Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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Jun 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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June 16, 202615 min

How to Achieve Your Goals: A Practical System for Success

Wondering how to achieve your goals? Well, achieving goals is quite different than just setting them. So while the first step may be to set the goals you really want, then we have to prioritize our actions from high to low. What is the most important thing that I need to do in order to get there? Because generally, you can come up with a dozen or a hundred different things that you’re going to need to do to achieve your goals. But there’s probably one to three things on there that are going to be more important than the other 97. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to achieve your goals. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, so glad to be here, David, and once again, I’m looking forward to this discussion. We hear people talk about goals all the time, and I know for me it’s something that I struggle with because what will happen is I’ll set those goals. I really haven’t defined how I’m going to get there, and then when I don’t achieve them, it becomes something that deflates me. So I think for a lot of people, goal setting can work against them. David: I think it can too, because I believe there is a lot of focus on goal setting, and it’s something that we do, particularly at the beginning of a new year. A lot of people focus on their new year resolutions, which are their goals. And while there’s been a lot written about goal setting, the importance of goal setting, writing things down, reviewing it regularly, having your affirmations and things like that. All of those things are certainly helpful, but they don’t actually, directly connect to the idea of how to achieve your goals. And that’s why I wanted to title this the way that I did, because setting your goals has been done to death, but how do you achieve your goals? I think it’s interesting to explore that aspect of this topic. Jay: Well, yeah. And one of the things that frustrates me is, when people talk about goal setting, they tend to assume that everybody’s the same. Oh, just follow this and you’re great. It’s like, I read The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and what was never mentioned or considered in that was, it was also seven habits for highly organized people already. You had already achieved a level where all you had to do was put these things in place and you’re good. You can achieve your goals. Well, what about me? I wasn’t raised with systems and those kind of things, so what about me? I didn’t feel like there was any place that I could implement that. David: Yeah. And that is very common. I mean, I think everyone probably deals with that because unfortunately, when you’re writing a book that’s going to be on a shelf for a long period of time, you have to include things that are essentially timeless. And The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I mean, it’s such a great book. It’s a very inspirational read. But when you’ve got rules, like “Be Proactive,” that’s a big, broad rule, right? And in many cases you can be proactive, but what does that mean? It gets down to the nitty gritty. We’ve talked in the past about Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth. I love that book. The E-Myth, The E-Myth Revisited. I read the original copy a long, long time ago, and I just loved it, because this was all about processes. And that book talked primarily about the fact that you have to have processes. But then what are those processes, right? Because that’s the part that people like you and I need. It’s like, what are the processes? How do I do that? How do I make that happen? And so much of my career has been focused on that. How do I turn this great recommendation, “be proactive,” you know? Jay: Yeah. David: “Work on your business, not just in your business.” How do I take broad statements like that? To some extent, they become platitudes, and how do I turn that into something that is actionable? Because that is the only way you can ever achieve your goals. You have to be able to convert those great ideas into actionable tasks. Jay: Yeah, such a key point. I think for me, what I found is I have to break it down enough to where I can feel that feeling of success instead of failure. Right? So it’s got to be minute enough to where I can say, okay, I did it. I accomplished something. And it could be something very simple. But that motivates me to the next step. I find if they’re too big, then I’m setting myself up for disappointment. David: Absolutely. But I think anyone who reads any sort of self-help material or business material, if you can take what they’re giving you and then just ask yourself right away, “how do I apply this right now to my business?” Again, Seven Habits, “begin with the end in mind.” Jay: Right. David: I mean, you could find that in a fortune cookie, couldn’t you? It’s brilliant advice, but it’s like, oh, hey, yeah, that’s really great. Now, again, in fairness, because it’s an excellent book… Jay: Yes. David: And he goes into a lot of detail about some different ways that you can do that. But in some sense it has to be general. And that’s why, if you’re able to ask yourself that question, “how do I apply this right now?” It’s going to get you a lot closer to being able to achieve your goals. Because now it’s not about concepts, it’s about you: Your activities, your focus, and what your next step is. Jay: Yeah, so let’s get into a little bit more detail. I’ve asked myself, “how do I accomplish this now?” Is that a list you would write down or how would you recommend people proceed from that point? David: Well, yeah, I think what I would generally want to start with is thinking in terms of resources. What are you going to need to achieve your goals? Okay. because once I’ve written down the goal… say my goal is X amount of dollars in sales by the end of the year. My goal is to sell X number of customers by a certain date. Whatever your thing is, now you’ve got the goal. All right. Well, as I said, the goal is kind of the easy part. Now we need to think in terms of, okay, what are the resources? What are you going to need in order to be able to achieve your goal? Can I do it by myself? Am I going to have to hire additional staff? Hopefully you’re not. But you need to know upfront. Because if you don’t take the time to consider the resources that are needed, versus the resources at your disposal, then you won’t even know if you’re taking actions that are not going to allow you to get to your goal. But if you take the time to think upfront, okay, what are the resources I’m going to need? Who am I going to need? Right? It’s not just about the things. It’s also about the people. Am I going to need additional help with this? And if so, what kind of people am I going to need? There’s an excellent book called Who Not How, by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy. It talks about the fact that when we’re looking to get things done, a lot of times we think in terms of “how am I going to do this?” When in fact we’re often better served by saying, “who can help me with this, who can help me get this done?” And that goes back to the resources. If you have a clear idea of what you’re going to need and who you’re going to need, then it’s going to be a lot easier to achieve your goals. And then ultimately, how much am I going to need? How much am I going to need in terms of resources, in terms of money, in terms of people, in terms of time? Time is always one of those resources that you need to evaluate upfront, and if you don’t do that, you’re never going to get beyond the fortune cookie aspect of what it is we’re talking about here. Jay: Yeah, you’ve kind of brought up negative emotions with me because it reminds me, I grew up in the restaurant business. And before I became an area manager and a regional manager, I remember my area manager coming in every year and we’d have to set sales goals. And so first of all, it was a complete shot in the dark. It was based upon air. Right? Just how much do you want to increase your sales? And second of all, there was never any instruction on how you’re going to do this. And so, how do you do it as a restaurant? I’m not in control of the marketing budget because it was a chain. So what am I going to do? Nobody ever said, well, you can increase your sales by doing A, B, C, and D. They just came in and set this arbitrary goal, and at the end of the year I was beat up because I didn’t reach that goal. And I’m like, this just becomes a bludgeon that creates disappointment. David: Right, because the focus there is on the what. Jay: Yes. David: What is it that I want to accomplish? Just like we’re talking about with goals. This is the goal. Okay. The goal is established very early on. But then every day, every hour preceding that, you need to ask yourself, am I on track? And that’s going to go back to, first of all, do you have a plan in place? Because if you don’t have a plan to achieve your goals, then it’s not going to happen. But then beyond the plan, do I have the resources? Do I have them in place? Am I firing on all thrusters? Jay: Mm-hmm. David: Are we doing the things that we need to do in order to accomplish it? And then also just adapting, recognizing that, let’s say you establish your goals today, you lay out a plan today, and you’re starting on it tomorrow. Well, as soon as you start it, it’s like that old quote, I don’t know if it was Colin Powell, some military general talked about the fact that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Jay: Yes. David: And it’s the same thing with a goal in business. It’s not going to survive contact with prospects and clients. You set your goal in terms of what you want to reach, but every day you’re going to be taking actions, some of which will work and some of which will not. At which point you need to be able to discern what’s good, what’s bad, what’s working, what’s not, so that you can jettison the stuff that isn’t working, do more of the stuff that is, and ultimately achieve your goals, achieve your objectives. But too often, just like New Year resolutions, we write them down January 1st and we don’t think of them again until December when we realized we’re nowhere close, because we never had the plan in place. We never had the resources in place, and we didn’t take consistent action. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And back to my own example, when I became an area manager, I resolved not to be that guy who put my managers in that place. And so I identified an action plan of how you can increase your sales. Starts with excellent customer service. Who are you putting on the front lines? How do you handle complaints? How do you assess your customer service? Then it went to quality of product. Are you following guidelines? Are you building the product the way that it should be? Is it consistent? So there was a checklist that they could go through and then they would see the results happen. To me, that was empowering as opposed to deflating. David: Yes. When you empower your employees with the specific steps they need to take in order to accomplish the objectives, that’s exactly what they need. Jay: Yes. David: You know, there’s a difference between lead measures and lag measures. I’m sure you’re familiar with that concept as well. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And our goals are usually lag measures. I want to be able to get to this amount of sales. But what are the lead measures that are going to make that happen? So when you talk about customer service being a first key, and then breaking that down, what does that mean? If you’re answering a phone, how many rings do you have? Do you have to answer it within three rings or 30 rings? Because that’s going to determine the experience of the customer. You can’t control how the customer’s going to feel, but you can control what you do on the front end to at least help to impact that experience. Jay: Yeah, and we had it as much as, you know, I had a really good employee in the back of the house, but not so good with customers, not a very good communicator. So I’d never put him on that interface with customers. It doesn’t mean he couldn’t help me in other places. So being that specific about each of those goals is so important. David: Yeah, I think so too. And I believe you want to start with setting goals that you really want, that are important to you. Because if you don’t have a really solid, great feeling about it, if you don’t have that driving “why” behind it, I really want this because it’s going to allow me more freedom in terms of my time, or it’s going to allow me to spend more time with my family or do more of the things that I want. If your goals don’t motivate you, then once again, you’re going to forget about them very quickly, or the moment some sort of temptation comes up that’s designed to derail you from your focus. So the first thing is you set the goals you really want, then you prioritize them from high to low. What is the most important thing that I need to do in order to get there? Because generally, you can come up with a dozen or a hundred different things that you’re going to need to do to achieve your goals. But there’s probably one to three things on there that are going to be more important than the other 97. So prioritizing is key. After you’ve set the goals, you got to prioritize what is that list of actions, and then it’s a matter of just focusing on each one. And in a previous podcast, we were talking about declaring independence from business as usual, looking at that and saying, I’ve got to be consistent about implementation because if I’m not, there’s no way it’s going to happen. Jay: Yeah and this last one you mentioned, focusing on getting them done. This is where so many times it falls down. And where if you do have a staff, you can really destroy your credibility. Because again, back to my own experience, company rolls out a new company-wide goal. For three days they’re pounding it and watching it. On day four, and forward? You never hear about it again. That teaches everybody that we just have to stay in line for a couple of days. Then it’s going to disappear. So you’re actually working against yourself at that point. It’s something I resolve to never do. You have to have systems of follow up. You can’t just say, “oh, we’ll follow up.” Have dates, have benchmarks, have things that are built in to help you track where you’re at at all times. David: Right, and just because they stopped talking to you about it after day four doesn’t mean they’re not going to hold you accountable for it. Jay: True. David: They’re still going to hold you accountable for it 362 days later, right? Jay: Mm-hmm. David: They’re going to say, “Hey, we talked about this. Why didn’t you hit it?” It’s like, “oh, are we still doing that? I forgot about that. That was, that was a long time ago.” Jay: Yeah. Absolutely. Again, I love this discussion, David, how can people find out more? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We love having conversations like this with smart, focused, bright business people who are not just interested, but committed to achieve your goals and get to the next level in your business. If you’re just interested, it’s like, “oh, it’s kind of cool. It’s kind of interesting, maybe.” No, forget it. Because that’s not going to get you there. But if you’re serious, if you listen to these podcasts, particularly if you’ve been listening for a long time, if you haven’t scheduled a call yet, do it today. Now’s the time to do it. TopSecrets.com/call. We’ll have a conversation. You’ll love it or you won’t love it. If we’re five minutes in and you say, this isn’t going anywhere. Perfectly fine with that. It hasn’t happened so far, but it could. So you don’t have to feel like you’re locked into anything. If the call does not have value for you, then we’ll drop it. But if you’re open to the idea that there are better ways of doing things that will allow you to achieve your goals and generate more sales in less time, then schedule a call. Jay: Yeah, set a goal to call right now and then follow up on your goal. David: Execute, right? Jay: That’s right. Thanks David. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Achieve Your Goals? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: 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 9, 202613 min

