Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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Aug 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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August 18, 202614 min

Uncover Customer Needs and Sell More Effectively

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

August 11, 202616 min

How to Overcome Call Reluctance: Make First Contact Easier

I would say the number one thing that helped me to overcome call reluctance is when I realized the people who are likely to yell or scream or be angry or be obnoxious or belligerent, they’re not the people we’re doing it for. We are doing it for the needles in the haystack. We’re doing it to find that perfect-fit customer that needs what we have to offer, and who was waiting for someone like us to come along. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of overcoming call reluctance. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: So glad to be here, David. And I really want to hear your feedback on this topic, because this is something that I struggle with. I’ve been put in sales positions in the past. I have a list of leads. All I have to do is pick up the phone and dial those numbers, and I can’t bring myself to do it. Which is funny. I can do it, if it’s a qualified lead and they’re expecting my call, or if they’ve set an online appointment with me, all of that fear goes away. But if it’s a cold call, forget it. I can’t do it. I just can’t. David: Yeah, well call reluctance is a big topic for people who have to make cold calls, and that is one aspect of it. But you hit on a couple of other aspects of it. There are some people who still struggle with the idea of picking up the phone, even when somebody is looking to hear from you. So, we’ll touch on a little of all of that, but you went to the big thing first, which is the idea that there are a lot of people who struggle with call reluctance. They don’t want to pick up the phone, they don’t want to do it. And if we think about the reasons for that, a lot of it becomes kind of obvious. What would you say is your number one reason? Jay: I guess fear of rejection. It’s just hard for me to feel like I’m going to get them to want to hear me. David: Yeah, and one of the reasons that I struggle a bit with this topic is that I’m not a huge fan of cold calls. It’s not that we don’t do them , we do. It’s not that I haven’t done them, I have. But generally speaking, my approach is to try to lead with something of more value. So in those situations, if you follow up with a phone call, it’s a lot more welcome than if they’re not expecting your call. But yes, what I’ve found personally and also with a number of the people that I worked with is that a lot of people think, Well, it’s fear of failure. It’s fear of rejection. I’m afraid that this person is going to get mad or they’re going to get angry or they’re going to hang up on me, and all valid fears because those things happen when you’re making cold calls. And so part of it for me, because those of us who have been in positions where you had to make the calls, regardless of whether or not you felt like it, you have to come up with a way to get over that. And the things that helped me the most, I would say the number one thing that helped me the most, was when I realized the people who are likely to yell or scream or be angry or be obnoxious or belligerent, they’re not the people we’re doing it for. We are doing it for the needles in the haystack. We’re doing it to find that perfect fit customer that needs what we have to offer, that was waiting for someone like us to come along, you know, the knight in shining armor or whatever. Those are the people that we’re doing it for, and you can’t get to those people until, and unless you first get to the ones that might not be as receptive to your message, shall we say? Jay: Yeah, absolutely. My dad was a very successful salesman his whole life. And he always told me that every day he has a goal for how many no’s he’s going to get. He just knew if he’s going to have a successful day, he’s got to have a hundred no’s. And of those no’s, he’s going to pick up a certain percentage of yeses. And so that’s how he made it a game. He made it fun for himself. That tactic never worked for me, but I know it works for a lot of other people. Cause after 10 of those nos, I’m just worn out, you know? David: That is so true. And I’ve heard that and I know that that works for other people. And the fact that it does makes me say, Hey, listen, if that works for you, absolutely do it. For those of us who are like, eh, still not quite there for me, it’s like, okay, well we need another way of approaching it. We need another way to think about. Because really fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of failure, it doesn’t even matter. It all boils down to fear, right? And so if we recognize that it is really fear that’s at the core of this, or in some cases it’s a lack of confidence or a lack of certainty. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. It could be fear of uncertainty. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. And no one is. You can’t be. If you’re making a cold call, you cannot be at all sure of what’s going to happen. They may be great, they may be terrible. It may be somewhere in between. Most likely somewhere in between. But it could go any of those ways. So when you recognize that and I guess this is actually pretty similar to what your dad was talking about in the sense that he knows he needs to get enough nos to get to the Yes. If you think of that in terms of getting to the people that we’re actually doing this for, they are very similar. But for me there’s a mindset difference. The mindset of finding the right people that can be long term customers and recognizing that I kind of have to go through this. I have to sort of run that gauntlet in order to get to the people that I actually want to get to. Jay: Yeah, and also as I think about it, it’s just harder work to cold call because you have to first get them to stay on the phone with you, then you have to get them to believe in your product It’s a lot harder than if they’ve been on your website and they scheduled a free consultation, right? Now they’ve already kind of said, I need your product. So you’re way ahead in that regard. David: Yeah. I also think that call reluctance is not probably the best description of what people are dealing with, because in a lot of ways they’re dealing with contact reluctance. Sometimes it’s like, Oh, I have to email this person. I don’t feel like doing it. In person, I have to go to this networking function and I don’t feel like doing it. I mean, a networking function isn’t like cold calling, but it has similarities. If you’re going to this thing for the purpose of meeting people and introducing yourself and trying to come up with a prospect, then it is kind of like cold calling. So I think the idea of call reluctance is only a sliver. It’s really only part of the issue that people are dealing with. And if you recognize that it’s contact reluctance, or in a lot of cases it’s first contact reluctance, then it becomes maybe easier to deal with. Because if you’re not comfortable making a phone call and if you have the option to initiate other forms of first contact, then you can very likely come up with another form of first contact that works better for you. So you can accomplish the same or even better results without having to convince yourself that the only way to do that is to overcome your call resistance or reluctance. Jay: Yeah. I love how you described it, first, contact resistance. That’s what I have. Because it is the same, whether it’s on the phone. I’ve been at trade shows, and I’ve just got to go up to different booths and talk to people. And they’re there to talk. That’s why they’re there. Right? And that’s the scenario I struggle with. But if I’d been introduced to them or if they’d been prequalified, no issue whatsoever. So that puts me in a place where if I’m going to be in sales, it’s got to be a specific type of sales funnel where I can thrive in. Because you know, I’m not the person and I tell people this, I’m not the pound the pavement, cold contact guy. That’s just not where I’m successful. But I’m a closer. Right? So yeah, put me somewhere in that funnel and I can close. Don’t put me at the front of the line though, because that’s not where my skill-set is. David: Yeah. This is what we work with with our clients all the time in our Total Market Domination course. And one of the modules, I think it’s module five, is about first contact. And it’s about