognition, the next thing we have to get it to is some level of comfort. They have to be comfortable enough with you to have additional conversations, to place that first-time order with you. And then once they're comfortable with you, that first order happens.

From there, if you perform properly, if they place that order, and if you deliver the way you're supposed to and everything works out well, then they might say, "okay, I'll give you another chance and we'll do it again." Getting from Recognition to Comfort At that point, they're in that comfort ring. They're in that comfort level. You can operate in the comfort level for quite some time. And if you continue to perform in the comfort level, then eventually you start to move into that bullseye area. You start to move into that area of loyalty where people essentially say "Okay. I'm going to continue to come back to you... unless you mess up."

Jay: Mm-hmm

David: So now at that point, I'm pretty loyal. I'm kind of loyal. But then if you continue to deliver and you continue to maintain that relationship, then you move closer and closer to the center. And then eventually up right there in the middle where they just wouldn't consider doing business wit...

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If our storytelling allows us to build trust, build credibility, build a bond, and increase sales, then we're telling the right stories. If it's just designed to be manipulative, then save your breath.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the power of storytelling in sales. Jay, tell me a story.

Jay: Listen, I am a storyteller. I love to tell stories and I like to build when I tell stories, right? And so this is something that I use on a regular basis when I'm talking to people and it's not just telling a story.

I think it's putting people in a story and what character are they in that story? And I think most people want to be the hero in their own story, right?

David: They do. which gets to the whole idea of the hero's journey and all that kind of stuff for anybody who follows that sort of storyline or that

Jay: mm-hmm.

David: type of story arc, The Hero's Journey by Campbell, I can't think of his first name. But it's a book and it describes essentially the plot of most of the most popular movies of all time.

Jay: Yeah,

David: Right. Star Wars, Rocky, anything where you've got this person who is initially kind of beaten down and not winning, and then they come in contact with a mentor and then they learn new things and they have a confrontation and it might not go well, and then they learn some more things and then eventually they come out triumphant.

There's a whole arc. And you're right, a lot of people want to be the hero, and the challenge as a salesperson is, in our storytelling, we can't be the hero.

Mm. Right.

We need to make sure that the person we're talking to is the hero and that we are the mentor or guide. We're not Luke Skywalker. We have to be Yoda. We have to be the one who's helping Luke to destroy the Death Star.

Jay: Yeah. This is a really hard thing, I think for a lot of people. Because we want to go in and think we're the hero, right? I'm coming into your business. I'm going to provide something that is going to save the day, and then I'm going to walk away and you're going to praise me and you're going to pay me.

But that's not what really is supposed to be happening, right? It's that I have the tools and the resources that you need to be the hero.

David: Yes, and it's easy to forget that, particularly when we're trying to read ourselves in as the hero to each story. But one of the things that I've noticed in sales is that many, if not most of the very best salespeople are also the best storytellers.

You can say. "Hi, do you know what time it is?" And instead of getting the time, you will get a fantastic story that might weave the time into it.

Jay: Mm.

David: But you're going off in all kinds of directions, and when they do it right, it's captivating enough that you sit there and pay attention.

Jay: Yeah. But you pointed out "when you do it right."

David: Yes.

Jay: Right. so let's talk about that a little bit. Let's talk about your feedback on doing it right.

David: Well, number one, as we already touched on, it can't just be all about you. You can't make the story about yourself. You need to make it about them, and a lot of that upfront comes from finding out about them, which means you're asking more questions, then you're answering, hopefully in the early stages.

Jay: Yes

David: Because customers always just want to know what it's going to cost upfront, and you don't generally want to lead off with that. So a lot of our storytelling will actually have to come from the conversations that ensue after we've gathered enough information.

Jay: Yeah.

David: To know what those stories need to be about. If we just go in and we meet somebody for the first time and we start telling them stories, that's probably not ideal. We need to still initially do some sort of diagnostic upfront to find out what their interests are.

Now, of course,

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When I think in terms of upselling versus cross-selling, what's the difference? Upselling to me means selling a better or a higher priced version of the thing that they're looking at. Whereas cross-selling is making a recommendation of something that's compatible.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of upselling and cross-selling. Are you doing it? Welcome back, Jay

Jay: Yeah, hey, thank you, David. Listen, have these bad memories when I was a kid and I was working in a fast food place and the manager was always pressing me, "ask them if they want a Coke, ask them if they want fries."