Increase Revenue with Upselling and Cross-Selling

If you want to increase revenue, upselling and cross-selling can help. So what’s the difference? Upselling means selling a better or a higher priced version of the thing that they’re looking at. Whereas cross-selling is making a recommendation of something that’s compatible. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of upselling and cross-selling. Are you doing it? Welcome back, Jay Jay: Yeah, hey, thank you, David. Listen, have these bad memories when I was a kid and I was working in a fast food place and the manager was always pressing me, “ask them if they want a Coke, ask them if they want fries.” And I got to a point where it’s hard to upsell and I think this has grown into my adulthood. You know, I just barely got the sale and now I’m asking them for more. It’s not an easy thing to do for people. David: You know, it’s interesting you should mention the fast food example because it’s the perfect example. It’s the one that everyone can relate to. “You want fries with that?” Jay: Yeah. David: Or the shortened version that you hear a lot of times, “want fries with that,” as the four word upsell. And it works extremely successfully for people in that sort of industry. Because it makes sense. Somebody’s coming in, they’re ordering whatever, a burger or something, or they’re ordering a burger and a drink, “want fries with that” makes perfect sense. And some percentage of time they’re going to say yes. And whether that is 1% of the time or 80% of the time, it’s probably maybe 30 to 60% of the time, I would guess, they’re going to say yes. Because it’s like, “oh, all right, sure. Why not? I’m already here.” Jay: Yeah. David: And you hit on a great point, which is that we can feel funny about upselling, if we feel like the purpose is to simply get more money out of a person. If it feels like it’s completely one-sided, if it feels like it’s manipulative, then we’re not going to want to do it. So I personally believe that the times that we should upsell and cross-sell are the times when we truly believe that we have an additional solution that is going to be better for them. Now, in the fast food example, are french fries better for you on top of the Coke and the hamburger? Jay: Yes! David: Probably not from a, health level, but certainly from a satisfaction level, yeah, it’s better. People are likely to want that. But in business, if you’re selling something, and somebody comes to you and they have something very specific they want to buy, and you have something that would be complimentary to that, or something that would go with that really well and would increase the value to the buyer, then you kind of owe it to them to at least ask them if they’re interested in that. Jay: Mm, I love that. I love that idea that if you are feeling uncomfortable, maybe you should ask yourself why. And how do you feel about your product? Are you really providing a value to them or are you just trying to sell something and get a paycheck, right? And I think we all have to ask that question about our own careers and what we’re doing and what we’re selling. But, you know, if you can just feel great that what you’re providing them is going to improve their situation, then you’re just passionate about what you’re doing and that’s going to come through. David: Yeah. So when you are talking to somebody like that, if you’ve got something that is actually going to be a benefit to them, if it’s going to help them, then it’s a lot easier to do it. So that really just boils down to motives. What is the motive? And unfortunately, I think sometimes managers, like in the situation you described in the fast food restaurant, the manager says, “just do this. Ask them if they want this. Push it, push it, push it. Sell, sell, sell.” When instead, if the manager had said to you, Hey, listen, when people come in here, they’re hungry. They want something good. You know, they’ve ordered this, they’ve ordered that other thing, so they might want it and maybe they didn’t think of it. You might want to suggest that. Maybe they want dessert, maybe they want an apple pie at the end, right? Jay: Mm-hmm. David: Apple pie. I’m saying yes to an apple pie, right? And if you don’t ask, you don’t get, and it’s very easy for them to say no. Now, there are situations, and I’ve heard it referred to, particularly in online situations, where there are online upsells where you buy something and then it asks you if you want to buy this and you want to buy that and you want to buy this. Yeah, I’ve heard people refer to that as upsell hell. Now, if you get somebody involved in that, then that’s not good. But if you make a recommendation that makes sense for them, then I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I also have heard this, you know, back to the fast food example, when the person who’s embarrassed to do it, they say, my manager wants me to ask you if you, and I’m like, oh, that’s just the worst situation. But I think, you know, I’ve also had like servers say, ” you should try this because it’s really good.” David: Yeah. Jay: And that’s different, right? That doesn’t sound like an upsell. That doesn’t feel like an upsell. So how you go about it, and are you passionate about it? Do you really believe that? David: Right. Jay: That makes all the difference. David: When my son was traveling, he was in Italy with some of his friends and they went out for dinner one night and they went into this restaurant and the waiter was very happy to see them. Americans there to spend money, and the waiter came over to take for order and one of the guys ordered chicken and he said, “no, no, no, no. You don’t want the chicken. It’s terrible here, get the steak,” right? Now there’s an example of an upsell, I guess. Jay: Yeah, David: Upsold them from the chicken to the steak. The steak was a lot more expensive. Was the chicken there really terrible? I have no idea. But he presented it in a way that made them think, all right, I’ll get the steak. And it was entertaining, too. So I think there are ways of engaging in this type of behavior where if it’s not manipulative, and it actually gets them a better result than you might as well do it. You know, another thing I think that people should consider is that when it comes to upsells and cross cells, it’s not something that always just has to take place at the immediate point of purchase. I mean, obviously that’s a great time to do it, but if someone buys something from you… in the promotional products industry, I mean the, examples are kind of easy. Somebody buys t-shirts or sweatshirts, “want caps with that,” right? Would be the equivalent of french fries. And you can ask and they can say yes or they can say no, whatever it is. But if you don’t do it at the point of sale, you could contact them back maybe a few weeks, a month later. Hey, I just wanted to let you know we just got this new product in. I think it would go perfectly with those shirts you got. Would you be interested in having a look at that? Right? And that’s an example of an upsell or a cross-sell that could take place later. So it’s not like, If you didn’t do it the first time, you can never do it again. There are plenty of opportunities to do that throughout the sales cycle. Jay: Yeah, I agree. And the other thing, I’ve seen some research and it’s something that I’ve implemented that has helped me get over the upsell thing, is that research that I’ve seen shows that the time when people are most willing to spend more with you is when they just spent with you. And that seems counterintuitive, right? Like, I just got this money out of you. You just spent money and you’re willing to spend more. That doesn’t feel exactly right. David: Yeah, but again, if you go back to the fast food example, it does make perfect sense. I’m getting this and I’m getting that. Do I want this too? Yeah, sure, why not? So there is that aspect of it. Now, outside the fast food example, it might not be quite as obvious and there might not be as much of a connection. But once again, I think if we get beyond the idea of selling product, and we get more into the idea of satisfying the customer, what is the customer looking to get from this experience? So in a promotional products example, am I looking to buy shirts? Not so much. I’m looking to buy awareness of my business. Maybe I’m looking to have people wear this thing and have people see it and recognize my business. Perhaps I’m looking for a sense of affinity, that the people who wear it feel good about my company. So there are very deep things that I could be looking for in this purchase. And so if I’m able to connect my additional recommendations, my upsells and my cross cells to those types of things, the things that motivated them to want to do it in the first place, then they’re going to be a lot more likely to say yes. But they’re also going to be a lot more likely to appreciate the fact that you thought about what they actually want and you’re trying to deliver it to them. Jay: Yeah, and then you’re avoiding that salesperson feeling and you’re more like a consultant, as we’ve talked about so many times in these podcasts. I think the other thing that you have to remember, just from a pure business standpoint, we talk about customer acquisition costs a lot, and if you can upsell somebody, That’s product on top of your initial acquisition cost. And then if you can cross-sell them, take your existing lead database and cross-sell them into other products, that by far is a better way to do business than constantly having to find new customers and always paying that cost to get those new customers in the door. David: Yeah, absolutely. One of the other things that we’ve done in our training is also suggesting to salespeople that when they’re recommending a product to the customer, you don’t always have to recommend the lowest priced option. Now, there are a lot of customers who are like, I just want the cheapest, I want the cheapest thing. But a lot of times the cheapest thing is not the best option. It’s going to fall apart, or the logos are going to rub off, or it’s not going to be the best thing. So another thing we can do, and this isn’t really related to upselling or cross-selling, but one of the things you can do is you can start out offering something that has a higher value that is a, a better product, a more high-end product, and let them say to you, “no, I want something cheaper.” Right? Because if you don’t do that, and you’re successful in selling them the cheapest thing, congratulations. You could have had this better sale and the customer could have had a better product. So that’s, as I said, not directly related to upselling and cross selling, but when you’re thinking in terms of, “well, what would I do or what would I like?” A lot of times we are more sensitive about other people’s money than they are. And we’re more likely to recommend something that’s cheap, just for the sake of getting the sale, rather than thinking what’s going to serve this person best in terms of what they’re looking to accomplish. Jay: Yeah, I think that’s a great line, that we’re more concerned about their money than they are. Again, looking at research and looking at our own behavior, I think sometimes we feel that if it costs more, it’s going to be better. If it’s cheap, it’s going to be worse. So oftentimes charging a premium, or at least giving them that option, makes them feel like they’re getting something of value. And I’ve seen situations where people didn’t sell very much of a product at a really low price point. So what did they do? Instead of lowering it, they raised it and it actually brought in more sales. There’s a lot of psychology involved in this, but it’s absolutely true and I think the bottom line, if you don’t ask, it’s not going to happen, right? David: Yeah. And also just to clarify real quickly, because we didn’t do this upfront, when I think in terms of upselling versus cross-selling, what’s the difference? Upselling to me means selling a better or a higher priced version of the thing that they’re looking at. Whereas cross-selling is making a recommendation of something that’s compatible. So the hamburger to french fries, that would be more of a cross-sell. An upsell would be upselling from a hamburger to a Big Mac, right? Jay: Mm-hmm. David: So you’re getting a bigger, better version of the thing that they were looking at. And so again, we’re talking about this in industries where people are selling, not just behind the counter taking orders. So when you think about that, if somebody is looking at investing in whatever t-shirts, well, maybe they would like to get the heavyweight, hundred percent cotton rather than the promotional weight 50/50. Maybe they would like to get multiple colors on there, that type of thing. That would be an upsell. Whereas a cross sell would be, you know, want caps, that type of thing. Jay: Yeah. Yeah. And just talking about promotional products, I can tell a difference when it’s a nice shirt or when it’s just like the cheapest. And so that’s some way that I could use to upsell somebody. Because if you’re putting your name and your logo on it, and it’s not very good quality, you’re sending a message, right? And so that’s a way that I think you can help people understand that it’s important that they consider those types of things. David: Yes. And one thing that you will find out for sure is that if you’re selling promotional products and you sell something cheap to a customer and they buy it and it’s not good, they’re not going to blame themselves. They’re going to say, why did you sell me this shirt? Well, you told me you wanted something cheap. Well, not that cheap. Not so cheap that it is going to be terrible. Oh, I didn’t know. Right? So… Jay: That goes back to the don’t buy the chicken, it’s terrible. Get the steak. Right? David: Exactly. Yeah. Jay: Yeah. Which again, great example, because if I heard that, I’m like, wow, this person cares about me. I’m not thinking, wow, this person wants me to spend more money, right? So it’s all in the attitude and how you convey it. David: Yeah. Jay: All right. How do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We would be happy to walk you through this stuff. If you’re struggling to increase the average value of your orders, if you’re struggling to bring more customers through the door, or you just need somebody to talk to about how to make things better in your business, TopSecrets.com/call, we would love to have that conversation with you. Jay: Well, and I love our conversations, David. Thank you so much for your time today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Integrate Upsells & Cross-Sells to Increase Value and Help Customers? If so, check out a few ways we can help: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

June 2, 202612 min

Still Chasing Prospects Who Will Never Buy?