coming up with a first contact that makes sense for you. Meaning it’s something you’re not afraid to do, you don’t hate doing, you don’t dislike, you’re not afraid of doing it. It’s something that you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m actually comfortable with this.” And there are lots of different forms of first contact that actually just position you a whole lot better than a cold call. Things like networking, that’s one approach to it. But also, if you have a list of prospects, it could be something as simple as sending them something in the mail and then calling to say, Hey, did you get the thing I sent you? Because a call like that is a hundred times easier than making that first call. And in a lot of cases, and again, I do a lot of work in the promotional products industry, so people who are sending out some sort of promotional gift in advance and then calling to say, Hey, did you get the item I sent you? It creates that gift of obligation, among people of conscience. Not everyone has a conscience, but among people of conscience, it does create a bit of a gift of obligation. So people are more likely to take the call and they’re more likely to be nice to you when they pick up the phone because you sent them something in advance. I mean, that’s just one example. But other forms of first contact can be things like social media. Your first contact with them could be replying to something that they posted on social media. Now at least you’re on their radar. They have an idea of who you are. And if you were able to continue that discussion inside a direct message, and then eventually that leads to a phone call or having them go to your page and then opting in for a call with you. All that type of stuff changes the dynamic from one of, “I am calling you because I need business” to, “hey, here’s an opportunity to talk with me about something that could seriously benefit you.” And so the whole dynamic shifts from “I’m a salesman calling to sell you” to, you know, “you are a person in need who’s seeking me out for potential help.” Jay: Yeah, I love this line of thinking. I work with a business where we do webinar training, right? David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And so people watch that webinar and at the end I’m like, “Hey, sign up for a free consultation. It will be me that you do the consultation with.” So now, when we eventually talk, it’s weird. They feel like they know me because they sat with me for this 10 minute video or whatever it is. And so we’re already way ahead in the game because they have already kind of started to build that relationship. And part of that is I was definitely giving them something of value in the webinar. It wasn’t just a commercial. I was giving away good information. David: Yeah, and you are positioning yourself as someone who knows what he’s talking about in that particular area, which is exactly what people are looking for. So while this really gets into the whole other topic of first contact and different ways to initiate that, to get more people into your pipeline, who could conceivably work with you. It all does tie together. This idea of contact reluctance and how we overcome it can be handled in lots of different ways other than “well just get over it and make the calls.” Jay: Yeah, I do think that we should have a much deeper discussion about first contact, because it definitely depends on what industry. I mean, if you are cold calling individuals, it’s a lot harder nowadays because we all set our phones to ignore calls that it doesn’t recognize. So that whole potential lead list may have gone away. And so you have to adapt and change to figure out whether it’s email or pay per click or something else. David: Yeah, absolutely. I think also part of getting over this goes back to what we touched on before. Which is essentially a focus on disqualification. In other words, if you overcome your call reluctance, you pick up the phone, you talk to somebody, and they’re rude, obnoxious, and belligerent. You can either be put off by that or you can be grateful that you found out that early on in the relationship that this is the type of person you’re dealing with. What’s worse is when you think somebody’s great and then you start doing business with them, and then they turn into Mr. Hyde, you know, they go from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. So the idea of focusing on disqualification and some sales managers will strongly disagree with me on this, and I’m not saying you use that as an excuse to eliminate your call list. What I’m saying is that if you go into this situation with the idea of coming out of it with a yes or no, qualified or disqualified, you’re going to be a lot better off than if you go in with the idea of, “I need to sell this person something,” even before you have any idea of whether or not they need what you’re selling. Jay: Yeah. And I think that’s going to reduce the number of rejections that you get. Right? So if you have to get 20 no’s instead of a hundred no’s, then that’s going to go better for you. It’s going to be easiest, right? I think one of the other things is I want people to know that I do believe that with repetition, you can overcome those fears. And oftentimes it’s just put your head down and push forward. And you’ll find, and I have found this, eventually, it’s not as hard. You can change, you can adapt. And so, you know, just don’t make the excuse that, Oh, I can’t do that and so I have to find something else. You can, you know, you just have to work at it. David: Yeah, and if you’re motivated by money at all, one of the things you can also do is you can start with the goal in mind. And you can even write down on a post-it note that you keep in front of your computer or in front of your phone, what’s the average dollar amount of the sale that is made? Now, you’re not going to sell that to every person you call, but you are absolutely not going to sell it if you’re not in touch with that person. So if you think of each of those contacts as being worth X amount of dollars, whatever that number is, if it’s $3,000, if it’s $10,000, whatever that number is, if you look at that and say, Okay, this call could be worth $10,000, you might be a lot more motivated to make it than if you don’t think of it like that. And I’m not really advocating the idea of thinking of it in terms of money instead of people. I’m thinking of it in terms of recognizing that in order to generate the money, you’ve got to have and initiate relationships with these people. And if this helps you do, go for it. Jay: Yeah, motivation is different for everybody. So if that’s your motivation, focus on it and figure out how many calls it’s going to have to take you to get to that dollar amount. Then you can motivate yourself. If you don’t know, and I feel like so many people in sales, it’s just kind of haphazard. I’m just calling. I don’t know how many calls it’s going to take and that makes it much. more of a slog I think. So figuring out some of those key performance indicators and testing them. And the other thing I would say is it really helps if you love your product, and you know it will help people. You know, that’s one of the things that keeps me going is I know that I’m helping people. I’m not just earning a living. And that’s very important to me. Not important to everybody, but to me that’s very important. David: Oh yeah. I’m the same way. I mean, that’s what gets me fired up in the morning. The idea of helping people pass these challenges and allowing them to get from where they are to where they want to be. And so anything we can do to help that, I’m all for it. Jay: Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons I love our discussions, because I know these will help people move forward. So I love that. How can people find out? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call, and we can have a conversation about where you’re looking to be, what you’re struggling with. If you’re struggling with call reluctance, we can work with you and come up with different ways that you can initiate first contact that you will be comfortable with, that will potentially position you better and allow you to get to more of the people that you need to reach, a lot faster and a lot more comfortably than you’re doing now. Jay: Yeah. And don’t have call reluctance calling David, right? David: Yeah, that’s right. You have no fears with us, right? It’s easy. Jay: That’s right. Fantastic. It’s great talking to you today, David. David: You too, Jay. Thank you. Ready to Grow Your Sales & Profits? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here .