And I got to a point where it's hard to upsell and I think this has grown into my adulthood. You know, I just barely got the sale and now I'm asking them for more. It's not an easy thing to do for people.

David: You know, it's interesting you should mention the fast food example because it's the perfect example. It's the one that everyone can relate to. "You want fries with that?"

Jay: Yeah.

David: Or the shortened version that you hear a lot of times, "want fries with that," as the four word upsell. And it works extremely successfully for people in that sort of industry. Because it makes sense. Somebody's coming in, they're ordering whatever, a burger or something, or they're ordering a burger and a drink, "want fries with that" makes perfect sense.

And some percentage of time they're going to say yes. And whether that is 1% of the time or 80% of the time, it's probably maybe 30 to 60% of the time, I would guess, they're going to say yes. Because it's like, "oh, all right, sure. Why not? I'm already here."

Jay: Yeah.

David: And you hit on a great point, which is that we can feel funny about upselling, if we feel like the purpose is to simply get more money out of a person. If it feels like it's completely one-sided, if it feels like it's manipulative, then we're not going to want to do it.

So I personally believe that the times that we should upsell and cross-sell are the times when we truly believe that we have an additional solution that is going to be better for them.

Now, in the fast food example, are french fries better for you on top of the Coke and the hamburger?

Jay: Yes!

David: Probably not from a, health level, but certainly from a satisfaction level, yeah, it's better. People are likely to want that. But in business, if you're selling something, and somebody comes to you and they have something very specific they want to buy, and you have something that would be complimentary to that, or something that would go with that really well and would increase the value to the buyer, then you kind of owe it to them to at least ask them if they're interested in that.

Jay: Mm, I love that. I love that idea that if you are feeling uncomfortable, maybe you should ask yourself why. And how do you feel about your product? Are you really providing a value to them or are you just trying to sell something and get a paycheck, right?

And I think we all have to ask that question about our own careers and what we're doing and what we're selling. But, you know, if you can just feel great that what you're providing them is going to improve their situation, then you're just passionate about what you're doing and that's going to come through.

David: Yeah. So when you are talking to somebody like that, if you've got something that is actually going to be a benefit to them, if it's going to help them, then it's a lot easier to do it. So that really just boils down to motives.

What is the motive? And unfortunately, I think sometimes managers, like in the situation you described in the fast food restaurant, the manager says, "just do this. Ask them if they want this. Push it, push it, push it. Sell, sell, sell."

When instead, if the manager had said to you, Hey, listen, when people come in here, they're hungry.

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To convert more sales and turn leads into customers you need to be dealing with qualified prospects. If somebody is not responsive, you can decide, do I want to continue to pursue this person, or do I want to leave them to my competitors? Let my competitors chase that person. If they're disqualified, you don't have to spend time with them at all.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of converting more sales: turning leads into customers. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Such a pleasure to be with you. This is kind of the secret sauce, right? I mean, if we could all increase our conversion rates and bring down our customer acquisition costs that's where the rubber meets the road.

David: Yeah, in a lot of cases it's a really critical part of it, and I think some people make a mistake upfront when it comes to conversion, and that's that they want to convert everyone. You know, they just meet somebody for the first time and they immediately go into sales mode.

And I think that they can really save themselves and other people a lot of time and a lot of aggravation if they actually start where it really should begin with a little bit of qualification. Trying to find out if they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, those kind of things.

Because a lot of times there are salespeople who will spend weeks, months, years pursuing somebody, just to find out once they get an appointment with them that they weren't qualified to buy to begin with. And you can eliminate that right up front. Save yourself a world of heartache.

Jay: Yeah, I love this point, David. I can't tell you I've had this happen, you know, I'm on the phone with somebody and talking about the product and things like that, and then after asking some questions, I realize this is not a good fit. I don't have the services they're looking for.

And I could have saved us both a lot of time if I had done a little pre-qualification before we got started.

