Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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Sep 2026

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The Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales podcast provides tips on how to increase sales, improve profit margins and grow your business. Each week, we address issues related to important topics like targeting your ideal prospects, fine-tuning your messaging, attracting the clients you need, monetizing social media, the MVPs of Marketing and Sales and much more. From mindset to marketing and prospecting to podcasting, the Top Secrets podcast helps B2B and B2C entrepreneurs, professionals and salespeople get more of the customers and clients they need so they can do more of the work they love.

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September 8, 202616 min

How to Lower Customer Acquisition Cost and Improve Conversions

What’s your customer acquisition cost? I’ve been accused of being a bit of a maniac when it comes to lead tracking and making sure that we know where everything is coming from. I was a bit of a tyrant about that in previous businesses that I had, because you have to know what’s producing and what’s not. Otherwise, you can waste enormous amounts of money. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing what it costs to get a new customer. Welcome, Jay. Jay: Hey, it’s so good to be here, David. And customer acquisition cost is a very important metric that all companies need to know. It’s almost as though it’s part of your cost of goods sold. And if you don’t know this answer, you may think you’re making money and you might not be. David: Yeah. It’s really funny when I ask audiences that question, if I’m in front of a group and I say, “What does it cost you to acquire a new customer?” I get some blank looks, I get some smiles, some nervous laughter, some looking around. It’s generally a very small percentage of any given audience that actually knows their customer acquisition cost. And I think it’s interesting because if you don’t know this, or if you don’t even have an idea of what that cost might be, then you really have no idea not just what you’re putting out, what you’re getting from it, but you really have no idea how to continue to build from there. And I think to the extent that I do get answers when I ask the question, a lot of it is just generalities. It’s like, “well, I spend a lot, Oh, it’s a lot, it costs a lot.” But what is it? And some people are like, “Well, I don’t spend anything because I get referrals.” And whenever someone tells me that, that tells me that they’re probably doing 10 to 25% of the business they could be doing. Because if they’re getting a lot of referrals, that’s awesome. But if they’re just relying on referrals alone, there’s a lot that they’re leaving on the table. What is Your Customer Acquisition Cost? Jay: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. If you don’t know what your customer acquisition cost is, you can’t impact it. And it should be a goal to try and drive it down if you can. And if you can’t, work it into your sales costs, work it into your systems so that you can make sure that you’re profitable. David: Yeah. I think something else that people often don’t think of, particularly small businesses, they may go to Chamber of Commerce functions, they may do different things, go to different networking events and that sort of thing. And they don’t really think of that as a customer acquisition cost. Because they don’t value their time enough in a lot of cases. And so even if you’re not putting out actual cash in the form of advertising, marketing, things to get you noticed like that, there are acquisition costs. It’s going to cost you a certain amount of time out of your day. It’s going to cost you in terms of energy. It’s going to cost you in terms of effort. It’s going to cost you in terms of what could I be doing instead of what I’m doing now that could potentially produce a higher return? So there are a lot of different aspects to this and that’s why I thought it would be a good conversation to have. Jay: Yeah, I do agree with that. And you’re mentioning all the different types of customer acquisition. I mean, it could be something that doesn’t cost a lot. Maybe you can make viral videos and that’s driving customers to you. But there’s still an expense of creating those videos. There’s a lot of time and effort put into that, and they’re not calculating that in. They would probably tell you we don’t have a customer acquisition cost. But they’re paying somebody to spend 30, 40 hours a week to create viral videos. That’s a cost. David: Yeah. Or they’re doing it themselves, and if their time’s not worth anything, then they’re not spending money, but our time is worth something. Everybody’s time is worth something. And so those are the things that have to start going into the equation. Also, I think a lot of times people don’t bother tracking to see what is their customer acquisition cost in terms of time, energy, effort, and of course, money. Now, if they are spending money to generate leads, maybe they spend a certain amount of money to whatever, buy or rent a list, or maybe they spend a certain amount of money on advertising. Maybe they’re doing Facebook ads, or YouTube ads, or billboards. I mean, it could be anything, any sort of advertising, Newspaper advertising, obviously not as popular these days, online ads, lots of different ways that one can advertise to get their information in front of people. So if you’re generating leads or clients on social media, there’s a definite cost associated with that in terms of how much time are you putting in while you’re online, even if you’re not spending money on ads themselves. There is definitely a customer acquisition cost involved. So these are the types of things that it makes sense to sort of think about as you’re going in on a monthly basis, weekly basis, if not a daily basis. Jay: Yeah, and I think actual individual tracking, I mean, maybe it’s even just a spreadsheet of each platform that you’re using, if you’re paying for Google AdWords. If you’re paying for boosting on Facebook or anything else. Track what you’re spending. And then the other part of that, and I think this is where a lot of people miss, is when that lead comes in, it’s important to ask. It’s important to know, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” Because if you don’t do that, you’re not going to know what’s working and what’s not working. David: Yeah, absolutely. You have to be able to track your customer acquisition cost on the back end once that happens. And once again, I think there are a lot of people who don’t do this. They’re just out doing a lot of different things, potentially. And if you don’t know the things that are actually generating the results, how do you know how you can improve? Because it’s possible you could eliminate a number of different things that you’re doing that just aren’t producing as much. You could double down on the things that are working and you could generate a lot more customers in the same or less time. Jay: Yeah. And the beauty is with at least digital products or social media products, it’s so easy to track where those leads came from. If you have Google Analytics that will help you. Or we kind of talked about it last time, where you used to have an individual phone number for each type of advertising. Now you could just send them to a unique URL for each advertising vehicle and know instantly how many leads are coming through. And then the next step would be, well, how many of those leads are we closing? Because that’s how you really calculate your customer acquisition cost. David: Yeah, and I think in a sense what you said, that’s the ideal. That’s exactly what everyone should be doing all the time. But even getting to that, if people were to do things as simple as pay attention to what it is that they’re putting out, pay attention to where those leads are coming from, even generally. If someone contacts you, however it is they contact you and you’re not sure where they came from, just to ask them, “Hey, where did you hear about?” Now, if they’re contacting you online, if they’re contacting you through Facebook Messenger or something like that, then that gives you a bit of a hint that they probably saw something that you posted on Facebook and they’re responding to that. So you should be able to track your customer acquisition cost that way as well. Without that information, you really have such a disadvantage over the people who are paying attention to those sort of things. Jay: Yeah, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really surprised. You know, we make assumptions about what’s going to work. And of course, people selling us