August 4, 202614 min

Turning Your Million-Dollar Ideas into Cash

Million-dollar ideas don’t always create million-dollar results. Only focused implementation can do that. I remember the day that I got a phone call from a client who said, “Hey, we hit a million dollars in sales for this year. I’m really excited.” It’s a huge thing, because when you’re looking to grow like that — when you’re talking about multiplying your revenue in a relatively short period of time — there are very specific things that have to happen. Most people don’t know what those things are, and even if they do know what those things are, they don’t take action on them consistently enough to make it happen. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing million dollar ideas. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. I have to tell you, this is a running joke in my home that I constantly have million dollar ideas. But I never do anything about it. And so I’ll have them.And then years later, my wife’s like, you told me about that, you know, five years ago, why don’t you do something about it? And I’m like, I don’t know. David: Yeah. And you’re not alone. I do the same thing. I think pretty much anyone I know who’s been involved in business in any capacity has had ideas. And then they see that somebody else did it later. And they’re like, “Oh man, I thought of that years ago.” And it’s like, yeah, well, unfortunately, as you indicated, thinking about it does not actually get it done. But it’s a fun topic because since we all pretty much have had them, we all have million dollar ideas, the question becomes. What are you doing with it? Or are you doing anything with it? And as I was thinking back on this in preparation for this podcast, it occurred to me that of the million dollar ideas that I might’ve had, and who knows, the ones that you don’t pursue, you have no idea what they’re worth, especially if nobody else then comes along and turns it into a billion dollar idea, but it occurred to me that I only took action on a few of them, and the ones that I took action on actually yielded some really good results. And the thing about a million dollar idea is… There’s a time component that really plays an important part in that, right? You could say, all right, my million dollar idea is to make $25,000 a year from the time I’m 25 until the time I’m 65. So if you multiply $25,000 by 40 years, it’s a million bucks, right? But if you’re earning $25,000 a year and it costs you $35,000 a year to live, then that plan is not going to work for you. But it is a plan. It’s an idea. It’s a million dollar idea. And so as we’re thinking about things that can actually get us from where we are to where we want to be. It’s a good idea to consider that. All right. Well, what’s the likelihood of generating revenue from this and how much on an ongoing basis so I can have an idea of where it’s going to take me? Jay: Yeah, it’s such a great point. I think for me, the fear of putting myself out there is one of the reasons why I haven’t pursued. And I’ve taken, some of them were good enough. I’ve taken a little stabs at them and I want to be successful by just stabbing at them and not really diving in a hundred percent. And it’s not until I said, “okay, I’m all in.” It wasn’t the idea that was bad. It was my desire to actually put any work and effort. I’ve just, I’ve always said, I want to have a company where all I do is come up with ideas and sell them. I don’t want to have to actually put the effort into, working on them. Why can’t I just earn the money from the idea? David: Right. Yeah. It’d be great if it worked that way, but somebody has to do the work that actually generates the revenue. But when I think about million dollar ideas, particularly as it relates to business. If somebody’s doing $250,000 a year in their business in four years, that became a million dollar idea. Now, again, if that’s your gross sales, it doesn’t mean that you’re making that much, right? It doesn’t mean that you’re pocketing that much, but it counts. It’s a million dollar idea, and then the question really becomes. Is my million dollar idea a million dollars in a lifetime? Is it a million dollars over 10 years? Over five years? Over a year? Is it a million dollars a month? Is it a million dollars a week? A million dollars a day? Because different businesses generate different amounts of money. I don’t know what Amazon is generating, how quickly it generates a million bucks, but it’s probably a lot faster than a million a day. It could be down to the minutes and seconds, probably is. Jay: Yeah, I really think a lot of what you’re talking about is your expectation, right? you’re just saying, I want to have this idea to make money, that to me really kind of feels misguided. And to be honest with you, a million dollars does not sound like that much money anymore, right? So it’s more a matter of, I think defining better what the idea is and what you want it to achieve. Are you looking for financial freedom to where you can travel and buy nice cars? Are you just looking to pay your bills? I think putting some better definition on it is more important than using this word million dollar and somehow that’s a sign that you’ve been successful. Cause as you said, you may be making millions a year in gross sales, but you could be losing as much, if not more. So, yeah, you have to be a little bit more specific than that. David: I remember when my daughter was young, we were talking about the idea of a million dollars at one point. And I said, well, think about this. Let’s say you make a million dollars. You’re able to save a million dollars and you’ve got a million dollars. You’ve got exactly a million dollars in the bank. And so you go out to celebrate and you go have lunch at McDonald’s and you spend $12. Now you’re no longer a millionaire. Right? Because you spent your twelve bucks. Whatever it is. And, I don’t know, just the idea of these money benchmarks being some form of accomplishment, I think is a little misguided. Jay: Yeah. David: And generally it’s misguided by people who look at it as a goal, think that it’s something to aspire for, and then if and when you get there, it’s like, oh, okay, now what? You know, now you go for more, right? And no matter what your number is, even if you’re Warren Buffett and you’re a multi billionaire, probably another extra billion or two never hurts. Jay: Yeah, I agree. For me, I kind of think about how I determine success in business. I have steps, like you said, benchmarks. So my first benchmark is, can I just pay my bills? Right? Can I feed my family, pay my car payment, keep the electricity on? If I can pay my bills, I’ve achieved a level of success because I don’t have to go out and have somebody else tell me how to do my job all day for an hourly wage. So that’s goal number one. Can I pay my bills with my business year round? Then I start saying, well, can I still make the money I’m making, but do less or spend less to make it? So maybe I only have to go into this business three days a week, and then two days a week I can be with my family or I can be tinkering, you know, with my car in the garage or something like that. So I start to look at it more in terms of time than I do in terms of actual dollar amounts. David: Yeah, the time component is huge and also consistency I think is huge. I had a client who signed up for our Total Market Domination course a couple of years ago. She was doing about $250,000 in sales at the time. She wanted to get to a million dollars. And so we went over the specific steps that she would need to take to do that. And she was a great implementer. She was able to do it. And I remember the day that I got a phone call from her and she said, “Hey, we hit a million dollars in sales for this year. I’m really excited.” Jay: Yeah. David: It’s a huge thing because when you’re looking to grow like that, when you’re talking about multiplying your revenue in a relatively short period of time, there are very specific things that have to happen. Most people don’t know what those things are, and even if they do know what those things are, they don’t take action on them consistently enough to make it happen. So for those who are looking to get to benchmarks like that, if you have a million dollar idea, if you know in your bones that this thing is likely to generate that amount of money, but you’re not quite sure how to get there, then we really ought to have a conversation. Jay: Yeah, and again, we talked about scary things and the fear of the unknown in our Halloween podcast. That’s what’s so hard, and one thing I keep telling people is, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is not the beginning of time . There are so many people out there who have done this and duplicated this over and over again. And often times, just coming up with a unique idea, that’s one of the toughest parts of the battle. Then if you can access and not be afraid to talk to people, see people like yourself, who have done this over and over again, and who have helped other people achieve it, if you can get rid of a lot of the unknown, and then just implement your idea, how much better is that going to be for you? David: Exactly. And so much of it just boils down to focus. It’s about what are the few things, what are the fewest steps I can take, the fewest number of activities that I can engage in to get me to my goals. And a lot of times it’s a lot simpler than people think. But they’re so distracted with all these different things they think they have to do that they end up missing the boat. And it goes back to your point earlier where, “hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could do less things, do fewer things, and still generate the revenue?” And the truth of the matter is that if you’re doing too many things, your likelihood of getting there goes down dramatically. Jay: Yeah, and we’ve talked about if the way you run your business is just putting out fires, or just, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, oftentimes those are not the places that you should be focused. And if you could identify those things, be very strategic in your mind and identify what the most important things are. Focus on those. You’re still going to have fires, but maybe you’ll approach them differently. That’s how mentorship, speaking with you, you always say give us a call. Sometimes just vocalizing and hearing yourself say it and having a sounding board is all it takes to get a little bit of clarity. David: Yeah, and we’ve had many conversations with people who were not a good fit for our program, but they still got a lot of great ideas for the call. They had some direction. They had some steps they could take. And sometimes what happens, we’ll have a conversation like this. They’ll implement a couple of things that we’ll tell them on the call. And then we’ll get a call back from them a few weeks later or a month or two later. Hey, listen, I did that. That really worked. I was able to generate more than enough to pay for the program. You know, let’s talk about that again now. And it’s about being able to help people to accomplish what they’re looking to accomplish when they either don’t have the exact knowledge they need, or if they don’t have the consistency in the approach. Jay: Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I love this podcast because, you know, I’ve been in business my whole life and I think, hey, I’ve got some level of understanding here. But you and I get on and we start chatting and either I say things that I’ve never thought of before, but this conversation triggered that, or you have a completely different perspective because you’ve been in different types of businesses than I have. And I walk away going, you know what? I’m going to use that! I mean, there are things that we’ve talked about just in this podcast that I’m implementing in my new business. And why? It’s because we talked. That’s it. We just, we’re bouncing ideas off of each other and learning from each other’s experiences. David: Yeah, and that’s one of the things that I love about talking with you. It’s also one of the things that I love talking about with my customers. Earlier this week, I was going back and forth with one of our customers inside the Total Market Domination course, and she referenced something that I had talked about years ago. She didn’t put it in those terms, but she was talking about the idea of sort of flying under the radar. And it reminded me of some material that I put together a while ago talking about moving from stealth mode to intimidation mode, like flying under the radar, getting everything in place, getting relationships set up with clients before your competitors even know anything is happening. And so you’re flying in stealth mode. And then you get to the point where you’ve got this momentum going under the radar. And then when you burst onto the scene, it’s very intimidating for your competitors because they’re like, “Where did this person come from?” So I believe these conversations, they’re helpful for everybody. When I talk to somebody for the first time on one of these strategy sessions, we have a conversation, very often it will remind me of something else that will help them. And it will also help me in terms of, yeah, wow. That’s something that we should talk more about because we know it works. Jay: Yeah, and kind of circling back to having that million dollar idea. One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do is have a million dollar idea and achieve it on my own. That way I don’t have to deal with employees. And is that going to happen? Am I really going to pull off a million dollar idea on my own? Probably not. Maybe as an internet influencer or something like that. But the reality is… The first step is having the idea. The second step is asking the question, “Who’s going to help me do this?” Whether it’s partners, staff, or consultants. I think the first thing you have to do is get that out of your mind that you’re going to pull this off on your own. David: Yeah, and maybe there’s some people who do that. I’ve never done that myself. I mean, any business that I tried to do by my, well, I never really tried to do any business by myself, I knew very early on when I would start a business, I’m like, “oh no, I need help with this, I need help with that.” But maybe there are some people who can do it, but I think the smart way to approach it, in my opinion, is that you look at what you need to have happen. You look at what you need to build and then who can help me do that. You get those spots in place, filling the seats on the bus. Good to Great. In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus. And I think that’s really key. Jay: Alright, well, people who have their million dollar ideas or they’re already working on them, how do they find out more? David: Go to TopSecrets.com, schedule a call with us, actually TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with us, TopSecrets.com is the main website, TopSecrets.com/call is where you can go to schedule a call with our team and we can just sort of talk through things. What are you looking to accomplish? If you have a million dollar idea or if you know that your business should be hitting numbers that you’re not yet hitting. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about where you are now, where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits, and see what we can do to help you get there. Jay: And it’s a great first step, David. Thank you so much. Always great to talk to you. David: You too. Thanks, Jay. Ready to Convert Your Million Dollar Ideas into Cash? If not, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