David: Yeah. Or if that's happening on the first call, then you're pretty good at that point. But literally, I know there are people who have gone to networking functions for a long period of time, and they're talking to people and trying to get them to agree to an appointment, and then they finally agree to the appointment, and then you get out there and you're talking to them.

I had this experience myself early in my career. I'll never forget it. There was this guy and I thought he was going to be a great prospect, so I tried to get an appointment with him. He agreed to the appointment. I showed up at his place.

His place was a dump and he didn't show up for the appointment, and I was sitting there looking around and I was thinking, "okay, why am I here?" And so a little bit of diligence upfront and a little bit of qualifying goes a long way.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And I also think technology can do a lot of that pre-qualifying, right? We had the experience where our Google ad buy was not targeting the right people. And so I was getting all these calls and I'm like, "wow, look at these leads we're getting."

And it turned out I was just wasting time. So I'm wasting money on the Google ad buy. And then I'm wasting money fielding all of these calls. That's just, you're spinning your wheels at that point.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about it, pitching unqualified prospects is the single biggest time waster on the planet. So if we can avoid that, we're going to be a lot better off.

Jay: Yeah. I think there's a tendency though to think, "oh, we can sell anybody." Or I think the other side of that is if you're not pre-qualifying, then you don't have a really good idea of how effective you are as a salesperson, because you're comparing it to every person you talked to.

Like, I've talked to a hundred people, my close rate was 20%. Well,

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To fix your messaging and improve business communication with the TBDs, consider this... If nothing that you convey in your communication, instills any sort of belief in the other person as to why they should take the action that you're requesting in the third step, then it's not at all likely they're going to take that action.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the TBDs. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, it's such a pleasure to be here with you again, David. We're talking about communication here and I'll be honest, oftentimes we'll discuss a podcast that we want to do, or you'll send me the topics and I sit here and I think, you know, I've never once thought about this type of thing, how to improve communication. I just kind of fall in the trap. You know, I talk to people, I send them emails. I'm guessing that that's good communication, but I've not really thought about it, David.

David: Yeah. I sort of introduced this topic backwards, I guess, at the top of this podcast. When I say we're going to be talking about the TBDs, what we're really talking about is improving our communication with the TBDs.

And for those of you who are saying, "what are they talking about?" Allow me to elaborate. A lot of times when I'm working with clients, one of the things that they'll ask about is how to improve the results that they're getting with the communications they're having with prospects.

That could be anything from the messages they're leaving on people's voicemails. It could be not getting responses to emails. It could be the things they're posting on social media, any form of outbound communication, whether it's one-to-one or one-to-many. What you say in those communications is going to determine what happens.

We touched on this a little bit in the previous episode. But if you want to really think about what is going to likely get you the best results, what I ended up boiling it down to for myself and for my clients is what I refer to as the TBDs.

Now, when people think of that abbreviation "to be determined," that's often what's used there. That's not what I'm thinking in terms of. When we're looking to communicate with other people, particularly when we're looking to get a result, we want to ask ourselves:

"As a result of this communication, what do I want this person to think? What do I want them to believe, and what do I want them to do?

Okay? And so if you structure your communication in a way where it addresses those three points, you're going to be a lot more likely to get at least closer to the result that you're looking for.

If I'm sending somebody an email and there's nothing in particular that I want them to think, believe or do, there is no reason for me to send that email.

Jay: Mm-hmm.

David: If I'm making a phone call, if I'm leaving a voicemail message, if I'm doing anything that is initiating contact with another human being, if there's nothing in particular that I want for them to think, believe, or do, then there's no point to having the conversation.

Now, if you're calling a loved one, Okay. You know?

Jay: Yeah.

David: You want them to know that you love them, you want to know that they love you, all that sort of thing. But, in business in particular, in our communications, if we don't have a reasonably good idea of what we want the other person to think, believe, or do, then there's not a whole lot of reason to communicate.

Jay: Yeah. That's so powerful because how often or is the temptation I'm calling a client? Hey, just checking in, seeing how you're doing give me a call back. It's like, that's the trap. I think so many of us fall into.

I'm not thinking at that moment, what I want them to be thinking is, please call me back because you need me.