advertising products, they tell us how it’s going to work. But when you do actual tracking, I’ve been really surprised. I’m like, Really? That was the one that I thought, that was just a shot in the dark. I didn’t think that was going to work at all. And that’s the one that’s really performing. So I’m going to dial that one up. And these other ones that I thought were going to perform, and they’re not, I’m going to dial those ones down. I mean, this is how you improve the entire process. And it should be a constant process, right? David: Yes. And that is absolutely the case. I know, I’ve been accused of being a bit of a maniac when it comes to lead tracking and making sure that we know where everything is coming from. I was a bit of a tyrant about that in previous businesses that I had. I had a direct mail catalog business. And it’s absolutely critical in a business like that, because you have to know what’s producing and what’s not. Otherwise you can waste enormous amounts of money, and so that’s something that I’ve just carried over. So even now, if I run ads. There are different types of ads that can be run through different organizations that’ll be doing email communications that can be coded and tracked to a specific page on a website, as you indicated. So if they opt in from that page, you know that it came from this particular ad. It’s very easy to do. And as you indicated, sometimes you think this one thing’s going to be great, and it turns out that it’s not. Sometimes you think it’s going to be great and it is. Sometimes you’re right. But what’s really interesting is sometimes you can have a lead source that will generate a lot of leads and you think, “Wow, this is great.” But then you find out that they’re not producing anything. They’re not converting into sales. So you can have fewer leads coming from one source that generates more revenue for you, more sales and more long-term customers. And then you have something else that’s generating a lot of leads, but they’re just taking up your time, and they’re not converting. All that plays into your customer acquisition cost. Jay: Oh yeah. I’ve totally had this experience. We had set up Google advertising and instantly we were getting leads like you couldn’t believe. And we started going through ’em and spent a lot of time with them, and none of them were valuable. Our close rate was like, 1% on this group. And we’re like, “that is terrible. ” So we refined the keywords. We did a lot of research and we were able to crank the close rate up to about 28%. And that’s just by watching and learning and you know, figuring out what works best. But it’s still a constant process. We’re still looking every day at that rate. And it will start to fluctuate sometimes. And we’re like, Okay, what’s going on? Is there an industry shift here? Are the needs of customers changing because of trends that we’re not seeing? It’s just a constant labor that we go through. David: What’s really interesting about that, is the idea that you can engage in an activity that will create a 28 x return, right? We were getting 1%, now we’re getting 28%. That’s 28 times… Jay: I know! David: …the result, right? And assuming, all things being equal, which of course they never are, but I mean that could mean a 28 x increase in overall gross sales. And the more you dial it in, the better it gets. But many people fail to even think of that sort of thing, let alone take consistent action on it. Jay: Yeah. And the incredible thing is that we’re actually spending less money to get those leads. Because we got the system so refined. So we reduced our customer acquisition cost and we improved our close rate at the same time. I mean, we were just jumping for joy when we figured out this equation. Now, not everybody is that simple. I’m in an industry where there’s a very specific type of customer and we were able to hone in and identify that individual. Not so easy in every industry, though. David: Right, but just the idea that that can be done. A lot of times what will happen is when people are running an ad or they’re doing some sort of outbound effort, if it doesn’t produce results, if you talk to a hundred people and you’re only able to close one, if you get a 1% closing rate. You may look at that and say, Oh, well this doesn’t work. And those three words, “this doesn’t work,” are deadly in marketing and sales. Because too often we blame the one thing, whether it’s the ad or whether it’s the medium that you’re using. If it’s Facebook or if it’s Google or whatever, you say, “Well, that doesn’t work.” “Facebook ads don’t work.” In the work that I do with promotional products distributors, there are customers for promotional product salespeople who say, “Well, promotional products don’t work for us.” And you can’t really just come out and say this, “Well, it’s your fault.” But it’s the truth. You can’t have an entire advertising medium that produces results for a whole lot of other people. That, for some magical reason, doesn’t work for you. It’s always a matter of saying, “okay, could this work? What can I do to tweak this? What can I do to make this work?” And you try some different things. It’s like the old story about Edison and how when he was asked about his many failures when trying to create the light bulb, or “you’ve tried 10,000 different things, they’ve all failed.” He said, “No. I’ve successfully identified 10,000 approaches that don’t work.” And then eventually he identified one that did. And that’s the reason you’re doing it. You’re not doing it for the failed experiments, you’re doing it for the one that actually ends up creating results. Jay: Yeah. Such a great point. And I do think it’s also important to talk about the closing process because you may have a great system that is actually generating good leads. But you don’t have the right closer, the right person on the other end, the right system on your website to actually get them to finally click that purchase button. So you may have actually a good system of generating leads of good customers. But then you’re falling down on the closing side. So there’s a lot of different aspects to this process that need to be looked at. David: Yeah, it’s true. There are lots of different places along the line where things can potentially go wrong. And the most important, or one of the most important aspects of this, is identifying that correctly. And not just saying, “Okay, it’s this,” when you haven’t actually determined that it is in fact that. Jay: Yeah, not guessing, right? Using key performance indicators, all of the information that’s available out there to make the best decisions about where you are falling down. David: Yeah. So I think for most people who haven’t really thought about this, take just a little bit of time, jot down a few notes in terms of, okay, what am I doing right now that is working well and how can I leverage that? How can I amplify that? What am I currently spending? In terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of energy and effort? If there are particular activities that you’re engaged in that just drain you and cause you to lose enormous amounts of time because you just can’t stand it and the rest of your day goes away, notice those types of things. But then also just look at those costs and identify what they’re likely to produce. And again, it doesn’t take a whole lot to be able to do this. But if you just pay attention to where those leads are coming from and which leads are closing, and you can literally do this anywhere. I get a lot of questions about this. Well, do I have to have a contact management system that I put this in? That’s ideal. You want to have a place to store all the information, have it all there so that you’re not looking around for different scraps in different places. So it’s good to have it all in one place, but within a customer record, you can identify this, Where did they first hear about us? And so if it takes three months or six months or a year to get them closed, hopefully it doesn’t take that long. But if it does, you can still go back and say, Oh, okay, this lead came from this particular source. So it just allows you to know. Because when you have some idea of where your existing customers are coming from, then you also have some idea of where to go to get more. Jay: Absolutely. Such great information. How do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We can work through whatever it is that you’re currently dealing with, where you are now, where you’d like to be, and see if we can help you. And if we can, we’ll let you know. If we can’t, we’ll let you know that, too. Jay: All right, David, thank you so much for your time today. David: Thank you, Jay. Ready to Grow Your Sales & Profits? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here .