July 28, 202611 min

Are You Afraid of Being a Pest in Sales?

Jay: I’m not lying when I tell you that I struggle with this idea that I’m being a pest in sales. So I think it’ll help my sales, I think it’ll help my daily attitude towards what I do. David: Well, I’ll tell you something, Jay, many of the most conscientious human beings feel this way. I mean, if you’re one of those sales guys who, “Hey, everybody loves me,” you’re not even going to think of that. It’s never even going to occur to you. So the people who are most likely to struggle with this are people who just want to help. They’re there to provide a service. Jay: Yeah. David: They don’t want to be a pest. And so really, most of the people who feel this way are the ones who are least likely to be a pest because they’re not arrogant to begin with. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast in today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I’ll be discussing the topic of how to avoid being a pest in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Oh, thank you for having me, Dave. This is a real problem for me. I always feel like a pest in sales, whether it’s an email, whether it’s a text, I always feel like they don’t want to hear from me. And. it’s been an ongoing problem. I’ll just be honest with you when it comes time, okay? I got to sit down and reach out to people. I’m like, oh, do they really want to hear from me? Am I going to bug them? How do I get over that? David: Yeah, it’s a great question. A number of years ago, I was doing a speaking presentation and Mary Lou Retton, the gymnast, was also speaking at the same event, and she told this story. It was just so great. I don’t know if somebody asked the question, but it came up in her presentation where people were saying to her, when she was doing her routine, the person who went on before her did a really, really good routine. And so at that point, the pressure would really be on her to deliver a flawless performance if she wanted to be able to get the score that she needed. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And so the question was how do you deal with that when this person delivers a great performance and you have to go on next? Don’t you feel nervous after that? And her response, I’ll never forget it. And this was easily 10 or 12 years ago this happened. Jay: Yeah. David: Her response was, “you know, I watched her performance and it was great. And I looked at it and I thought to myself, wait till they get a load of me!” Jay: Mmmm. David: And I was like, “wow, how much does that apply in sales?” Jay: Yeah, David: I mean, I think it applies every bit as much in sales as it does in gymnastics. If you go in with the idea of, oh, that person’s better than I am, or they’re not going to like me, or they’re going to think that I’m annoying, or I’m rude, or I’m obnoxious, or I’m a pest, or whatever. If you go in with that mindset, then what you are likely to say, the way that you’re likely to position yourself, all of those things are going to reflect that. But if you’re able to go into a situation with the idea of “wait ’til they get a load of me,” or at least “I have something valuable to offer.” Now, any salesperson who doesn’t feel like they have something valuable to offer should be either in another line of work or selling a different line of product. Right? Jay: Yeah. David: You need to be able to feel good about what it is that you’re selling. And if you know that what you’re selling is, ideally, better than the competition. If you know that you’re going to deliver better than your competition, you know that you’re going to be more responsive, you’re going to be more concerned, you’re going to be more caring. If you know all those things, then you owe it to the client to convey all that. And if you don’t convey it to them, then you’re doing them more harm than good, and you’re doing yourself and them more harm than good. So, If you look at it from the standpoint of, “I’m here to provide a solution, I’m here to help,” then it’s a lot easier to not start thinking of yourself as a pest and just recognize that if you’re there to help, it’s very difficult to be a pest. Jay: Yeah, I’m not a pest. I’m a value. And I’m trying to pass that value on. It’s really interesting because, you know, I do these initial consultations and I’m going to toot my own horn. I am incredible at building that first relationship. But in that first relationship, it’s them learning. We don’t talk about costs a lot or anything like that. And then we schedule a second follow up, and that’s where we get into the other things. And it’s the second follow-up where I’m like, oh, now we’re going to talk about money. Now I’m going to turn into a pest. Now I’m going to do that. And I can see how what you’re talking about is, “no, I got them excited in the first meeting, and so why would they think I’m a PEs in in the second meeting?” And, and furthermore, maybe I should just get to the money in the first meeting and do it when I’ve got them excited initially. David: Well, yeah, that’s a great point. Because if they are excited and if they’re ready to move forward, then scheduling another call and having time pass in between and they get distracted, it’s probably giving opportunities for them to fall out of the process. So, Jay: mm-hmm. David: I think you just asked and answer a great question for yourself. Jay: Yeah. David: But if you think of a pest, I mean, I think of something like a mosquito, right? A mosquito is a well recognized pest. And it’s buzzing around you and it wants something from you. It wants blood, right? And so it’s trying to get to you so that it can take something from you and not give you anything except maybe a bump of your skin, right? Which is not pleasant. So, If you’re not doing those things, then you’re really not a pest. And when you are creating value in your communication, when you’re creating value in the relationship, there’s nothing pesty at all about that. If you’re talking to somebody about the products and services you offer and they’re interested, even if they’re not like really excited about it, if they’re like, “oh, okay, that sounds interesting. I’m open to this…” Jay: Yeah. David: And then you provide them the information on, okay, here’s how much it will cost. Here’s how it’s going to work. Then at that point they get to evaluate, does this make sense for me? Can I justify the cost of that for what it is that you’re offering? If the answer is yes, you’re going to be doing business together. If the answer is no, if they tell you that, if they say, well, listen, this isn’t for me, that’s not in my budget, and if you can’t come up with another solution, then at that point the conversation is over. The person is disqualified and you move on. The times where we’re most likely to feel like a pest is when we’re talking to somebody and they start ghosting us. Jay: Hmm. David: And when that happens, when they start ghosting us, then we feel like we have to follow up because they asked for information from us, right? Jay: Right. Right. David: They wanted to know stuff. They seemed interested. They said they were interested. Now I’m supposed to follow up on a certain day at a certain time, and they’re not taking calls and they’re not returning calls and all that sort of thing. At that point, if you are following up, you’re not being a pest. You are attempting to deliver what it is that they asked you for. It’s like if you called and ordered a pizza and I’m the pizza delivery boy, and I come to your house and I know you’re in there and I’m ringing the bell and you’re not answering it. Jay: Yeah. David: Well, am I a pest because I’m trying to deliver the pizza you ordered? I think the answer is no. And it’s the same thing here. If you’re trying to provide them with information they requested, if you’re trying to follow up because they said they have a particular in-hands date on an order and they’re not responding to you, then at that point, what you’re doing is not being a pest. What’s happening is that they are being rude. They are being discourteous. Right? They are wasting your time and wasting their time. They’re also creating frustration because you’re frustrated because you can’t reach them. They’re probably frustrated because they might see you calling and they’re like, “I don’t want to take this call.” So they’re creating unnecessary anxiety by doing those things. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: So I put out a post on social media the other day talking about my feelings about people who ghost. And they’re not good. I don’t remember exactly what I posted. It’s up there on social media. I’ll share it below this video. But when we are in a situation where people have an interest, express an interest, we’re having a decent conversation, then as long as you’re acting with integrity to try to get them what they said they wanted from you, I don’t think there’s anything pesty about that. Jay: No, I, think that’s a great perspective and you’ve helped me as I’ve got calls coming up after this podcast that I need to do, and I think I’m going to approach them with a little bit different perspective. And also, if somebody is ghosting you, they are systems now, right? I put them in a drip program and so they’re still going to hear from me automatically. I don’t have to do anything about it. And. If the time comes around where they realize again that they need me, well, I’m still in their face a little bit and they’ll come around and I don’t have to worry about it until then. David: Right. And so when we think about the topic to avoid being a pest, I mean, essentially if you are focused on them, you’re focused on helping them, you’re focused on getting them the answers they need, focused on helping them to create value to achieve the results they’re looking for then as long as you’re continuing to do that and literally just trying to provide them with the information they wanted, they should be totally fine with that. A lot of salespeople feel this way. They feel like they’re being a pest, but nobody’s ever actually said it to them. Right. Right. And I know salespeople who have left messages saying, “Hey listen, I don’t want to be a pest.” Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And I’ve said… Jay: Don’t do that. David: Don’t leave a message like that. Jay: Yeah. David: Because that might’ve never occurred to them. Jay: Yeah. David: It probably hasn’t occurred to them. And if you position yourself like that, you’re also positioning yourself lower on the scale, right? You want to at least try to be coming a people from an even level where we’re on an even playing field, “I’m here to help, you’re here to get help, let’s work together.” As opposed to, “oh, I don’t want to be a pest.” Because if what you have is of value to them, then they should want it, and you’re the person who can help them get it. Jay: Yeah, that’s such a valuable, valuable point. So I’m going to reassess David: Good! Jay: And I’m going to work on this this week and next week when we talk, I’m going to report back and… David: Cool. Jay: And let you know how this kind of new perspective goes. ’cause I’m not lying when I tell you that I struggle with this idea that I’m a pest. So I think it’ll help my sales, I think it’ll help my daily attitude towards what I do. David: Well, I’ll tell you something, Jay, many of the most conscientious human beings feel this way. I mean, if you’re one of those sales guys who, “Hey, everybody loves me,” you’re not even going to think of that. It’s never even going to occur to you. So the people who are most likely to struggle with this are people who just want to help. They’re there to provide a service. Jay: Yeah. David: They don’t want to be a pest. And so really, most of the people who feel this way are the ones who are least likely to be a pest because they’re not arrogant to begin with. Jay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s a great point. All right. How do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call , schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re looking to create actual rapport with people, get into relationships that are going to be mutually beneficial, we’d love to talk with you about that. TopSecrets.com/call . Love to have a conversation. Jay: Yeah, and I’ve loved this conversation. I think it’s going to make a difference, David. So thank you so much. David: Cool. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it. Are You Ready to Create More Value and Avoid Being a Pest? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