How much time do you spend chasing prospects who will never buy? If somebody is not responsive, you can decide, do I want to continue to pursue this person? Or do I want to leave them to my competitors? Let my competitors chase that person. If they’re disqualified, you don’t have to spend time with them at all. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the idea of converting more sales: turning leads into customers. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Such a pleasure to be with you. This is kind of the secret sauce, right? I mean, if we could all increase our conversion rates and bring down our customer acquisition costs that’s where the rubber meets the road. David: Yeah, in a lot of cases it’s a really critical part of it. I think some people make a mistake upfront when it comes to conversion. They want to try to convert everyone. You know, they just meet somebody for the first time and they immediately go into sales mode. And I think that they can really save themselves and other people a lot of time and a lot of aggravation if they actually start where it really should begin with a little bit of qualification. Trying to find out if they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, those kind of things. Because a lot of times there are salespeople who will spend weeks, months, years pursuing somebody, just to find out once they get an appointment with them that they weren’t qualified to buy to begin with. And you can eliminate that right up front. Save yourself a world of heartache. Jay: Yeah, I love this point, David. I can’t tell you I’ve had this happen, you know, I’m on the phone with somebody and talking about the product and things like that, and then after asking some questions, I realize this is not a good fit. I don’t have the services they’re looking for. And I could have saved us both a lot of time if I had done a little pre-qualification before we got started. David: Yeah. Or if that’s happening on the first call, then you’re pretty good at that point. But literally, I know there are people who have gone to networking functions for a long period of time, and they’re talking to people and trying to get them to agree to an appointment, and then they finally agree to the appointment, and then you get out there and you’re talking to them. I had this experience myself early in my career. I’ll never forget it. There was this guy and I thought he was going to be a great prospect, so I tried to get an appointment with him. He agreed to the appointment. I showed up at his place. His place was a dump and he didn’t show up for the appointment, and I was sitting there looking around and I was thinking, “okay, why am I here?” And so a little bit of diligence upfront and a little bit of qualifying goes a long way. Jay: Yeah, I agree. And I also think technology can do a lot of that pre-qualifying, right? We had the experience where our Google ad buy was not targeting the right people. And so I was getting all these calls and I’m like, “wow, look at these leads we’re getting.” And it turned out I was just wasting time. So I’m wasting money on the Google ad buy. And then I’m wasting money fielding all of these calls. That’s just, you’re spinning your wheels at that point. David: Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about it, pitching unqualified prospects is the single biggest time waster on the planet. So if we can avoid that, we’re going to be a lot better off. Jay: Yeah. I think there’s a tendency though to think, “oh, we can sell anybody.” Or I think the other side of that is if you’re not pre-qualifying, then you don’t have a really good idea of how effective you are as a salesperson, because you’re comparing it to every person you talked to. Like, I’ve talked to a hundred people, my close rate was 20%. Well, if 5% of those were never going to be a lead for you, or never going to be a customer, then you’re not really using accurate numbers. Right? David: Yeah, exactly. Everything’s skewed when you’re doing it that way. So, I mean, I believe qualification upfront is really important and systematic follow up is another thing. If you’re not following up systematically with people, which means that you are in touch with them at the times when you need to be in touch with them, then you’re also going to be at a big disadvantage. Jay: Yeah. and that’s really an area where I struggled a long time ago, and that is if I didn’t get them right away, then I’m going to move on to the next person. David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And like you said, it’s about relationships. And again, I love technology that can do a lot of this stuff for you, drip campaigns and those kind of things. David: Right. Jay: But because somebody down the road, they don’t need you now, that doesn’t mean they’re not going to need you in the future. David: Yeah, and so if you’ve qualified them and you know that they would still be a good prospect for what you’re selling, then at that point you want to make sure that you’ve got something in place, whether it’s inside a crm, however it is that you’re doing, so that you know that you are in touch with them until they’re ready to buy from you. And when we talk about systematic follow up, it goes far beyond the, “are we there yet” approach that a lot of people take where it’s like when you’re traveling in a car with small kids and they keep saying, “are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” And there are some salespeople who do that. They just call and say, “Hey, you want to buy, you ready to buy? You ready to buy? Are we there yet?” And that’s not what I mean by systematic and or strategic follow up. Jay: Yeah. I think part of that is you start to seem desperate, right? And I think what we need to avoid, and I’m really learning this, is the feeling that I’m a salesperson and they’re a potential lead. If they feel like I’m a salesperson, then I’ve already lost kind of the battle, right? So, whereas if I’m a consultant, if I’m somebody who can help them grow, if I’m somebody who they have a relationship with, who they feel really cares about them, then that’s a real advantage. But if they just feel like this is sales to potential client relationship, that’s a much harder road to go down. David: It definitely is. And when we think about it, you know, once you’ve qualified somebody and you’ve got your follow up in place and you’re interacting with them. You know, part of the deal then is persuasion. You know, what are we saying that is going to entice this person to want to move forward? Essentially, are we hitting their hot buttons? What are their hot buttons? What are the things that are motivating them to either take action or not take action? Because if you’re not doing that, once again, you’re going to have a lot of difficulty converting. Jay: Hmm. Yeah. This kind of goes back to the pre-qualifying you talked about. You’re not just finding out if they’re a fit for your product. You’re finding out what their specific needs are. Because how often have you been in or anybody been involved in. I’m pitching a sales strategy to them and it doesn’t meet their needs. And what I’ve done is I’ve conveyed to them that I didn’t listen or that I don’t know their business. There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, if somebody’s trying to sell me something and they haven’t taken the time to really figure out who I am, what my needs are, what is my business model? That can really be a detractor to the process. You can lose the sale if you are going down the wrong path. David: Yeah, you definitely need to keep it focused on them. A lot of times we make the mistake of talking about ourselves and our product and our capabilities and how great we are and it’s like, you’ve lost me at hello. When you do that. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve been there like with somebody else and we walked in the door and we were both supposed to be part of the sales process and before there’s even a hello, they’re like diving into the product and opening the book and this is what we have and what we have. And. I’m just like you got to at least take a few minutes to set some baseline relationship and ask some questions and pre-qualify even there, if you’ve pre-qualified them before you’ve arrived. I think that pre-qualify is really, I think there is a pre part, but there’s a constant requalifying that happens as you go along. David: Absolutely, and people are constantly cycling through the five levels of qualification. Sometimes they’re ready to buy right now. Other people have specific dates in mind. Still others are open to it. They’re generally receptive. Sometimes they’re disqualified, and sometimes they’ll just ghost you. They’re just unresponsive. When you recognize that they’re five essential levels, then you know exactly how to follow up with each one, and it becomes a lot more systematic. Jay: Yeah, and I love that you’ve broken these things down into different levels. Because that makes it really easy to classify. And that’s the problem is you may have a sense that you want to do this, but you really don’t know which buckets to put people in. What are those buckets? If you can have a system where you’re not giving a lot of thought, you’re just like, boom, this one goes here, this one goes there, then you can spend more time working on the right buckets, I’m guessing. Right? David: Exactly. Because if somebody is not responsive, you can decide, do I want to continue to pursue this person, or do I want to leave them to my competitors? Let my competitors chase that person. If they’re disqualified, you don’t have to spend time with them at all. But if you focus on those first three buckets, the ones who are ready now, the ones who have specific dates and the ones who are generally receptive, you’re going to be a lot better off. Now the ones who are generally receptive. The goal there is then to find out, well, when are they planning on moving forward? When will they be ready to buy? And a good way to do that is through sequencing, which would be another step in this process is to say, we’re going to put out a series of communications, drip campaign, whatever you want to call it, that is designed to be in front of them when they’re ready to buy. Even if we don’t know exactly when that’s going to be. Jay: Yeah, because that can be hard to project. I mean, I know with promotional products there’s a seasonality, but it could also be based upon their product releases, right? They’ve got a new piece of software coming out, or they’ve got a new special or something like that. So it can be very business oriented. They may not know when they need it until the day before. Right? Or the day of, the way I see some people run their businesses. David: That’s true. And there are a lot of times where we’re in touch with someone for a long time and we’re not hearing back from them. And then we sort of give up for a while. We wander off, we do something else, we pursue other people, and then we come back and we find out they bought from someone else.ry Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And it’s cause we didn’t have these sequences of communication in place for the people who are actually worthy of them. Now again, if somebody’s totally ghosting you. then I don’t know that you even want to do that. Because if they’re not going to be responsive to you, when they’re thinking about buying something, how are they going to be when they need to pay their bills, right? Jay: Yeah. Yeah. David: So you need to balance this, but if they seem like a good prospect, if they’ve been qualified upfront, if you have been following up systematically and you’ve been able to determine that there is a good fit, you’ve been able to exercise a little bit of persuasion and keep yourself in front of them, then at that point it could very easily convert into a sale. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I love this. This is great feedback and great instruction. How do people find out more, David? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with my team. We can walk you through this stuff. If you’re thinking about where you’re stuck, you’re not quite sure where that is, you’d like to have a conversation… TopSecrets.com/call. We would be happy to have that conversation with you. Jay: Well, and I love it. Just sometimes talking about it is important. But there’s not a reason to reinvent the wheel. You’ve got these systems ready, and sometimes that’s just perfect for people, right? David: I was literally talking to someone the other day who’s been in the industry for a really long time, and she was asking a question about what to say when someone says they already have somebody they’re working with. And I was thinking to myself, “you’ve been in this industry a long time, like you need to have an answer for that.” Jay: Yeah. David: And a lot of what we do with our clients is we have this type of stuff in place so that when you get a really common objection, you have a very specific response that you know works. And without that kind of thing, you can be spinning your wheels for a really long time. Jay: Oh yeah. I love that. I love it. David I hope people check it out. And as always, it’s great talking to you. David: You too, Jay. Thank you. Are You Ready to Stop Chasing Prospects Who Will Never Buy from You? If so, check out a few ways we can help you make it happen: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