September 1, 202613 min

How to Monetize Your Sales Pipeline and Close More Sales

To monetize your sales pipeline, you need to fill it, prioritize it and tackle it. This whole idea of knowing what to do and not doing it, is rampant. It seems ridiculous. It’s like, “who would do that?” And the answer is nearly everybody does it. And none of us do it on purpose, but we all, to some extent, end up doing it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to monetize your sales pipeline. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I really can’t wait to talk a little bit more about this process. I see people who kind of think they have a pipeline. But they’re not sure exactly what to do with it. So a good, important topic today. David: Yeah. What to do with it or in a lot of cases, even what it is. I think even before we can talk about how to monetize it, you almost have to identify it. What is it? What is your sales pipeline? Who is it? Who are the people who are in it? Where is it located? Is it just inside your head? Because if it’s just inside your head, leaving enormous amounts of money on the table. Jay: Yeah, and we’ve talked in the past about key performance indicators, KPIs. First you have to know what that pipeline is. Then you have to know how to track it and where people are at in each stage so that things ideally trigger automatically. I think that’s the end goal, but getting there can be difficult. 3 Steps to Monetize Your Sales Pipeline David: Yeah, I mean I think of it in terms of filling it, prioritizing it and then tackling it. Because if you’re not doing it in that order, it’s going to be problematic for you. Jay: All right. Well then let’s start with filling it. Let’s get that going. David: Okay, Well, when we talk about filling our pipeline after we’ve identified what it is and where it is, filling it obviously is the biggest thing. And I think a lot of salespeople tend to think of this as being pretty important. Getting new leads into their pipeline. And of course, it is very important. It’s the number one step. Because until you know who’s in there, you don’t really have anything you can do. You’ve got to have the prospect first. So filling it starts with asking yourself, who goes in here? And what types of clients am I looking for? Are they in particular types of industries? Are they located in a particular geographic area? What are the different things that I’m looking for in terms of a good, solid prospect for my pipeline? So who goes in is very important. But who stays out is also extremely important. And we don’t think about this, but it is so critical. In my sales career over the years, particularly in the early stages, I just thought if someone was willing to talk to me then they were a good prospect. And I learned, not as quickly as I should have, that that’s just not the case. There are people out there who will be happy to talk to you again and again and never actually buy anything from you. So when you’re looking at who goes in and who stays out, think in terms of exactly that. When you are talking to someone, if you’re not able to get them qualified in as quickly as you’d like, to make sure that they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend. Then, don’t keep going back to that well and expecting to get water out if there’s no water to be found. Jay: You know, we had exactly this problem here recently with the company I’ve been doing consulting for. They wanted to start using Google ads and David: mm-hmm. Jay: So they just put out some general pay for click kind of stuff, and their phones and their online scheduling just lit up. I mean every single day, packed and full. But only about 3% of those calls were related to their actual focus and their product. So they ended up spending all this time. And then what they had to do was go through a process of, like you said, Okay. Identifying the core customer and refining your keywords down to a point where you’re not getting all of that other stuff. At first, they’re like, “look at all these calls. This is going to be great,” and it turned into a huge detractor very quickly. To Monetize Your Sales Pipeline, Don’t Overfill it David: Yeah. And so when we think in terms of filling our pipeline, and I led with that. I said, Okay, first we have to fill it, but we don’t want to overfill it. And we particularly don’t want to fill it with people who have no likelihood of becoming clients. So, a lot of times the thought process is, you know, where is the next lead going to come from? Whether it’s coming from online, whether you’re doing something with Google, whether you’re doing in person prospecting, whether you’re doing it through social media, where they come from is not as critical as making sure that you’re getting people into the pipeline that you can qualify in or out as quickly as possible. So that’s really the first thing. Fill it, but don’t overfill it. Because I know people who have what they think are sales pipelines. It’s basically a database of thousands of people that they’re never going to get to, because they didn’t do the second thing we’re talking about, which is to prioritize it and decide, you know, who are the people in here that I need to be in touch with now? We need to rank the contacts inside that database so that we can be in touch with the right people at the right time. I mean, that’s really all prioritization is, starting with the most important contacts first, and that’s a challenge sometimes too, is to say, Okay, well who is most important? is it what they refer to as the bleeding neck thing? You know, who’s in the most trouble? Or is it, hey, I’ve got a really good, loyal client who reached out to me. Do I reach out to them first, or do I reach out to the person who’s screaming, who I might not know as well? That’s a personal decision, but in a lot of cases, you need to do your prioritization based on what’s most important to you. If it’s serving a really good customer first, then that person has to come first. If somebody else is screaming for service, but they’re new prospects and you have no idea whether or not they can spend a dime with you, you need to decide how that’s going to fall on the prioritization scale. And to the extent possible, if you have help, if you’ve got an administrative assistant who can help with some of that stuff, that’s great. But prioritization is absolutely key. Is it our best customers? Is it the person with the biggest, most pressing need? Now, biggest and most pressing are also two different things, right? Somebody might have a very pressing need for a very teeny, tiny order. And so if that’s the case, does it make sense for you to step away from what you’re doing with a bigger, more important order or customer to deal with somebody who’s got something smaller in mind. And once again, you’ve got to make some of these decisions for yourself. But when you recognize that there are different criteria that go into this decision, then it really becomes more of a simple thought process. Because you make those calls for yourself and then you make those decisions accordingly. And there are always people who are going to have time sensitive projects. So where does that fall into the overall scheme of things? People, you know, say they need stuff tomorrow or they need it immediately. And sometimes that’s the case and sometimes it’s not. So finding those things