July 21, 202612 min

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

Want to get better sales leads? It starts with tracking what works. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the topic of where are your best leads coming from? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you. And I’m just going to answer the question. I don’t know. (laughing) I’m just… David: Short podcast. Thanks for listening. Jay: Yeah, I’m just going to say it straight up. I mean, I do have some systems. We do try and use Google Analytics and things like that, and that helps a little bit. But I’ve never done a deep dive yet on this is the source, this is the well or the font of where my best leads have come from. So I’m looking forward to this discussion. David: This is really a good one to look at and to dive into a bit, because I’ve always maintained that if you don’t know where your best leads are coming from, then you don’t know where to go to get more of them, and when you are able to identify it, everything else gets a whole lot easier because now you can go fishing in the same ponds, rather than just trying to put stuff out to anyone and everyone, which is very expensive to do. You can really tune in and focus in on what people are doing, where they’re coming from, how they’re hearing about you so that you can go find more of them. In addition to… well, a number of the businesses that I’ve been involved in over the years, one of them was a retail mail order catalog business that I owned. And in a business like that, it’s absolutely critical to know where your best leads are coming from. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: We would run magazine ads and we would get people out of different magazines. We had ads running on television that were designed to get leads for our catalog business. And every single one of the ads we ran had some sort of mechanism to let us know where they were coming from. If it was calling an 800 number, we had one primary 800 number, but we would give them an extension to ask for. So we’d say, call this 800 number extension 214. Right? And 214 meant that it was coming from this particular TV station or whatever. If they were seeing something online, there would be specific links that they would click through that would tell us where it was coming from. If it was a magazine ad, it was a similar kind of thing on the back of the magazine, it would say, call this number, dial this extension, or go to this web address, and there would be a slash with a suffix on the url.. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And that would tell us where it came from. And when people would call in, one of the first things that our people were required to ask them is, “where did you hear about us?” And there was a box there that they would fill out. Where did you hear about us? Oh, I saw your ad on such and such a magazine, or, I saw your ad on such and such a TV station. And so we would have the data that the computer said based on what they came in and said, and then we would also have the data corresponding with whatever the person said. So I was pretty pathological about it, and to this day I’m still very pathological about determining where leads come from. Even now when, you know, at the end of this podcast, when you say, how do people find out more? And I give out a link that link tracks back to the podcast, it lets me know that the people who register on that link, Came from the podcast. And if they’re coming from some other ad, then it’s going to have a different code and that sort of thing. So it’s not that hard to do when you discipline yourself to do it. And most people don’t do that until and unless they realize how much it is actually worth to you when you do that right. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And in today’s world, honestly, there is no excuse. It is so easy. There is so much data out there. If you want to target a specific group, you can target that group. And that’s kind of the process, right? You’re going to send out a link for this podcast, you’ll know who you get back. You’ll know age groups and those types of things. And then you’ll be like, well, let’s adjust it this way, or let’s adjust it that way. I mean, never in our history has there been such an easy way to say, I want this age group who’s interested in this type of thing. Then you can target that group. And then based upon that new batch of information you can target in even more. I know we all kind of complain that we’re being tracked everywhere we go, but at the same time, we’re all asking for it. We’re subscribing to newsletters, we’re hitting the like button. We’re feeding all of that information. So it becomes this circle, right? And I think it’s incredible personally. And if I am going to get sent an ad, I want it to apply to me. When I get something that I’m like, there’s no way that this is something that I would ever consider. I almost get angry. Like, come on, get your algorithms together here. David: Yeah. And what you’re talking about is probably a level or two above what I’m even talking about. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: I’m talking about simple things that most small or medium sized businesses can integrate into their own business, just so they have an idea of where the people who are paying them money are largely coming from. And I don’t mean every site they’ve visited over the past 20 years. Jay: Sure, sure. David: I mean, where did they hear from us most recently? Did they hear about us from the podcast? Did they hear about us from an email broadcast that went out through an email broadcast platform? If so, which one? If there is some sort of ad, which ad did they click on? There are some ads that we run on some websites where there’s an ad at the top of the page, there’s an ad on the side of the page. The ads say different things. We track those separately so we know which message and which ad. Does the top position get more of a response? Does the side position get more of a response? Because that tells us where to focus our attention on getting more people. And a lot of it, in the early stages especially, is just about seeing where the people are basically coming from. But then when you see who’s actually buying, that narrows it down even more. Jay: Yes. David: Because you may be getting more leads from one source than another, but you find out that the leads from that source aren’t converting. Jay: Yes. David: At which point you can stop advertising there and put your money behind the ads that work. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when I mentioned how easy it is today, I even mean for small businesses. I mean, we started a small business and I don’t know anything about pay per click or, you know, anything like that. But I looked on Fiverr, you know, the website, Fiverr and Upwork, and I found somebody who said, I’ll do this for you for a month for 30 bucks and I’m like, it’s 30 bucks. I’ll try it out. We did the $30 and the results were dramatic. So we’re like, wait a minute, if we do 30, let’s do 60. Now we’ve got this guy we spend about maybe 250 a month with him, and we get constant leads that convert from him. I don’t know how he’s doing it and I don’t need to know how he’s doing it. Right? Now I can spend my time focusing on those leads. The other thing he’ll do is come back and say, okay, you’ve got a lot of people who are landing on your checkout page, but they’re not converting. So we’re like, “oh, wait a minute, what’s going on?” Is it the language we’re using? Is it the pictures we’re using? Are we not conveying the message? These things can be done for relatively cheap nowadays, and so even if you’re at the smallest point, I would definitely try some of those things. David: Yeah, it’s simple enough to be able to at least get an idea of where most people are coming from to be able to go back and get more. And obviously, we’re talking quite a bit about online, but there are a lot of offline sources. If you do networking, you go to networking functions, you may find that one networking function does much better than another. You may find that you go to one particular networking function and you don’t get any leads from it. You go back again and again and again, and you’re not getting leads. Everybody’s just schmoozing. That happens a lot in business. Jay: Yeah. David: Particularly in B2B. Well, B2C as well. So in those situations you can make determinations if you’re keeping track of it. But very many small businesses in particular will just go out, go to some sort of networking function or go to something that’s supposed to generate business, and they use that as an excuse like, “I’m doing something.” But if you go out to something like that and you’re not going out there with the idea of coming back with leads that you can follow up on, it’s really just a waste of time. So there’s a focus aspect to this. There’s an online versus offline aspect to this. But ultimately what it boils down to is the subject of this podcast. Where are your best leads coming from? Jay: Yeah. David: Where can I go to find more? Jay: Yeah, and I see this a lot and I’ve been a victim of it. Movement for the sake of movement. You know? I’m doing something, I’m going to these networking events. Going to these shows. Placing these ads. So when is it going to start working? Movement for the sake of movement is of no value. Right? There has to be some intent. It has to be trackable. It has to be adjustable. And I think it’s so easy to fall into that trap of “I’m doing something!” And so, where’s the result? David: Yeah, it reminds me of that Zig Ziglar quote, “Don’t look for your ship to come in if you haven’t sent one out.” Jay: Yeah. David: And very often we’re trying to do things that are generating results. We talked about goal setting in a previous podcast, and a lot of times we’re so focused on the goal, “I need to generate X dollars per month or X dollars per year.” And what am I going to do to do that? And we just run around in a lot of different directions trying to generate that amount of money. Well, what we need to be doing is saying, “okay, what is going to get me to that?” In other words, how many leads do I need to generate in a month in order to get to my number? If I know how many leads I need to generate in a month, because a certain percentage of them will convert and a certain percentage won’t convert. If I know how many people I need to initiate contact with on any given month, then we can track those metrics and say, “okay, well today is the 20th of the month” or whatever the date is. How many people have I initiated contact with so far this month? And if it’s less than the number that you know, you need to reach to hit your numbers, then okay, I need to initiate contact with this many more people. Because when you focus on those lead metrics, the things that you can actually control as opposed to the lag metrics, like how much actually came in for the month. You can focus on the lead measures and then the lag measures will follow. Jay: Yeah. And again, the focus of this podcast, the high value leads. So if you’re just not fishing in any pond, but you’re fishing in that pond where you know you’ve gotten some good leads before, maybe you won’t get as many leads, but who cares, right? Because you’ve got quality customers who are going to come back to you. And we’d all rather have that than, you know, a hundred little minnows on our line, right? David: Yeah, and it absolutely ties into the topic of what we’re talking about. Because when you find those really popular or those really productive fishing holes, then you say, okay, well if I go here, primarily, I can get fewer leads and know I’m still going to hit my numbers, so why would I want to waste time bringing in more leads over here if it’s not going to produce at the same level? Jay: Yeah, maybe ’cause some people like movement. It feels like you’re busy, so that’s a good thing. It’s not always a good thing, right? David: No. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Jay: Yeah. Well, how do people find out more? David? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re looking to attract more high quality leads in your business. If you’d like to start focusing on the high value, high dollar leads that can do better things for your business, it’s probably worth a call. TopSecrets.com/call. Jay: All right, as always, great conversation. Can’t wait till we talk again. David: Thanks a lot, Jay. Are You Ready to Determine Where Your Best Leads are Coming From? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