May 26, 202613 min

Social Media in Business: Conversations Over Clicks

A lot of people think the goal is to get likes and engagement, but when it comes to using social media in business, conversations and conversions are the metrics that matter. That’s what results in sales. The rest are vanity metrics. Those who think it’s all about views and clicks might be missing the point. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best use of social media in business. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David I feel like this is one of those areas where I don’t feel confident in myself, but I’m not in a position yet where I’m going to hire somebody to do it. And so, it’s hard to get motivated every day, because I know it’s an important part, especially in my business. Most of our leads come from the internet and social media, so it’s like I don’t know that this is something I should be handling myself. David: I think a lot of people feel that way, and for many of us, social media can be a huge distraction. And in some cases, like, well, the best use of social media is to keep it turned off if you have to actually get things done. But there are benefits to it when it’s used properly, and part of our Total Market Domination course involves working with our clients to help them through the best forms of first contact with a new prospect. And one of those methods is social media. I mean, you can be doing it via cold calls, you can be doing it via networking events, direct mail, lots of different ways to initiate first contact with a new prospect. But many people like the idea of using social media, particularly because it is a one-to-many method of reaching people. You can post something on social media one time, and hundreds of people could see it, or thousands of people could see it. And so it allows you a great deal of leverage much more than if you’re making one phone call at a time or meeting one person at a time. So there are definitely benefits to utilizing it. Of course, with the benefits come the flip side, the detriments that go along with it in some cases. One of the things that a lot of people seem to struggle with is that they go onto social media with one purpose and they end up doing 10 other things that they didn’t plan on doing when they got in there. They don’t end up doing the thing that they actually wanted to do. And so a lot of it, I think, boils down to the fact that we’re not sure what to do. In a lot of cases. We’re not sure, well, what should I post? What should I say? What should it be designed to do? And there’s so much talk among so many people about creating content, and I’ve done classes on this. The fact that content is kind of a misunderstood word. If you think about what is content? Well, content is whatever’s in something, right? If you’ve got a bag, whatever’s in that bag is the content. Could be something good, could be something very bad, right? But whatever’s in the bag. So if you think of it like that and you say, okay, I have to create content. Well, yeah, but you need to do more than just content. You want to make sure that whatever it is that you’re dispersing to the masses has enough value for people that they say, wow, that was actually worthwhile. That was worth my time. So a lot of what we focus on in the communication aspects of what we do with our clients is related to how do we do that? How do we create value in our communications? And I know I’m sort of rattling off all kinds of different things that could be entirely different podcast subjects. But coming back to the idea of the best use of social media, if you think about what it is, I mean, I’ve got an idea of what I believe it is. Do you have any thoughts on that before I spill the beans on what I think here? Jay: Well, I think it’s going to be different for everybody and what type of clientele you have. I’m guessing a key part of this and we’ve spent a lot of money on my end doing this. Is identifying who our end user is, what, what type of client are we trying to attack? When we first started it, we were and I’ve told you this story before, we were attacking so many leads. It was blowing us out of the water. But the leads were not closing, and so we had to narrow that field, finally to a point where we could just get potential leads. In order to do that, we spent a lot of time around a table figuring out who that potential client is and what are the keywords that are going to be interesting to them? And when you talk about posting content, if you’re just shooting in the dark and you haven’t identified who your target is, then you’re going to spend a lot of time on social media spinning your wheels, and you may be chasing people away or just making them disinterested because you haven’t put in the time ahead of time to really have an impact. David: Yeah. When I think about having an impact on social media. And I want to be really transparent here too. I have not used social media nearly to the extent that other people have to get clients. We have other methods of first contact that are extremely effective that work really well. And so don’t look to me as the expert on this, but what I can tell you is that to the extent that we have done this effectively, the way that we’ve done that is using social media for the primary purpose of initiating conversations. So when I think in terms of the best use of social media, For me, but I also believe for most other businesses, the best use of it is to be able to initiate a conversation with someone else. So if I’m able to post something that’s interesting enough to get someone to comment back, and then I can reply to that comment and then they reply to that, now we’re actually in a conversation. And of course, conversations is exactly where sales happen. You don’t have sales generally, if you’re a salesperson without having a conversation. Now that could take place via text. It could take place via Messenger. Maybe it takes place in comments. It could take place on the phone, in person. Lots of different ways to do it. “When it comes to social media in business, most people focus on likes and clicks. And while that might feed the algorithm, I still believe the metrics that matter are conversations and conversions. Conversations and conversions result in sales. The rest are vanity metrics.” — David Blaise But if we think about it from that standpoint, it makes things a little easier, because when we’re on social media, we are programmed to think in terms of likes and think in terms of shares and things like that. And likes and shares are fine. Shares are probably better than likes in my view, because it gets it in front of more people. And if the content is good, then it expands your horizons a bit. But if a bunch of people like your stuff and it doesn’t lead to conversations, then what really happened? Their likes might get it in front of more people, because I think that’s how the algorithm works. But, if people are not actually engaging with it and initiating conversations with you, then I believe there’s a lot of opportunity that is lost. And when you talk about delegating this kind of thing, hiring other people to create social media for you. If they don’t know what the goal is, then the stuff they create is not likely to produce the result. When they think the goal is to get likes, then they’re going to create content that is designed to get likes. If the goal is to interact with people, initiate conversations with people who could potentially buy from you, then what we’re doing on social media has to be completely different. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I also think you know, you talked about conversations. It actually has become a very important part of the algorithm that you get comments and more importantly, that you reply to those comments, whether or not they’re important or not. If you could reply in such a way that they respond back then that’s going to increase the algorithm. So that’s an important part just to get it seen by more people. But then if they’re actually interacting with you, you’re now building the relationship. And I think oftentimes we forget relationships are the most important part of our business. Anytime I close a sale, when I’m done, I almost feel like I’ve gained a new friend. And in a lot of ways, I have. Somebody that I’m providing a service for, they appreciate that service. And it all starts with a conversation somewhere, like you said, on the phone, in the comments, that’s where it’s all going to begin. David: Yeah. I think also tracking what’s going on is important, and a lot of people don’t do that. They have a vague idea of, oh, this got a lot of likes. I got a bunch of comments here or there. People seem to like this one or that one. But none of that is really tangible enough to be able to justify, in some cases, the amount of time that goes into it. So if you track how much time you’re putting into it and you’re able to track how many leads you get as a result of it, and by leads, it may just be something as simple as having a conversation with someone, whether it is in the comments or whether it is through DMing, that type of thing. Then you’ve got some metrics. You’ve got some basic metrics to look at, to say, “okay, I put an hour and a half into this and I had two people enter into conversations with me.” Is that worthwhile? Well, let’s keep track of those two people. What happened? Were they even prospects? Did you get them qualified as quickly as possible? Were you able to sell to anybody who might have actually been interested in buying? Was it worthwhile? Because if you can make a decent volume sale with an hour and a half involvement on social media, then you can say, all right, that was worthwhile. If you put in an hour and a half on it and you have no conversations with anyone, then you keep track of it and you say, okay, well how much have I been putting in? Have I put in 10 hours, 15 hours, a hundred hours? And if so, how many conversations have I engaged in? How many of them led to actual sales conversations and did it generate a single dollar? And if it didn’t, then you either need to look at, is it the marketing vehicle itself? Is it the social media? Is that the problem? Am I not connected with the right people? Or am I not saying the right things? Goes back to what we talked about in a lot of these episodes, the MVPs of marketing and sales. Is my messaging right? Am I using the right combination of marketing vehicles and who are the people or prospects that I need to reach. If things aren’t working, it is always at least one of those things, sometimes more than one. Jay: Yeah. Such a great point. Tracking is, and, and measuring such an important part about social media. We started doing this a while ago and it never fails. The posts that I thought were not going to go anywhere, they blow up. And the ones where I was so proud of them and they just went nowhere. I have hashtags in my database and anytime something breaks like a thousand views, that to me is something. And I don’t know why, you know, I’ll do three posts, they average 300, and then the next one will have 12,000. And I don’t claim to know what the difference was. But I can see as I go along that there are trends in the description, you know, in the headline? Sometimes your content is great, but there’s a skillset in just knowing what to title your videos and your posts. That’s why I’ve also become a big fan of focusing on what your skillsets are. And so I do want to point out, it’s so easy nowadays to find people who are talented and skilled in this area on sites like Fiverr or Upwork. And so it may just be that you need to hire some help to do this for you, and then you focus on the conversations and on the closing. David: Yes, and if you are hiring someone, you need to let them know what your priorities are. Because a lot of people who do that sort of work, they think the goal is to get likes and engagement, and to some extent it is engagement, but the engagement needs to lead to the conversations that are going to result in sales. If they think that you’re going to be happy with just getting views and clicks, then they may be missing the point. Jay: Yeah. And you know, this happened to me. I ran for public office a couple of times and brought in an advertising firm, and they don’t really take the time to get to know me. And so every time we’d sit down and they’d show me what they’re going to post and stuff like this I’m having to repeat myself. Like they’re locked into this specific thing. And I’m like, that doesn’t match who I am and who I’m trying to attract. So that’s such an important first step in the process. Who are those customers? What is the message they want to hear? Can we provide valuable content? And how do we get them to get their fingers on that keyboard? David: Yeah, exactly. So just thinking those things through, recognizing that there should be a goal, there should be some tangible measure measurement. And if you just focus on that, you will probably create better results with your social media. Jay: Yeah, fantastic discussion, David. How do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team if you’re struggling with this. If you need to be able to get more clients, more quickly, whether it’s on social media or outside of social media, we’d love to have the conversation to see if we can help. So it’s TopSecrets.com/call. Jay: As always, David, such a pleasure talking to you. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Start Getting More Sales from Your Social Media? If so, check out a few ways we can help you grow your sales & profits: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

May 19, 202613 min

Are Your Priorities BS? Aligning Actions With Goals

Are your priorities BS? Well, focusing on that area in particular, looking at what are the things in my life that really are important to me? What are the actions that I want to take and need to take that are important to me? Even if they’re not urgent, how can I get those things scheduled so that they have a better likelihood of getting done? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic Are Your Priorities BS? Welcome, Jay. Jay: Hey, David, as always, such a pleasure to be with you. And another great topic. I think that it’s so easy to just do the squirrel thing or the squeaky wheel gets the grease and we don’t really know what our priorities should be a lot of the time that’s half the battle I think. David: Yeah, I think that’s true. Knowing what our priorities are and recognizing that a lot of times they’re not really what we think they are. And most of the time when I talk about stuff on these podcasts, it’s not because I’m particularly smart, is because I feel like I’ve made every stupid mistake that anyone can make. And so if I can help our listeners and viewers to avoid doing some of those things, then that’s a pretty good service. And when I think about priorities and I reflect on the priorities that I’ve had over the years and over my life, I recognize that we have priorities that we really put out there. We say, okay, this is what’s important to me. What’s important to me is my family. What’s important to me are my friends. What’s important to me is, whatever, losing weight, like if we have goals, my my priority is to do this and to do that, and all these different things. And then when we look at our actions and we realize that our actions don’t really line up with what we say our priorities are, it raises the questions are our priorities BS? And I think in some cases, even when we don’t realize it, they might be. Jay: Yeah. First of all, I’d say there’s nothing wrong with learning in the school of hard knocks. I mean, sometimes those are the best lessons we can learn. But I also think it, we can spin our wheels a lot trying to reinvent the wheel, so learning from other people can help expedite that process. Right? Which is why I’m glad you’re so willing to share the trials that you’ve had. I think that that’s so critical. But I think you’re right. We’ve talked a lot in the past about self assessment. Can you really look at yourself and know what your weaknesses are and what your strengths are? And oftentimes, I think you’re right. We think something is a priority for us, but in the grand scheme of things, and according to our own actions, it’s really not. And we’re kind of fooling ourselves. David: Yeah, and the way that I’ve actually sort of worked through some of this is recognizing that there’s a really big difference between our stated priorities, the things that we say are priorities to us, and then our actual priorities, meaning the priorities we act on the things that we do, the actual steps that we take or don’t take. Because if our priority is to spend time with our family and our actions are that we’re working all the time and we’re not spending time with our family, then we have two different sets of priorities, our stated priorities that always sound good, and then our actual priorities, which is what we’re doing on a daily basis. Jay: Yeah, I see this all the time in like TV reality shows. I don’t know why this comes to mind, but you see people saying, my family is the most important thing to me, and they’re working 80 hours a week at their career, or their job. And I’m sitting there thinking, Hmm, no, I don’t think you really understand what your priorities really are. David: Yeah, and most people are sincere, I think, when they say those things. It’s just that in many cases, life interferes. And when we allow life to interfere, then it turns out that our actual priorities are different than the ones that we’re telling ourselves and telling other people. Jay: So how do we sift through that? How do we do that self assessment and really identify what our core priorities are, and maybe we need to identify them as BS and head in a different direction. David: Well, I put together a worksheet. You can download it here. It’s very simple. It’s basically got stated priorities on the left and actual priorities on the right, and what you do is you list down on the left hand side all the things that I tell other people and that I tell myself are my actual priorities. And then you just keep an eye on what you’re doing every day. Did I take action on my top priority on the left hand side of the page? And if I didn’t, what did I do instead? If my goal is to write a book and instead I slept until 10:30, then I’ve got a stated priority and I’ve got an actual priority. And so when I’m working with clients, these are some of the things that we look at. What is it that is most important to you? What is it that you believe, that you truly believe is most important to you? What do you believe your priorities are, and then what are the actions that demonstrate what your actual priorities are? Jay: Yeah, and I think, people have specific priorities, but they get trapped in the every day. So it’s not like it isn’t my priority and the priority’s not really BS. What is BS is that I’m, not doing anything towards it. I’m letting my business run me instead of me running my business. David: Yeah, I mean, a personal one for me is like I’ve been losing and gaining the same 10 pounds for probably 20 years, right? So if my priority is actually to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is. But then I have a conflicting priority, which is, “oh, dessert!” Right? Then those two things are in conflict. And every time I choose the dessert, which is the actual priority, it’s the action that happens over the stated priority of losing the weight, then it really is BS. It’s BS to say that this is the goal, if the actions on the right hand side of the sheet are not going to correspond to that. And that’s where I feel like, by calling ourselves out on it, it might encourage us to take the actions that we need to take to accomplish the results we’re looking for and to really get our priorities in order. Jay: Yeah, and let me tell you, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, of breaking even on weight loss. David .Losing 10, gaining 10, at least you’re not completely losing that battle. So that’s something to be proud of. So we talked about the worksheet and identifying your priorities. And making sure they’re not BS. I’m guessing then you want to set a path, you’ve got to break that down into smaller chunks or something. You can’t just say, “oh yeah, that’s my new priority,” or that I’ve identified it. You’ve got to talk about how you’re going to get there. Right? David: Right. So when we look at the left side of the page and we compare it with the right, and we determine that, okay, our actions are not in line with our priorities, then it’s a matter of looking at each of those priorities and breaking each of those down into projects and tasks essentially. So a project is anything that requires more than one action. A task is basically one action, right? That’s the way I break it out. So if there are a series of three or four things that I need to do to accomplish that, then those are three or four tasks. If there are three or four or five or 10 related things that belong to an entire project, then I put it in the form of a project. And the way that I manage my time is that I use a time planner that allows me to use different colors for different things. So I use one color for projects and another color for tasks because I can look at it and say, okay, here’s a task. This is something I can knock out relatively quickly. And when you know which goals, which priorities your projects and tasks line up with, then you can always be taking action on something that is actually important to you. Jay: Yeah. And I think you’ve hit on something very key as part of this process is by writing things down, by having a color code, by doing those things, you’re giving yourself kind of back testing, right? So you can look back and say, okay, you know, do a monthly assessment. I know people who spend a couple hours on Sundays just reflecting back on their previous week and saying “Did I really make my priorities, priorities?” And so that process of writing it down, whether it’s digitally or some people still use day planners, you know, they actually still use paper. That drives me crazy. But I understand, because that’s got to be an important part of the process. David: Yeah. And I think the calendar is really an important part of the process because we could do another podcast called “To-Do Lists are BS,” right? Because I feel like in a lot of cases they are. If you have a to-do list that has a hundred things on it and you don’t get to most of them… If you’re getting to the most important things, then it’s worthwhile. But if you’re not, then how do you fix that? And generally, the only way that I’ve ever been able to fix it is to budget time on the calendar for those specific activities, block it off just like you would any other appointment and say, “okay, from this time to this time, this is what I’m doing.” Turning off the phone, not answering calls focused on doing this just as if I were having a meeting or an appointment and making that appointment with yourself. I’m sure I’m not the first person to recommend something like that, but for me, just moving things from a to-do list onto a calendar helps a great deal. As long as you’re willing to follow through on what’s on your calendar. And if you’re not, yeah, then you got some real issues. Jay: Yeah, it’s really a place where I struggle. I kind of have a good idea where my priorities are, but moving them into a schedule, I still have the tendency to just kind of do whatever I feel I want to do. that’s the life I want to live, as opposed to the things that are most important in that moment. And that comes from the fact that I haven’t identified and categorized them by level of importance. And so, again, I’m letting the mayhem of the day, and my own emotions, dictate what I’m working on at any given time. David: Yeah, I remember reading the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and he referenced, I think it’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. I think Eisenhower is the one who came up with it originally or popularized it. You can download it here The idea that you draw a cross on a piece of paper and you break out your priorities according to urgent and important. So one of the Sections is urgent and important. Another one is urgent, but not important. Another one is not important, but urgent. And then not important. And not urgent. Okay, that’s it. Breaks out something like that. And of course, the things that are not important and not urgent are probably the things we shouldn’t do at all. But very often they’re the easiest things to do. They’re the most tempting, and they get the attention. The things that are urgent and important tend to get done because they’re urgent and you have to do them. But the sweet spot is the area that is not urgent but important, and that’s the area that tends to get neglected in favor of the other areas. So, even doing something like that, breaking it out and saying, “okay, what are the most important tasks that I need to get done? What are the most important actions I need to take that I haven’t taken that are not time sensitive?” Because that’s what always nails us. If there’s something that’s time sensitive, that’s going to jump in ahead. And then the other category of not important but urgent, a ringing telephone, for example. Some people might view that, if they’re required to answer it, as urgent. And in that case, you don’t know who’s going to be on the other end. You have no idea how it matches with your goals or your priorities. You end up taking the call and at that point you can be derailing your success. So focusing on that area in particular, looking at what are the things in my life that really are important to me? What are the actions that I want to take and need to take that are important to me? Even if they’re not urgent, how can I get those things scheduled so that they have a better likelihood of getting done? Jay: Yeah, I love that. So figuring out first what your priorities currently are. Are they BS? Then identifying what you really want those priorities to be, and then creating a plan and scheduling that plan. Such great advice. How do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re struggling to get to the results you’re looking for because of whatever, if it’s time management, if it’s a failure to actually address your own priorities, you know, there are combinations of things that can help. One of the things that I think we struggle with sometimes, and this might be a good topic for a future podcast, is the fact that in some cases, we think that more energy and more effort is going to fix the problem. But if the things that we’re doing are designed to create average results, then putting time and energy into them is just going to create average results faster. It’s not going to create exceptional results. And so by changing the activities that we’re engaged in, maybe changing the way that we’re doing some of those things, the results change dramatically. So if that makes sense to you, if you’d like to have a conversation, TopSecrets.com/call. We would love to talk with you about that. Jay: All right, David, we really appreciate you sharing your experience and what you’ve learned from trial and error and this service that you offer where people can just talk about it, because I think that’s a great place to start. Thank you so much for joining us today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Take Action on Your Real Priorities? If so, check out a few ways we can help you grow your sales & profits: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