But I sound kind of desperate and not like there's a priority. There's no urgency, there's nothing really being conveyed. Right?

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A lot of people think the goal is to get likes and engagement, but when it comes to the best use of social media in business, conversations and conversions are the metrics that matter. That’s what results in sales. The rest are vanity metrics. Those who think it’s all about views and clicks might be missing the point.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best use of social media in business. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David I feel like this is one of those areas where I don’t feel confident in myself, but I’m not in a position yet where I’m going to hire somebody to do it.

And so, it’s hard to get motivated every day, because I know it’s an important part, especially in my business. Most of our leads come from the internet and social media, so it’s like I don’t know that this is something I should be handling myself.

David: I think a lot of people feel that way, and for many of us, social media can be a huge distraction.

And in some cases, like, well, the best use of social media is to keep it turned off if you have to actually get things done. But there are benefits to it when it’s used properly, and part of our Total Market Domination course involves working with our clients to help them through the best forms of first contact with a new prospect.

And one of those methods is social media. I mean, you can be doing it via cold calls, you can be doing it via networking events, direct mail, lots of different ways to initiate first contact with a new prospect. But many people like the idea of using social media, particularly because it is a one-to-many method of reaching people.

You can post something on social media one time, and hundreds of people could see it, or thousands of people could see it. And so it allows you a great deal of leverage much more than if you’re making one phone call at a time or meeting one person at a time. So there are definitely benefits to utilizing it.

And of course, with the benefits come the flip side, the detriments that go along with it in some cases. And so one of the things that a lot of people seem to struggle with is that they go onto social media with one purpose and they end up doing 10 other things that they didn’t plan on doing when they got in there.

And they don’t end up doing the thing that they actually wanted to do. And so a lot of it, I think, boils down to the fact that we’re not sure what to do. In a lot of cases. We’re not sure, well, what should I post? What should I say? What should it be designed to do? And there’s so much talk among so many people about creating content, and I’ve done classes on this.

The fact that content is kind of a misunderstood word. If you think about what is content? Well, content is whatever’s in something, right? If you’ve got a bag, whatever’s in that bag is the content. Could be something good, could be something very bad, right? But whatever’s in the bag. So if you think of it like that and you say, okay, I have to create content.

Well, yeah, but you need to do more than just content. You want to make sure that whatever it is that you’re dispersing to the masses has enough value for people that they say, wow, that was actually worthwhile. That was worth my time. So a lot of what we focus on in the communication aspects of what we do with our clients is related to how do we do that?

How do we create value in our communications? And I know I’m sort of rattling off all kinds of different things that could be entirely different podcast subjects. But coming back to the idea of the best use of social media, if you think about what it is, I mean, I’ve got an idea of what I believe it is.

Do you have any thoughts on that before I spill the beans on what I think here?

Jay: Well, I think it’s going to be different for everybody and what type of clientele you have. I’m guessing a key part of this and we’ve spent a lot of money on my end doing this. Is identifying who our end user is, what, what type of client are we trying to attack?

When we first started it, we were and I’ve told you this story before, we were attacking so many leads. It was blowing us out of the water. But the leads were not closing, and so we had to narrow that field, finally to a point where we could just get potential leads.

In order to do that, we spent a lot of time around a table figuring out who that potential client is and what are the keywords that are going to be interesting to them?

And when you talk about posting content, if you’re just shooting in the dark and you haven’t identified who your target is, then you’re going to spend a lot of time on social media spinning your wheels, and you may be chasing people away or just making them disinterested because you haven’t put in the time ahead of time to really have an impact.

David: Yeah. When I think about having an impact on social media. And I want to be really transparent here too. I have not used social media nearly to the extent that other people have to get clients. We have other methods of first contact that are extremely effective that work really well. And so don’t look to me as the expert on this, but what I can tell you is that to the extent that we have done this effectively, the way that we’ve done that is using social media for the primary purpose of initiating conversations.

So when I think in terms of the best use of social media, For me, but I also believe for most other businesses, the best use of it is to be able to initiate a conversation with someone else. So if I’m able to post something that’s interesting enough to get someone to comment back, and then I can reply to that comment and then they reply to that, now we’re actually in a conversation.