out is also part of this process. Jay: Yeah. One of the ways I ‘ve seen this done, kind of what you’re talking about, is identifying where different leads are coming from. So I have leads that are referrals and I have leads that are from Google Ads. And then I’m tracking my close rate on both of those leads, and I’m realizing that the ones that come from referrals or my current database, my close rate is 30%, and from Google it’s 10%. To me, that’s a great way to be able to identify where you should focus your time. David: Yeah. And in those situations too, I mean, some people will look at that and say, “well, I got 30% here and 10% there. Let’s forget about that.” But hey, 10% is still 10% right? And if your qualification procedure is tight, and you can disqualify the unqualified as quickly as possible, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that in future podcasts as well, then it makes perfect sense to look at that. Because the 10% that you’re getting from one source might actually perform better than the 30% you’re getting somewhere else, depending on how large a customer it is and what they’re buying. So there are all those different factors involved, and it’s smart. What you’re doing is very smart. Looking at that and trying to make those best decisions based on what’s actually happening in real life, in your customer base, in your prospect base. Jay: Yeah. Such a great point, because I may be able to close 30% of this type of lead, but I’m only getting three of those a day. And then on the 10% side, I’m getting 20 of those a day, so David: Right. Jay: That’s part of that calculation, right? David: Yeah, 10% of 20 is two. So if you can pick up two customers from it, then, you don’t want to throw that away. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other part is you don’t have to ignore those smaller percentages or things. You can have systems to deal with those people. Maybe you put them in a drip program so that they’re still getting contact from you. There’s other ways you’re not going to just, you know, kiss those people goodbye. You just may have a different way to reach out to them. David: Absolutely. All right, so we talked about identifying it, well, identifying it first, but then in terms of the 1, 2, 3 of it, filling your pipeline, prioritizing your pipeline, and then tackling it. So we talked about filling it and prioritizing it. Now, when it gets down to tackling, it’s really just a matter of doing. Once you’ve done your prioritization, once you’ve decided who the next person is, or who’s the first person I need to be in touch with, then it’s a matter of executing on your plan. So your prioritization is essentially your planning stage. And then tackling it is just about taking action. It’s about doing it. And we’ll be talking about things like call reluctance and things like that in future podcasts. But this whole idea of knowing what to do and not doing it, is rampant. It seems ridiculous. It’s like, well, who would do that? And the answer is nearly everybody does it. And none of us do it on purpose, but we all, to some extent, end up doing it. It’s like, Well, I know I need to do this, but then something pops up on our radar and we do that. It could be shiny object syndrome. We’ve talked about squirrel before, right? Squirrel. That was from a movie, right? You had mentioned that in a previous podcast. Jay: Yeah. That was from Up In Disney’s Up. David: Right, okay. The dog. Jay: The dog, yeah. David: Yeah, and I think we can all relate to that. So it’s like we know what we need to do, but then we get distracted. And so tackling it simply means having the self discipline to, once you’ve made that plan, to stick to that plan. And follow your instincts in that regard, because if you’ve taken the time to identify who needs to be in touch next, then you want to make sure that that’s the person that you’re being in touch with. It’s very straightforward, but needs to be mentioned because a lot of times it just doesn’t happen. There are probably situations. I know I’ve been in this situation, probably anybody who’s watching this podcast has been in a situation where you’re like, Oh, I really need to call so and so. I really need to get in touch with this person or that person. And then days go by, or weeks go by, or months go by, and in a lot of cases it’s because you didn’t do step two, you didn’t prioritize it. You didn’t actually put that person on a list, at or near the top of that list where they would be seen, and it could be acted. And once again, going back to what we started out on this, if you’re doing it all in your head, you are going to miss things. There’s no way you will not miss things. It’s just the way things work. You get it down on paper, you get it into one prioritized list, you organize it, you sort it. You start at the top and work your way through. That’s about the best way that you’re ever going to be able to get these things done. So, the topic that we started out with was monetizing your pipeline. Now, all we’ve really talked about is filling it and prioritizing it and tackling it, but that’s what leads to the monetization. Because it’s the failure to do those things that puts you in touch with a lot of the wrong people at the wrong time with the wrong words. That leads to non monetization. So if you really want to monetize your pipeline, you still need to focus on these three things. First, you have to fill it, then you have to prioritize it, and then you have to tackle it and be ruthless about eliminating poor quality prospects. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And again, looking at tackling knowing your sales cycle is something that can be critical. Like if you, if you discover that, if you don’t get back to them in a week, then the close rate goes down. I mean, it depends on what type of business you have, but that timeliness is also something you should study and look at. Because you may learn, if I don’t get back to these customers in 48 hours, then my percentages go way down. David: Absolutely. I mean, I’ve always maintained that a hot lead is like a hot cup of coffee. It doesn’t get any hotter as a result of neglect. You know, you’ve got to get to it fast. And leads are like that. And I know I’ve made that mistake in my business over the years where something comes in, I get distracted. You follow up later and they’re like, “Oh, I already took care of that.” It’s like, “ugh.” Now I haven’t done that at all recently, but I know years ago, and in the early stages, I’d just have things falling through the cracks because I didn’t do this consistently, these three things. When you do it, it works really well. When you don’t, you really pay the price. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. How do people find out more, David? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call if you’d like to have a call with myself or my team to talk about how you’d like to grow your sales and profits. We can have a strategy session, discuss where you’re struggling, what you’re looking to do, and if we can help, we’ll tell you how we can do that. And if we can’t help, we’ll tell you that too. So I’d start with that: TopSecrets.com/call. Jay: All right, Dave, I love it. Thank you so much for joining us today. David: Thank you, Jay. Ready to Grow Your Sales & Profits? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