May 12, 202615 min

Stop Wasting Time on Unqualified Prospects

Unqualified prospects can be a huge waste of time. Lately, I’ve been on a bit of a kick in terms of commitment versus interest. If you’re interested in the possibility of working with us, that’s very different than if you’re committed to getting the results you want in your business and working with us to do it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the pursuit of unqualified prospects. Welcome, Jay! Jay: Hey, it’s so great to be here again, David, and I always love the topics that we get into. I think usually, I’m in pursuit of just any prospect. I don’t give a lot of thought to are they qualified, are they not? It’s like, just send me all the leads and I’ll sort through it. I’m sure I’m wasting a lot of time doing that. David: It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s like just looking for warm bodies. Anybody who can fog a mirror, right? And to some extent, that’s part of every process. Because we really don’t know who’s qualified and who’s not until and unless we have a qualification procedure in place to figure that out. Or if we just get good at it from having conversations and hearing what people say. So I think you’re right. I think no one really sets out to pursue unqualified prospects. But to some extent, we all do it every day. Jay: Yeah, exactly. I will tell you that as a company, we’ve done some things. when we first started using Google ads. It was crazy. I mean, we were getting so many responses. And then after taking all of these leads and calls, we realized that 90% of them were not good. Because, our key words that we were using for Google were bringing us the wrong type of client that we couldn’t help and that we couldn’t close. So once we just did something as simple as figure out our keywords, wow, that saved us a lot of time and money. David: It really helps to dial it in, doesn’t it? When you’re more specific and it, you’re right. It could be the difference of one additional parameter, one additional thing that you’re saying in the messaging that you’re putting out there. Because all of that’s going to contribute to the type of people who respond to your ads when we’re talking about leading with advertising. Jay: Yeah, exactly. The other thing we found is a seasonality to it, and you and I have talked about seasonality a lot when it comes to sales. But we’ve found that the same keywords don’t work the same all year long, that there’s different motivations that things change. And so, we’re kind of starting to keep track of that now for the first time, and I’m excited. You know, we probably won’t reap the benefits of that until next year. But that’s how far ahead we have to be, to know when and how to start pivoting and adjusting. David: Yeah, I can see exactly how that could be the case. And it’s something that you discover through doing it, right? Through iterations. You try different things and you say, Hey, this isn’t working. This used to work. What’s the reason for that? So a lot of it too is sometimes talking to people. One of the things that we’ve done for a long time is when people make a decision not to work with us, or sometimes, if someone expresses interest in working with us, but then doesn’t follow through, we’ll reach out to those people and find out. “Hey, it looks like you were thinking about contacting us. Looks like you were maybe thinking about scheduling a strategy session with us. You didn’t do it. What was it that held you back? And the answers you get from that can be extremely helpful in terms of finding out what might also be holding other people back. Jay: Yeah. That is so powerful. I think sometimes people are afraid. They’ve turned you down and they’re afraid that if you make another phone call you’re going to be bothersome to them. But if you do it in the right approach, or it can even be done in a form, a survey after the fact. You know, some way to kind of gather and harness that information. Something really obvious might rise to the top and you’re like going, “oh my goodness, why didn’t we think about that? It should have been so easy for us to see,” but we get that tunnel vision so often. David: Yeah, and everything’s obvious in hindsight, right? Once we figured it out, I was like, “oh, of course. How did I not know that?” You know, one of the things, too, that I think about unqualified prospects is that they’re everywhere. Right? They are everywhere. And I know one of the early mistakes that I made in my business was assuming that everybody was going to be qualified until they proved otherwise. And that’s a tough mistake to make, too. Jay: Yeah, totally. I mean, you have to be proactive about this process. If you’re letting them decide if they’re qualified, well then again, you’re going through a pile of paper, a pile of leads, whatever it is, and you’re honestly just wasting time and time is money. And if you can get that down to where, your close rate you know, instead of one out of a hundred, you can get, five out of 20 because you’ve got 20 good leads instead of a hundred anybodies. That could change your whole life. It could change your whole business with just that one simple adjustment. David: Yeah. And numbers like that frequently do. They change everything. They change your life, they change your business, they change the number of sales you’re going to make. They change everything. And when we look at it, and think in terms of the fact that, yeah, we have to determine if somebody’s qualified to do business with us. But on the flip side, they are also deciding whether or not we are qualified to do business with them. So as you pointed out, sometimes people think they’re qualified. They think that perhaps they want to do business with us. But then when we have questions, when we ask them some things, we may determine that it’s not a good fit on our side. It has to go both ways. One of the things that I’ve always maintained is that when two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they will figure out a way to do it. But if one of them doesn’t, it’s not going to happen. If you and I are talking about putting something together and we’re both pretty excited about the idea, we’ll make it happen. But even if he or she’s not saying it, if one of us doesn’t want to make it happen, there will be excuses. Things will come up and it just won’t end up happening. So when you realize that and you say, “okay, well these people think they’re qualified to do business with me, I’m either going to have a conversation with them or not.” I mean, if you can determine that somebody’s not qualified ahead of time, you can potentially avoid a conversation. Normally, if somebody is excited about doing business with us, we want to at least have the conversation. But very early on in those conversations, you can usually figure out whether or not it’s going to be a fit. And if is, then great. You move forward and you work with them. And if it’s not, you determine that as early as possible. Then you either recommend another solution for them, or everybody just sort of moves on and goes from there. Jay: Yeah. This is such a unique and powerful, perspective. David, I was talking to a financial planner the other day and I was asking him, “so what is your criteria for a new client?” And he said, “well, we sit them down and we interview them to see if they meet our standards for a new client. I was sitting there going, wait a minute, you interview them? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? That they’re assessing you to see if you’re good for their business? And he’s like, “No, we decided years ago exactly what our potential client looks like. We know who we can help and who we can’t. And if we choose the wrong client, then both sides are going to be dissatisfied because we didn’t do the work upfront to see, like you said, if there’s going to be a cohesive, kind of gel between the two parties. David: Right. And the other reason that I think he’s right is that we can only ever decide if we feel that someone is qualified to do business with us. We can’t decide it the other way. So if you think about it from the standpoint of a financial planner, yeah, they need to decide is this person going to be a good fit for us? Do they have enough money to invest? Do they have a similar philosophy to the way that we operate? And if those answers are yes, then it makes sense to work together. On the other side, the client is thinking, “okay, is this person on the same wavelength as me? Am I going to trust this person with my money?” But those are the decisions that that person gets to make, right? The client makes a decision. And the organization, the salesperson makes a decision. They both have to come to positive decisions if they’re ever going to move forward. And the thing is, we can’t decide for the person. We can try to convince or persuade them to do business with us. But generally, it’s far easier to find people who you resonate with and who resonate with you so that you can just put it together. Everything becomes a whole lot easier when you’re on the same page. Like I said, when two people want to do business together, they’ll figure out a way to do it. Jay: Yeah. An d it’s because, you know, and we’ve talked about this so much, it’s about relationships. no matter how you slice it, there’s going to be a long-term relationship between the two of you. It is going to be about more than just picking up the phone and calling you. It’s going to be, “Hey, how’s it going?” There’s going to be understanding of each other’s lives and each other’s needs. I will tell you another point is I’m getting really good, because I spent so much time on the phone, at figuring out which clients are going to be so demanding that they will be problematic well through the process. And so I’m getting good at assessing, whether or not, I want to just say, “you know what, we probably can’t suit your situation, but there are some other options out there. Have a nice day.” Because if even on the first phone call they’re that way, well imagine how they’re going to get through the ordering process and through all of those things, I just don’t want to deal with the headaches. And often I’m going to end up giving them a refund anyway, because I couldn’t make them happy. And so, you know, I’m realizing and starting to understand that I need to be picky about who I bring into our business and who we decide to service. David: Yeah, no question. Because like you said, if they’re not going to be pleasant on that initial call, how are they going to be when it’s time to collect on what they purchase from you? If you’re going to have to go chase them for money, if they’re rude when you’re just meeting them for the first time, imagine how they’ll be when they owe you money? But one of the things that I tend to think of, when we think in terms of unqualified prospect, well, what does it mean? You know, to me it means… Unqualified people are the people who don’t have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, right? Because, and it’s kind of in that order, if they don’t have the need or the desire, then they’re not going to do it. If they don’t have the money, then they can’t do it. If they have a budget, but they don’t have a willingness to spend, right? Some people say they’ll do something, but then just won’t spend the money. I mean, these are all sort of different things, but they all tie together. They’re all related, and they determine whether or not somebody is actually qualified to do business with us. One of the other things I look at is if they’re rude, obnoxious, belligerent, uncommunicative. Woo. That’s a big one. And it didn’t used to be, for me. In the early stages of my business, if people were not rude, not obnoxious, if they were personable or whatever, I would really pursue them to the ends of the earth. But if they weren’t communicative, it kind of kills all the rest of it. And so I’m certainly at a point now where even if somebody is nice and pleasant and they seem interested in wanting to do something, if they don’t communicate, I tend not to pursue anymore. Because if I have to chase somebody to remain engaged and remain interested and we end up doing business together, am I going to have to try to chase them to do the things they’ll need to do to get the results they want in their business? Because I can’t do that either, right? And so there needs to be that reciprocal level of interest and willingness to communicate. Lately, I’ve also been on a bit of a kick in terms of commitment versus interest. If you’re interested in the possibility of working with us, that’s very different than if you’re committed to getting the results you want in your business and working with us to do it. Some people are interested in the idea of growing their sales. They’re interested in the idea of getting more customers. Interest is not going to cut it until you get to the point where you are absolutely committed to the idea of growing your sales and profits, growing your customer base, finally hitting the level of sales that you wished you would’ve hit years ago. Until you reach that level of commitment to say, “okay, I’m going to take action. I’m going to do this.” Then all the interest in the world is really, nothing. Jay: Yeah, really wasted. And, one final point that I’d like to make is that, you mentioned, you know, maybe it’s because they can’t afford it right now. Maybe it doesn’t fit into their plan. Maybe they don’t necessarily fit the perfect model. These are not lost people. These are people that you can put in your drip program from your customer management system. And I’ve had this happen. I had it happen to me two days ago. I get an order out of nowhere and I’m like, “I don’t even remember talking to this guy.” And I pull up my system and I’m all, I talked to him eight months ago. He said he probably was not going to use our service. I threw him into my drip program and he received emails from us every month. And then when the time came, he’s finally ready. Now he became a customer. So it’s not like these conversations that we have are a waste of time if it’s the situation where they can’t afford it right now, they see the point, but it just doesn’t work for them. Those are still prospects. David: Yeah, absolutely. And so when they move from interested to committed or when they… well, even there, I would still say that if they don’t have the money right now and they’re committed to doing it, then we’ve got somebody that is going to be a good quality prospect. If you have somebody who’s mildly interested, they don’t have the money now, well, they may have the money later, but if they’re not committed to the process, they’re still not going to spend it. So I think we’re on the same page. I think maybe we just look at it a little differently in terms of who’s interested in and who’s actually committed. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So how do people find out more? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you are looking to get to the kind of prospects that you need, if you’re looking to be able to qualify those prospects as quickly as possible, and jettison the ones who are not good quality prospects for you. A lot of times the reason that people don’t make the sales that they want to make is that they spend too much time pursuing unqualified prospects. So one of the things that we do in our Total Market Domination course is we give you a process for being able to do that as quickly as possible. You know, speed of implementation is key. If I can get somebody qualified in or out. Within the first conversation, that’s a whole lot better than if I have multiple meetings, multiple phone calls, and then four months later I determine this person isn’t a good fit. So if any of this resonates with you, and if you’d like to have a conversation, TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have the conversation. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, as always, it’s a pleasure talking to you. David: Thanks. You too, Jay. Ready to Stop Wasting Time on Unqualified Prospects? If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