And of course, conversations is exactly where sales happen. You don’t have sales generally, if you’re a salesperson without having a conversation. Now that could take place via text. It could take place via Messenger. It could take place in comments. It could take place on the phone, in person. Lots of different ways to do it.

“When it comes to social media in business, most people focus on likes and clicks. And while that might feed the algorithm, I still believe the metrics that matter are conversations and conversions. Conversations and conversions result in sales. The rest are vanity metrics.” — David BlaiseBut if we think about it from that standpoint, it makes things a little easier, because when we’re on social media, we are programmed to think in terms of likes and think in terms of shares and things like that.

And likes and shares are fine. Shares are probably better than likes in my view, because it gets it in front of more people. And if the content is good, then it expands your horizons a bit. But if a bunch of people like your stuff and it doesn’t lead to conversations, then what really happened?

Their likes might get it in front of more people, because I think that’s how the algorithm works. But, if people are not actually engaging with it and initiating conversations with you, then I believe there’s a lot of opportunity that is lost.

And when you talk about delegating this kind of thing, hiring other people to create social media for you. If they don’t know what the goal is, then the stuff they create is not likely to produce the result.

If they think the goal is to get likes, then they’re going to create content that is designed to get likes. If the goal is to interact with people, initiate conversations with people who could potentially buy from you, then what we’re doing on social media has to be completely different.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point.

I also think you know, you talked about conversations. It actually has become a very important part of the algorithm that you get comments and more importantly, that you reply to those comments, whether or not they’re important or not. If you could reply in such a way that they respond back then that’s going to increase the algorithm.

So that’s an important part just to get it seen by more people. But then if they’re actually interacting with you, you’re now building the relationship. And I think oftentimes we forget relationships are the most important part of our business.

Anytime I close a sale, when I’m done, I almost feel like I’ve gained a new friend. And in a lot of ways, I have. Somebody that I’m providing a service for, they appreciate that service. And it all starts with a conversation somewhere, like you said, on the phone, in the comments, that’s where it’s all going to begin.

David: Yeah. I think also tracking what’s going on is important, and a lot of people don’t do that. They have a vague idea of, oh, this got a lot of likes. I got a bunch of comments here or there. People seem to like this one or that one.

But none of that is really tangible enough to be able to justify, in some cases, the amount of time that goes into it. So if you track how much time you’re putting into it and you’re able to track how many leads you get as a result of it, and by leads, it may just be something as simple as having a conversation with someone, whether it is in the comments or whether it is through DMing, that type of thing.

Then you’ve got some metrics. You’ve got some basic metrics to look at, to say, “okay, I put an hour and a half into this and I had two people enter into conversations with me.” Is that worthwhile? Well, let’s keep track of those two people. What happened? Were they even prospects? Were you able to get them qualified as quickly as possible?

Were you able to sell to anybody who might have actually been interested in buying? Was it worthwhile? Because if you can make a decent volume sale with an hour and a half involvement on social media, then you can say, all right, that was worthwhile.

If you put in an hour and a half on it and you have no conversations with anyone, then you keep track of it and you say, okay, well how much have I been putting in?

Have I put in 10 hours, 15 hours, a hundred hours? And if so, how many conversations have I engaged in? How many of them led to actual sales conversations and did it generate a single dollar?

And if it didn’t, then you either need to look at, is it the marketing vehicle itself? Is it the social media? Is that the problem?

Am I not connected with the right people? Or am I not saying the right things? Goes back to what we talked about in a lot of these episodes, the MVPs of marketing and sales. Is my messaging right? Am I using the right combination of marketing vehicles and who are the people or prospects that I need to reach.

If things aren’t working, it is always at least one of those things, sometimes more than one.

Jay: Yeah. Such a great point. Tracking is, and, and measuring such an important part about social media. We started doing this a while ago and it never fails. The posts that I thought were not going to go anywhere, they blow up. And the ones where I was so proud of them and they just went nowhere.

And so I have hashtags in my database and anytime something breaks like a thousand views, that to me is something. And I don’t know why, you know, I’ll do three posts, they average 300, and then the next one will have 12,000. And I don’t claim to know what the difference was.