August 25, 202615 min

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

To increase sales, profit, cash flow, and personal income, understand that money is always flowing in one direction or another. In a business, it needs to flow in from the customers. It needs to flow through to the employees and to the suppliers and to everybody who is providing you with services. And there needs to be something left over at the end to take home. And when you’re able to make those things happen consistently, everybody’s just better off. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing how to increase sales, profit, and personal income. Welcome Jay. Jay: Yeah. Thank you, David. I’m so excited, as usual, to talk about these topics that we discuss every podcast. I think that people often get caught up, especially small business owners, in one of these aspects, instead of having balance between all of them. And I feel like the one that they think about the most is sales. We have to increase sales. And if you’re not focusing on profitability in that regard, you could be generating all kinds of sales, but you’re not controlling your costs. And so ultimately those sales aren’t helping you. David: Yeah. Been there, done that. I think anybody, if you’ve started your own business, you’ve probably found yourself in this situation and gross sales is usually a good place for people to start. They’re thinking in terms of top line. Okay. I need to bring in as much as possible, which is true. You got to be bringing it in. But if you’re not paying attention to the rest of it, as you indicated, you could be selling a lot of stuff and losing money every day. And unless you’re keeping track of that, you’re not going to know it. I remember in the early days of my promotional products business, I would get together with my accountant once every 90 days. At the end of every quarter, actually the beginning of the following quarter, we would review the numbers for the previous quarter. And at that point, it’s too late to do anything about it. You feel like things are going well because you know, you’re selling stuff, but then you look at the expenses, the cost of goods, the cost of people, all your internal costs, your overhead costs. And you find out that you’re not making money on it. And 90 days later is too late. So once we got that in focus and we started doing it every month, reviewing what happened last month, where are our expenses too high and where are our gross sales too low? And which customers take up too much time and don’t generate enough revenue? Once we’re able to focus on the things that actually allow you to operate a profitable business, things got a lot better, a lot more quickly. And when we think in terms of these three things, how to increase sales, profit, and personal income, it’s almost like you’re starting here with the sales and then that generates whatever profit you have. And then after you’ve spent money on overhead and things, then you have some money to pay yourself, get some personal income going. But different businesses operate different ways. There are some business owners who are so focused on what am I going to bring in for myself that they may cut costs. They may short change people in terms of what they’re delivering in terms of product. They may choose less quality products. And so depending on where people’s focus is, determines where they’re going to be successful among those three things. Jay: Yeah. And I think you need balance. I mean, they’re all important. And so as you talked about looking at things monthly, I think having systems to identify and track each of these areas and have proper goals and benchmarks and reporting systems so that you can catch issues quickly. And pivot quickly is the only way you’re going to find balance in the force with these three things. David: Yeah, I agree. And I’ve operated businesses that had overhead that was too high. And that’s really hard. Because you feel like you’re trying to do everything right. And you’re trying to take care of the business and you’re trying to take care of your employees and you’re trying to take care of your customers. And if you don’t have the metrics right, it’s going to be pretty darn close to impossible to do that. And so finding the balance between the quality of product, which has to be high, the customer service, which has to be great. And the quality of client you’re interacting with, which also has to be great. When you get those three things lined up, you’re more likely to be successful, but if you’re not quite connected with some of those things, it’s a really uphill slog. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve kind of mentioned this in some other podcasts, but I see businesses when they need to increase their profitability. Their default is we need to increase sales or revenue. And I think that can be misguided. Because in order to make a dollar in profit, you may need to increase sales by $10. But if you focus on reducing cost, like for example, in a restaurant, if you can reduce your food cost by 1%, that immediately goes to the bottom line and increases profitability. So I find that the much faster route to profit than just to increase sales. And I don’t know that every business person understands that. David: Right. And I think it’s probably because there is a limit to how much you can cut. But theoretically, there’s not a limit in terms of how much you can generate. Now, obviously there is. If it’s a restaurant, you’ve got a certain number of seats or whatever. In a promotional products business, there’s a certain number of customers that you can visit with. Whatever your business is, there are going to be limits on the upper end. But most businesses never see that. They never get to the point where it’s like, I’m totally overwhelmed. I’m extremely profitable. I’m making a lot of money and I’m capped out. Because when you’re doing things well, when you’re doing things right, you’re generating the revenue, you’re generating the profit, which means you can hire additional people. You can add the staff, you can get the help and you can still continue to make money. But when you’re not in that situation, when you’re just sort of barely eking things out, and you’re saying, “okay, I need to increase sales. I need to generate more.” Yeah, you probably do. But as you indicated, if you are able to cut some of your overhead costs by even just a small amount, all of that drops, whereas gross sales don’t drop. Gross sales do not drop directly to your bottom line. And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve worked with who forget that. And when they think about gross sales, when they focus on gross sales, when they talk about gross sales, they’re like, “oh yeah, we’re generating all of this.” It doesn’t matter if you don’t get to drop it and keep some of it and pay everybody who needs to be paid. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things is knowing what your cost should be. What is the ideal cost that you’re shooting for? Because you’re right. You can’t continue to reduce costs. There is a line. There’s a threshold. My experience, like in the restaurant business, we had something called a theoretical food cost versus our actual food cost. The theoretical was if we had no waste, if we had no theft, if we had no shrinkage, if we ran perfectly, what would our food cost be? And then we compared that to our actual food cost. And so the goal was constantly trying to close the gap between those. And if you’re not an industry where there’s no shrinkage or things like that, then that’s not going to be as easy. But this was a great system for us to always be trying to achieve, to close that gap between the theoretical and the actual. David: Yeah, there are also a lot of business people who, when they start talking about this or thinking about this, it feels cold. “Well, I don’t like thinking about the numbers. I want to make sure I’m taking care of my people” and all that sort of thing, which is great. You do want to take care of your people. But the only way you can take care of your people is by remaining in business. Cause if you don’t remain in business, you can’t take care of anyone anymore. Can’t take care of your customers. You can’t take care of your employees. You can’t take care of yourself or your family. So, paying attention to this and recognizing that, yeah, this is a real thing and it’s not just driving gross sales is absolutely critical. I’ve operated businesses that generated huge gross sales, but they didn’t have the profitability they needed. I’ve operated businesses that didn’t generate a huge gross amount of money, but they had really good margins. And that works well too. And I’ve also operated businesses that generated a lot of sales and had a lot of profit. That’s my favorite. That’s probably most people’s favorite. That’s what you want to stick with. But if you recognize that that’s the goal and you’re taking the actions necessary to make it happen, then you’re going to be in a much better position. Jay: Yeah, totally. And then, you know, something like a pandemic can come along and your sales drop and now you’ve got to pivot dramatically to figure out how to increase sales and stay open. And so it’s not like you can assume that the status quo is going to be the way it always is. You’ve got to be prepared to identify issues quickly and pivot quickly. David: Yeah, you should probably assume that the status quo is never going to be the status quo. Because in life and in business, things are constantly changing. And some people were able to pivot extremely well and extremely effectively during the epidemic. And some people were just like, “I don’t know what to do.” And we’ve, we see the results of that. There are a lot of businesses that are no longer around because they couldn’t do it over. Even over the past six months. I’ve still seen a lot of that fallout happening, where there’s still businesses that are sort of merging with others or they’re being acquired, or people are retiring earlier than they would’ve otherwise because they just couldn’t figure out how to do it. And I think if you recognize that there are these three primary things, what am I making from it is the third part of it because you’re not making anything if you’re not able to increase sales and if you’re not generating profit, but looking at those three things and saying, okay, where do I need to focus my attention? Do I need to focus on how to increase sales? Do I need to focus it on trying to reduce my costs without reducing the quality of the product and the service that I’m delivering. I mean, if you cut food costs by getting cheaper, less tasty ingredients, then you can save some money there it’ll drop right to the bottom line. But then your gross sales are probably going to drop too. So it’s this constant balance. It’s this constant process of looking at, where am I, where am I trying to be? And what do I need to do to get there? Jay: Yeah, it feels complicated, but I think if you have good systems, if you have key performance indicators, ways to easily capture and process this information, I think that’s critical. You know, In my experience, a lot of restaurant operators don’t even know what their theoretical food costs should be. They don’t even know what a plate of food is supposed to cost. All they know is what their sales are and what they’re spending. And that’s it. So whatever your industry is, knowing what those ideal goals are, and then having systems to identify early issues, I think it’s the only way you’re going to find balance. Otherwise it’s an emotional process instead of a tactical process. David: Right. And knowing the how is extremely important. I know I need to increase sales and bring in more customers. How do I do it? I know I need to cut my costs. How do I do it without impacting quality? I know that I need to be able to increase my personal income, to be able to maintain the standard of life that’s going to allow me to want to continue in the business. I mean, I talk to people. Particularly in the last six months where they’re just tired of doing it. They don’t feel like what they’re generating for themselves is worth it. Because they’re doing all this work and they feel like it’s benefiting their suppliers. They feel like it’s benefiting their coworkers and it’s not dripping down to them. You know, they’re paying everybody else and there’s very little left. And so recognizing that in order to maintain a healthy business, it’s got to be healthy for everybody. It’s got to be healthy for the business owner, for the employees, for the clients, and not always necessarily in that order. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I’ve seen this happen so many times. People start a business because it’s their passion. David: Mm-hmm, Jay: It’s a product that helps people or they love to cook for people or whatever it is. And then as things tighten up, it starts to be very stressful and it starts to feel like a job, not like your own business and you become a servant to that business. And that’s a tough place to be. So,, figuring out how to make it a love instead of a job, I think if you can balance these three things, you’re probably going to be able to do that more effectively. David: Yeah. Trickle down economics was actually the term I was struggling to think of before, ties to the idea of cash flow. In other words, money’s always flowing, it’s flowing in one, direction or another. And in a business, it needs to flow in from the customers. It needs to flow through to the employees and to the suppliers and to everybody who is providing you with services. And there needs to be something left over at the end to take home. And when you’re able to make those things happen consistently, everybody’s just better off. And I think a lot of it does come down to mindset too. If we recognize that our goal is to service our customers, whether it’s the people coming into a restaurant or the business owners, we work with, whoever it is, if we’re able to provide them a good quality product, a good quality service at a reasonable price that is profitable enough to us, that we can pay our people and pay our suppliers and pay ourselves. Then that’s a real win. Jay: Yeah, I love that you brought up cash flow and you might want to make it sales, profit, cash flow and personal income. It’s that important. David: Yeah. Jay: I worked for a gentleman who had a great business. I mean, he was making money hand over fist. But he wasn’t getting paid from his clients for three to six months. And so making payroll, being able to cover all your expenses becomes very difficult if you don’t have the money. You know, you can have the sales, but you don’t have the money. That can be a very difficult situation. And so cash flow is equally as important as these other things we’ve talked about. David: very true. So it’s going to flow from sales to cash flow to profits, eventually, when you get the cash flow in, and then eventually to personal income. So it does flow. That’s the point. And sometimes it trickles and sometimes it floods, and our goal is to try to get it to move at a steady enough pace that everybody gets paid. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. How can people find out more? David: Oh, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. If you’d like to schedule a time to talk with our team about how we can help you grow your sales and profits. If you’re an Inner Circle member, be sure to log in. We’ll be talking about that all this week. If you’re not an Inner Circle member, you can check out that service at topsecrets.com/ic for Inner Circle. That’s TopSecrets.com/ic. Yeah, thank you so much, David. I love that we’re sharing this information and hopefully just planting seeds and helping people think about things that perhaps they haven’t thought about before. So thank you for joining us and for sharing all your great insights. Thank you, Jay. Ready to Increase Sales & Profits? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