May 6, 202612 min

Stand Out from Competitors: What Makes You Different?

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

April 28, 202615 min

Strengthen Client Relationships & Increase Repeat Business

Strengthen client relationships if you want to increase repeat business. Some people feel like they can get more attention from a salesperson calling than they get at home because maybe they feel like this person’s listening, paying attention and then asking about it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to strengthen client relationships. Welcome back. Jay: Hey, David, once again. It’s great to be here and I think that this is another really, really important topic. The key word for me is relationships. I think that oftentimes you see people with a business model who want to “turn ’em and burn ’em,” so to speak, and they don’t think about that word, relationships and how important it is. David: Yeah. And very often, even if they don’t intend to do it, the tendency among many salespeople is to get in there, make the sale, move on, get to the next one, get to the next one, get to the next one. And when it happens this way, it’s very difficult to really maximize the value of those relationships in terms of dollars, but also just in terms of the relationship itself. When you do that, when you just get in there, you sell something and then you move on to the next one, you’re not really building and nurturing a relationship, which is critical if you don’t want to have to constantly replace the clients that you’re losing because you’re not maintaining those relationships in the first place. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is that there is for most companies a customer acquisition cost. And so if you’ve already paid that cost to get that customer, well, that goes away if you can build a relationship and they continue to use you. That to me is just such an important approach. If you’re just doing it one at a time, you’re going to pay that cost every single time, and it’s going to lower your profit margins. David: I completely agree, and people talk about that sort of thing all the time. We all know that it costs a whole lot less to resell an existing customer than it does to find and sell a new customer. We all know it intellectually, but it is rarely practiced as well as it could be and should be within most businesses. You know, an analogy that helped me a lot was when I realized that when we’re building a client base, it’s a little like building a brick wall. You know, you get that first brick in place and then you get the next brick in place and the next brick in place, right? So your first year in business, you’ve got this sort of layer of bricks. These are each of the initial customers that you brought in. And then, your second year in business, if you’re able to maintain all the customers you brought in the first time, then you can add on, you can layer in another layer of bricks, another layer of customers, and then your third year you can build in a third level and you can continue to grow it like that. And eventually you’ve got this great monolith of exceptional clients who continue to pay you money on an ongoing basis. But the problem is that we are not able to retain those customers. You get a crack in that, one of the bricks disappears from the first level, then your second year in business, you’re starting out by plugging the holes. You have to replace those missing customers. And so everything takes a lot longer. You’re essentially reconstructing your customer base, and a lot of it is unnecessary if we would just focus on strengthening and maintaining those client relationships. Jay: Yeah, and there’s several ways to do that, right? Phone calls, emails, drip campaigns from your customer management system. There’s a lot of ways to do that. But I got to tell you, you know, as somebody who’s on the phone all day long doing sales, when I already know that person and they know me, it’s just easier all the way around. I mean, it just feels so good when I call ’em and they’re like, “Hey Jay, how’s it going?” Instead of, “what do you want?” You know, “I don’t have time for you.” It doesn’t just affect your sales, I think it affects your peace of mind, right? To work with customers who know you and like you, and know you provide a good service. That’s just a great feeling and it really helps motivate you, I think, to move forward. David: Yeah, and so much of it is a mentality issue. If we go into that call with the idea of “I want to sell this person something.” With every single call, then that’s not going to build and strengthen the relationship. Sometimes those calls are just designed to find out how they’re doing, what they need, what they’re struggling with, how the last thing that we sold them worked out for them, what’s working for them, what’s not working for them. Because those are the types of things that many salespeople never bothered to do. They’re just so busy, as you indicated, just sort of churning and getting from the next customer to the next customer, to the next customer that they miss out on, okay, well what happened with that order? What happened with that thing you bought from me? Did that work out well? Are there things that could have been done better? If you’re buying something for me, and this is particularly true in the promotional products industry, where sometimes people will buy promotional items and we’ll contact them back and say, Hey, how did that promotion go? And they say, you know what? It’s still here in a box by my desk. We haven’t given them out yet. Well, that’s not going to get the job done, right. Not only is that not going to get you a reorder, it’s not going to get them whatever result they wanted from buying that product in the first place. And so those are the types of things that need to be corrected. So very often, what I recommend for my clients is that when there is follow up, effective follow up on a sale, it’s not just about, are you out of the thing you bought for me yet, and do you want to buy more? It’s about how did that go? What might have worked better? What other alternatives could and should we consider? Because that’s the type of thing that allows them to recognize that we’re actually trying to solve a need for them. We’re trying to solve a problem as opposed to just providing them more and more stuff. Jay: Yeah, I love this concept. Something as simple as a follow up call to say how did that work out? And if it didn’t, help educate them on how they could do it better and come up with strategies together to make it work, and not make it sound like I’m just pressuring you for more product. I think that that builds a powerful relationship. And maybe they don’t need more product right now. But because you’ve taken the time to do that, it’s one of the things I love about your brick wall concept is you may not even be calling the first layer right now. But you’re going to get surprise orders from them that you weren’t expecting because they’re starting another campaign or whatever. So it stops being just when I call, I get an order. And starts being this constant income stream from all of these relationships that I’ve built over time. And that’s a lot less work, right? David: It is a lot less work, yes. And one of the things that we focus on in our Total Market Domination course with our clients is the idea of creating value in every communication with a prospect or client. So if somebody bought from you previously, when we’re reaching out to them, it’s not just about asking for the order. It’s about creating value and asking yourself a question, how can I create value in my next communication? Whether it’s an email or a text, or a phone call. Not just the idea of “checking in” or “seeing how you’re doing,” but being able to say something that will actually create some value for them in terms of an idea, a thought they didn’t have, a concept they hadn’t considered before. Something that allows them to think, “oh wow, that’s great. I hadn’t thought of that.” And then for a lot of people, Potentially automating that sort of thing. And that’s another one of the things that we get involved with in our program, is allowing our people to create, set up drip campaigns that are designed to create value for the prospects and clients, even when we’re not physically in front of them. Because too often, one of the reasons that follow up doesn’t happen is, oh, well I don’t have time. I’m too busy. I’m distracted. Right? I’m busy dealing with other clients. But when you are able to. Create value in your communications and potentially stack that value in the form of messages that are going out on an ongoing basis to create value for the specific purpose of creating value for those customers. It creates a level of loyalty that most people never see. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think, you know, when you talk about value in emails, I know from my own personal experience, going through all the emails we get, and let’s be honest, we get so many emails. When they’re just like, “Hey, we’ve got a special on this.” I’m like, “delete.” But when for example, if I got an email saying, here’s a promotional product success story, right? Something like that, to me I would be much more likely to read that if I rely on promotional products. Because I know that’s going to help me. And educate me a little bit. So we try that in every one of our drip campaigns as well. We’ve got to have something more than just a price point or a sale, something valuable that will draw them in. And also, I think it helps them know that you care, you want to educate them. So again, it changes that relationship. So, so important. David: And when we think about the idea of building relationships or strengthening relationships, obviously it involves communication. Business relationships are very much like personal relationships. So it requires communication. And sometimes we can even build into our nurture campaigns, our follow up campaigns. Messages that are just designed to open a conversation. It could be something as simple as sending out a message saying what do you have going on this week? Something like that, an open-ended question that somebody might actually reply to, to get you engaged in conversation. Let the person know you’re thinking about them and maintain that relationship. Jay: Yeah, and I also, you know, some of the relationships, the business relationships that I have, Would consider my top tier? I know about their families. I know about their lives. I know about how their business is going. And it’s not like I pried, it’s just every time I call, it’s just, Hey, how’s everything going? And people will automatically, they’ll tell you. Well, it was a tough week because this happened and this happened. And if I’m making notes on that and things like that, then the next time we follow up I’m like, “so how is that going?” You know, those types of things go so far in taking that relationship to the next level. And even then, the really top tier clients, I would say, Hey, let’s get together for dinner sometime. And at dinner we don’t talk business, we get to know each other. We talk family, we do those kind of things. So relationship really means something. It has strong value. And if you can find ways to build that, those relationships could last the entire time of your business ,right? And just go on and on. David: Yeah, no question. And one of the important keys to that, I think, is recognizing that in personal relationships, we very often will pick up the conversation right where we left off the last time. There are probably people you know, you might not have seen them in years and years and years, and as soon as you see ’em, you can just pick up on that conversation right away. We want to be able to do the same thing In business. In business, we usually accomplish that with our contact management system. You enter the appropriate notes in there about what you talked about so that you can reference that conversation. That sort of thing builds relationships, calling people and just saying, what do you want to buy next? Not so much. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you and I take notes on everything, any interaction with a customer, not just what they’ve ordered, but what they’ve said during that conversation. and I want to point out, people may be hearing this and saying, well, it’s kind of mechanical and you’re keeping notes on them and when you call back you’re just, responding or asking those questions because you only want the sale. I have found just the opposite. They become friendships. And when they become a friendship, now there’s no way they’re going to go to somebody else. I mean, when I was in radio, I had people who said, “I am only using Jay for our ads.” And it was because I worked very hard to establish that relationship and we were friends. We were not clients or business partners. We were absolute friends. And if you can reach that goal, then that’s going to last forever, you know? David: Yeah, exactly. And it takes the same kind of thing. I mean, the same things that go into a personal relationship should go into our best business relationships. Jay: Yeah. David: And if you’ve got perfect memory and you don’t have to make notes or write things down, then knock yourself out. For most of us, particularly if you’re dealing with a lot of people, the notes help because you can pick up that conversation. You can know that they will be on the same page. You know, another analogy to this is if you’re making a number of calls a day and that person isn’t, they have one person to remember, you. And you’ve got a dozen people to remember. So if you’re able to make those notes and pick up those conversations right where you left off, it just creates a sense of relationship that you will not have if you are not able to do that. Jay: Yeah. And the other thing is, it plants in their mind, this guy was listening to me last time. Right? And so that tells them, that sends a message that you cared enough to remember those things. And you know, I ‘ve had that experience and I’m like, “wow, we talked six months ago and you still remember all that stuff.” You know, that tells me you care. David: Exactly. Some people feel like they can get more attention from a salesperson calling than they get at home because maybe they feel like this person’s listening, paying attention and then asking about it. It doesn’t always happen as well as it should in personal relationships. Same thing in business. But in business, there’s something very simple you can do about it. Just take the notes and pick up the conversation where you left off. Jay: Yeah, I love that. David, how can people find out more? David: Well, you should go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with our team so we can help you try to figure out where you are now, where you’re looking to be. If you’re looking to strengthen your client relationships, we can help you with everything from sequencing your communications to doing that kind of thing on automation. We help our clients to create the results they’re looking for. And so if you’d like to have a conversation, we’d love to have it with you. Just go to that URL and we’ll talk to you soon. Jay: Well, I have loved this conversation, David. Thank you so much. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Strengthen Client Relationships & Increase Repeat Business? If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

April 21, 202613 min

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

Don’t feel like you’re earning what you’re worth? Consider this: When you outproduce what you earn, it creates friction. It creates a bit of tension. And in most well-run businesses, the organization says, “this person needs to be compensated more.” If that’s not happening in the organization you’re with, if you are outproducing what you’re earning, it means that there are plenty of opportunities for you somewhere else that will actually recognize and appreciate that value and reward you accordingly. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be asking the question, are you earning what you’re worth? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David, it’s great to be with you again. And as I was thinking about this question, I realize I’m not sure I know what I’m worth. I know some people who say, my time is worth this much money. If I’m not making it, I have to change something or do something. I’m not there yet. I’m just not. David: Yeah. I think you’re not alone. I think there are a lot of people who struggle with this. The real challenge comes in the last half of the question. You know what you’re worth because you can’t answer the question until you determine that part of it. Are you earning it? Well, I don’t know. I have to know what I’m worth. Or I have to decide what I’m worth, choose what I’m worth. Choose what I think I’m worth. I’ve said this to a number of people over the years. The reason that I ended up getting into business myself is that I couldn’t find anyone else who was willing to pay me what I thought I was worth. Right? You work in different jobs and say, okay, I feel like I’m worth more than this. Well, when you start your own business, you earn what you’re worth. Because if you’re not producing anything, you’re not earning anything. And if you start earning, then whatever you’re producing justifies it. And so essentially you’re earning what you’re worth. But even with all that, those of us in sales or those of us who own businesses, may still feel like the work we’re doing is costing us too much in terms of time and energy and effort and not producing what we’re looking for in terms of financial results. That’s why I ask the question. Jay: Yeah. I think it is so important that there’s other ways to be paid for your worth. You know, if you’re in a place where you get job recognition, where they listen to your ideas, where you can climb up the ladder, for a lot of people that’s worth more than the bottom line paycheck. Now, if they’re not getting enough to pay their bills, then obviously cash is king. But all the surveys I’ve seen say that people would take less money if they felt like they could get rewarded in other ways. Now, when you’re working for yourself, that equation changes completely. David: Yeah. And I mean, a lot of times people start their own business. They do their own thing because they figure it’s going to give them all sorts of time freedom and things that they don’t have in a regular job. And very often they find out it’s exactly the opposite. I think it was Michael Gerber, the author of the EMyth who talked about the fact that there are a lot of people who work for other companies and they say to themselves, “okay, this guy’s a jerk. I’m going to start my own business.” And they stop working for a jerk and they start working for a maniac… themselves. And when I heard that line I’m like, “that is so true.” So often we will do things in our own businesses that we would probably never do for another employer. We wouldn’t put in the amount of hours, thought, and all that sort of thing. Now, there are employees who do that. There are employees who are really focused on that and who really give their all to a job. But when you are an entrepreneur, particularly if you’re a solo entrepreneur, when you’re doing your own thing, you’re the business. And so the things that you do have to count, they have to matter. And the actions we take have to generate. enough of a result that we’re able to get the kind of money that we need to make just to maintain the business, let alone earn a good living. Jay: Yeah. And don’t you think we kind of romanticize what it is to be an entrepreneur? To be a small business person? You know, we picture all the good. , you know, all the freedom that we’re going to have and everything else. And sometimes what we did is we gave ourself twice the work and half the pay. And so, it becomes hard when you think, what your worth? But you just can’t figure out how to get there. David: Yeah, exactly. And it is very romantic in the early stages. You have this idea of what it’s likely to be like. But that is often very different from how it actually works out. So whether someone is an employee or an employer, the idea of earning what you’re worth starts with identifying, okay, well, what am I worth or what would I like to be worth in terms of dollars, in terms of time freedom, in terms of relationship freedom, all that sort of thing. Because it all plays into it. If you are a people person and you like interacting with other people, and suddenly you’re forced to work by yourself from home, that’s going to be an issue for you. So for some people, currency is interacting with others. And so we have to think in terms of what’s important to me as far as my work life is concerned? Does it involve interacting with a lot of other people? Does it involve learning things? Because there are some people who are real learners and they like to constantly be learning new things and testing new things and applying new things. And for them that can really get them fired up and that can be a form of currency as well –learning new things, growing within a job, growing in terms of responsibility. Because all of that is designed to increase your worth to the business, but really, ultimately to the market, which is the most important thing. If you’re able to increase your value to the market, the people who buy from your company, then your value goes up. And sometimes we try to increase our value to an employer, and maybe the employer just has a certain view that’s not going to line up with that. So I feel like whenever we focus on trying to increase our value to the marketplace, we’re likely to create better results. Jay: Hmm. I think that’s an excellent point. I think also if you can really establish what your time is worth, if you can come up with an equation, then you can start knowing when and how you should delegate, right? Because if you are doing things that are not worth your time, then you’re wasting time. You know, we talk about time capital, right? And we talk about delegation a lot on this podcast. But if you think your time is worth $150 an hour and you’re doing something that you could pay somebody $18 an hour, well, then you’re not going to make what you think you need to make. And so you’ve got to figure out those equations. And sometimes it takes time to do that. David: Yeah, exactly. And it’s also important to think in terms of what is it that’s holding you back? We need to focus on what is the bottleneck that is keeping us from earning the amount of money we want to earn or whatever it is that we want to earn as a result of the work that we’re doing. And just as in manufacturing, in the book The Goal by Eli Goldratt. He talked about the idea that there’s usually one primary bottleneck in a manufacturing organization. It’s easy to visualize, because if there’s one machine in the middle of a company and that’s designed to churn out the product and that machine is broken, you’ll have people on the front end of the machine who are trying to load it up and they can’t do it. You’ll have people on the back end of the machine who can’t unload it. And shipping people who can’t ship it, and salespeople who can’t sell it, because they can’t produce it because of that one thing. When you are in sales yourself or when you own a business yourself, it’s not always easy to see the one thing that’s keeping it from happening. Particularly when you’re in sales. Because we think of sales as reaching out to people, talking to people, having conversations, closing sales, delivering product, that sort of thing. But within the sales process itself, there are various stages. Is the bottleneck in the prospecting that I’m doing? Am I reaching out to the wrong people? Am I attracting the wrong people in the marketing that I’m doing? Are my conversations not going the direction they need to go? Am I not being persuasive enough? Not responding to questions and concerns? Am I not addressing complaints? There are a lot of different areas there, and just one of them can be the same bottleneck as the bottleneck in the manufacturing facility. If you’ve got one particular thing that is slowing you down, the most important thing you can do is to identify that one thing. Because everything else you do around that is not going to produce the result. All the potential that you have for growing is behind that rock, essentially. If you’re going down the street and you come to a place where the road is completely blocked off, there’s a gigantic boulder and there’s no other way to get there, you got to figure out, “how am I going to get around this boulder?” Same thing in sales. We have to. What is it that is keeping us from earning what we feel we are worth? Now, sometimes it could be we just think we’re worth more than other people think we’re worth, at which point we either need to start our own business or we need to prove it. We need to generate results that are far more in excess of what we’re being paid to demonstrate that we’re worth it. And when you start to do that, when you take responsibility, it’s a whole lot easier to start moving toward getting paid what you actually feel like you’re worth. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right. you talked about that boulder in the middle of the road. I think that we have a tendency to get tunnel vision. Like, this is what works for us. This system has worked for us for years. This is what we do. But if you don’t have an awareness of the market and you don’t have possible contingency plans, then you can find yourself flatfooted. I mean, right now at the moment of recording this, we’re hearing a lot of talk of a recession. So in your business, are you thinking, okay, how are we going to survive if we go into a recession? Does that impact our business model? Does it impact our strategy? I think in this way we can have multiple income streams, possibly? And like you said, multiple approaches? Multiple advertising vehicles? Perhaps we have to adjust our pricing to get through something like a recession. We saw the very same thing during the pandemic. I mean, the businesses that survived during the pandemic shut down were the ones that could pivot and find new markets and still be able to provide a product, but in a completely different way. David: Yeah. If we just think in terms of taking responsibility for our results, a lot of that will end up allowing us to take more responsibility for what we’re going to ultimately earn. Because when you’re outproducing what you are earning, that creates friction, it creates a bit of attention. And in most well-run organizations, the organization says, “this person needs to be compensated more.” And if that’s not happening in the organization you’re with, if you are outproducing what you’re earning, it means that there are plenty of opportunities for you somewhere else that will actually recognize and appreciate that value and reward you accordingly. Jay: Yeah, and I think one of the other things is if you’re doing gangbusters you’re not really thinking about systems or potential roadblocks. I mean, what’s the saying in sports? Winning is the best deodorant, right? So things are just screaming along, oftentimes you’re not thinking about systems. You’re just fulfilling orders. things are going great. And then the minute market forces change or something else, you have no clue what to do because you were just in the right place at the right time to produce that level of sales. And that can be really dangerous if you’re not thinking ahead and creating these contingency plans. David: Yeah, it’s great when you’re riding the wave, you don’t have to think a whole lot. You just keep doing what you’re doing and that works out great. But then, when the ocean is still, you got to start paddling. Jay: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Great discussion, David. How can people find out more? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, that’s TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We would be happy to sort of walk you through where you are, where you’re looking to be in terms of visibility, sales, and profit, where you are now versus where you want to be in terms of what you’re earning versus what you’re putting into the business. These conversations have been so helpful. I’ve had so many people who said, “wow, this is great.” And again, even if we never work together, if the conversation is helpful to you, we’d love to. Jay: Yeah, sometimes it’s just hearing the words come out of your mouth and having a sounding board, so we really appreciate that you offer that service. David, it’s been great talking to you. David: You too. Thank you, Jay. Are You Committed to Earning What You’re Worth? If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

April 14, 202614 min

Losing Business to Inferior Competitors?

Very often, inferior competitors play the price card: Jay: I get that question. “Well, I talk to your competitor and they’re less expensive than you are.” Now I have to find a way to let them know, yeah, we are more expensive, but there’s a reason. It’s because we’re very good at what we do. We have certain guarantees that they don’t, or whatever it is. David: Yeah. A pack of cigarettes is cheaper too, but that can also kill you. No, that would not be a good answer. But sometimes it’s what we feel like saying… David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of losing business to inferior competitors. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It’s good to be here, David. This is one of the most frustrating things for me when I know that I have a better product. I have better customer service. I know this because I’ve heard complaints about my competitor. But you lose it to them for whatever reason. Well, that can really ruin your day , and it can also affect your business. David: It really can. Just this idea and even the words “inferior competitors” makes you think. Probably anyone in business who has competitors that you’ve run into has had this experience. And you’re like, I can’t believe they went with that person instead of us. You know that what you have is so much better and offers so much more. You know it will transform the person in positive ways so much more than if they go the other way. And yet they go in that direction. It can be extremely frustrating. So when we think about how to avoid losing business to inferior competitors, there are a number of different things that we can do. But I think it starts with recognizing, first of all, that they’re out there. That there are a number of people out there who are not as good as we are. Then it’s about how can I communicate that to my prospects without sounding bitter or frustrated? That can be a challenge sometimes. Jay: Yeah, I agree. I have people regularly ask me, what’s the difference between you and your competitor? And I find that you have to be very careful with this question. And the tactic that I’ve chosen is to say, here’s the value that we can bring you. Here’s what I know we can do. I try and steer it back or say, “I haven’t worked with them directly. “But let me tell you this is where we shine.” I know we’re going to bring you success in this way.” Because it’s always been weird to me that somebody would believe what I say about my competitor. I’m the worst person to ask. It’s like in politics when somebody runs an attack ad. Why would you believe the guy, you know what I mean? It ‘s the worst person to ask, but we put so much faith and trust in it. David: Right. One of the things that we do when people ask us is to say, “listen, anything I say is obviously going to be biased. Why don’t I fill you in on some of what our customers have said about that topic? Then we have videos, audios, and written testimonials of customers who worked with us. We’ll point them to that. And allow them to hear what other people just like them are saying about the products and services we offer. Sometimes there are situations where a customer will talk about a bad experience they had with one of our inferior competitors and the reason they came to us. So sometimes we’ll share those stories as well. Say, well, listen, I can’t tell you this personally. I’ve never personally dealt with this other company. But you know, we’ve had a number of customers who were dealing with them in the past, and here are the reasons they gave for switching over to us. They said that they found that we do this better and this better and this better. I don’t know if you’ve ever had any experience with that company. But if you have, you might have noticed those things as well. But either way, I can tell you that these are the things where we’re going to be very likely to provide you with better service in those areas. Jay: Yeah, that’s great. And I don’t want to skip over what you said about having customer reviews and testimonials available. That’s got to be an important part of your sales process because, you know, I have people ask me all the time, well, can I talk to somebody who’s worked with you? And in my particular line of work, my customers don’t want to receive calls every day to give references to people. But if you have a system, you know, if you use an online customer service rating system, or if you have, as you said, recorded video testimonials, that’s all very important. But you have to make a concerted effort and have a system to get those and a place to post those. David: Yeah. One of the places where we got a lot of them was at trade shows. We would be at trade shows and people would come up to the booth and they would start telling us a story. Oh, I love your program. I was able to bring in three new accounts as a result of this. And we’d say, wait, wait, hang on a second. Would you do me a favor? Stand over here. We’d put them in front of our booth where our logo is, and say, “I just want to shoot a quick video. Just tell your story to my camera. Okay?” “Start out with your name, your company name, and what happened. Okay. Ready? Go!” And then they would say their name and their company name and they’d say what happened. And they’d just rattle off these beautiful testimonials that were straight from the heart. They weren’t scripted, there were no bullet points. They were just saying what they came up to us to say. And then we put those on our website. We have a page on our website. We call it The Wall of Fame, and that’s for people who have had successful experiences with our program and wanted to share those experiences. It’s at TopSecrets.com/results if you’d like to see our Wall of Fame page. And so a lot of times now when we have new customers, we’ll say to them, Hey, take a look at this page. I would love for you to be our next testimonial on the Wall of Fame. And now they can just shoot them from their own homes on their own iPhones and that sort of thing and send it in like that. But a lot of times, when you deliver what you promise to people, they’re more than happy to do that sort of thing if you just ask them. Now, some people are a little shy, they’re a little more hesitant to do that. But in those cases, even if they send you an email and maybe a publicity photo that they might have on their website, you can use the photo next to the quotes of what they said. You can pull out a headline of something they said that was particularly important. Put that at the top in bigger letters as a headline. So they see the headline, they see the person’s face. And then they see the description of exactly what they said. It just adds credibility. And it also gives them a chance to promote themselves and their brand because it would have their logo or their company name on it as well. So it’s really a win for everyone as long as what you’re doing actually delivers the results you’re promising. Jay: Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. And I think the other part of that is if you can have a system that encourages people who’ve had a good experience to refer their associates, other companies, people they’re working with to you. This can either be done as you know, on your website, you can have 10% off if you refer a friend, or it could be part of your phone call process. Hey, just, is there anybody else you can think of that would benefit from our services? Because more than anything else, more than anything that I see online, if I hear a referral from somebody who has said I’ve used them, there’s nothing more powerful in business, to me, and the way I look at who I’m going to choose to do business with. David: Exactly. And as you pointed out earlier, it’s not like you’re going to be giving out phone numbers of all your best clients and having them annoy them at work because that’s the quickest way to annoy your best clients. I’ve had situations where people ask me that question and I said, well, we don’t give out our customer’s contact information, but take a look at our Wall of Fame and if you have any questions, let me know. And they’ll look at it and they’ll see page after page and video after video of people telling their own words and their own stories. They’ll say, well, you know, I’d really like to talk to somebody. And I’ll say, well, you know what? I’m not going to give out that information because it’s more important for me to protect my customers than it is to bring in a new one who’s still skeptical after seeing all that stuff. But I’ve also had people who have actually dug up the information. They go to the Wall of Fame, they find the person’s name, they look them up, and they call them and they talk to them. So since it’s rare that that happens, sometimes the people on the Wall of Fame will call and say, Hey, I got a call from somebody. I’m like, well, listen, I didn’t give out your number. They must have checked you out. And at that point, you know, they’re fine with it. They’re not upset about it. But people can be funny with that, you know, it’s like, no, I must speak to the person. But I’ve got to tell you, the times that’s happened, most of the time those people are just using it as an excuse and they don’t end up becoming customers anyway, or they don’t end up becoming good customers, the ones who actually insist on doing that. If they can’t extrapolate after seeing testimonial, after testimonial, after testimonial, then they’re probably not a good fit to begin with. Jay: Yeah. And I think having the testimonials, I love the idea of the Wall of Fame, can be really helpful if you’re more expensive than your competitors. Because you know, you may be on the premium side and you have to identify are they bargain shoppers? Because I get that question. Well, I talk to your competitor and they’re less expensive than you are. Well, now I have to find a way to let them know, yeah, we are more expensive, but there’s a reason. And it’s because we’re very good at what we do and we have certain guarantees that they don’t or whatever it is. David: Yeah. A pack of cigarettes is cheaper too, but that can also kill you. No, that would not be a good answer. But sometimes it’s what we feel like saying. But honestly, just to say to somebody, oh, okay, look, if you’re looking for the cheapest option, then by all means, you know that might be a good option for you. However, if you’re looking to accomplish the results that we’re talking about here, then it would probably make more sense to work with us because we’re a lot more focused on getting you the result that we’re talking about than we are in terms of, you know, just trying to keep it to the lowest price. You know, if it costs less, maybe they can provide similar service. I don’t know. But I know that with what we do, you know, our pricing is actually very competitive for what we do. Jay: Yeah, and I love how you said that, and I’ve said exactly the same thing. I’ve said, look, I understand if finances are important to you, then absolutely, I understand if you go a different direction, but we’re here because we provide results. And if you want to see that go to our Wall of Fame or go to, right? This is what we do and we are the best, or whatever you want to say to counter that. I’ve seen people stumble on this question. And instead of stumbling, you should be prepared for this question if you cost more, if you’re not trying to be the bargain basement competitor yourself. David: Yeah, and when you’re getting these testimonials as you’re gathering them, the ones that are going to be the most valuable for you are the results-based testimonials. The ones where they talk about the results they achieved because they worked with you. It’s not enough for them to say, oh yeah, I worked with this company. They were great. Really nice. Very pleasant to work with. No, what was the result that they got? And on our Wall of Fame, most of the people are talking about the results they got financially in their businesses. You know, they increase their sales. You know, one guy was talking about getting from 400,000 in gross sales to 800,000. There’s this one gentleman who was talking about how he was able to achieve six figures in growth in a very short period of time. Now, is that the normal, is that going to happen for everyone who takes our program? No, but that was his experience and that’s what he shared there. And we even talk about the fact that most of the people on this page are the ones who are creating the best results. They’re exceptional performers who create exceptional results. And those are the type of people we’re looking for. The ones who will actually put in the work. Take the next step, follow through, and create the results they’re looking for. Jay: Well, and I think that’s an important part, especially in promotional marketing. You know, you may have provided the best product, but if they’re not going to go out and use it properly, and maybe this is something we should talk about in the future, how to encourage them and teach them how to use it. Otherwise, they’re going to say, oh, those guys were terrible. They’re going to blame you. , and it’s really because they’re not using what you’re giving them in a proper way. David: Yeah, that happens all the time in the industry, and particularly you were talking about pricing earlier, people in the promotional products industry who give in to people who want the cheapest product? If you do that, and you sell them a cheaper product because they demanded it of you, and if that product is not as good as the product you originally recommended to them, they’re not going to blame themselves. They’re still going to blame you. Why did you sell me that? Well, you told me you wanted something cheap. Well, not that cheap. I didn’t want it to be bad. It’s like, okay, well I recommended something to you originally that you said no to. You really don’t want to give into that because the more we devalue ourselves and the more we are willing to do for less money, the less empowered we are to be able to actually deliver on our promises. So it’s just always so important to sell with a conscience. When you recommend a product, you’re recommending it because you know it’s going to do the job for the person, not just because they beat you into submission, into accepting a lower price. Jay: Yeah, I love it. How come people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d be happy to walk you through what it is that you’re dealing with now, where you’re looking to be, and how we can help you get to the next step. If we can help you, we’ll let you know. If we can’t help you, we’ll let you know that too. Either way, I am very sure you’ll get a lot of good value from the call. Jay: All right, I know they will, and I hope they get a sense of that from our conversations. David, just been fantastic talking to you today. David: Thanks a lot, Jay. Ready to Stop Losing Business from Inferior Competitors? If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors take the next step: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.