July 14, 202615 min

Grow the Value of Your Business: Make it Worth More

To grow the value of your business, consider this. If your business burns down, you’ve got whatever… desks, furniture and things like that. That stuff’s all insured. You should be able to come back from that okay. But if your book of business burns down, right? If you still have all this overhead, but you don’t have that book of business anymore, you are really in trouble. Because if you have desks, and furniture, and technology but you don’t have the ability to sell to the people that you need to sell to, what’s that really worth? All of that is just overhead. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing building the value of your business. Welcome back Jay. Jay: Hey, I’m so glad to be here, David. Once again, you hit me with another term, Do I really know what the value of my business is? And value has such a different meaning for so many, right? Value could be. Well, it gives me free time. I hate my business, but it gives me free time. So it’s of great value. Or it’s of great value because I have all these shiny toys, you know, those types of things. So I think value could be very different for different people. David: Yeah, it absolutely can. Particularly when we’re thinking about business owners versus salespeople. When I think about business value, I mean what is it worth to someone else if they wanted to buy it from you. For a business owner, what would someone actually pay for the business? For a salesperson, what is your book of business worth? If you’re building something up and somebody wanted to buy your book of business, what would that be worth? That’s what I was thinking of in terms of value. But you touched on a lot of other great points regarding the term. Jay: Yeah, like I said, there’s so many other things. I’ve talked to people who have said, yeah, I’m thinking about selling my business. And I ask them, well, what’s it worth? They often look at me like I have no idea whatsoever. In fact, I was working for Kinko’s way back when, when they wanted to sell. And they wanted to go public first, and the SEC came in and said, you don’t know what you own. You don’t know what you owe. You don’t know anything about your business. And you have the worst paperwork system we’ve ever seen in our lives. You’re not going public. And so they went and found a private buyer, which was FedEx, who went and bought FedEx Kinko’s. So just in how you manage your business can affect the value of that business. David: Yeah, absolutely. And for a lot of people, the value of their business isn’t going to be FedEx Kinko’s worthy, very likely. Jay: Yeah. David: But still, it’s good to know. And, for some it might be worth more than that. But for most people, particularly small to medium sized businesses, when they’re looking to sell, they really don’t have any idea of what the business is worth or what it could be worth to someone else. And in different industries, there are different metrics and multipliers that people use. They say, okay, well, we’re going to take a multiple of your net value. In other words, what is, bottom line, after owner’s compensation and things like that. They have a number of different metrics that people use. But in a lot of cases, that’s what it boils down to. What’s it likely to be worth to someone else? Glen Holt was a professional in the promotional products industry for a long time. He was one of my mentors in the early days. I remember him saying that when people are looking to buy a business, what they’re really paying for is the likelihood of future business. Because the only way I want to spend a dime on a business is if I know it’s going to generate a high multiple of that over a period of time. Whether it’s two years or five years, or seven years or ten years, whatever that multiple ends up being. At some point I know that I’m going to be able to recoup my investment and make more going forward. Jay: Yeah, exactly. Maybe you envision running this business forever and then you hand it off to your kids and their kids. But a lot of parents find out their kids don’t want the business. So it’s not easy to offload it that way. But I like the idea of even if you’re never considering running your business, things happen. Right? Medical things happen. Emergencies happen. You may find yourself someday saying, “I don’t want to sell. But I have to sell because of my circumstances.” So I think always running your business in a way that if you had to sell, you’d have your numbers in line. You’ve built your value, you have a clientele. I think that may be just a good mindset. David: Yeah. It’s also a good mindset if you think about the fact that some people don’t want to sell their businesses. That’s perfectly fine. But the thing that you have to realize is that if you don’t sell your business, then who bought it? You did, right? Jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. David: You bought it with your time, your energy, your effort, all the hours that you put into it. So it’s good to be able to say, “okay, I know what I’ve put into this.” If you even get a value of what it might be worth to someone else, you can say, “would I be willing to pay that for this business?” Right? Or the amount of time and energy and effort that I put in, would I want it to be worth more than that? So I think it’s a good metric to know from our own standpoint in terms of what’s the business worth or what’s the book of business worth to someone else. But also how am I doing in terms of what I was hoping to build when I started out? Jay: Yeah, that’s a good question. What were you expecting to build and where are you now and what more can you do? I think there’s also some sticker shock when you think your business is worth one thing and someone comes in and says, “oh, I think it’s worth half that.” You’re like, “wait a minute, this is my baby! I built this thing. It has to be worth more than that.” David: Right, but there are metrics that you can use to make those determinations. And chances are, if you go to sell your business, somebody’s going to tell you they think it’s worth less than you do. But that’s where you have to make a determination as well and say, “okay, well look, if you were to buy this business, in three and a half years, you would be able to get your money back even if you just maintain it,” right? So, and if they say, “well, I only want to pay, you know, a year’s worth,” then you can say, “all right, well we probably don’t have a fit here,” or whatever. But as long as you’ve got the metrics to back it up, to say, okay, we’re doing this amount of sales after our costs, we’re doing this amount. If you take out what the owner’s being compensated, then this is what you would have left at the end of each year. And then you use that as some sort of multiple to say. Is it two years? Is it three years? Three and a half, five, seven, whatever you can get. Now, there are some companies, particularly in the tech space, and particularly if they’re recurring revenue companies, that they can sell for high multiples of what they’re bringing in each year. It just depends on what people feel that it’s worth and also, what they think they’ll be able to do with it. Because if somebody has a book of business and they’re selling whatever, a quarter million, half a million dollars a year, I’m talking about a salesperson and they want to retire. If they were to sell their book of business to someone else, and that person was going to look at it and say, well, I think I can probably maintain that for a certain number of years. Then they would value it based on that. If they looked at it and said, I think I can do twice what this guy’s doing with this book of business, then they might value it higher. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: So a lot of it has to do with the person that you are looking to potentially sell to as well. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think just some of the more simpler things like staffing, you know, who’s running the place when you’re not there? What does the place look like? Is the equipment updated? Because, you know, that’s what I’m thinking. Am I going to have to come in here and update all of this equipment? Will I have ongoing capital costs? Am I going to have all of these things? You may think you’re saving a dollar now, but if you do have to sell, it’s really going to hurt yourself in the long run. David: Yeah, and we didn’t even really talk about things like that because it depends on the kind of business that you have. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: If you’ve got a lot of overhead, if you’ve got furniture, fixtures, real estate, all those types of things, those are all going to play into it. I was really thinking more in terms of small businesses or a book of business that a salesperson has, where it’s primarily their book of business that they’re selling. Because in those situations, when people buy businesses too, they very often prefer to do an asset sale. They only want to buy assets of the business so that if there were any potential issues with the business before, if somebody was going to try to sue the business or whatever, that wouldn’t potentially come with a sale. So they’d say, “I just want to buy certain assets. I want to buy your customer base. Maybe I want to buy certain furniture and fixtures. I want to take along certain employees.” So they can sort of cherry pick the things that they want to buy from the business. But I don’t want to get too much into the weeds on this. I think for anyone who has been considering the idea of, okay, what is my business or my book of business worth? What do I need to look at? And so some of it would be to say, okay, what type of clients do I have? Do I have a base of high value clients? People who spend money with me consistently? Because if I do, that’s going to be worth a whole lot more than if I’m getting one-off and two off orders from lots of different people, and it’s coming from all kinds of different sources and I can’t say where it’s coming from. Jay: Right. David: When you know where your clients are coming from and you’re selling to them on an ongoing basis and you’ve got a lot of repeat and referral business, that’s a whole lot easier to sell. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you know, I’m just going through this process right now. I am basically starting a company that is mirroring the company I work for, because they’re going out of business, and I was able to cherry pick the things that I liked, so, David: mm-hmm. Jay: Yes, give me your customer base. Yes, give me some of your systems with your website and things like that. Throw the rest away. I don’t want any of the other stuff because I didn’t feel like they were doing it right. So I really came away, like you said, with this book of business that I know is going to be of high value and high dollar for me. David: Yeah. And what a lot of people lose sight of sometimes is that that is really the primary value of a business. There are a lot of people in the print and promotions industry where they’ve got printing equipment and they’ve got all that sort of thing, inks and all sorts of things like that, which for the most part reflects overhead. That stuff that you’ve got to pay for, that then has to be paid back. And all of that’s going to be paid back by the customers that you’re able to bring in. So it’s all going to be dependent upon the business that’s coming in. So a lot of times the things that some business owners and also most banks, the thing that most banks look at as assets are to most business owners, actually liabilities because it’s overhead. And I’ve, said this a number of times when I’ve been speaking in public about this. One of the things that I’ve said very often is the fact that If your business burns down, you don’t want that to happen, right? But if your business burns down and you’ve got whatever, desks and furniture and things like that, that stuff’s all insured. You should be able to come back from that okay. But if your book of business burns down, right? If you still have all this overhead, but you don’t have that book of business anymore, you are really in trouble. Because if you’ve got desks and you’ve got furniture, and you’ve got technology and everything, and you don’t have the ability to sell to the people that you need to sell to, at that point, what’s that really worth? All of that becomes overhead. So it’s just good to think about. Jay: Well, and I also think, and I don’t know if this is on topic, with what you’re thinking of, but it really pops in my mind, is if you have different salespeople in your business and their book of business is treated as their book of business, if they leave, you’ve lost a portion of your clientele. And so it’s very important to somehow incorporate that into a customer management system where you can see everything that’s been going on, maybe have non-competes. Because in the situation I was in, I attained a certain level of knowledge that no one else in the company had. And so when I went to leave, they’re like, “we’re going to have to shut down because he is the only guy who knows this stuff.” And so offloading their information, offloading their customer base, making sure that it’s treated as your property if you do have a sales team, I think is absolutely critical. David: Yeah, absolutely is. In the promotional products industry in particular, a lot of businesses hire independent contractors. And when you’re an independent contractor, unless there are documents that say something different, you pretty much own that book of business. Jay: Yeah. David: If you’re an employee, if you’re a paid salesperson, if you’re on salary, then it’s very likely that the company owns that book of business, unless there’s some sort of documentation saying otherwise. So regardless of however you’re set up, it’s really smart to have some sort of clarification upfront when you join an organization. Okay, who owns these clients? Is it the salesperson? Is it the business? Because if you’re unclear on that stuff, that could lead to expensive legal issues down the line. Jay: Yeah. One person could walk out the door and that’s it. Then you’re rebuilding from scratch. David: Yeah, we have a manual system, that a number of businesses in the print and promotional products industry have used. And when we were promoting that at one point, one of the points that I made with that particular product was that if someone were to walk out of a bank with $250,000 that didn’t belong to them, that would be called bank robbery. It would be a crime. Jay: Yeah. Yeah. David: And they would send the police after you. But if a sales representative walks out of your business with $250,000 worth of business, if you don’t have the paperwork in place, there’s no crime there, right? Jay: Nope. David: You just lost it, and that person has it. Jay: That’s right. David: So you really want to make sure that stuff is nailed down in advance. Jay: Absolutely. I love this discussion. How can people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re thinking about building up the value of your business, one of the best ways to do that is to have the systems and processes in place that will allow you to be able to sell it, move away from it, and have the person who buys it be able to expect to continue to grow that business and obtain a high return on investment. That’s what’s going to allow you to sell it for top dollar. If you don’t have systems and processes like that in place, it’d be great to have a conversation. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, once again, it’s always a pleasure. David: Thank you very much, Jay. Want to Grow the Value of Your Business? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

June 30, 202613 min

Get Responses: Create High-Value Communication

To get responses, create high-value communication. When you’re doing this, obviously, you’re not actually telling your customer “I’m here to create value in our communication.” You’re just doing it: Adding value in the conversation. You’re thinking about, “what can I say when I reach out to this person the next time to make this communication more interesting, more beneficial?” By doing that, you’re going to create that in their brains and they’re not even going to know why or how it’s happening. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will discuss how to get responses by creating high value communications. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David, once again, great to be here with you as we talk again about a topic that I know in my business career, we probably haven’t had this conversation a lot. Communication is just something that happens. And it may depend on whether you’re old school or new school. Old school, we’re just making phone calls and picking up the phone. That’s high value communication. If it’s new school, we’re texting and emailing. And that’s the extent of the thought process. David: Yeah, and I think the adjective here, the high value part of it may be what we’re bringing to the discussion today. Because you’re right, communication in business is expected. It comes with the job. Mm-hmm. And we’re always going to be communicating. But the fact of the matter is that particularly now, as people are more and more likely to skip over communication, if they don’t like what you’re saying or if they don’t feel like it’s worthwhile to them, it becomes more important for us to ask ourselves “am I creating value in this conversation?” Am I creating value in this email, this text, this phone call, this podcast, right? Because if we’re not communicating value in the discussion, then we’re doing our listeners a disservice. We’re doing whoever it is that we’re calling a disservice. Whoever we’re emailing, we’re doing them all a big disservice. So, If we consider the idea that we need to be engaged in high value communication as much as possible, it will very likely change what we’re saying at any given time. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think that most people now are engaging these new technologies that make the communication part automatic, right? Like drip campaigns, newsletters, automatic texting or whatever. So that part of the equation is fairly easy to implement. But then the real question, as you’re bringing up, is if I’m not providing value in that communication, I am training the customer or the potential customer to block me out. Because that’s the other thing that’s so easy. It’s so easy to automatically communicate. But on the other end, it is so easy for me when I hit delete in my messages. It says, do you want to block this sender? And that’s it. It’s done. It’s over. So that’s why you want to focus on that word value. David: Yeah, and particularly now when people are using AI to help generate communications. And my belief is that’s going to cause a lot of communications to start looking like other communications. Mm-hmm. And everybody’s going to be saying pretty much the same things. But if you are operating with the intent of creating value in the communication that’s going to be a component that you might be adding that other people aren’t going to be adding into their algorithm, whether it’s with AI or whether it’s what they’re doing themselves. And you also raised a great point, which is the idea of if you’re not doing this, you are training people essentially to ignore you. And wow, that’s not what we want to train people to do. Jay: Right. my email service now, I use Mac right at the top now, they put the unsubscribe button, like that’s the first thing I see. So it is so easy, and I just think about it. There are newsletters that I keep, that I allow to keep coming, and there are those that I unsubscribe to immediately. And I kind of do this thing where I, okay, I’ll scan down quick. And I’m looking for value for me. Because I have a time to value, you know, ratio. So I’m looking, is this something, is there anything in here that this person’s sending me that I really care about? And if I get one or two and the answer is no, they’re done. That’s it. You’ll never get through to me again. David: Right. And when you think about it, particularly with something like email, but it also applies to texts or whatever, When you’re looking through your inbox, you’re going to see two things. You’re going to see who it’s from, and you’re going to see the subject line. Mm-hmm. What is it that they’re trying to communicate? So sometimes people will look at your name and they’ll say, “oh, it’s from Jay. I’m going to open this.” They don’t even care what the subject line is. Yeah. But if you don’t have that sort of relationship, they’re going to say, “okay, it’s from Jay. What does he want?” Right? And then they might go to the subject line and say, “does this subject line interest me enough to open this?” And if the answer is yes, then it will get opened. But that combination is going to be huge. And if you’re not thinking in terms of adding value in your communication, then you’re very likely not going to have any value mentioned in your subject line, and you’re going to dramatically reduce the likelihood that it’s going to get opened. Jay: Yeah, I agree. So we’re kind of talking about the drip campaigns or the ongoing attempts to kind of get in and remind them about us. That’s one part of communication. But I also think it’s important to assess the value of the regular ongoing communication that is happening. Like when somebody calls in, are they getting a phone tree? When somebody on your staff or you talk to somebody, is somebody going to hang up the phone and say, and we’ve all had this happen. I hang up the phone and I go, well, that was a big fat waste of time, right? And so clearly I didn’t have a high value conversation with the person who I was talking to. David: Yeah, exactly, and I think we’ve all been in that situation where we’ve either been on the receiving end of it or we’ve been on the ascending side of it, where we just feel like, “oh wow, I clearly didn’t create enough value in this communication.” If they’re ignoring us, if they’re ghosting us, there’s always a reason for it. Now that reason is not always us. maybe it’s not your communication. Maybe you’re doing everything right and this person just has different things going on, or they’re afraid to say no, whatever that is. We’re never going to completely get around that. But if you recognize the fact that most people are going to be looking for “what’s in it for me? What’s the benefit to me in pursuing this conversation?” Then we can change what we’re doing. And the really great point that you raised there is, yeah, we’re not just talking about drip campaigns, we are talking about every single bit of communication that you put out. And that’s sort of what we led off with, is that you need to create high value communication in everything. Telephone calls, voice messages when you’re leaving a voicemail message. A lot of people don’t get calls back when they leave a voicemail message. And some of the reason for that is very likely the fact that there may not be enough value created in the message that is being left. If the message is, “Hey, give me a call back,” and I don’t know why I should, because I don’t know how that will benefit me, then the likelihood of me calling back is dramatically reduced. But if I recognize that I need to dangle some sort of carrot there. Why should they want to contact me back? Why should they want to return the call? And if I can add some value in there, give me a call back so I can, dot dot dot. What is it? What can you do that would be beneficial to them? Because if you say that in the communication, they’ll be a lot more likely to reply. Jay: Yeah. I think today it’s so funny how we respond to things. When I get an email that I don’t feel like had value or that I didn’t ask for. I feel invaded. I feel like somebody has come into my house and forced their will upon me. And when I get a text, it’s even worse. We judge these communications so aggressively and one of the other things that jumps into my mind that is so important about high value communication, one of the things I hate is when I call and whoever I’m calling goes right into the sales pitch, like right away. We don’t want to misinterpret value as the minute I get on the phone with them, I’m going to tell you what my value is to them. My preference is that they spend some time getting to know me so that they can properly explain to me how their product or service fits into my situation. If they’re just going to start cramming stuff down my throat, the minute we start talking, I’m going to be gone pretty quick. David: Yeah, and that’s an excellent distinction. Because there’s the value that we will create if and when we do business together, right? If I’m trying to sell you something, there should be value created if we’re doing business together, right? Otherwise, there’s no purpose in that happening. But I’m talking about the value that has to happen to even have that conversation. When you dive right into “here’s who I am and here’s what I sell,” they don’t understand the value at that point, right? Because the value has to come, to some extent, from the relationship that we are establishing in that call. And so to the extent that we’re going to lead off with value in that call or in that communication, we need to do it in a way where they get the value upfront and it can’t be related to the fact that they’re already buying something from us. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. This is one of the things I do every day as I do sales consultations. And oftentimes I will have people that have already spoken to two or three of my competitors and they will vent to me about how they talk to those people. They were just trying to sell me. I never felt like they had any real interest in me. And then they talk to me and the first five minutes of the conversation, I’m getting to know them and their product and what they’re looking for so that I can actually provide a consultation, because that’s what I bill it as, right? I if I say it’s a sales consultation, or a free consultation is what we call it, and what they’re getting is a sales pitch, that is just bait and switch and they’ll sense it immediately. David: Yeah, absolutely. And once again, I think just considering this, just thinking about it, keeping in the back of your mind or tacking it up on the wall next to your desk, next to your phone to remind yourself that ultimately it’s about creating high value communication, if we want to get a response, if we want to engage with people, create relationships, and ultimately sell something, Jay: Yeah, and at every level of communication, right? Not just the beginning, not just the middle, but the entire process from beginning to end. Think about that mindset, if a customer knows that every time they interact with you, it’s going to somehow be fulfilling on some level. Whether it’s the product or how the communication is perceived or how you just pick up the phone. Then, like we talked about in the last podcast, when we see a caller ID and somebody’s calling us, we’re not going to be like, “ugh, I can’t believe I have to pick up the phone on this one.” We’re going to be like, “oh, it’s going to be great to talk to that person.” David: And nine times out of 10, they won’t even realize why. Right? Because most people don’t talk about this. They don’t think about this. They don’t even consider the idea of creating value in the communication. So if you’re doing this, obviously, you’re not telling your customer “well, I’m here to create value in our communication,” right? You’re just doing it. Adding value in the conversation. Thinking “what can I say when I reach out to this person the next time to make this communication more interesting, more beneficial?” By doing that, you’re going to create that in their brains and they’re not even going to know why it’s happening. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Such a great point. How do people find out more, David? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you are looking to create value in your communication, that is really one of the core principles of what we do in our Total Market Domination course. A lot of it is about creating entry-level communication, the kind of communication that’s going to introduce you to someone initially so that they can start to feel comfortable with you and comfort level communication, because they’re not going to buy until they get to the point where they’re feeling comfortable. So there are different levels of high value communication that we walk you through that are specifically designed to get you the result that you’re probably looking for. Jay: As always, I love the conversation. Thank you so much for your time today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Get Responses with High-Value Business Communication? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .

June 23, 202615 min

The Follow-Up Mistake That Costs Sales

The follow-up mistake that costs sales (and kills communication) is a lack of sequencing. If I’ve got a sequence in place that says, all right, when I get a lead from a networking function, I’m going to initially, either same day or next morning, send out this email message, which essentially says, “it was great meeting you at the networking function. Nice having a chance to talk.” Then, you include something in that email to elicit a response. Some will initiate a dialogue, some of them won’t. So from that point, if you don’t hear back, you could have another one that goes out a couple of days later saying, “Hey, never heard back you on this, but something else occurred to me that I didn’t mention…” and then you add something else to the conversation that could potentially be of interest to them. So you’re not just hitting them with “call me, call me, call me, call me.” You’re actually creating value in the communication, which is particularly key when you’re doing sequencing like that. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of sequencing your communication. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. I really love that we dive into these things that can have such an impact on your daily business. Oftentimes people will focus on the large things, not understanding that sometimes the smallest tweaks can make all the difference. David: Yeah, and things like this really are kind of diving deep. And many times I know other people in podcasts or in stuff that’s actually going out to the public, they’ll just keep it all high level and not really get into too much. I think we’ve done a reasonably good job over the years of diving a little deeper and getting into things in a little bit more detail. Because it’s important for people who watch this or listen to this to recognize that there are a lot of aspects to all of this. And we touched on this in the previous episode. We were talking about sort of the high level goals, we were talking about the high level concepts versus the nitty gritty of what do I have to do on a day-to-day basis. And this really gets more into the idea of the nitty gritty. But sequencing is something that I don’t hear many people talk about in business. And I think it’s a real game changer for people in the sense that when you get this and you start implementing it, it changes the way that you interact with your prospects and clients to make what you are doing better and more appealing than what your competition is probably doing. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. And back to the idea of focusing on the smaller stuff. I’m weird. I call myself lazy because I want to avoid steps and reduce steps, but in the name of that laziness, I will spend weeks trying to create a system, whether it’s a software system or a planning system or something, just knowing that over the long run, it’s going to have such a dramatic impact. And I can be lazy about that thing after that. And I focus. I mean, if I can reduce one little step, I’ll spend weeks trying to figure out how to do that. David: Yeah. But that’s smart. I don’t think that’s lazy. I think it’s far lazier to just go into each situation, not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing how to respond to the common objections you get, not knowing how to create a system that will allow you to bring clients through the door like clockwork. And when you do that, you’re basically going into work every day with no idea of what’s going to happen. So I think that’s really lazy and really sloppy and I don’t think what you described is lazy at all. Jay: Well, I don’t, you know, I think you’re probably right, but it is something that drives my wife crazy and it’s really bad. Like when we go grocery shopping, I have a route, and that route has a very specific design. It’s based upon how the groceries are going to end up on the conveyor belt. And that’s important because that determines on how they will go into the bags, because I want the bread on top and all of those things on top. So I have this all planned and thought out from years of experience. It brings me joy, David, it’s, it’s a little, probably obsessive compulsive, but that’s the way I am. David: That’s funny and she still lets you come along. That’s amazing. But it’s a great example though, because when you think about that, and there are two schools of thought when it comes to outcomes, right? You described a more outcome driven approach. And it reminds me of the expression, the road is better than the inn, if you’ve heard that one. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And I remember hearing that years ago and thinking, no, I kind of like the inn, right? I like, where are we going? Let’s get there. Mission accomplished. Onto the next thing. But there are people who just enjoy the experience. Shopping is a great example of that. I have never been a good shopper. Jay: Mm-hmm. At least before online shopping. I was a terrible shopper. As a kid. My mom would drag me around to different stores and she could just look at stuff for hours. I got bored three minutes in. As a kid, I could go to the toy section and I could look around for a few minutes, maybe see something I liked or whatever. Then I’m done. Right? And people are just wired differently in that regard. But I think if we really get down to the core of it, and we start thinking in terms of creating the systems and processes that will allow you to get results in your business, and tying it again back to our main topic, sequencing your communication, what this will allow you to do is to leapfrog your competition. Because you won’t have to think about each step of it. And it really ties to what you were saying about, you know your process in a store. Well, imagine that in business. Imagine a situation where you create a sequence of communications to send out to the prospects that you want to convert, in a specific order, in a specific sequence, at a specific timeframe. You can automate that as well. And design it to accomplish a result Too often in business because we’re sort of focused all over the place, we’re here, we’re there, we’re everywhere. We think in terms of sending a message out to a prospect and waiting for them to reply. And when they don’t reply. We become confused and annoyed. It’s like, why didn’t they reply? I sent you an email. Why didn’t you reply? And it’s cause that’s not the way the world works anymore. Right? I sent you an email. Yeah, it’d be nice if it were like tennis, where you bat it across the other person bats it across, and you bat it across and you have a nice volley going. That happens sometimes, but more often than not, it’s not happening. And if you’re depending on getting that volley hit back to you right away, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Where instead, if you recognize, you may have to send it across the net 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 times before it gets lobbed back, you’ll be prepared. And if you prep that in advance, you are so far ahead of what your competition is doing. It’s just not even funny. Jay: Yeah, I, have this situation going on right now where somebody has sent me an email inviting me to do something. I don’t know who this person is. I’ve never heard from them, and then I don’t respond. And then like four days later, I get an email that says, Hey, you didn’t respond. And I’m like, Well, that should tell you all you need to know. And then I got another one. I’ve sent you two emails and you haven’t responded. This person is sequencing, but they’re doing it in a horrific way. I mean, by the third email, I’m like, who do you think you are? That you can sit here and demand a response from me? And I don’t even know who you are. The whole thing has soured me. I am never going to call them back based upon that type of sequencing. David: Right. And if that’s the type of sequencing we’re talking about, then yeah, don’t do that. That is not what I’m talking about. It’s interesting you should mention that because over the past several months I have received so many messages from people, pitching guests for this very podcast where they’re saying, Hey, I think you should interview this person who’s talking about this thing, and let me know if that’s of interest to you. You know, I’ve listened to your podcast. I think he’d be a great fit. And most of the time I get, you know, pretty much the same pitch for different speakers. So I’m on some kind of list and I normally ignore them. But they’ve got sequences set up where it’s the second one. Hey, just bumping this up to the top of your inbox again, you know, do you want to consider so-and-so for the podcast? And so finally, I just put together the response that I’m sending to people, which is to say, if you listen to this podcast, you would recognize that we are not an “interview of the week kind of thing.” You know, there are two of us who do this. Jay: Yeah. David: If we were a podcast that had a lot of people on and we were interviewing what you said would make sense, and I don’t get into all that much detail. But they’re basically not pitching the right thing to the right person. And so in those situations, yeah, sequencing is not a great idea. But when you’ve got somebody who is engaged or would like to be engaged and you want to find out whether or not they’re on board with you, when it’s done right… And that ties into the MVPs, the messaging, you know, is the messaging going to be good? Which combination of marketing vehicles you’re using to reach them, and who are the people you’re reaching? If you’ve got those three things in sync, then sequencing is going to work extremely well for you. Jay: So let’s talk a little bit more about. Sequencing. I can guess at a, couple of these things. I’m guessing like so many of the things we’re talking about, you want to start with pen and paper and maybe start identifying who your potential customers are. What are potential, the stages that they might be in, and then start focusing on the messaging for each of those stages. David: Yes. And when we think in terms of the overall stages, or the initial stages, where is this person in the journey? If this is somebody that I just met, let’s say I meet somebody at a networking function. We exchange business cards or whatever, I go back to my office, this person goes back to their office and nothing happens until one of us moves, right? So, If I’ve got a sequence in place that says, all right, when I get a lead from a networking function, what I’m going to do is I’m going to initially, either same day or next morning, send out this email message, which essentially says, it was great meeting you at the networking function. Nice having a chance to talk. And then. you have something that you say and obviously it’s going to be different for each person who’s doing that, but you’ve got something that is said in that email that is designed to elicit a response. So you might want to end that email with a question so that they’re likely to initiate a dialogue. Some will initiate a dialogue, some of them won’t. So from that point, if you don’t hear back, you could have another one that goes out a couple of days later like, with a reply to your own message saying, Hey never heard back you on this, but something else occurred to me that I didn’t mention… and then you add something else to the conversation that could potentially be of interest to them. So you’re not just hitting them with call me, call me, call me, call me. You’re actually creating value in the communication, which is also key to good marketing, but it’s also particularly key when you’re doing sequencing like that. And then the third step in your sequence could be calling to follow up. If they gave you a business card, it could be a phone call that comes whatever, a week later or a certain period of time later, and you decide what that is. In our Total Market Domination course, I mean, we walk through all of this so people can decide, can determine for themselves what is a good timeframe to do this in. Because a lot of times if you get a business card from somebody at a networking function and you forget about it? Or you go to a trade show, that’s the worst! You’re paying to have all these people go out to the trade show. You’re paying to put ’em up, you’re paying to feed them. They bring cards back and they stay in the bottom of their briefcase or their suitcase. And those people never get phone calls. It’s just such an incredible waste. But if you’ve got these processes in place to be able to sequence your communication, to be able to get those people back into the zone that they were in, that first initiated the conversation, then they will be far more likely to respond to you and reply to the conversation and keep it going. Jay: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m in the heat of this process right now, because as you know, I’m setting up a new business. David: Mm-hmm. Jay: building the CRM behind the scenes and I have to ask myself, what are each of the stages and what do I want to happen? What type of communication? And one of the other parts about that, that is so important is, oftentimes, I know when I’ve been put in somebody’s CRM drip system. Because the messages stop being personal and I’m like, you’re sending this out to everybody. So there’s a fine line between having a sequence and making people feel like, oh, they’ve just been put in the hopper. I think we have a high awareness. And so I think that your sequences need to be a combination of personal contact. And these systems that will save you a lot of time and effort. David: Yes, I agree completely. I also think that the way that those sequences are written is going to determine a lot of that as well. Jay: Yes! David: There are people in business, many of us in business have initially been trained on “corporate speak.” And we write in brochure language, instead of in human language. Jay: Yes. David: A lot of what you just described can be overcome simply by engaging in conversational English, even in the messages that are going out automatically. Even in the automated messages where much of the content will be the same. But the way that you’re conveying it still seems more personal and still feels like it’s coming from another human being as opposed to an auto-generated sequence. Jay: Yeah. David, I love this point. And you know, I’ve discovered a way for me to do this. And that is I’ve started using dictation on the computer a lot. Because I don’t know if people notice if they’re watching the video. I have something called Essential Tremors, which causes me to shake. And it’s getting harder and harder for me to type. So I’ve gone to dictation, but I found if I close my eyes and I act like I’m on the phone with the person when I’m doing the dictation, that brochure speak goes away. And so it’s something I don’t have to give a lot of thought to. It’s just a change in how I’m recording that information. David: Yeah, I do a very similar thing on the treadmill in the morning. I’ve got a, a little digital recorder and I’m on the treadmill and I’m moving and I’m recording. It could be a letter, it could be notes for some sort of presentation I’m going to do. But I will record that and I’ll just stop it every few seconds. If you heard those recordings, it’s a lot of heavy breathing and little bits and pieces. And I’ll say three words and I’ll stop and I’ll try to figure out what the rest of the sentence is, and I’ll say that, and then I’ll just take that whole thing and I’ll get it transcribed. And then at that point I can clean up the words and it’s a hundred times easier than trying to sit down in front of a blinking cursor and figure out what I’m going to say next. Jay: Yeah. And that blinking cursor, it does something to us. It changes how, how we record that information. So I love that piece of feedback when it comes to sequencing. Cool. How do people find out more, David? David: You can go to top secrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team if you are interested in getting better response from people by thinking things out in advance and sequencing your communication so that people are actually looking forward to hearing what you have to say next instead of dreading it, schedule a call. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, once again, it’s a pleasure talking to you. David: Thank you so much, Jay. Are You Ready to Start Getting Better Results by Sequencing Your Communication? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: 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 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 .