August 18, 202614 min

Uncover Customer Needs and Sell More Effectively

Knowing how to uncover customer needs is critical. Essentially, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs implies that when one need is satisfied, another one is likely to pop up. Once I’ve got this satisfied, then I’m going to be working on this. And then I’m going to be working on this. It’s human nature. So if you recognize the fact that the needs are constantly going to be changing and you adopt a policy of constant requalification with your people — staying in touch, building that relationship, and finding out what they need next — you’re going to be in much better shape. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of uncovering customer needs. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I think that this is another great topic because a lot of times we just decide on our own what we think the customer needs, right? So we formulate that in our mind and we try and force that square into a round hole. You’re probably creating a lot more problems that you really don’t need to have. Uncovering customer needs in sales David: Exactly. When salespeople go in with the idea of “what I want to sell this person,” instead of “what does this person need,” they’re behind the eight ball right from the beginning. And I think there are some schools of thought in terms of sales, particularly if it’s a company that has one primary product that they’re looking to push, that, okay, you just have to go in and sell this. It reminds me of, you know, selling things door to door. If you’re a Fuller brush salesman and you’re looking to sell this one particular brush, well that’s my thing. That’s what I’ve got to sell. If you are sort of a one trick pony like that, if you’ve got one thing you want to sell, then this can still actually apply to you. Because when we think in terms of customer needs, I think a lot of people get stuck on the idea that uncovering customer needs means discovering which products they want to buy from us. And uncovering customer needs goes way beyond that. It’s more about what do they really need? Where are they struggling? What do they need help with? What are they trying to accomplish? Because even if you’re selling a Fuller brush, if you go in with the idea of “do you want to buy this brush,” the answer is no. But if you find out that what they’re struggling with is that they’re very busy and they don’t have enough time, and their life is chaotic. Then you may be able to let them know that this Fuller brush is going to allow them to clean things faster and be more economical in their time and accomplish some of the things that they’re telling you are actually important to them. So while that’s a rather extreme example, it really goes to the whole idea of what I believe uncovering customer needs is all about. Uncovering customer needs with questions Jay: Yeah. And I think there’s only one way to get to customer needs and that’s to ask questions, right? David: Right. Jay: If you start out with your sales pitch, you’re not going to know what their needs are. And I also like the idea of letting them talk and that helps you build the relationship and discover their needs. Is there another way besides asking question? David: I don’t think there really is. I mean, you’ve got to be able to get the answers from them. The only way that you can actually uncover what a customer needs is if they vocalize it. I mean, unless it’s something that you’ve observed, Hey, it looks like you could really use this. Right? Or if somebody refers you to that person and says my friend could really use what you’re offering here. But even then, it’s somebody else’s opinion. So that’s just the beginning of a point of conversation. Hey, your friend suggested I give you a call. I understand that you’re looking to accomplish this and perhaps this item can help. Wanted to see what your thoughts are about that. And then yeah, as you indicated, let them talk. Jay: Yeah, and letting them talk, I think you kind of help them understand why the customer needs your product. And like you said, it may not be something they’re thinking about. They may not know that they need your product. But like you said, maybe there’s something else in their life where they don’t have a lot of time. This product will save you time and so you can actually deal with other issues in your life better. So, figuring out how you can best serve them and then helping them come to that conclusion. I love to go down that path in the sales process. David: Yeah, I agree, and I think this really kind of ties to the idea of what a lot of people think of in terms of features and benefits. If I’ve got a phone what’s the feature of my phone? Feature of my phone is that it’s this big and it’s got a big screen and lots of colors and good audio quality. But what are the benefits? Well, you know, the benefits are that I can be in touch with the people that I care about. I can be responsive to customer needs. I can have the latest and greatest in terms of technology to allow me to connect better with everyone. So, there’s features and benefits, and I think that’s something that a lot of people talk about. But if we really want to get serious about it, it even goes beyond that. And it starts to get into sort of the emotions and the experiences that people want to have. Like we were talking about before, if somebody wants to clean their house, what do they want it to feel like? What do they want it to smell like? What’s the experience that they want people to have when they come in? And I mean, we’re not selling cleaning products here. Again, I’m using this more of an extreme example than anything else. But recognizing that there are a lot of different stages to this. And if you focus just on uncovering product needs, you are very likely going to be selling a much smaller percentage of the audience than would potentially buy from you. Jay: Yeah. And I think oftentimes, depending on what your product is, what you’re really selling is yourself. And once they trust you and believe in you, then they’re going to take your word for it, that that product will do what it says. So you got to realize that it is about relationships so often. David: Yeah. And it’s a lot easier to sell someone on you, if you are interested in them . Right? I think there was a, a brief synopsis I heard one time of How to Win Friends and Influence People. And it basically said if you talk to other people about themselves, they’ll think you’re the most interesting person in the world. Jay: Yeah, I can remember going into a situation, I had a partner at the time, and every time we went into that situation, all he did was talk about himself and then talk about his product. And people would just sit there and they would start to tune out and he never figured it out. I’d come in and when I led, I’d just ask questions and ask questions and you look for those nonverbal cues as well. You know, are they paying attention to me? If they’re not, I need to get their focus again. Are they nodding their head in agreement? Okay, that means they’re coming along. If they look confused, of course, that’s very hard over the phone, but if you’re doing it in person, I find those nonverbal cues to be essential in determining customer needs. David: Yeah, and a lot of people just don’t always do that. I mean, I think another important aspect of this whole topic is that customer needs are always changing. So when we talk about the idea of uncovering a customer’s needs, just because you did it today doesn’t mean that those needs are the same tomorrow. They’re not going to be. And if you are in the kind of business where you’re looking for long term business and long term relationships, and you want to be able to continue to sell to someone, then you really need to sort of get things in gear and recognize that it’s a constant process of requalifying and finding out where are they now? What did they need today that they didn’t need before? How did what they purchased from me before now create new situations that they need to tackle that could require something that I could provide to them later. I mean, a great example in the promotional products industry where we do a lot of business, is that some people use a promotional item to get people to come into a retail store, Come on in and you’ll get this free item. So let’s say it’s a car dealership. Come on into this car dealership and you’ll get this free key fob, right? And on the key fob, there’s a key, and you can try it out in the trunk of this car that’s in the showroom. And if it opens up the trunk, then you win some sort of prize. Right? So that would be designed to get somebody to actually come in. So once they come in, what’s the next thing you want them to do? The next thing you want them to do is probably to take a test drive. Because the goal is to get them to buy a car. They’re not going to come in for the free thing and then just immediately buy a car. So you say, Okay, what we’re doing today is for everybody who takes a test drive, you get a free dashboard cell phone holder for your car. And so then that would increase the number of people who’d be taking a test drive. And then it’s great, okay, so they’re in the test drive, they’re doing the test drive, they’re enjoying the feel of the car, the smell of the car, everything like that. And then the person says to them, you know, for people who buy a car today, we’re including a pair of Italian leather racing gloves that match the interior of the vehicle, right? Custom imprinted, of course, when that’s what you’re selling. So you can use your products to lead your prospects down a path that accomplishes their goals and accomplishes your goals, sells more stuff, and sets you up for future business. And when you do this type of thing, people look at you and say, Wow, you’re really thinking about not just what I said, I needed , but what I actually need. You’ve taken the time to think things through for other people, which is really essential and entirely endearing. People love that for long-term results. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. You’re building that relationship of trust and it should be easier the next time you come to them with a product, right? You’ve already torn down some walls. You know, as long as they were satisfied with your last product. We have a guy, he’s a car salesman, and I went to him for a referral. He didn’t treat me like a normal car salesman. He got to know me. He gave me a great deal. I never, ever thought, David, that I would say I have a car salesman guy. Like people say, I have a mechanic or a doctor. In my family, we’ve purchased seven cars from this man over the last 10 years. And it’s because of that first interaction and that building of trust. I get emails from them, and I’ve reacted on some of those. But if that first experience wasn’t there, he would’ve lost out on six other vehicles, right? So to me… David: Yes. Jay: If he would’ve tried to cram me into that same hole as every other salesperson, I would’ve been out of there. I wouldn’t have bought the first car, and I wouldn’t have bought six more from him either. David: Well, I’ve got exactly the opposite experience that I can share with you very quickly, and that is that I purchased a car from somebody. It’s got to be 14, 15 years ago. And when I was ready for a new one, I went back into that same dealership and I saw that same guy, his name was Kerry. And as I was about to walk over to say, Hey Kerry how you doing? He came up to me and said, Hi, may I help you? Jay: Oh. . David: Okay. He had no idea who I was. He had no idea that he had sold me a car. And at that point I looked at him and I said, “no thanks, just looking.” right? Jay: Yeah. David: So instead of “Hi Kerry,” you know, we could have picked up the conversation where we left off years before, it didn’t happen. And I was just like, I looked around and I walked out and I’m like, Nah, I think I’ll go somewhere else. And I mean, it wasn’t like he was rude, it wasn’t like he was obnoxious, but it’s like, I’ve spent some money with you, you know? And… Jay: And you were going back to him for that reason. And when that reason disappeared, You did too. David: I did too. Just like the wind. Poof, . Jay: Yeah. So again, knowing your customer needs and if you can fill them, that’s so important. Oftentimes, we just ask questions upfront to try and get to know them. But I think asking questions the whole way. So like if you’ve presented your product as a solution, asking them if that really matches their needs before just going into your close process. I think asking questions all along the way, helping them come to the belief that your product is helpful instead of just telling them is a great way to go. David: Yeah, and when you think about needs, you know, there’s a whole thing about the hierarchy of needs and all that sort of thing, but basically what that says is that when one need is satisfied, another one’s going to pop up. Once I’ve got this satisfied, then I’m going to be working on this, and then I’m going to be working on this. It’s human nature. So if you recognize the fact that the needs are constantly going to be changing and you adopt a policy of constant requalification with your people, staying in touch, building that relationship, and finding out what they need next, you’re going to be in much better shape. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And it’s funny that you mention the hierarchy of needs. I find that when you’re not building a relationship, when you’re just going into your close or whatever, what happens is you drive price to the top. That’s all people will focus on is the price. But the more they get to know you, the more you build trust, the more your products do fill their needs, that price, or the need for money, or for the sale starts to go down. And they start to not even worry about that anymore because you’ve got that relationship. So I think you have the ability to determine if they’re going to only focus on price or if they will trust you in other ways. David: Absolutely. Jay: All right. 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’ll figure out where you are now, where you’re looking to be, what you’re looking to accomplish, and if we can help, we’ll let you know that. And if we can’t, we’ll tell you that too. Jay: I love it, David, And often just talking to somebody else about it is just a great way to, you know, sometimes you’ll come to your own conclusions just hearing yourself talk, so I love that you provide that service. David: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I mean, I love talking to the people that we talk to. And it’s a similar kind of situation. Not everybody is qualified to be a client of ours, and that’s perfectly fine. We like having the conversations and if we can help, we like doing that. And if we can’t help, we’ll normally just redirect them to someone that we think can. Jay: Fantastic. Thanks, David. David: Thank you, Jay. Ready to Grow Your Sales & Profits? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

August 11, 202616 min

How to Overcome Call Reluctance: Make First Contact Easier

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. Ready to Grow Your Sales & Profits? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here .

August 4, 202614 min

Turning Your Million-Dollar Ideas into Cash

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: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

July 28, 202611 min

Are You Afraid of Being a Pest in Sales?

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: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

July 21, 202612 min

How to Get Better Sales Leads (without Burning Time or Wasting Money)

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: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

July 14, 202615 min

Grow the Value of Your Business: Make it Worth More

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: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

June 30, 202613 min

Get Responses: Create High-Value Communication

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: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .