The Need to Say No in Business

Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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المحتوى المقدم من David Blaise. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة David Blaise أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.

<div class="span index">1</div> <span><a class="" data-remote="true" data-type="html" href="/series/techsurge-deep-tech-vc-podcast">TechSurge: Deep Tech VC Podcast</a></span>

1
TechSurge: Deep Tech VC Podcast

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منذ 9 أياممنذ 9d ago

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The TechSurge: Deep Tech VC Podcast explores the frontiers of emerging tech, venture capital, and business. For entrepreneurs, investors, tech professionals, or anyone interested in where technology is headed next. Presented by Celesta Capital, and hosted by Founding Partners Nic Brathwaite, Michael Marks, and Sriram Viswanathan. Email feedback and show ideas to techsurge@celesta.vc. Join us as we examine the next major tech cycle, uncover emerging global tech hubs, and analyze where VC investment dollars are headed. Tune in to hear directly from Silicon Valley leaders, daring new founders, and visionary thinkers. Past guests on the podcast and TechSurge Live summits include Kara Swisher, Vinod Khosla, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, and others. Each discussion delves into the intersection of technology advancement, market dynamics, and the founder journey, offering insights into the vast opportunities and complex challenges ahead. Episode topics include AI, data center transformation, blockchain, cyber security, healthcare innovation, VC investment trends, tips for first-time founders, and more. New episodes release every two weeks. Visit techsurgepodcast.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletter and other content!

منذ عام واحد 11:48

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I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, "no is a complete sentence." have you ever heard that one? It's interesting because it's very hard to just say no in business when someone asks you something. That was an old Nancy Reagan thing, right? "Just say no." Say no to drugs. Just say no. But when somebody asks you to do something, you just say "no." I think there was an episode of Seinfeld like that... David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss the need to say no in business. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I think this is one of the hardest things to do in business because we feel like we can answer every question and that we should. And the reality is, that's not the case. David: Yeah, and it's such an easy trap to fall into because there are so many people that we feel like we need to say yes to, right? We've got business associates, we've got clients, we've got prospects, we've got family, we've got friends, everybody coming to us with things. And the agree type of person inside us wants to say yes to most things. We want to be agreeable. We want to do the best of our ability. But sometimes we can really get in over our heads when we don't at least start to say no to some of the things that are not going to allow us to get where we need to go. Jay: Yeah, and I agree. It's in your personal life. It's in your business life. If you have a sales cycle, it's which customers you choose to deal with. I mean, you can let your entire life be dominated. And I know people like this and I've looked at him and I said, how do you ever get something done? I mean, I love you because you want to help everybody and you're so serving to other people, but your family might be neglected. Your business might be neglected. There's got to be balance in the force, right? David: Yeah. And sometimes, during some stages of life, it's easier than other times to say no. But there are periods in there, man, where it's just like you feel like you have to do everything. You have to say yes to every opportunity. You have to at least explore it. You want to try to help everyone you can possibly help, which is a great thing, but we all have a limited, finite number of hours in a day. 24 hours is fixed. It's inflexible. We can't change that. And everything we say yes to means that we're saying no to something else, even if we're not physically saying no. We're not giving ourselves the ability to accomplish additional things, which creates sort of a huge opportunity cost if we're not careful. Jay: Yeah, and how many of us are careful? That word careful, right, David? What does that mean? Is it identifying the things that you have to get done? I think yes, the things you want to get done, the priorities? And I don't think we're saying no to everybody, right? It's understanding yourself and what's most important and saying, I'm actually going to say yes. to so many people, but after that, I'm booked. I can't. I've got to be with my family. I've got to be at work. I've got to be, with these other priorities. David: Yes, and I think for a lot of us, it's inside of work where we often have the most difficulty saying no. Because when you're dealing with family and friends, in a way, it's easier to say, well, I can't because I have to do this. I can't because I have to work, right? We're not saying no I'm not doing it. We're saying I can't. When in fact, we're either prioritizing incorrectly or prioritizing poorly or we're just making the decision that no, I'm going to do this instead And it's very difficult to do that to actually say no to someone as opposed to presenting the excuse instead of the actual no. Saying I can't as opposed to I am choosing to do this other thing. That's tough. Jay: Yeah, it is tough or find what I'll do is because I don't want to use the word no, I'll put it off till later. Like, I'll say, well,

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The Need to Say No in Business

Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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300 حلقات

#Business #Don't Get #David Blaise #MBA #Entrepreneur #Marketing

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1
Disrupting Sales Relationships 15:09

منذ 4 أيام15:09

15:09

Disrupting sales relationships is tricky. When you go into a sales presentation, if you recognize that it’s likely they’re going to have someone, and if you’ve got an arsenal of responses that you can come back with to demonstrate to them why you are obviously the better choice, then they’re going to be a lot more likely to at least give you a shot at that business, than if you don’t have those things in place. David: Hi, and welcome back in today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of disrupting sales relationships. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. It’s a pleasure as always. I don’t want to do it. Don’t want to disrupt sales processes. I refuse. Don’t want to do it. David: Okay. I refuse to participate. Yeah, it’s a tough one. The word disrupt is a tough word. But the reality of the situation is that when we’re approaching a new prospect, a new client, and that person already has a business relationship, perhaps with a competitor of ours — the only way that we’re even going to get a shot at that business is if we can, in some way, disrupt the existing sales relationship. Now, I’m not talking about trying to drive a wedge between people. I’m not talking about anything nefarious. I’m just talking about the idea that to disrupt an established sales relationship, particularly one that is going reasonably well, requires you to be significantly better and different than the option that they’re already looking at. Jay: Yeah, I agree. and I think that this starts way ahead of trying to disrupt any particular process that’s going on right now. We’ve talked about, in the past, do you know your competitors at all? Do you know their sales process? I mean, how would you disrupt anything if you didn’t know the process of what was going on? David: Yeah, exactly. And if you think in terms of business relationships versus personal relationships, when you’re in high school and you first start dating, and the person that you like is already attracted to somebody else, like, oh, okay, well, how am I going to position myself as a better alternative, a better option, right? So it requires strategy. It requires persistence. It requires some sort of advantage, right? Some sort of, what we would call in business, a competitive advantage. And we need to think through those things, because it’s the same in a business relationship. If they’ve got a great business relationship, it’s going to be a lot harder. In those situations, we have to determine whether or not it even makes sense for us to try to provide a better solution. But here’s the thing, if we truly believe that our solution is better than whatever they’re currently receiving Then we kind of owe it to them to let them know that, don’t we? Jay: Oh, yeah, I absolutely agree with that and we talked I think in the last podcast that we’re a company that loves it when you talk to our competitors. We love it when you’re in a sales process with somebody else, cause we know how unique we are in our presentation, in our initial consultations. We know. And so the key for us to disrupting an existing sales process with somebody else is just, how do we get them to call us? How do we introduce ourselves to them mid process? Because we know if they can find us or we can find them, our chances are pretty good. David: Exactly. And so in your situation where you’re using online resources like pay per click and things like that, it’s a matter of getting some sort of messaging in front of them that has them questioning at that point, whether or not there is a better alternative out there for them. And so the only people who are going to schedule a call with you are the ones who have determined that they are at least open to exploring that sort of relationship. I think it’s interesting that a lot of times in business loyalty is often based on inertia, right? It’s just easier to stick with what I have rather than to try to find an alternative. And in those situations, when you are able to get in front of someone who’s just doing business with a competitor of yours out of habit, it does become a lot easier to be able to create messaging that will intrigue them to the point where they’re willing to have a conversation. Jay: Yeah, I love that line. Loyalty a lot of times is about inertia. I think about, in my own case, maybe a company that I’m using wasn’t perfect last time, and I probably would like to see if somebody else is out there. But I know them. I know their number. I have a relationship with them. So suddenly I’m going to be a little bit less demanding, I guess. And that means I’m compromising on what I want. And that’s not something that I should be doing. David: Yeah, I completely relate to that. We’ve had situations with some of the CRMs that we’ve used over the years where they’re doing things that are just so incredibly frustrating. And the support is so terribly bad. But the pain of having to move everything and switch everything over and all those dead links and all the things that go with it’s like, okay, well, I guess I’ll stick where I am. So in this situation where you’re trying to attract a new prospect or client to you, you have to make sure that the rewards outweigh all the downside that comes with having to switch a relationship from the current one to the new one. Jay: Yeah, exactly. And so, once again, you’ve got to identify what are the differences, then you have to identify how are you going to get in front of them to even talk about your differences? And then there’s the approach. Because if your approach is to just bash the other guy. I’m sure you remember the Burger King and McDonald’s wars and Burger King, all their spots were just bashing McDonald’s. And I’m like, I’m not going to stop going to McDonald’s cause you think that they’re bad. Of course you think they’re bad. You’re their competitor. It always blows my mind in politics or anything like this. Why would I trust your competitor to give me a valid review about you? That the worst possible person to get a review from. David: Exactly. And I think in some of those situations, what they did, rather than saying “we good, they bad,” was that they would look at a specific difference. Like in the example you mentioned with McDonald’s and Burger King back in the day when the burger wars were going on. I believe Burger King’s positioning was all about flame broiling or was it flame broiling vs. frying? Jay: Flame broiling. Yep. Mm hmm. David: And so that’s the message that people can actually evaluate objectively. Do I want it flame broiled or do I want it fried? Okay. Yeah. Flame broiled. That may sound better, right? So that was an approach that appealed to logic and fact, and it gave people an opportunity to make that decision. So in that regard, it wasn’t just like, “Oh, our competitor is terrible. It’s really bad.” Although there were some commercials that came close to that. But I think. That’s a reasonable example of where they were able to define a clear difference that perhaps could change some minds. Jay: Yeah, I remember Burger King was “have it your way.” And that was a whole spin on the fact that McDonald’s, you could not, custom order anything, right? And so they were literally saying, we can treat you better, right? Identifying differences. David: Yeah, that was a good one, too. Really back in the day when McDonald’s wouldn’t customize anything. I don’t know if they will today. I’m assuming they probably would. Jay: They do. Yes, David: But at that particular point in time, you couldn’t say, “Hey, can I get it without ketchup or whatever?” No, you just couldn’t. And so when they came out with that campaign, it’s like, okay, that has definite appeal to people. Because again, it just makes sense. It resonates with them. “Have it your way” is just a great statement when you’re talking to a prospect. “Hey, listen, have it your way. Let’s do it the way you want to do it, not the way that we’ve prepackaged it.” It’s a great example. And so all of this really goes back to messaging, right? What is it that we’re saying about what we do, which is the subject of a previous podcast. And when it comes to trying to disrupt or displace a current vendor or a current supplier, what is it that we’re going to have to say to make that happen? Now, in a lot of cases, when you’re approaching someone new and they’ve already got somebody, they’re going to tell you, yeah, we already have someone we’re dealing with. Or we’re already happy with the person we’re dealing with. And sometimes that’s true, and sometimes it’s not. But if you don’t have sort of a series of go-to responses about what to say to overcome that, you’re pretty much dead in the water. Jay: Yeah, and it’s really difficult cards to play because if your whole thing is I’m just gonna bash the person that you’re working with? I’ve always felt like you’re bashing me, right? It’s like in politics. If I question somebody on your side of the aisle, it’s like, I’m personally questioning you. And so I’m never going to change your mind by attacking you. There has to be a different play there. That play could be talking about your services. So you’re strategically bashing the other person, but not by saying a name, you’re identifying a need that you can fulfill that is not being fulfilled right now. But if you think you’re just going to attack the person they’re working with, I’ve always felt like that was an attack of the person who you’re trying to get their business from. David: Yeah, I think that’s a really bad strategy. I think bashing your competition is just a really bad strategy. It works much better if you can think in terms of how can you outshine your competition? How can you outperform your competition? And how can you convey that in a way that doesn’t bash them? It just points out the differences like we were talking about in those examples from Burger King. It points out the differences and then they can decide which of those approaches they like better. Because the whole idea of bashing competitors, most people I think don’t like that because it forces you to engage in a level of negativity. Now you’re saying negative things, you’re using negative words. If you know what your competition does not do as well as you do, and they tell you that they’re using someone like that, there are ways that you can just ask them about their potential weak points without even identifying those as potential weak points. If you know that your particular competitor is not particularly responsive in terms to getting back to people, then you can say to them, Oh, yes, you know, I’ve heard very good things about them. are they pretty good with the responsiveness? Are they pretty good with the things that are important to you? And even if they’re not, they might say, Oh, yeah, they are. But in the back of their mind, they might be going, eh, could be better, could be better. And then that way they’re doing the bashing mentally in their own heads and you’re not having to do it. I just don’t like the idea of bashing competitors. Just never did. I think that it is a sign of desperation and I think it’s really unnecessary. Because when you’re bashing the competitor, it’s like you’re trying to put them down rather than trying to show them how you are above the fray. Jay: Yeah, and I think anytime there’s feelings of negativity in a sales call type situation, that’s a losing battle. I don’t think you should do this. Interestingly, as I think about it, our process in these circumstances, is to take them through the same questionnaire that we take everybody else. In fact, we don’t really change our process. Because our process is to find out where they’re at and then ask them questions about what they’ve done. And then find out if they know about the solutions and the problems. So if we’re doing that and the person they’re working with has never done that, because our competitors don’t do that, then we’ve already demonstrated the difference. They can tell in a nanosecond, wait a minute, these guys are different. The people I’m working with, they don’t even care. They just pushed past all of these things. So you can do it. And if you can achieve it, wow, can it be a game changer for sure. David: No question. And I think a lot of that really comes down to the idea of making your offer so compelling that they will want to leave their current provider and come to you because of what you’re describing to them. Now, of course, this is where what we’re saying about what we do, and then what we actually do have to be integrated, right? You can’t say you do this and then you deliver something that is completely different than that. But if you’re consistent between what you’re saying and what you’re doing, and what you’re saying and doing is actually better than what they’re currently getting, they’re going to be a lot more likely to make that switch. Jay: Yeah. And if you think about it, your competitor will help you make the sale. Cause if they’re bad, if they’re not good, and you’re leveling up, they’re going to be like, why wasn’t I with you in the first place, right? And we get that a lot. So there is a way to do it, but very industry specific and unique. And, Dave, that’s why I think a call to you guys could really help them walk through the process. How do they find out more? David: Yeah, we’d love to have that conversation Just go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team The reality of the situation is that most of the people that you interact with, particularly the type of clients you actually want to have, probably already have a provider of the solution you provide. Right? Because if they don’t, then do they even need it? Are they early stages? Why don’t they? Or they’ve at least had some experience with a competitor. So when you go into a sales presentation or even a prospecting session with somebody to try to find out if they are a potential client of yours, if you recognize that it’s likely they’re going to have someone, and if you’ve got an arsenal of responses that you can come back with to demonstrate to them why you are obviously the better choice, then they’re going to be a lot more likely to at least give you a shot at that business, than if you don’t have those things in place. So once again, if you want to go to TopSecrets.com/call, we’d love to have that conversation with you. Jay: Absolutely. And I know it’ll be worth it. David: Thank you so much, Jay. Ready to Start Disrupting Some Existing Sales Relationships? 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 .…

1
Getting to Your Ideal Prospects 14:09

منذ 11 يومًا14:09

14:09

Getting to your ideal prospects involves identifying what our ideal prospect looks like in terms of the type of customer we’re looking for, the type of industry they’re in, the number of people in their organization if we’re selling B2B. All these considerations that are going to add up to the ideal prospect, because until we know who it is we’re going to go after, we have absolutely no idea where to go to find them. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of getting to your ideal prospects. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much. Another great topic. We could call this one the Holy Grail of Sales. How much time does everybody spend talking to people who would never be their client in the first place? What would you do with all that extra time? David: It is an amazing amount of time. When we work with clients, that is one of the biggest ways that they get back time that is otherwise spent. Very often, when people are considering the idea of working with us to help them grow their sales and profits, it’s like, “well, am I going to have time to do this?” And nine times out of 10, they don’t have time not to do it. Because they’re wasting, in many cases, so much time with poor, unqualified prospects. And simply by taking a few specific actions, you can pretty much eliminate a lot of that right up front, save yourself enormous amounts of time, and better still, being able to then interact with the types of clients you actually want to do business with Jay: But I’m a new company. I need money to pay my bills. I need to try and close everybody. Isn’t that what you would hear? David: In the early stages, everybody says that, and after they’ve been in business for a while, they try to figure out, now how do I undo what I’ve done? How do I untie this knot that I’ve tied for myself over the past however, many months or years? But yeah, in the early stages, we just want to take anyone who’s willing to do business with us. But eventually, when our true selves kick in — when we find ourselves in a conversation with the wrong client, somebody that we took on a while before, and we recognize, wow, this was a mistake — that’s when you start thinking, Okay, well, maybe what I need to do going forward is to not just take anyone. I need to identify who are these ideal prospects. How can I identify and initiate contact with the right people up front so that I’m not wasting a lot of time with the wrong people down the line. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I have a business partner and he’s this sage old business partner. He’s built several businesses on his own over the years and I didn’t know he was even doing it, but he has this list of people who he doesn’t want to do business with anymore. He calls it the naughty list. And, somebody came around and they were repurchasing our services. He just, with no emotion said, “nah, I don’t want to do that.” And I’m like, what are you talking…? I didn’t even remember the customer. And he’s like, “no, they’re on the naughty list. They were a pain. They didn’t provide what we needed soon enough and they harassed us on our pricing. The answer is no.” And so he’s got this Santa Claus naughty list, and I was like, “but they want to give us money.” And I’ve just come around to his way of thinking. I am not emotional about it anymore. They’re on the list. Forget it. David: It’s a lump of coal for you, baby. That’s how it works. Yeah. I mean, it is a strong argument for the fact that you don’t need more prospects, you need the right prospects. You don’t need more customers necessarily, you need more of the right customers. Because life is too short to do anything else in my view. Jay: Yeah. Let’s say that you spend 10 hours a day working with customers are doing sales for potential customers, and five of those hours are spent on people who are not the right fit. What if you could take those five hours and apply it to finding customers who are a good fit. Or even just providing a better product to the other five customers. Both of those are a win. The first option is, is a complete loss. David: Yeah, and when you do that, when you actually save those five hours and channel that time toward better, higher quality prospects and clients, not only does it improve your bottom line, it also improves your quality of life, right? I mean, in this podcast, we talk a lot about marketing and sales, but all of this also pertains directly to your quality of life. Your quality of life gets better when you’re interacting with ideal clients versus just any client. Jay: Oh, such a great point. There are few things worse than running around like a chicken with your head cut off for customers that you don’t like to work with. That is a nightmare. And when you think about why you wanted to get involved, why did you become an entrepreneur? Why did you get involved in this process? Did you envision yourself being worked every day by people that you didn’t want to work with. I don’t think that’s what you envisioned. So how do you get back to that ideal? David: Yeah, because a lot of the words that I hear from entrepreneurs in the way they want to build their business involves the word freedom, right? It’s about the freedom to be able to do what you want to do in your business, to be able to make your own rules, set your own pricing, decide what types of clients you want to interact with. And many entrepreneurs end up harming their own freedom by accepting people that they shouldn’t accept. So, to answer your question, you know, how do you get around that? I think it starts with identifying what truly defines a high quality prospect for you? What defines an ideal client for you? Because until you make the call about the type of business that you want to interact with, the type of people that you want to sell to, in terms of their ability and willingness to communicate. I mean, that’s a big one. Prospects who ghost you? Do you really want to deal with people like that? Particularly when it comes time to getting paid, right? So we have to make these calls. At least in my view, we’re better off making these calls up front. Setting the criteria of what’s acceptable for us and what’s ideal for us and trying to stick to that as much as possible. Now are we going to get it right 100 percent of the time? No, we’re not. But if we at least go into the sales experience, the prospecting experience with the idea of attracting and converting ideal clients, we’re going to be a lot more likely to be able to pull it off. Jay: Yeah, it’s so important and you also kind of alluded to something there and that is training the customer. Before they even sign up, letting them know what the expectations are. We do a lot of this now. We’re like, okay, here’s what will happen. And in order to make this work, here’s what our expectation is going to be. Then once they sign up, we do it again. We say, okay, here are the next three steps. After three weeks, we do it again. And this protects us, right? But it’s also a constant reminder to them that we have expectations. And this just comes to my mind talking about my seasoned partner. Let’s, let’s call him that way. He fired off an email to somebody who we were so upset at. This person was unbelievable. And my partner fired off an email and he said, look, I don’t want to do business with you anymore unless you agree to these five conditions. You will not do this, you will do this. You won’t do this. And I’m like, I’ve never seen anything like that before. The customer apologized, and they’ve been an ideal customer ever since. And I’m like, there were one of two choices. We kiss them goodbye, or we give them the opportunity to play on our terms. That’s just genius. Just genius. I just loved it. David: It is. It’s amazing. And fortunately, that particular client had it within them to be able to adapt, to recognize, oh okay, I probably shouldn’t have done that. And to be able to admit it and to be able to change the behavior. Not everyone’s going to be like that. So we have to be open enough with our clients in our communication to be able to find out where they fall along that continuum between being totally obnoxious or being educable. You know, you talked about training them, being able to be trained. And if they are able to be trained to be able to interact with you in a way that works for you and your coworkers… One of the things that I had in our business was when we had people who were inappropriate or unprofessional with my coworkers. That was basically the kiss of death, because we’re not going to put up with that. The people in our organization have been with us for a really long time. We know how they are. We know how they act. Now, if you’ve got a brand new person talking to them and they’re a wild card, you can’t be as sure. But when you’re very confident about the people that you work with and there’s an issue, you can generally take the side of the person you work with over the side of the prospect in most cases, if you know the person you’re working with better. Jay: Yeah, exactly. We had exactly the same thing. Somebody made one of our cherished employees cry, and I was about to climb through the phone. That’s a deal breaker. I don’t care how much money you pay us. I don’t care. Your staff has to believe that you have their back and that there is some loyalty there. And so, I don’t think you ever want to choose good money over an employee, right? But I just really encourage people to think about why you got involved in the first place. And what type of customer and experience is going to give you that? Is it quality of life that you wanted? Is it money? I’m sure financial freedom was part of that. But so often what we talk about, and I know that you do, is help people think very specifically in these terms. Because most of us are running around haphazardly. We’re not being specific about, if you ask somebody, well why did you even do this? Could they answer the question? If you ask them, what is your ideal customer? Could they answer the question? I think in most cases, the answer is no. David: I completely agree. I think another thing that we should consider is the fact that there is always a cost of selling to the wrong people. And that cost comes in terms of wasted time, wasted energy, lost sales, of course, from chasing the wrong prospects rather than the right prospects. There are a lot of costs associated with that, and it doesn’t show up on a bill, right? So you’re not seeing what the dollars actually are, but you have to know what your time is worth. And if you’re spending a lot of time trying to fix problems caused by the wrong prospects and the wrong clients, it’s a strong indication that it’s time to make a change in that regard. Jay: And also, it can show up on a bill. In our case, we pay per click online. I can tell you, we pay $300 plus to get somebody to sign up for a consultation. And if I don’t close that consultation. That’s $300. David: Absolutely. And those costs are real. They are tangible. Plus, the time that you spend on the phone with someone like that. So you’ve got the initial cost for the meeting itself. And then if you spend an hour with that person rather than 10 or 15 minutes, that’s more money that doesn’t show up on the bill, but is still very much a cost. I think part of our consideration too, is to think about where are our ideal prospects and clients hanging out? Where are they hiding? Are they online? Where are they hanging out in person? Where are they in terms of other people we know? Can we get introductions to those people? Because they’re out there! Sometimes we feel like they’re not. It’s like, oh, nobody wants this. There’s always someone who wants it. Our job is to find the buyer. And if we’re not finding the buyer, that’s on us, it’s not on them. It’s not their responsibility to come out and introduce themselves to us. It’s up to us to try to find them. So that really involves identifying what our ideal prospect looks like in terms of the type of customer we’re looking for, the type of industry they’re in, the number of people in their organization if we’re selling B2B. All these considerations are going to add up to the ideal prospect, because until we know who it is we’re going to go after, we have absolutely no idea where to go to find them. Jay: Yeah, being specific and that’s so important thinking about these things at a time and then planning towards them. David, how do people find out more? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re in a situation where you are looking to grow your sales and grow your profit and identify more of your ideal prospects and clients rather than just anybody, be sure to go to that URL: TopSecrets.com/call. We’d love to have a conversation with you. Jay: All right. As always, it’s a pleasure. David: Thank you so much, Jay. Ready to Start Getting to Your Ideal Prospects? 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 .…

1
Turn the Tables on Rejection in Sales 12:26

منذ 18 يومًا12:26

12:26

In order to turn the tables on rejection in sales, there are very specific steps you can take, and we work with our clients to help them do that every day of the week. David: Hi and welcome back in today’s episode co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of turning the tables on rejection in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey Dave, it’s always good to talk with you and I love these topics. They’re so important I think more than anything, at least for me, rejection, fear of rejection stops me from doing a lot of things that I know I should be doing. David: Yeah. And you are really not alone. I think we’ve all felt that way at one point or other. I know there was a period of time, a lot of years ago, where I was so frustrated by this that I’m like, okay, what can we do? To not just try to overcome it, not just try to overcome the fear, but to actually turn the tables on rejection in sales. And essentially what I came up with is that in order to make that happen, we have to take the initiative in terms of identifying the types of clients that we want, the types of clients that we will accept. And by leading with that strength, going into each prospecting opportunity with the idea that I may accept this client, I may not. They may accept me, they may not. If the two of us agree that we want to work together, we will. And if one of us doesn’t want to work together, we won’t. And being okay with that, Once I embraced that idea and that concept, everything became a lot easier. Jay: Yeah. So just a paradigm shift. I will tell you, and this is no joke, before we dive into your concept a little bit more, I went to a doctor and I said, just give me a drug that makes me not fear rejection. He didn’t have it, but hey, I was willing to try anything. David: Yeah, it’s funny because you would think there’d be something for that. I guess maybe something that might relax you or make you not care as much about the rejection, but, short of medication, I think the idea of sort of reframing it in some ways and saying, all right, I’m going to do what I can on my end in terms of identifying the clients that I want to work with. And just by doing that, you can actually eliminate a lot of rejection when you decide in advance that there are some people you’re going to talk to that are probably just not a good fit for you. Jay: Yeah, I love this and I feel like I’ve been doing this, but not purposefully like you’re talking about. I get to the point now where when I talk to somebody and they’re not interested, I almost feel glad. Because through the conversation, I learn they’re not really a good fit for me. So we both kind of decide that on our own. We wish each other well. I add them to our drip campaign and it’s done. I can hang up the phone call and do other work or move on to the next call. David: Yeah. It’s so much better when you’re able to take an approach like that and feel good about the fact that we really weren’t born to do business with anyone who can fog a mirror, right? It’s not an ideal scenario for either of us. I also realized at some point or other that rejection in some ways can actually be a tool to help you find better clients, whether you’re the one who’s rejecting them, basically saying, okay, this isn’t a good fit. Or even in a situation where if you decide you would potentially like to work with them, if they decide they don’t want to work with you, if you view it as essentially a way for you to be able to find better clients, that also makes it quite a bit easier to take. Jay: Yeah, I think I told you in the past, my dad was a salesman his whole life and I asked him how did you deal with rejection and he said I look at no’s as a positive. I know what my close rate is. I know how many cold calls I have to make. And so every time I got a no, that means I was one step closer to the yes. So, changing your outlook, your mindset, it actually made him feel good. Okay, one more closer. I got that no. And so I’m on my way. David: Yeah. And going along with that exact mindset, when you recognize that every wrong client that you take on is going to cost you time, money and energy that could be spent with better quality clients, that also makes it a lot easier to deal with. Jay: Yeah. And I, when somebody says they don’t want to work with me, I’m like, whoo. You know, it’s like, David: Slipped the noose! Jay: That’s right. Because they’ve listened to my services. They’ve listened to my spiel. They know what I’m going to cost. And if after that, they’re like, you know, or even when they start asking for discounts and things like that, we’ve just learned. No, we’re proud of our product. We know what it’s worth. We know what it costs. And if you’re not in that strike zone, then whew, I’m glad that we decided before we went any further. David: Yeah, the idea of just clients in general, particularly when you’re starting out in business, it’s like, okay, I need clients. I want to bring a new client through the door. It’s all about client, client, client, or customer, customer, customer, whatever you refer to the people as. But one of the terms that I tend to use a lot in my material and just what I’m talking to prospects and clients in general is the idea of the ideal client. What is the ideal client? Who exactly are the types of customers and clients that you want to work with? And when you come up with your own sort of filter of the types of prospects and clients you want, it really allows you to be far more selective in terms of who you bring through the door, but it also allows you to feel a lot less concerned when you talk to somebody who’s not a good fit. Because you don’t feel like, Oh, I have to sell this person anyway. Jay: Yeah. And , you had mentioned something to me in a previous podcast that really hit home. And it kind of changed the way that I look at things. You talked about the salesperson interviewing the potential client to see if they’re a good fit as much as the other way around. And I find myself now saying, is this somebody that I even want to close or do I want to start getting out of this conversation early. Sometimes now in the first 2 or 3 minutes, I can say, this one’s not going to work out. It’s not going to go the way that I want it to And so let’s get it over with. So I love that idea that i’m interviewing them As much as they’re interviewing me. David: Exactly. Because you can’t decide for them whether or not they want to work with you. And they can’t decide whether you want to work with them, right? We can only make those decisions for ourselves. When we realize that, I think everything gets a whole lot easier. Jay: Oh, I agree with you and I love easy when you do sales. Right? And then the other thing that I know we’ve talked about a little bit is if you can change your sales pitch into more of a feeling like you’re not pushing your services on them, but they really need your services. I mean, I’ll give you an example. I never have to tell somebody, Okay, let me show you what our costs are. Never have to do that. They always ask me, What are your fees? And to me, that’s such a great place to be. I’m not a salesperson. I’m just somebody showing them what our expenses are. And then when we get to the screen that has our expenses, I say. Would you like me to walk you through each of these? Right? I’m never, “okay, let me show you each of these and this is the most important for you” and, and whatever. And then they’ll say things like, ” well, I really think maybe the third package is something that would work for us.” And I’d say, “you know what, based on our conversation, that’s probably right. And let me tell you some of the other benefits.” So there’s no real sales going on at all. I’m just answering questions. To me, that is the most beautiful way to be doing sales. And there’s really no chance of feeling like I got rejected. Because they’re the ones asking the questions, right? David: Exactly. And there’s also a layer of exclusivity that comes with that. When you are in a position where you can say to somebody, “Hey, I don’t think this is a good fit,” where you can make that determination as you’re having the conversation. “Listen, based on what you told me, from my side, it sounds to me like you’re a perfect fit for this. It seems to me like this is something worth pursuing. What’s your take?” And then they’ll say either. Yeah, I agree. It sounds like this is something that’s good. Because then at that point, it’s okay to have conversations about, what’s it going to cost and how does it all work and everything like that? Because until you can get to the point where you’re in basic agreement about whether you even want to work together at all, the price doesn’t even matter at that point. In some sense, the deliverables don’t even matter at that point. You want to get a good feel up front for whether or not this is the type of person you can interact with. And if it is. Then you go forward with it. And if it’s not, there’s not a lot of point wasting a lot of time, as you just indicated. Jay: Yeah. And, it depends on the type of business, but in my case, I’m looking for partners. I’m looking for a long term relationships, year after year after year. I’m not looking for the turn them and burn them, one time hit. It really surprises me though, how often now I say. You know what? I really don’t think that we’re right for you, for whatever reason. And early on, I would have been clawing and scratching to get their money And it would turn into heartaches for both sides. And I just say it comfortably. I’m like sometimes i’ll say I know I shouldn’t be talking you out of our services, but I really think that because of abc and d This is not going to be a match and they really appreciate that. And if anything does change down the line, then they’re going to think of me. And I’ve also gotten referrals off of that. Because they’re like, “Hey, I talked to him and they were really straight shooters.” So, it’s not necessarily a waste. David: I completely agree. And just keeping it that way, keeping it as a conversation. It’s not a monologue. I’m not trying to convince you to do anything. You’re not trying to convince me to do anything. We’re having a conversation. We’re determining if we have a fit. If we do, great. If we’re both in agreement, we put it together. If one of us is not in agreement, we count it as a win and move on quickly. I think the biggest problem that a lot of salespeople have is that they feel like they have to close every single one. And when they don’t, it’s like a failure. But the truth of the matter is, not everyone’s going to be a good client for you. And when you recognize that up front, it’s a whole lot easier to take this approach. Jay: So very true. 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. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re in a situation where you’d like to turn the tables on rejection in sales, you don’t want to have conversations that you feel are leaving you on sort of the downside of the equation, or you’re feeling like you’re the one who’s being put out. In order to turn the tables on rejection, there are very specific steps you can take, and we work with our clients to help them do that every day of the week. If that sounds like something that makes sense for you, TopSecrets.com/call. Jay: And no high pressure sales call, right? David: No. Definitely not. Jay: All right. As always, it’s been a pleasure. David: Thank you so much, Jay. Ready to Turn the Tables on Rejection in Sales? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .…

1
What You Say About What You Do 13:13

منذ 25 يومًا13:13

13:13

“You have to create value in the sales process, create value in all the communication that you’re putting out there. When you do that, you’re already positioned better and differently. So when you think about the idea of what you say about what you do, you’re doing it in a way that is actually appealing to people rather than repellent.” David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic “what you say about what you do.” What it is, Jay? Jay: Hey, David, how’s it going? Once again, it’s a pleasure to be here. I think, how we view ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, what is that inner monologue? Those types of things, they matter a lot, and they’re probably things that we never think about. David: Yeah. And it’s interesting you should bring that up. Because when we talk about what we say about what we do, yeah, there’s what you just mentioned, what we’re telling ourselves in our own heads. And then there’s also the idea of what we’re saying to prospects and clients about what we will potentially do for them. Essentially the communication, the messaging that we are putting out into the world, that will allow someone to decide whether or not they want to do business with us. Jay: Yeah. And this is so important because if you over promise, you’re setting up for failure from the beginning, right? If you under promise, then they may find a competitor who promises something faster or better. So there is a strike zone there somewhere that you have to find. David: Exactly. And our messaging is very likely either going to attract the person we’re talking to, or it’s going to repel them. Probably the worst case scenario is if it does neither. It’s just totally boring and they’re not even paying attention to what you have to say. But when we recognize that, particularly in the early stages, what we tell them about what we do or what we’re planning to do for them is going to determine the nature of the relationship. If we communicate something that sounds appealing to them, It’s like they’ll be interested. If we communicate something that does not sound appealing to them, then it’s likely they are not going to be interested. So we don’t want to go into these situations and wing it, particularly when we’re going from prospect to prospect. We want to make sure that we’re creating a consistent experience so that each person we talk to is getting the best of what we have to offer, up front, so they can make an intelligent decision. Jay: Yeah, we’ve really started using, I learned it from being in the media, process language. Like, if you are out doing a news report somewhere, you didn’t just say, well, I’m standing on the street corner and this is what I’m seeing. You instead say, “well, we got here about 20 minutes ago when we rolled up, this is what we saw. This is what we’re seeing, right? You bring them with you to wherever you’re at. And so we kind of do this process language, not just about how we got here. And process questions. Like I want to know what drove you to call me. So that’s the first thing I want to know, “what drove you to call me?” The second thing I want to know is, what is your expectation from this call? Like what are you hoping to gain from it? And then we can get to where we’re at. And then we’ll start talking a little bit. If you use our services, this will be the process moving forward. By the time we’ve shaped this whole thing, it’s like we’ve been friends for years, you know what I mean? So, it’s something that I love doing and it makes the potential client very comfortable. David: It makes a whole lot of sense and it’s really about being present in that moment with the prospect or client, and having them be there with you at that point as well. Where one person is not talking, another person is totally tuned out. It really is about creating that level of communication where you are interacting the way that you need to in any relationship. And when you think about it, every sales relationship, just like any personal relationship, they involve, they require, that sort of level of communication. And I think they also require a great deal of clarity. Jay: Yeah. And again, we have to be honest, my services that we offer, tax services for a very specific clientele, it’s much easier for me to say, okay, why did you call and what has your experience been? It’s been easy to define that. I don’t want to give people the impression that that’s always simple. A lot of times you cold called them. And so you can’t say, well, why did you call me? Do you know what I mean? You can’t… David: Right yeah. Jay: You can’t… David: They can say that to you… Jay: That’s right. So it really does depend upon the type of business you have to create this story on your own. But I think if you call it a story and you’re making them, what the main character of the story? i’ve heard that before. And you’re progressing them through that story, even on the first call, I think that’s going to make a difference David: Yeah, I completely agree. When you’re in that situation where you’re having these conversations, particularly if you’re reaching out to them, if you’re cold calling somebody you don’t even want them to get to the point where they’re asking you, why are you calling me, right? That means the thing you say up front needs to be compelling enough to grab their attention and get them interested enough in the conversation that they don’t even think to ask that. Jay: Yeah, exactly. So, if I could get them asking questions or if I’m, you’ve heard this before, and I think it’s become cliche. Get them talking, right? But it’s not just getting them talking. it’s what are they talking about? If you can get them talking about the thing that you’re offering. Or their negative experience with the thing that you’re offering, or if it’s promotional material, what is impeding their sales or things like that, then you’re obviously way ahead of the game at that point. David: Yeah. And it’s the classic, you know, what’s in it for them. If I’m talking about them, their needs, what they’re looking to accomplish, they’re going to be a lot more interested in that than if I’m talking about what I do and how I do it and why they should give me money. Right? When you are taking one approach, you’re talking about what you do. That’s essentially more of a sales approach. When you take the other approach of how what you do solves their problem, then it’s about them, and they’re going to be a lot more receptive to it. Jay: Yeah, and a lot of times, depending upon your industry, they may not know they have the problem, right? That’s something that we do a lot on our consultations, is help people understand they’re setting themselves up for a world of hurt. Now, tax wise, you can really be in a world of hurt, right? And so just helping them understand where they’re at before we ever talk about being a salesperson or offering services. By the time they get to that point, they’re saying, “okay, I understand now that I’ve I’ve got a potential problem, can you solve it for me? And how much would that cost?” Right? So again, I’m not a salesperson at that time. I’m a savior at that point. So, you know, if you can lead people in that direction, you can win. David: Yeah. It’s such a great point, particularly when you think in terms of the whole idea of coming across as the authority, right? You used the word savior, but even just an authority, if they recognize that you know what you’re talking about in this particular realm, better than they do, more than they do, and you’re able to help them, they’re going to be a lot more responsive to that. And one of the challenges for a lot of people is how do you sound like an authority, without coming across as arrogant or conceited or positioning yourself as if you’re better than they are. That’s not what you’re looking to do. You need to be able to convey the fact that you’re the expert through your knowledge, through your expertise, through your language. But you have to do that in a way that still allows you to be accessible. And so all of that, when we talk about the idea of what it is that we’re saying to people about what we do, there’s a lot of balance that has to come into play there. Jay: Yeah, I love that you brought a couple of things up here because we have some experience with our competitors. We kind of track them. I’m sure they track us and we get a lot of calls from people who are doing their research. And they’ve called them and now they call us and I’m never afraid when they say, “well, I talked to some of your competitors.” I’m like, oh, this is going to be perfect. This is going to be great. Because I know how our competitors act. They do something completely different than us. Or they want the customer or the potential client to feel dumb. Maybe they want them to feel like there’s no way they could understand any of this stuff. And so you need an expert, and then they start scaring them. They are using scare tactics about how they might get in trouble. And people get off the phone and they’re panicked, right? And that’s their sales model. That’s what they want. They want to scare you into believing that you’re the only one. And then they hit us. And by the time they’re off the phone, they have a pretty good understanding of how things work. We don’t tell them how to solve their problems, but we let them know what those problems are and what they could mean. And oftentimes you can hear them exhale. You just hear it. They go, oh. Thank you so much. I hear all the time. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to my situation. So I’m like thankful to our competitors. Bring it on. Call them. Because I know you’ll call me back. David: It’s such a great example of what we were just talking about. It’s such a great example of being able to demonstrate that you are the authority without coming across as arrogant. You’re also accessible. So when you’ve got an authority who is also accessible, that is a definite combination for success. Jay: Yeah, when I have people at the end of a sales call, if you can have people thanking you for your time, thanking you for the information they receive, my goodness, that is a great place to be. Again, not always easy with different types of products, but it can be done. David: And if they’re not thanking you, what does that say about the quality of information you conveyed? Right? I mean, what you’re pointing out is unusual, right? Most people don’t end up thanking a salesperson for their time, right? Because it comes across as a sales presentation. But when you’re doing what you just described, and you are creating value in the communication, which is something that we pound into our clients, the idea that you have to create value in the sales process, create value in all the communication that you’re putting out there. When you do that, you’re already positioned better and differently. And so when you think about the idea of what you say about what you do, you’re doing it in a way that is actually appealing to people rather than repellent. Jay: Yeah, repellent that, I mean, that’s such a great word. I will tell you this. I can’t tell you how often, we have people when we get to our pricing page, our package page, they feel cause we’re a premium service, right? They feel bad because they maybe can’t afford us. So that’s, it’s not the issue. Am I going to spend money on these people? I don’t know. It’s, oh man, can I afford these people that I’ve decided to go with already? Do you know what I mean? It’s like that’s the only letdown in the process sometimes. David: Yeah. once again, it’s a very good problem to have when people want to do business with you and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to be able to do it. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. 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. We love to have conversations with people who are looking for ways to improve their communication, improve their ability to create authority with clients without alienating them. And just to be able to create an environment in which you’re able to attract the type of clients you want, without having to position yourself as an unruly salesperson. Jay: As a nuisance, right? David: Exactly. Jay: All right. It’s always a pleasure. David: Thank you so much, Jay. Ready to Adapt What You Say to Generate More Sales and 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 .…

1
Reimagining the Essentials of Marketing & Sales 13:42

منذ 5 weeks13:42

13:42

Reimagining the essentials is different for everyone. And I hear both sides of that from people. I hear people who are like, ” oh yeah, you know, I’ve been doing this forever. I know exactly what I’m doing and all that sort of thing.” And then I have people on the other side who are like, “Hey, I’m doing all the things that I’ve done before. I’m doing it more aggressively. I’m doing much more of it. I’m doing it with more people and it’s not working.” And so for the people who are struggling with that… again, it’s not really a matter of saying, “well, now instead of prospecting, we need to do something different.” No, you’re still going to need to do prospecting. The question is, “can we now do it in a way that is going to reach the people that you need to reach, communicate the things that we need to communicate and allow us to advance our communications and close the sales?” David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing reimagining the essentials. Welcome, Jay. Good to have you here. Jay: It’s so good to be here once again. I’m very excited about today’s topic. What’s the Point of Reimagining the Essentials? David: Yeah. I mean the whole idea of the essentials to some people it’s like, “oh, essentials, that’s boring.” Right? But it seems to me that in current times we really need to look at the essentials and say, “okay, how can we tweak them or fine tune them or change them around so that they’re going to be more effective in a 21st century post-COVID economy?” Jay: Yeah. When I think about essentials, I think about foundational type things. And once you take away the foundation, other things that you have in play don’t work as well. So what type of essentials specifically are we talking about that we want to, that we might look at in one when everybody looks at it that way, but we’re going to reimagine or rethink about them in a different way? David: Well, I guess when I think of the fundamentals or the essentials, I tend to think of the real basics, prospecting, presenting, following up when it comes to sales. And sometimes you start talking about those things and people’s eyes glaze over like, “oh, I know all that stuff.” And yeah, we all know we need to do it. Knowing and Doing are Two Different Things We all know we need to do prospecting. We need to make presentations. We need to follow up with prospects and clients. But knowing it, knowing what to do, is really not the issue at all. It’s how are we doing it? How well are we doing it? How much better are we doing it than our competitors? How frequently are we doing it? How consistently are we doing it? There are all these different nuanced aspects of it that completely change the results. And when we look at things like prospecting now versus five years ago, 10 years ago, it’s completely different. Same thing with presenting, same thing with following up. In the past, it was basically phone and in person. Well now phone and in person are a lot less popular than other methods of communication. So that’s really what I’m talking about here. Jay: Yeah, I think again, it’s so important, you know, it’s so easy to just fall into that trap of I’ve, you know, we’ve done it this way forever and it’s always worked. I think it’s hard for people to break free from those things, because it’s hard to know what type of impact you really can have. And I think part of that is even understanding what your baseline is before you can make changes to understand if you’re making any progress, right? What Happens When Everything Changes? David: Yeah, absolutely. And I hear both sides of that from people. I hear people who are like, ” oh yeah, you know, I’ve been doing this forever. I know exactly what I’m doing and all that sort of thing.” And then I have people on the other side who are like, “Hey, I’m doing all the things that I’ve done before. I’m doing it more aggressively. I’m doing much more of it. I’m doing it with more people and it’s not working.” And so for the people who are struggling with that… again, it’s not really a matter of saying, “well, now instead of prospecting, we need to do something different.” No, you’re still going to need to do prospecting. The question is, “can we now do it in a way that is going to reach the people that you need to reach, communicate the things that we need to communicate and allow us to advance our communications and close the sales?” Reimagining the Essentials Post-COVID Jay: Yeah, I have to think that COVID has had a huge impact on reimagining the essentials. Before, in-person experiences were the norm. That was the expectation in so many ways. Now people are standoffish about that. We’ve become much more interested in doing something online or over the phone. That’s not nearly as personal. It’s hard to connect and build those relationships. David: Yeah, that’s absolutely the case. And so I think for a lot of people, the idea of becoming comfortable with other methods of communication, just like what we’re doing now… some people are like, “Hey, Zoom is great. I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t have to get in my car and I can be face-to-face with someone. It’s awesome.” Other people are like, “oh, I can’t stand that. I don’t like looking at myself on camera. I don’t like hearing what my voice sounds like when I’m on a speaker.” And you either need to get over some of that, or you need to figure out ways to engage only with prospects who are still willing to do business, just the way that you want to do it. That really limits your audience. Jay: I think that’s interesting to sometimes say that there is a customer base out there that I could probably have access to, but it doesn’t really match my skillset or my comfort level. My close rate is going to be lower with them. Do I even want to spend that time? I think in my mind, I’m like, “I want to reach everybody. I want to talk to everybody I can because that’s going to improve my odds.” Maybe it’s just the opposite. You’re Never Too Old for Reimagining the Essentials David: It could be. And for some people it is. I think when I was much younger, and there are certainly younger salespeople and younger people in the business who are really good at doing a lot of this stuff online. It really is about the person. Because there are people my age who are like, “yeah, let’s do it.” Like myself. I’m all in favor of new technology, trying to figure out how to use it to best advance results for our clients and for ourselves. But then there are people far younger than myself who are like, “oh, well I’m too old to learn that stuff.” It’s like, “well, I don’t know if that’s such a great position to take.” Jay: Yeah, old dog new tricks. I think especially in the sales world, you know, is something that I see that is very common. What would you say to those people that are like, “I don’t need to reimagine anything. I have a certain close rate. I know what I’m doing. I’m comfortable in this process.” What If You’re “Comfortable?” David: People who are comfortable. I have no recommendations other than “keep up the great work.” If you’re comfortable with what you’re doing, if you’re able to do it, that’s awesome. What I have seen, however, particularly over the last six to 12 months is I’ve seen a lot of people who have been established in sales for a long time, who have basically said, “okay, that’s it. COVID came, everything’s changing. All the rules are changing. The way that I have to interact with people is changing. I’m not comfortable with that anymore.” And as a result, they just basically said, “okay, I’m not doing it.” There are other people who are like, “okay, I have to continue to plow ahead.” Maybe I can’t afford to retire or whatever. In those situations, there are people who are trying to do it, but they’re not comfortable with it. And that can cause a lot of problems. Reimagining the Essentials of Communication A lot of the people that I work with in our Total Market Domination course are pivoting in terms of the communication. In fact, when we originally came out with the course, it was pre COVID. Then as soon as COVID arrived, all of the questions inside the portal changed. All of our approaches in terms of the prospecting, the presenting, the following up, those things all changed. And, It was actually exciting for us, as participants in the program, and for me, leading the program, to be able to say, “okay, look, this isn’t working for you anymore? What can we get to work?” And not just, “what can we get to work,” but “what will you be comfortable with?” So it’s not just a matter of saying, “okay, well now, instead of seeing people in person, Zoom with them.” Right? Because that is a lot easier said than done. But what else can we do to initiate first contact? In a future podcast, I know we’re going to be talking about alternatives to cold calling and things like that. The Essentials Haven’t Changed. Just the Methods. But for now, if we think in terms of what the essentials are, it still involves establishing relationships, introducing ourselves to people, creating an impression. All of those things haven’t changed. It’s now just the method that has really changed. Jay: Yeah. I’m just curious. Do you think it’s harder now, because of COVID and because of how things have changed? Or does that just depend upon the individual and their particular skillset? David: I think it depends a lot on the individual and their skillset. Because there are some people who are happy not to have to jump in a car and drive places. They’re able to see a lot more people, a lot more quickly. People who are comfortable with the technology can leverage themselves like you’ve never been able to leverage yourself in the past. Creating Leverage You can literally shoot a three-minute video and get it out to, you know, a hundred people and get 300 minutes of face-time in what will take you three minutes to shoot and a few more minutes to send out a link. So there is a lot of leverage there for the people who are willing to use it. And also to get over any of the hangups that they might have with things like video. It’s like, “oh, my hair is out of place.” Well, your hair might be out of place when your visit somebody in person, too. “I don’t like the way I look on camera.” Well, guess what? The camera captures what we look like. So, this is it. You know? This is as good as it gets. If you recognize that the technology can actually help you to leverage yourself and accomplish more in less time, then it becomes a lot more advantageous than not. It’s Not About Perfection Jay: Yeah, I have to tell you my experience is that people are much less concerned now about video quality, audio quality you know what you’re wearing in a video conference. I think we’ve all lowered our standards so much. Cause we’ve had to deal with this so much that they’re just not thinking about those things. And I can see people being caught up in their mind. “I just have to get everything perfect or I can’t do it.” I don’t think anybody’s holding you to that standard. David: No, I don’t think so either. And actually, I got three of these shirts. These are going to be my official podcast shirts going forward. Because one of the things that I found is potentially problematic, is if people are expecting you to be in a different outfit every time. But if people are watching for that, then they’re really not paying attention to whatever your message is. Consistency Can Help But I thought that from a consistency standpoint, It’s good to be able to… and like when we shoot these podcasts, you know, we’ll do more than one in a day. Well, I don’t want to be changing shirts between recordings and things like that. I don’t want people to say, “oh, you had the same shirt on last time.” Yeah. This is my podcast shirt. I’m going to be wearing these shirts when you, generally, when you see me on video. So you can make decisions like that. Somebody else might be, “I’m going to have to have 16 different outfits because I will not be seen in the same thing twice.” But that’s a personal decision. Jay: Yeah, and there are so many things you can get caught up in that don’t matter. Like, what does the background look like? Just so many different things, I think just, you know, be presentable, but more important than anything that you look like, it’s still about relationships, right? I mean, ultimately that’s where it’s all going to live and breathe. We’re Reimagining the Essentials This Week David: It is. And all this week inside the Top Secrets Inner Circle, we are going to be discussing this topic of reimagining the essentials. And what does that look like? And how do we do it? There’s a lot of nuance to this. And particularly for our members who are concerned about “how do I do some of this stuff?” Or “how can I get comfortable doing some of this stuff?” And I think that’s where what we’re going to be diving into this week is really going to be helpful. So for Inner Circle members, who are already members, be sure to log into the portal and dive into this conversation. For those who are watching who are not Inner Circle members, if you’d like to sign up, you can go to TopSecrets.com/ic (for Inner Circle.) Join us in the conversation. The Need for Change Because if you understand the importance of being able to do the things that need to happen in a different manner, in a 21st century manner, even if you are an old dog, like myself who needs to learn new tricks. And I’m probably a good example of this. My, you know, my natural inclination would be to say, well, what do I need with that, but… Well, that’s really not my natural inclination. My natural inclination is, “ooh, cool. What’s this? What’s this new thing? How can we use this?” And so that’s really what I’m looking to help our clients with. Is to say, “all right, which aspects of this are you comfortable with? Which aspects of this could you become comfortable with? And how can we help you to put together a sequence of communications or a way to communicate with people that will help you get the results? Jay: Yeah, I love that. Identify the things that you are very good at, but then let’s take a look at areas that you can reimagine, right? And, look at it from a different perspective. Who knows how it can affect your overall success rate? Leveraging Technology David: Yeah. And if you’re great at something, how can we take that thing that you’re great at, and utilize the new technology and all the new tools that you have available, to essentially broadcast that. To be able to leverage yourself, get yourself out there to a lot more people and actually create far better results than you would have been able to create on your own. Jay: Yeah, that’s fantastic. One more time. If people are interested, how do they find out more? David: Okay. Yeah. Just go to TopSecrets.com/ic, for Inner Circle, and you can join up there. And of course members can just go right into the portal and they know where that is. Since it’s Top Secrets, I can actually reveal that… Jay: (Laughs) That’s right. Well, fantastic. Everybody go check it out and get started on reimagining those essentials, David, thank you so much for your time today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Reimagine the Essentials and Grow Your Sales? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help . Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here . Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry . Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here . Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here .…

1
Don’t Be Invisible to Your Target Market 15:20

منذ 6 weeks15:20

15:20

Don’t be invisible to your target market. Do they even know you’re alive? This goes back to the idea of money versus time. Because one of the advantages of social media is that if you have more time than you have money, you can spend more time posting and contacting people directly on social media. If you have more money than you have time, then you can run ads and you can get your ads in front of people without having to sit in front of the computer all day. So there are definitely different ways to accomplish this. If you want to become visible though, you have to have one or the other. You have to have time or money. You can’t be out of both. Well, I have no money and I have no time to do this. Well, at that point, you’re out of business. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of, Are You Invisible to Your Target Market? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. This one is tough for me because when you know you have a product that people want, you just know it. And you know if they could just learn about you, that you would be able to sell this product and you just know they don’t see you. It’s a frustration. It really is. David: Yeah, we’ve talked about this topic before. I’ve talked about this topic in live presentations and probably in previous podcasts, and one of the reasons that I keep coming back to it is that it really resonates with a lot of people in business, a lot of sales people, a lot of business owners, because it is so important. The idea of being visible or invisible to your target market is going to directly impact your ability to make things happen. And what I find kind of fun about this topic, to the extent that it can be fun, is that a lot of times in the movies or in television, invisibility is generally viewed as a big advantage. It’s an asset, you know, Ooh, wouldn’t it be cool if I’m Harry Potter and I’ve got my invisibility cloak, and I can do all sorts of things that are cool and fun. But in business invisibility is just deadly. Because, as you indicated, if the people who could benefit from what you’re offering don’t see you, don’t hear you, don’t know you’re there, don’t know you are alive, then you have absolutely zero possibility of selling to them. So in evaluating that question for yourself, are you invisible to your target market? It’s probably a good idea to really think it through, and don’t assume that you are more visible than you might actually be. Jay: Yeah, we know about assumptions, right? But I think this is also important because a lot of people will only focus on advertising that gets them leads or some type of returns. There’s a whole nother level of advertising where it’s just brand awareness. You’re probably not going to generate clicks, but if you can be one of the options in their mind, you know, if you’re a plumber and you’re not necessarily getting a lead every time you send out a postcard or something, but when that toilet finally goes down, if you’re one of the three that they think about, then you’re so much closer. And so that’s a part of advertising that I think a lot of people miss. David: Yeah, I completely agree. I think another problem that people run into sometimes with this is that they’re trying to be everywhere at all times with everyone. And unless you have an unlimited budget, that just doesn’t work. So you can get in front of a whole lot of people who have absolutely no capacity to buy from you. I’ve worked with businesses in the past that were running radio ads and they were business to business businesses. And they’re running on music stations, and I’m like, okay, well, it’s possible that there are some business owners or some people who could buy from you who are listening to that station, but the majority of people listening to that ad don’t own businesses. They can’t use what it is that you’re selling. So you’re paying 100% of the purchase price of an ad on that radio station, but maybe only one to 2% of that audience is someone who could benefit from what you’re doing. So in that case, they have the opposite problem. They’re visible to lots of people, very few of whom can actually purchase. So recognizing that we need to be visible primarily to the people who have the ability to spend money with us is going to be key. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And that takes research and time and tracking. But you work a lot with promotional products, and I used to think, what good is somebody giving out pens or mouse pads or things like that. This is one of those things, you’ve been holding that pen and using it for weeks and it’s got somebody’s name on it. I didn’t need ’em before, and now suddenly I do. And here’s this pen or this mousepad that I’ve been using, and the phone number’s right there. So it’s kind of like a preemptive strike. You’re trying to be in their mind at the right time when they actually need you. David: Yeah, and when is the right time? It’s whenever they’re ready for it. So when you have something like that that is in front of people on an ongoing basis, the likelihood of getting that result is better. If you’re running a radio ad or a TV ad, you see it for 30 seconds and then it goes away. Or you hear it for 30 seconds and then it goes away. So things like promotional products can be very effective like that. Especially because it’s also extremely targeted. You can send those out physically, just to the people that you want to reach and impact. So you’re not going to have the waste that’s associated with a lot of other media. So, just sort of circling back, for those who know they need to be more visible to their target market and aren’t. You know, one of the first things that I would suggest is to evaluate who exactly is my target market? Who are the people that I need to reach? Where are they located? What companies do they work in? Or if it’s b2c, who are they? What neighborhoods do they live in? And are there ways that I can reach them so that I can start to become visible? And then create that level of awareness they’re going to need. I refer to that as entry level awareness. In other words, they don’t know you too well yet. They recognize that you’re alive. They recognize that you’re taking in air on the planet, but they don’t love you. They don’t hate you. They’re just aware that you exist. That sort of entry level awareness, and it’s a start, but that’s not where the sales happen. So we have to sort of move through these different levels. We go from entry level awareness to comfort level. I get to the point where I’ve seen you enough, or I’ve seen your information, or I’ve seen your ads, or maybe I’ve met you at a networking function or two, and now I’m comfortable enough with you that I’m willing to place that first time order. And so it’s moving people through these different layers. Starting out with moving from invisible to visible and then moving through the layers that’s going to ultimately generate the sales. Jay: Yeah. I love the concept of entry level and we’ve heard the statistic, I don’t know what it is now, but that a customer has to see you or see your brand, you know, three, seven, whatever times… David: Right. Jay: Before they get to that comfort level. David: Right. Jay: And that can be done in a lot of ways. We talk about social media a lot in this podcast, but the beauty of social media is that you can do a lot of things that do not cost a lot of money. But you can get in front of people. And if you can do things that people will share that can be worth a lot of money. Especially for that entry level awareness that you’re talking about. David: Yeah, and sort of going back to what we talked about in our last podcast, what does it cost to acquire a customer? This goes back to the idea of money versus time. Because one of the advantages of social media is that if you have more time than you have money, you can spend more time posting and contacting people directly on social media. If you have more money than you have time, then you can run ads and you can get your ads in front of people without having to sit in front of the computer all day. So there are definitely different ways to accomplish this. If you want to become visible though, you have to have one or the other. You have to have time or money. You can’t be out of both. Well, I have no money and I have no time to do this. Well, at that point, you’re out of business. And it’s really kind of sad. But there are business owners and salespeople that I’ve talked to who kind of say that, well, I don’t have time to do that, and I don’t have money to do the ads. It’s like, well, what are you doing all day? Because if the work that you’re doing during the day is not producing revenue that you could then use to acquire new customers, you’ve got to change those activities. Or if you’re spending time doing things that are not generating the customers to begin with, you need to change the activities that you’re engaged in in order to be able to get customers from it. So lots of different aspects to that, but starting out with the understanding of, okay, who exactly is my target market? Where are they? What percentage are you reaching now of the people that you could and should be reaching in your market? How many of them actually know you’re alive? There’s a definitive answer to that. You might not know the exact answer, but you’ll have a reasonably good idea. Jay: Yeah. And I also like the idea, for entry level awareness. If you have a system that encourages people to give referrals, I don’t think that there’s a better source for entry level. You know, somebody’s at home and they’re talking to their friend and they’re like, “I’ve got a problem with my car.” And their friend says, oh, I use so and so mechanic down the street all the time. If there’s some way to encourage your customers, whether it’s some type of a gift card or something like that, to encourage them to do that, I think that’s a very strong play to get that entry level awareness. David: Yeah, absolutely. And that really gets to the point of creating value in your communications. It’s not just about getting something in front of them. What can I get in front of them that is going to create a positive impression that has them go, “oh wow, that’s actually valuable to me.” One of the things that we talk about in our Total Market Domination course is this idea of creating value in your communications. It’s not enough to create value for people when they’re clients of yours. That’s expected. If you want them to become clients, you have to create value ahead of time. Create value in advance so that they see that you actually have things that are worth saying, things that could be valuable to them, so that they’ll choose to do business with you rather than someone else. Jay: Yeah, such a great point. If you’re running a newsletter, if you’re, you know, a blog, if you’re running online videos or something, and you’re trying to entice people to come to you, but you never give them anything of substance ahead of time, it’s going to be much more difficult. But if they’re like, wow, I can’t believe they’re just offering that up for free, that is really an encouraging factor. because you told them to do something and they tried it and it worked. And so now you’ve created a relationship with somebody. You’ve never even met them. But you’ve established trust, and you’ve established expertise. David: Right. They view you as the authority in the market, which is awesome. So as you think about this and you decide, okay, how am I reaching these people? How will I reach these people? How could I reach these people, if I’m not currently reaching the way that I need to? Then also, how often are they seeing me? Are they seeing me in their inbox? Are they getting emails? Are they getting texts? Are they seeing me on social media? Are they seeing me in the community? Where are they seeing me? How often is that happening? Getting back to your point, do they need to see you more than once? I remember in the book Guerrilla Marketing, I think he talked about the fact that someone needs to see your message a minimum of nine times before they’re going to be ready to make a purchasing decision. And I remember when I read that the first time I read it, I thought that sounds like a lot. And then I also thought about the fact that most people aren’t even going to see your message most of the times you put it out there. So if I post something on social media, what are the odds that you’ll even see it? Right? So I did the math and basically said, okay, I’m going to multiply that by three, each one by three. And assume that you’re not going to see two out of my three messages. That means I’ve got to get myself out there 27 times, in order for you to see me nine times so that you might be ready to place an order with me. And these days, with so many distractions and so many different ways to reach people, that number might even be conservative. So, If you ask yourself, how often are they seeing you? What are you communicating to them? That, of course, is key. And is your messaging consistent? Is what you’re saying valuable to them? And is it consistent? Are you jumping around a lot and saying lots of different things so they don’t know really who you are or what you’re all about? Because that just confuses people and that hinders the buying process more than it helps it. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And you brought up a point about social media and will they actually see you. And this may be the subject for a completely different podcast, but I’ve learned it’s important to not rely on social media. It may be a good lead source for you. But they could change their algorithm in one day. And what was working for you, you know, for the last year, now you’re getting nothing. You can’t rely on their system. So that’s why, you know, I think it’s important. Yes, get their attention on social media, but get them onto your property as quickly as you can. Collect an email, collect contact information so that you can make sure, because when you start sending them an email, now you know they’re going to get it and probably see it. And so, you’ve got to be careful with those social media vehicles as well. Because I’ve seen that happen. Things were going fantastic and all of a sudden, one day you’re like, wait, what happened? Well, they changed their algorithm and now you’re left out of the game. David: Yes, and a lot of people do exactly what you said. They figure they’re marketing on social media. That’s all they have to do. And what they’re failing to do, in a lot of cases, they’re failing to do lead generation. Which is the purpose of being on there, to get them from that platform into your own platform as you just described. Getting you from their customer base into my customer base. Right? They’re already a customer. Well, they’re not really a customer of Facebook. They’re the product. I remember reading that somewhere and I’m like, oh, that’s so true. We don’t pay Facebook to have a Facebook account. And the reason we don’t pay them is because we are not the customer. We are the product. We’re being sold to advertisers. And so when you realize that, you say, okay, the goal here is to get someone from wherever I’m impacting them, and this could be a billboard, it could be anything to get them from there into my circle, into my world, so that I can then reach out to them as I want to when I’m ready to. Jay: Absolutely. 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. Again, that’s TopSecrets.com/call. Love to have a conversation, see if we can help you to accomplish your goals and become more visible to the people who matter in your market. Jay: All right, I love it. David, thank you so much for your time today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Become Visible to Your Target Audience? 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 .…

1
The Truth about Call Reluctance 12:54

منذ 7 weeks12:54

12:54

When we’re doing business-to-business or business-to-consumer outbound calls, the truth about call reluctance is that it can seem very real. Those fears can be founded. They might very well say no. Or they might be rude, obnoxious, belligerent. It’s possible they say all kinds of things that you don’t want to hear. So that’s all true. That could happen. One of the things that helped me a lot though, is recognizing that we are not doing it for them. We are not doing this for the people who react like that. We are doing it for the people that we are ultimately going to help. And we can’t get to the people that we are going to ultimately help without having to go through some of these people sometimes in between. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Is Call Reluctance Real? Jay: Listen, it’s a pleasure to be here, David, and let me tell you, this is one of my biggest issues. I know it’s real because I have a job where I spend a lot of time on the phone and man, there are days where I just do not want to do it. And what’s funny is it’s actually something that I enjoy, but it requires a certain level of energy. It requires that you are prepared and there is the occasional call that turns in a direction that I don’t want to go. And so this is me to a T. I experience this on a regular weekly basis. David: Yeah, and the title is kind of provocative and I guess I sort of did that on purpose. Because anyone who has experienced this, that feeling of, “oh, I just don’t feel like picking up the phone,” is going to look at this and say, “well, yes, of course, it’s real.” And I think that when we just look at it as call reluctance, then it’s easy to say, yes, it’s real. What do we do about it? But the reason that I wanted to raise the topic is that I don’t believe that call reluctance is actually the issue. if you boil it down, what does it mean? When I did this for myself and for other people who were struggling with it, it all really just boils down to fear, right? It’s some type of fear. It’s not that we’re really afraid of picking up the phone. That’s the easy part. It’s not that we’re afraid of dialing. The issue is what’s going to happen next. It’s about that unknown. And I think that’s what people struggle with, without even realizing that that’s what they’re struggling with. Jay: Yeah. So I mean, for me, fear of rejection, fear of the no, and I mentioned fear of the negative experience. You know, the guy who’s asking the questions that I can’t answer or wants to spend two hours on the phone and I only have 20 minutes for him or those kinds of things. You’re right, it’s all born out of fear. David: And what’s interesting, too, is that today, if you have to pick up the phone and call somebody and you don’t have an appointment with that person, the likelihood that they’re actually even going to answer, that you’re going to get to a live human being is probably what? 30%? 20%, right? 10%. I mean, most of them are going to go to voicemail. And so voicemails are kind of easy as long as you know what you’re going to say when you get a voicemail message. So a lot of it, I mean, at least 80% of it, it’s like, well, there shouldn’t be any fear here because they’re probably not going to answer. Right? But as you indicated, it’s the fear of rejection. In some cases, it’s the fear of success. And some people are like, “I’ve never had fear of success. I love success.” Well, we all love success, but sometimes getting to that success can be a little frightening. It can be a little bit of a struggle. And sometimes it’s just, hesitation is born out of fears that just haven’t even manifested yet. Jay: Yeah. They’re not real. And, for me, it’s asking the question, “what if?” And this is again, something that my parents taught me. I would tell them that I didn’t want to do something or I was afraid of doing something and they would say, “and then what?” Or “what if?” Right? Okay. Let’s say you do it and something happens, and then what? And they would play it out until the very end and eventually help me come to the conclusion that my fears are not rational and they are getting in my way. So I think recognizing, like you said, that it is a fear., and then having a way to process that fear in your mind can be so powerful. David: Right, and when we’re doing business calls, when you’re calling people who don’t know you’re going to be calling… if you’re doing a cold call, whether it’s B2B or B2C, it’s kind of the same because you’re reaching out to people who don’t know that you’re going to be reaching out to them. The fears are all pretty much the same. But if you recognize, well, what’s the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is they’re going to swear at me or they’re going to hang up on me and they’re going to get mad at me and they don’t know me at all. Right? So it’s never really personal. It’s just about the fact that they’re dealing with whatever they’re dealing with on any given day. Their reaction is going to be based on whatever’s going through their head. It has no correlation at all to the person you are or the wonderful human being that you are, or the characteristics that you normally exhibit in conversation. It has nothing to do with that at all. It’s more about them, particularly when the conversations are bad. It’s easy to tell yourself, well, you know, that was really more about them than it was about me. I mean, unless you’re doing a lot of things wrong on your call, in which case, then yeah, you want to adjust that. But simply recognizing that if this is the job, or if this is part of the job, then understanding, this comes with a territory. Like you were talking about a situation where, as a child, sometimes our fears are unfounded. When we’re doing business-to-business or business-to-consumer outbound calls, those fears can be founded. Yeah. They might very well say no. It’s possible they are rude, obnoxious, belligerent. They might say all kinds of things that you don’t want to hear. So that’s all true. That could happen. One of the things that helped me a lot though, is recognizing that we are not doing it for them. We are not doing this for the people who react like that. We are doing it for the people that we are ultimately going to help. And we can’t get to the people that we are going to ultimately help without having to go through some of these people sometimes in between. Jay: Yeah, that is valuable. I don’t know, I’ve been talking about my family a lot in the last couple of podcasts, but my father was in sales his whole life and he taught me what he does for success and he reprogrammed his brain to think that a no was actually a positive. He knew his close percentage. And he knew that each no brought him closer to the yes. And that it also took somebody off of his list. Okay, that’s somebody I don’t need to call back because they treated me like crap. So, boom, they’re off the list! Fantastic. I don’t have to worry about them. I can now move on to the next person. So this reprogramming has really helped me as well, knowing, yeah, I don’t want to do it, but I’ve got to get through these and eventually, It’s going to happen as long as I stick to it. If I let the call reluctance win, then I’ve already guaranteed the outcome, right? David: Absolutely. And one of the things that we’ve done in our business is when we reach somebody like that, who is rude, obnoxious, belligerent, whatever it is, we don’t discard that person from our contact management system. We flag them in our system. So that if that person would happen to call us back a few days later, or a few weeks later, or even a few years later, we’re going to see those notes in the system that say exactly what that person did and how they treated us and how they acted in those situations so that we can then make a decision about whether or not we would like to even do anything moving forward with that person. Because our time is valuable just as their time is valuable. And so one of the potential problems is if you reach out to a lot of people who are like that and you don’t keep track of it, you might inadvertently reach out to them again and now you’re just setting yourself up for trouble. Jay: Yeah. That’s such a good point. And you’re going to regret it. Boy, you really will. I think you mentioned the number of calls that go through now. You know, we all have programs on our phones, and unidentified calls don’t go through. And so it really has reduced the number of calls that go through. And so what I do is I actually use that as an excuse sometimes. Because I know I can email if I have an email list or I can text, and those are valuable. And I still want to use them, but they’re not ever as good as a call if I can get through. So the system that I have now involves all three. But calling is absolutely key because I know that’s where I’m going to close more if I can speak to them, voice to voice. But I use my customer management system for long-term drips. So if they’re not interested, they’re still getting emails from me. Sending out texts. You know, I have customers that only want to text. And that’s fantastic. Right? And so knowing how to contact them, that’s all part of managing call reluctance. David: Absolutely. And also thinking in terms of other options. Now, not everybody has this option, but some people do. And so a lot of what we work on with our clients in our Total Market Domination course, We refer to the topic of first contact as opposed to outbound telemarketing. Outbound telemarketing is one form of first contact. It’s not the only form, and for people who are great at it, obviously, they can and should continue to do it. For people who really struggle with it, and it’s just not a good fit for them, you should recognize too, there are other ways you can initiate contact with people that don’t involve simply picking up a phone. So I want to differentiate again, because not everybody has that option, but for those who do have an option, if you’ve been struggling with call reluctance, but you have the option to be able to initiate other forms of first contact, perhaps just looking at that could alleviate the problem. Because there are ways you can initiate contact with a new prospect that could actually get them to call you. And those calls are a lot easier when they’re calling you and asking you questions. It’s a lot easier to deal with a call like that than if you’re calling them and trying to convince them about why they should talk to you. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Such a great point. And for me, I don’t want the direct call. You’re going to go right to voicemail if I don’t know you. But I absolutely don’t mind the email or the text, as long as you have an option for me to unsubscribe or whatever. I don’t mind it. It’s a natural part of life now. And sometimes it works. And the other part of that is we know that the first contact often is not going to be the one that they respond to. It may be the fifth time they see you. You’ve left a voicemail, you’ve sent an email, and so having a system where you can get multiple touches, if possible, will also be a powerful way to get over this reluctance we’re talking about. David: Right. And when you are able to sequence those communications and think in terms of what message goes into each of those sequences, where the next message may reference the previous one. So it’s a series of communications that are along the same lines, but it’s not just saying the same thing. It’s not like a kid in the backseat of the car saying, are we there yet 500 times on the way to a destination that is seven miles away. Right? It’s coming up with different ways to phrase the message, to let them know and to present some of the benefits so that they would be more likely to respond to you, whether it is a phone call or an email, or a text, or however it is that you’re communicating with them. Jay: Yeah. And I think if you can add some kind of value in whatever you’re sending, that really helps. 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 where we can help you review some of your first contact methods. Help you determine where you are now and where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits. A lot of times people know where they are in terms of sales. Well, I’m at this level, and I’d like to get to that level. But they don’t recognize that their visibility is kind of off the chart for a lot of the people who could potentially buy from them. So simply having these conversations will help you to identify key areas of your business where you can change a very small thing and get great results. So schedule a call. We’d love to have the conversation. Look forward to talking with you. Jay: As always, David, it’s great having these discussions with you. David: Thanks a lot, Jay. Need Better Ways to Initiate First Contact that Just Cold Calls? If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors take the next step: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help . Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you’re an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team . Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you’re an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry .…

1
Creating Demand for Your Products and Services 14:08

منذ 8 weeks14:08

14:08

When you’re creating demand for your products and services to the point where they really want it, “listen, yes, I want to do this. I want to move forward with you.” That is extremely powerful. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I discuss creating demand for your solution. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Thank you so much. Once again, a great topic. If we could all do that, if we could all accomplish this simple goal, then none of us would have to worry. We’d have all the business that we would want, correct? David: It sure seems that way, doesn’t it? I mean, when we are able to succeed in creating demand for our products and services, selling becomes so much easier. It’s not quite unnecessary, but it gets darn close to it. When somebody just really wants what it is that you have to offer, everything gets easier. Jay: Yeah. I think may be a little bit counterintuitive, right? Where like, I need to find a demand that people have, and then I need to create solutions for that demand. And I think that’s entirely appropriate, but it’s not enough, right? It’s maybe only half the battle. David: Right, because there’s a certain amount of demand that can be found, but there is probably a lot more that can be mined with a little bit of effort. Now mining, that sort of implies that you’ve got to do some digging. You’ve got to do a little more work and just sort of saying, well, I found this, this, and this. These are the three things I’m going to talk about, and these are the three things I’m going to lead with. But when you recognize that there are things that we can say, there are things that we can do that will not just create demand for our products, particularly if we’re selling commodity products. Because creating demand for our products isn’t going to be helpful unless it’s creating demand for the products that we’re selling. Because if they can get it anywhere, I can create demand for something that they can then go buy from someone else. So part of this has to be the ability to create demand for not just the products and services you offer, but the way that you offer those things. All the little differences in the way that you do things, there needs to be demand that is created for that. And you’re the only one who can do it because you’re the only one who knows what those differences are. Jay: Yeah, I agree, and back to the idea that I’m going to create a business based upon a certain demand, can that demand actually support and sustain a business? You know, just because there’s demand doesn’t mean that you can survive off it, especially if you’re only going to get a certain market share of that demand. So it better not be your only solution, right? And so I think with your website advertising, with everything that you do, you should be thinking, how do I convince people who may happen to my site or happen on my business? Wow, I didn’t even think that I needed this person, but I really do. David: Yeah, and a lot of that goes to getting past the what, in terms of the product, and getting to the how. The way that you are better, the way that you are different, the reason that If they don’t choose you over every other option available to them, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. And that’s what most people tend to miss in their messaging. They talk about products, they talk about speed of delivery, they talk about pricing, all the usual things. But so many of those things are common to everyone, that those can’t be the things that you focus on. Because if you do, you’re just creating more demand for the products and services, as opposed to creating demand for your method of providing those products and services. Jay: Yeah, you know, I think about our own business model. A lot of people call us and talk to us in the consultation. They’re not even sure if they need help. So our first step is to convince them they absolutely do. Because there’s not one person who calls us that doesn’t need help. We’re in a very unique situation. So our first goal is to get them to a place where they realize they have a demand. And now, once they’ve realized they have a demand, then we can move on to the process of trying to answer why we’re the ones to meet that demand. But I can see a lot of people not even trying that first step. Just assuming that because you’re on the call with them, that they’ve already decided that they need you. That’s not always the case. David: No, it’s rarely the case. And it requires the ability to build a narrative around your solution. What’s the story? Hey, what’s the story, Jay? Tell me a story. Everybody loves stories. Tell me a story about why what you’re offering is exactly right for me and exactly right for my business. And of course, all of this is predicated on the fact that it actually is, right? So that comes in the qualification process. We’ve talked about that before. I don’t think either of us are at all interested in trying to sell someone into our solution if we don’t feel like they’re a good fit, because that’s a negative outcome for them. It’s a negative outcome for us, and it’s a negative impact on the business. It reflects poorly on the business whenever we attempt to provide a solution to someone who is not a good match for that solution, so I think our narrative, first and foremost, has to be direct, and it has to be honest about what we can do for that person. Jay: Yeah, we use a line now that, maybe I should find out what you think of this line, but in the process of creating demand, we will say a phrase like this. “So please, whether you use us or somebody else or one of our competitors. Please understand that you should not be doing this on your own.” And so now, I’ve instilled into them the urgency of using an expert. Now, in the rest of the call, it’s my job to tell them why it is that they would choose us instead of somebody else. But if I haven’t got to the point where they’ve decided, I better not do this on my own, then the rest of the process is going to be much more difficult. David: Yeah, I think that’s brilliant because I think what it also does is it gives you a first nod of agreement. If you can get them to agree to the fact that, yeah, I really shouldn’t be doing this myself, then it takes you one step closer. Because you don’t want to get to the point where you’re talking all about what you do and then, when you go to circle around, they’re like, well, yeah, I’m not sure I might just try to do this myself. So that’s an objection that you can start crushing early on in the conversation, so it doesn’t come back to bite you later. Jay: Yeah. And I’ll tell you, one of the things that happens with us is first, we create the demand. Now they know that they need an expert. Then we’re going to talk about their situation and maybe some of our solutions, but it’s funny, the minute I’ve created that demand in them, their very next question is, “okay, how much do you cost?” And I don’t answer that question right away. I say, well, let me find out more about your situation. And I dive deeper. And they may ask me a couple of times in the conversation, how much do you cost? And I’ll say, well, I’m not really here to sell you anything. I want to answer your questions. Think about how beautiful that is. They ask me three or four times how much I cost. And I go back to focusing on them, because that is important in my industry. But it’s like, by the time we get to pricing, it’s not me telling them what we cost, it’s them begging for that information, right? So it’s such a unique and, and fun, I never, cause you know, you feel awkward when you’re like, okay, here’s my price. I never feel that because they’ve asked for it over and over again. David: Yeah, in my case, and probably in yours as well, particularly in the early stages of the conversation, the answer almost has to be, “it depends,” right? It depends on what you’re going to need, what we’re going to be able to provide for you. It might not cost anything because we might find out that this isn’t a good fit for you. So there’s not a lot of point talking about price until we’ve identified exactly what they need. What we’re going to be able to do for them and whether or not it makes sense to work together. Jay: Yeah, it’s so true. So true. You know, we work in the tax industry. I can’t give them a lot of specific information based upon a general consultation, right? So my goal is to convince them why they need an expert, and then help them understand that we are the expert. But if you want a detailed, specific description of how your situation works, I’ve got to find out more about you. I’ve got to see documents. I’ve got to get to that point. So you’re going to have to engage with us to get to that next level. David: Yeah. And all of that is very consultative, right? I mean, that’s really about getting to the heart of the issue and all that sort of thing. Because there are people who engage in things like scarcity, in some cases false scarcity. There are people who engage in urgency to try to drive a decision quickly. And to some extent, I guess we may all incorporate elements of that when it’s real. If it’s real, then it makes sense to do that. When it’s done. In an effort to just sell people on something that they might not need, might not be able to afford, et cetera, then I feel like that’s not smart. But when you do have a situation where there are actual limits to what you’re able to offer, the number of people you’re able to serve, and the speed with which they need to make a decision based on the availability of whatever it is that you do. Then it does make sense to say those things, as long as you’re not doing it in a way that is designed to be manipulative. Jay: Yeah, I could not agree with that more. If you’re trying to create false urgency, people pick up on that very quickly. And you’re also creating a scenario where it’s going to be very hard to meet what you’ve sold them on. Because going through the process, eventually they’re going to probably figure out that you can’t deliver on what you said, or you were being manipulative. So, you need to create demand based upon what you can actually provide. David: Right. And why they need the solution that you’re providing, assuming they do. And that’s why it’s so important, as you said, to be able to have those conversations up front, to try to find out what is the issue they have? What is the problem that they need to overcome? Because you don’t even want to talk price. You don’t even want to talk about any of these other things until you’re absolutely convinced that you’re going to be able to help. And once again, this goes well beyond products. It’s really about the very specific solution that you provide that is the answer to their biggest pain points. And talking price, talking about anything else that’s unrelated to that until you’ve identified what those issues are, and then you can solve them, is just a waste of time. Jay: Yeah, it is. It’s a waste of your time and a waste of their time. My goal, and I think we achieved this about 80% of the time, is to get to the point where they’ve decided before we talk about pricing, that we’re the expert. We are who they need. I mean, think about that. Before we’ve talked about price. They’re like convinced I’ve found the right person. Then the only obstacle left is can they afford us? Right? We’re a premium service. Can they afford us? And there are people who are disappointed because they’re so convinced that they need to use us, but then they see our pricing and it’s like they don’t know if they can. I mean, it’s such a great place to put yourself in. David: Yeah. And when you’re able to create that level of demand where they really want it, “listen, yes, I want to do this. I want to move forward with you.” That is extremely powerful. And some of that can also tie into doing things like leveraging social proof, demonstrating how this has worked for other people. Showcasting testimonials, case studies, success stories, or reviews. All of that allows you to build trust with people, allows them to see that you are able to create the solutions that they are very likely looking for. And all of that goes to create demand where they look at that and they say, I want that too. Yes, I really want that. And when they start saying those things, first of all, in their own minds, and then they start saying them out loud. And when you know that you’ve got a solution that can help them, it’s game over. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that you should also try and look at yourself as a consumer. When you’re thinking about engaging with somebody, do you look at reviews? Yeah, I do. Even on Amazon, I’m looking at stars. And when the stars are questionable, I’m pulling up reviews. I do this more and more in my life. And so if I’m doing it, Of course, my customers are doing that. And if I’m not providing that, and my competitor is, they’re going to see that, they’re going to notice that, and they’re going to question why. So I think that’s a very important piece of the process. David: Yeah. I also think identifying unmet needs, right? What are the needs that they have that might not be met by other people in the market? And when you can identify those, particularly if that’s part of what you’re great at, you’ve got to be able to communicate it. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. David, how can people find out more? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re in a situation where you need to create more demand for the solutions you provide, schedule a call. I’d be happy to have a conversation. Jay: All right, David, as always, it’s a pleasure. Thank you. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Start Creating Demand for Your Products and Services? 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 product 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 .…

1
Let’s Hit the Ground Running in 2025 21:04

منذ 9 weeks21:04

21:04

To hit the ground running in 2025, we can start by taking responsibility. Whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you’re just going to feel better about yourself. You’re going to feel better about your situation. Because you’re allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you’re a victim and there’s nothing you can do about it. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to hit the ground running in the new year. Happy New Year, and welcome back Jay! Jay: Thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I think everybody has a desire, you know, at the beginning of the year, to say this year’s going to be different, you know, we’re going to make all these changes. It’s going to be fantastic. But do they really have a way to translate that into action? I picture myself hitting the ground, you know, it’s like the cartoon when they start to run, you know, their feet are moving, but they’re not moving quite yet. I think a lot of us are in that place. How do we get from spinning to actually moving forward? David: Yeah, it’s a great question. I know in the promotional products industry, we have trade shows that start at the beginning of the new year, the ASI Show in Orlando, the PPAI Expo in Las Vegas. And, There’s one in Fort Worth as well, an ASI show in Fort Worth. So we got three trade shows in the industry that are really designed to help people get up and running and get started. But as we look at today, you know, this first week of the new year, even aside from that, whether or not you’re attending a trade show, chances are you’re probably pretty reasonably fired up. Okay, here we go. It’s another new year. What are we going to do? This is exciting. And if we think about the types of prospects that we want to interact with this year, the types of clients that we would like to attract, the types of customers that we might want to let go this year, and really focus on building our businesses as proactively as possible. Building our client lists as proactively as possible can really help to improve our quality of life in a dramatic way. Jay: Yeah. I love that. in the restaurant business, there’s something called a theoretical food cost and an actual food cost. Theoretical is, what would things be like if you ran perfectly? If there was no waste, everything was perfect. And then actual is where you’re at. And the goal is to constantly be trying to close that gap. And so to me, I think about it in any business, what does your ideal look like? Your ideal client base, your ideal staff, your ideal sales? So if you can know what that is and then track a course to get to it, I think that’s a great way to feel progress. Because that’s what I tend to miss when I’m running a business is sometimes it’s just a daily grind. And I don’t feel like I made any progress today. And if you do that over and over again, it’s hard to continue to press forward. David: It really is. And I think a lot of that goes to the fact that very often we’re just tied up in the day. Whatever it is that’s going on in the day, we’re just facing whatever is happening to us moment by moment, day by day. And that can get very frustrating. I remember, I think it was Tony Robbins was talking in a seminar one time about the idea that in order to create our future, we need to envision it first. It’s like if you are going to build a house, you don’t just start nailing boards together, I think was the analogy he used. I thought it was a great one. You have to envision it first. You have to figure out, what do I want this thing to look like? Where is it going to be located? How many rooms are going to be in it? All that sort of thing. And at the beginning of a new year, it’s really nice to start thinking about what do I want my life to look like this year? Who do I want to be surrounded by? Who do I want to interact with? Who do I no longer want to interact with? What types of customers do I want to work with? What types of customers have I decided I’m no longer really interested in pursuing anymore? Simple decisions like that can have an amazing impact on your life and your career. If you simply change the quality of the prospects that you’re targeting. If you go from interacting with a whole lot of small dollar clients to interacting with a smaller group of high dollar clients, particularly if those high dollar clients are people that are actually enjoyable to work, everything changes. Because now you’re not running around like a crazy person. You’re able to focus more on a smaller group of people that you can serve to the best of your ability and all of that impacts everything you do going forward. Jay: Yeah. Quality of life, frame of mind, stress level, home life, all of those things can be impacted. You were talking about your Tony Robbins analogy. I’m a big sports fan, and in football, typically when a coach comes out, they have their first 15 plays planned. They know exactly what they’re going to do. And the reason for that is so that they can kind of assess the skills and what the rest of the team is doing. And I kind of was thinking, you know, maybe that’s a great way to kind of start the year. because you’re not going to plan out every step of the whole year. because things change. And we’ve talked about pivoting. But if you’ve got a plan for your first 90 days, this is what I’m going to do and this is how I’m going to go about it, then maybe that can set you up better for the rest of the year. David: Yes, and it makes us just feel better about ourselves because we’ve actually given it some thought. We at least have an idea of what we want to do and where we want to go. There’s that great quote from wartime, which basically says, “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” right? So we know that even if we put everything together, we want to do things a certain way. We know that it’s not necessarily going to happen that way. However, if we at least have some things in mind and we say, okay, I would like to do this and I’d like to do that, and I’d like to do this. You may not be able to do it immediately, in the order that you’ve chosen, but it gives you something to go back to after you’re dealing with putting out the fires or whatever else you have to do. If you’ve got that basic plan laid out and say, okay, I was able to accomplish this first thing, then I got sidetracked, but let’s go back to that second thing and then I got sidetracked again. But let’s go back to that third thing and work through it systematically. It just allows you to probably live more the kind of life you want to live. Because you’re deciding, in advance, what it is that you want to do, who you’re going to be doing it with, where you’re going to be doing it, when you’re going to be doing it. And even though you will not be 100% successful in accomplishing that, if you get 70% of the way there, or 80% of the way there, or 86% of the way there, whatever your number is, you’re going to be a whole lot better off than if you start out with a blank slate. Not knowing, not deciding where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, then just taking it as it comes. Being reactive like that is okay for some people, but generally for business people, business owners, salespeople, reactivity is not a tremendous asset. Jay: Yeah, I agree. But I also think we have a tendency to look at losing in a negative way, because it’s losing, right? But losing is learning, right? And that’s one of the reasons why a coach runs those first sets of plays because they find out, will the run game work? Will the passing game work? Is their defense strong on this side of the line or that side of the line? So as you try things in business and you do lose, in some areas, it should be losing is learning, right? David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And then you can pivot and you can adjust. And the goal is to win more than you lose. But if you think you’re always going to win, you’re setting yourself up and that’s going to be very hard for you. Or if you only focus on the losses and not learn to grow from them, that’s also going to be difficult. So learning from losing I think is such an important part of starting a new year. David: I agree completely. And even the word lose or the idea of losing, I mean, if you think in a sports analogy, you can be losing in the second quarter, in the third quarter, and then you can end up winning at the end. And you haven’t lost until the game is over, right? So Jay: yeah, David: in life and in business, we haven’t lost until the game is over. We’re still in it every single day. We are still in it. We’re still in life, we’re still in business. We still have opportunities. So, It’s difficult to even say I’ve lost, because if you’re still breathing, the game is still going and you haven’t lost. You may feel like you’re behind. You may feel like you need to change the plays, but you haven’t lost yet, right? Jay: Yeah. You haven’t lost yet. And one of the other things that I find to be valuable, maybe especially at the beginning of the new year, is to challenge some of the assumptions that kind of creep around your business. Like I’ve been somewhere and I’ll say, what about this? And they’ll say, oh, we’ve tried that. That doesn’t work. Right? You’ve heard that how many times, right? And then I’m like, well times have changed. Things are different. Maybe we can tweak it a little bit. And then you try it and there’s amazing success there. It’s almost cultural within a company, sometimes. “No, that doesn’t work. We can’t do that.” I think challenging those assumptions can be of great value. David: Yes, absolutely. And there are a lot of times when people will do that. They’ll say they tried something, they’ll say, that didn’t work, and they will assume that it was that thing that didn’t work, when in fact it might have been the way that they implemented that thing. It might have been the way that they used that thing. Maybe they didn’t implement it as well as they thought they did. In the promotional products industry, salespeople run into this all the time. They’ll come up with a recommendation for a product that somebody can use, whether it’s a custom imprinted whatever, mug or t-shirt or cap or doesn’t matter, whatever the item is. And people will say things like, “oh yes, we tried mugs. Mugs don’t work.” It’s like, okay, well there are hundreds of millions of custom imprinted mugs that are working for businesses all over the world. If it didn’t work for your business, why didn’t it work? Right? What did you imprint on the mug? Who did you give those mugs to? What did you do with them? Did they stay in the box by your desk and they were never given out? That’s not going to work, right? So there are a lot of times where people think they did something, they feel like they’ve done something, and they either really didn’t do it, or they didn’t do it as well as it could be done. And I think for most of us, that’s something that we have to reflect on. Not just, was this done? But did I do it to the best of my ability? Did I do it better than my competitors? Did I do it to the extent that I’m capable of doing it? Or did I just sort of turn in a half-baked performance? Jay: Yeah, kind of haphazard. And what I found oftentimes is it was the employee, you know, you tried a new sales pitch or a new program to get leads and it was just the person who was doing it wasn’t into it. David: Yeah. Jay: And then we all decide, oh, that doesn’t work. Let’s move on. Instead of always assessing your systems and your returns and saying, well, wait a minute, let’s listen in on what you’re doing and let’s find out if there’s ways to tweak or improve your close rate. So challenging assumptions. I just love that concept. Especially several times a year, and especially at the beginning of the year. David: There’s a quote that I thought of that really kind of cracks me up. I’ve used it with my kids a lot. And whenever I say it to my kids or whenever my kids say it back to me, it always makes us laugh because the quote is, “it’s a poor artist who blames his tools,” right? I don’t know if you’ve heard that expression or some variation of that. And the way that we say it is, “’tis a poor artist who blames her tools,” right? If I’m talking to my daughter and she’ll say, “oh, this didn’t turn out the way that I wanted. This paintbrush stinks,” or whatever. “Oh, it is a poor artist that blames her tools!” And in business, we just have a tendency to do that. Everybody in business has a tendency to do that. When something goes wrong, well, it was this circumstance, or it was this person, or it was this prospect. This prospect was unqualified. Or this person was, whatever it is. And it may very well be the case. But whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you’re just going to feel better about yourself. You’re going to feel better about your situation. Because you’re allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you’re a victim and there’s nothing you can do about it. Jay: Yeah. Yeah. So, perfect. And, and the other thing I would add to challenging the assumption is just try stuff. You know, sometimes we say, you know, you’re on the whiteboard and you’re like, no idea is a bad idea, which I’ve never believed is true. There are bad ideas that end up on the board. Right? But sometimes something sounds a little crazy or a little wacky, you know, trying some of that stuff, you just never know. I have some good friends and they’re part of a major software game development company and they used to spend five years, six years developing these vast games, you know, and it would take forever. And they have no idea if they’re going to be liked. And one day they said, “what if we just put out some kind of small games to see how they would go and if people would like them. And then if they do, we would expand on them.” And they had hit after hit after hit. And you may know their most recent hit, it’s Fortnite, one of the most popular games ever created. Fortnite was a side project that they were just kind of saying, “Hey, what if we did this or that,” while they were working on one of these massive projects. “Just something we’ll try. We’ll throw it out there, see what happens.” And that’s such an amazing concept to me. Sometimes you’re like, no, it has to follow these guidelines. Sometimes try something new and see if it works. David: Yeah. And sometimes the thing that we have to try that’s new is exactly what you talked about, which is listening. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: Listening more than talking and not making assumptions about what people want. Just actually asking them, what do you need? How can we help? And whatever it is that you’re selling. Sales ultimately boils down to solving some sort of need or some sort of problem. And if you focus on the product, if you focus on what it is that you’re selling instead of “what problem needs to be solved for this client,” you’re never going to be as successful as possible. So much of it is about trying to get inside the prospect’s head, client’s head, by asking them questions about what they really want to accomplish. What are they looking to do? And then prescribing the appropriate solution to help them do it. And this kind of ties into the idea of features and benefits. And I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day, where back in the fifties and sixties and seventies where features and benefits were considered premium, amazing ideas in selling. A lot of years have passed since then. And people have gotten more sophisticated. Their needs have changed and developed and evolved. And so the way that I view it now is that you start out with features and benefits, and that’s going to be somewhat helpful. But then you need to start getting into the emotions and the experiences. You know, talking to them about what’s it going to be like to have this result, or what’s it going to be like to have this product and the result that this product is going to create for you? That’s the emotions, it’s going to feel great to be able to go out and attract more clients with this promotion that we’re going to put together for you. So you can really tie in not just the features, not just the benefits, but the emotions, the experience of what it’s going to be like to do that. And ultimately, what is the transformation? What are we going to do to transform what they’re doing so that when they buy whatever it is that we’re selling, they’re going to experience something completely different and better than what they experienced before. Jay: Yeah, so true. I was thinking about the end of the year and that my inbox was inundated with surveys from companies saying, “how did we do?” And I was like, “oh my goodness. Not another one.” You know, as a consumer, I’m like, really? Another one? But when you think about what the businesses are trying to do is they’re making a genuine effort to try and understand their customer experience and how they can improve. And so as much as I don’t like those forms, I do appreciate what they’re trying to do. And you can do that. You know, if you’re a smaller organization, you can just make a phone call and say, “Hey, you know, how are we doing? Are we meeting your needs? What else can we do for you? I just want to see if you’re getting, you know, good service from your account executive,” those types of things. But making an honest effort to find out. Because oftentimes our perception of the product we’re delivering is very different than what the customer is experiencing. David: Yeah, exactly. And when you have companies like Amazon, for example, who will send out an email after every delivery, “how was it? Was it great? Was it not great?” It’s like, “oh boy, again?” Like, “I have to do this again?” But for most businesses, you’re not doing it every time. You’re not doing it every order. So if you do it once or twice a year, it’s not going to be as dreaded as the type of experience that you’re talking about. And another thing that you can do, when you are a small business, is you can basically send out a one or two sentence open-ended question kind of email, so it doesn’t come across like a survey. But if I just sent you an email that said, “Hey Jay, how did we do for you last year? Hit reply and let me know. Thanks. David Blaise,” right? You’ll reply to it or you won’t. Some percentage of the people will reply to it, but the ones who reply are going to just tell you what they thought, whether it was positive or negative, and it’s very non-threatening. They don’t even view it as a survey, because it just comes across as a very informal communication between two people who happened to have been working together. Jay: Yeah, I love this suggestion that you just made. Just a letter. The more it looks like a form letter, the more it looks like something that everybody received, the less likely I am to respond to it. But if it looks like a personal note, “hey, just checking in,” I am much more likely to respond. Such great feedback, David. So how do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. Then we can see what you’re dealing with, see if we can help you through it as we begin this new year. It’s just such a great time to be able to focus in on where we want to be, where we want to go, what we want to do. It’s an exciting time. Exciting time to be alive, right? Every day is an exciting day when you’re focused on the right things and interacting with the right people. And so that’s another thing. If you have been watching this podcast, listening to this podcast for any length of time, you’ll know if you’re the right person for this. You’ll know if we’re a good fit. If we’re not, you’ll know that. You’ll listen to you go, “ah, I don’t like what these guys are having to say.” All right, unsubscribe. Right? But if what we’re talking about makes sense for you, schedule a call! Let’s have a conversation and see what happens. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. David, thank you so much. I hope you have a great year and for everybody who set those resolutions, you can do it! Just keep pressing forward and make it happen this year. David: Stick with it! Thanks, Jay. Jay: That’s right. Thank you. Are You Ready to Make 2025 Your Best Year Ever? 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 product 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 .…

1
New Year Success Planning: A Simple Framework 12:04

منذ 10 weeks12:04

12:04

Today, we’ll discuss a simple framework you can use this week for New Year Success Planning. Very often we say we’re going to prioritize time with our family and our loved ones. And we do this every year, January 1st, going to spend more time with the people we care about, the people we love. And then by March, it’s back to life as usual, right? So if we decide what we’re going to prioritize, who we’re going to prioritize, and again, the flip side, what am I going to deprioritize? Who am I no longer going to prioritize in terms of allocating time? Those things as well allow you to live a far more proactive life. And it allows you to really start living the kind of life that you want to engage in. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to use this week for New Year Success Planning following a simple framework I call The Big A.P.E. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Well, I’m so glad to be here. David. I have to tell you, after Christmas my number one tendency is just to kind of want to detox, you know, because of all the shopping and everything else. But I know it’s also, because there’s not a lot going on business wise. It’s probably a great time to kind of start thinking about the next year. David: Yeah, and I think detoxing is also a really good part of that. It’s nice to be able to use this time, it’s sort of the eye of the hurricane, a little break in the action before the new year starts and everything gets rolling again. It’s just a great time to be able to do that, to be able to take a breath. Take a moment. Sort of think through how things went, what we liked, and what we didn’t like about the past year and what we want to do better and differently in the coming year. And for me, I think it’s just a great time for planning, for making notes, and really considering the things that we’d like to accomplish. Because, there’s something magical about a new year where everybody wants to start fresh and turn the page. I mean, there’s no reason you couldn’t do that any day or every week. Reminds me of the expression, “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” People hear that and they go, “yeah, that’s right.” And then we never do anything about it. But boy, January 1st rolls around and everybody wants to do things. We’ve got different resolutions, and I’m going to do this better. I’m going to do that better. Lots of people join gyms and they go for two weeks. Then that’s the end of it, right? So there is this tendency to get really excited and really focused about a new year, and then perhaps let it fall away. So if we use this week to just really think through, okay, what do I really want? What am I trying to get out of my life, my business, you know, my relationships? What is it that I’m looking to accomplish? It’s just a nice sort of quiet time to consider those sort of things. Jay: Yeah, and I think, you gave the example of the gyms. My wife goes to the gym all the time and she can’t stand January and into February because she can’t find an open machine to use, because everybody has set this new goal and it’s going to last at most six weeks and then everybody returns. I think that that’s kind of a microcosm of our goal setting for the new year and for resolution. So it has to be important too, as you’re being mindful to be specific I think, but also to be reasonable with yourself, achievable, right? And trackable are all things that I think would probably be important in this process. David: Absolutely. There’s another thing that I tend to think of, just in terms of planning and thinking things through. I refer to it as The Big Ape, A.P.E., the Big Ape. And it stands for activities, priorities, and expectations. So what are the activities that I want to engage in in the new year? What are the activities I no longer want to engage in in the new year? Right? And that’s big. So much of growth in business and personal development comes not just from what we do, but from what we decide we’re no longer going to do. Changing those behaviors that have not created the results that we’ve been looking for in the past. So if you were to do nothing else this week but get out a pad of paper and then jot down, okay, what are the activities I really want to engage in in the new year? And what are the activities I want to either do less of or completely eliminate? Start with that. And that exercise alone just allows you to kind of feel good. Because it’s a glimpse into your potential future, right? You have to decide whether or not you’re going to engage in those activities, if you’re going to follow through and do it. But as you write that sort of thing down, you say, okay, this is what I would like to be doing on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis. Who would I like to be interacting with? In other words, if I’m writing down a list of activities, who am I going to be engaging in these activities with? And all of that, I think, is highly motivational. Also, when you write down the activities, you’re going to stop engaging in, that is in a lot of cases, even more motivational, because you say, wow, what if I stopped doing this one thing that I know is not good for me, that’s been holding me back. A good example of that is I deleted the news app off my iPhone a couple of weeks ago because I found that if I looked at the main app, there was always something that I would click on and it would pull me into some sort of awful negative thing that’s going on in the world that I just really don’t need to be exposed to. So for me, things like that, reducing or eliminating things that I know are just going to bring me down. Now’s a great time to eliminate those sorts of things of the new year. if you start with that and you say, okay, what are the activities I’m going to engage in? What are the activities I’m no longer going to engage in? That’s a great start. Then the P part of the APE formula is priorities. What are going to be my priorities this year? Who are going to be my priorities this year? So many of us, well, we’re going to prioritize time with our family and our loved ones, and we’re going to do this every year, January 1st. going to spend more time with the people I care about, the people I love. And then by March, it’s back to life as usual, right? So if we decide what we’re going to prioritize, who we’re going to prioritize, and again, the flip side, what am I going to deprioritize? who am I no longer going to prioritize in terms of allocating time? Those things as well allow you to live a far more proactive life. And it allows you to really start living the kind of life that you want to engage in. And then the third part of it is the expectations. What are the expectations I have for the new year? What are the expectations I have of myself? What are the expectations I have of the people around me? Now, having expectations for other people can be a recipe for disaster, because if they don’t have the same expectations, you’re not going to have a match there. But at least if you have a clear idea of what you’re expecting from yourself, perhaps your coworkers, that’s all going to really be helpful. Jay: Yeah. I love that. As you go through this concept of the Big Ape you just made me think of a couple of things. I know people who have decided, like you with the news app, they’ve decided they’re not going to look at the phone for the first two hours of the day. They’re going to get up. They’re going to meditate. They’re going to do some exercise. They’re going to do those things so that they’re not sucked in right away. Because that starts your day basically out of control. Right? And that’s very important. But I think some of the other elements of APE is having self-awareness, right? You have to really sit down and think. Like it took some awareness for you to realize that news app was having a negative effect on you. Sometimes we don’t know what those things are. And so you have to kind of have a self-inventory of, you know, how are these things making me feel? It could be eating habits, you know, it could be your diet that is making you feel in a negative way. And so keeping track of those things is so critical to be able to improve your situation. David: And it’s really funny, because years ago I remember saying to my wife I wanted to get rid of the newspaper. And it took me a long time to convince her to do that. But we got rid of the newspaper and I didn’t watch news on television anymore. And I was very proud of myself for accomplishing that, because I just felt like it just relieved so much mind pollution. And then just a couple of weeks ago I realized, okay, well I’m still getting it here, right? It’s still pulling me in, still getting me worked up. I just don’t want to do that anymore. But one other thing about the Big Ape. I gave a presentation, a live presentation on that topic one time, and I talked about the fact that if you get the Big Ape worked out, if you get those things lined up, it’s going to be a lot better. And one woman in the audience, she said, “yeah, if I could get the big ape to do what I wanted him to do, everything would be a whole lot better.” I said, “okay, no, the Big Ape does not refer to your spouse. Okay? The Big Ape is all about you: Your activities, your priorities, and your expectations.” Jay: Yeah, I love that. The other thing about the Big Ape, and we’ve talked about this for months and months now, is tracking your activities, tracking your customers, tracking what your business is doing, what your employees are doing. I think that during this week of looking back at the previous year and projecting forward, if you have good actionable information, you can say, you know what? I’m not going to focus on these clients anymore because they’re not producing. I’m going to focus on these clients because I think I can grow the business. So having that information is critical. If you don’t have it, then maybe that’s one of your first goals for the new year is to set up key performance indicators and say, I’m going to start to track this stuff so that I can set proper goals and expectations for myself and for my staff. David: Yes. So in that situation, if you decide you’re going to prioritize that, that’s going to go on my list of priorities. My activity is going to be getting that in place, and my expectation is that it’s going to improve my productivity and the productivity of the people around me. It fits perfectly into each of those three categories. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And if you’re not doing that, then the chances are they will fade. Right? If you’re not saying, okay, every week I’m going to sit down, you know, maybe it’s Saturdays, I’m going to reassess. You kind of take this week to plan that out. But I really think you have to be deliberate about when each week you’re going to go back and review that information and update it, change it, improve it. If you don’t do that, I think the odds are pretty good that you’re eventually going to just kind of revert back to where you were before. David: Absolutely. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Well, how can people find out more? I know you have a lot of great resources, especially as they’re going through this week, that can help them reassess and think about what they want their new year to be. David: Yeah, we have a lot of free resources available at TopSecrets.com. So you can just basically go to that site, click through, check out a lot of the different things that we have. We’ve got a number of different free resources available. Of course, we have our various training programs and coaching programs you can also take advantage of. Or if you’d like to schedule a strategy session with us to talk about what you’re looking to do, what you’re looking to accomplish in the new year, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s TopSecrets.com/call. We’ll have a conversation and see what we can help you accomplish in the new year. Jay: All right. I love it, David. Have a Happy New Year. David: Thanks, you too, Jay. Are You Ready to Make 2023 Your Best Year Ever? 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 product 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 .…

1
The Best Holiday Gift to Give Yourself and Your Family 11:29

منذ 11 weeks11:29

11:29

I think the best holiday gift is to make the most of ourselves, when it comes to personal development, whether that means sales and marketing training, whether it means personal training, whether it means meditation, whatever it is for you, prayer, whatever it is that allows you to get to a place where you can really focus, really be present, and be your best for yourself, and those around you, is really important. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David, for the opportunity to be here. And I love this question. It's a little off track from some of the things that we normally talk about. But I think as we talk about running your own business and the amount of time that it takes, taking a little bit of time out to think about your family and how you can make their holidays special, I think it's a critical topic. David: Yeah. And of course, because of the nature of the things that we talk about, what I'm really thinking about when it comes to the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family, I tend to look at it as "a better you," right? If you can provide yourself and your family with a better you, a smarter you, a more motivated you, a more inspired you, that is going to really make a huge difference in your business life, in your personal life, and the life of the people that you care about. And of course, this time of year a lot of people are focused on actual gift giving, which of course is a traditional thing as well. But when we think about what really is going to help ourselves, our family, our loved ones most, it's going to be, you know, a healthier, happier, safer, more productive you, generally. Jay: Yeah. I love this line of thinking because you could give them all the presents in the world, but if you're stressed out all the time, if you're angry, because of what's going on at work and those types of things, you can't buy their love or their gratitude with gifts. Maybe they're a little bit happy in the morning, but by the end of the day they still remember what kind of circumstances you've left them in. David: Yeah, I remember when the kids were really young and we'd have gifts in the morning and by afternoon , it was like everybody was kind of cranky because you kind of get what you wanted out of the day and have too many sweets and all that sort of thing. But again, I think if we think really more in terms of what we're going to be doing and how we're going to be living and interacting with each other. A great example of this about a week or so ago on social media, Charity Gibson, who is involved in the promotional products industry in a lot of ways, and is just really inspiring for a lot of people. She posted something on Facebook about what happens when, at some point, you're doing everything for everyone else and you're not doing anything for yourself. You're not taking care of yourself. And I think it's such a great point, because a lot of times people can fall into this trap of thinking, well, I don't want to be selfish. But there is a big difference between selfishness and what I refer to as rational self-interest. In other words, rational self-interest is what keeps us from stepping off the curb and into traffic, right? The desire to look both ways before we cross the street. That's rational self-interest. Nobody would really look at that and say, oh, you're being selfish. But I think a lot of times people tend to, for themselves mostly, think, well, I should be doing more. I could be doing more. They want to help everybody else. And if you don't put gas in your own tank first, you're not going to have any energy left for anyone else. Jay: Yeah, such a good point. In fact, I saw a study just yesterday and it was talking about the high levels of anxiety in our youth,…

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Stop Following the Followers 13:23

منذ 12 weeks13:23

13:23

If you're just copying what everyone else is doing, and 80 percent of the market is doing that, you're just going to be seen as part of that group. So stop following the followers! If you want to differentiate, it starts with that. How am I communicating my strengths to an audience that actually needs the strengths that I'm able to deliver? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Stop Following the Followers. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Once again, a great topic for our discussion. This one is hard. Sometimes we are sheep and we're not following a leader, right? We're following everyone else who's following that leader. Why are we doing that? David: Yeah, great question. Why are we doing that? I know in the early stages of my business, I did that all the time. When you don't know what to do, you're basically looking around to see what other people are doing, and very often they don't know what they're doing either. I particularly remember in the early stages of my business where I would look at somebody who I saw as a competitor in my space, and I would say, okay, well, what are they doing? And sometimes I would do that pretty indiscriminately, not even realizing that they may have been in worse shape than we were at that point, and I'm looking at what they're doing. Now, fortunately, I've always been able to learn as much from bad example as I have from good. And to me, that's like a superpower. If you're able to do that, it is extremely helpful. If you look at something that someone else is doing and you say, you know what, I am not doing that. And you see something that you like and say, well, I am going to do that. That's extremely helpful. But very often we don't know who's doing extremely well and who's not doing as well. And we see something we like, and we may imitate it. We may try to copy it. But, it may not be working for that person, and it very well might not work for us either. Jay: Yeah, or I think understanding what is making them successful and what you're seeing them do, that doesn't mean that's what makes them successful. I mean, there are many people out there who are successful in spite of all of the mistakes they're making. And that really frustrates me, David, when I see that, because here I am busting my butt to try and do it right, and I see other people that are... it's like they'd have to work hard to mess things up. They just fall in a bucket of gold everywhere they go. Drives me crazy. It's like when I was in the radio business, we had a consultant who was paid incredible money and we're like, why does this guy know what he's doing? Well, he happened to work for somebody who achieved major syndication. Well, just because he worked for that guy doesn't mean that he's the reason that guy was successful. And that doesn't mean we should listen to everything that he says. David: Absolutely. I've got similar radio horror stories. I think we've all had experiences like that. We've also probably had experiences where we see someone, and our impression is that that person is successful, is smart, is doing things right, and is doing things well. And that's not always the case. Because we don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. In our work with clients, one of the reasons we have the brand we have, TopSecrets.com, is that there are things that people don't know that can help them. Whether you want to consider them secrets or whether you just want to consider them things that somebody's never learned, doesn't really matter. But it's a fact. And I've had conversations with people who say, "oh, there's no such thing as secrets in business." And I'm like, "I completely disagree with that." I completely disagree because while there are a lot of things that are common in business, and a lot of things that everybody knows. For every one of those,…

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The Need to Say No in Business 11:48

منذ 13 weeks11:48

11:48

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Why Working Harder Isn’t Working: The Effort to Outcome Myth 13:39

منذ 14 weeks13:39

13:39

Working harder won't cut it, and breaking the Effort to Outcome Myth starts with understanding that it's not going to be a 1 to 1 thing. You're not going to put in more effort and just immediately generate a corresponding amount of result. That's why it's necessary to look for points of leverage -- in the form of systems, technology, and delegation. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the Effort to Outcome Myth. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I've got this figured out. All I have to do is spend so much time on something and that guarantees me that I'm going to have the exact outcome that I want, right? David: Cool. This is going to be the shortest episode ever. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it kind of falls along the line of what people always say about "you get out out of life what you put into it." And I like the sound of the expression, but what I found personally in my life is that it's just not true. It's not accurate. It's never really a direct correlation. You never really get out of life exactly what you put in. You never get out of business exactly what you put in. You get out some sort of multiple, at least that's been my experience. Now, if your multiple is one to one, okay, then you're getting out what you're putting in. But I'm sure you've had the experience as well, where you put a whole lot of work in on something, and it didn't create the return that you wanted. You've had other things that maybe you didn't have to put a lot of work in on, but they happened to work out well and created great results. So I think sometimes when we make that connection in our mind saying, I have to push harder. I have to work more. I have to do more things in order to get what I need out of it. We may be missing some elements there. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree with you. As you know, I've studied a lot of these billionaire types. I think a lot of people do, and I was looking for some commonality. And I do see commonality in how they think about things, how they look at things, but I don't see commonality in scheduling and how hard they work. Some people like Bill Gates, his schedule, I mean, I get exhausted just reading it. But other people are like, no, I work smarter, not harder. And I work because I want time off. I want to enjoy my life. So I don't see a correlation between how much they work compared to what their results are. David: Yeah, definitely not a one to one correlation. Now, some of it also is common sense. If you think in terms of people engaging in busy work, as opposed to impactful actions, things that actually move the needle. There's an example of where you can start to create some leverage for yourself. If you look at your day to day actions. And you recognize that many of the things that we might be doing are not actually moving the needle for us, then it's easy to say, Okay, well, what can I eliminate? And what can I focus more attention on so that I can get the results that I'm looking for? Jay: Yeah, and I think it's really difficult. We talk about this a lot. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? Especially as a small business owner, the idea of working smarter sometimes is the hardest thing that you can do. Because you're putting out fires and those fires need to be dealt with. That's why they're called fires, right? So finding a way to do that but still move the needle forward can be a very difficult process. David: Yeah, and I think when we look at things in terms of applying a brute force solution to what could be a strategic or a planning problem, that's also where we kind of run into trouble. Thinking, okay, well, I have to do more. I have to push more. I have to push harder. And what that doesn't take into consideration is the law of diminishing returns, right? There are more hours that we're working, but that can often lead to burnout. It can lead to a lack of focus.…

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Cold Calls: How to Reduce or Eliminate Them in Your Business 13:11

منذ 15 weeks13:11

13:11

If you want to reduce or eliminate cold calls, you need to recognize that there are other, and very often more effective ways of doing this. More leveraged ways to be able to do this. More ways of being more focused, more specific... David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to reduce or eliminate cold calls. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey David, I'm so glad we're talking about this. I hate cold calls and who loves them? Right? I mean, if anybody comes on and says they love cold calls, wow. I mean, maybe if you do it enough and it's successful enough, I can see how you would love them, but I'm not to that point yet. David: I've always been skeptical of that too, Jay. I've always been skeptical of people who say, I love cold calls. But I know they exist. And I've had conversations with people like that, and they tell me why they love them and how great they are at them. And when I hear that, I'm like, congratulations, that's awesome. I'm extremely happy for you. I've never actually learned anything from them, though, that I could really share with other people that would get other people to change their minds. And so for that reason, I've never been one, at any of our trainings, to sort of teach cold calling. Now, have we done it over the years? Absolutely. But it's not something that I feel like, oh, okay, I'm going to put together a course on cold calling because I feel that strongly about it. I don't. I feel more strongly that there are other, better ways of getting recognized and getting noticed, and that's why nearly everything we do in our material is focused on allowing people to do that without necessarily making cold calls. And it's not even really just cold calls. There are certain things that some people hate. Cold calls, posting on social media, engaging in paid advertising, different people hate different things. Now, if you hate all of those things, if you're not going to do anything, then it's going to be more of a challenge to get clients. But generally speaking, you don't have to do everything and it's very likely there are things that you don't like to do, that you won't have to do if you take the time to think things through and come up with a strategy that works better for you. Jay: Yeah, and I think you made such a good point there. There may be somebody who loves cold calls, there may be somebody who's successful, but that's really like a character trait. That's like an individual skill set. So if you think Oh, because this person can do it, then that means I can have five people doing it. I don't know if that's reality, finding five people who love cold calls and are successful at it. And the other thing is that because there are so many other ways to contact people now, a cold call is very surprising to me. It's like, if you didn't send me an email first, that's very strange in today's world. It's changed. David: It really is. You touched on something and this is a bit of an aside from what we're talking about, but I think it's important, which is that there are some people who are wired to do things. There are some people whose personalities are geared toward doing things extremely well. There's a sales trainer that I've known over the years. I met him in a number of trade shows. He's kind of a bigger than life character. He's tall and he's really good looking, very well spoken, very smart, makes excellent presentations. And every time I've seen him, I thought, this guy is made for this. He is built for this. profession. But what I've also noticed is that not everybody's him, right? Not everybody's as tall, not everybody's as good looking, right? Not everybody is, and the list goes on. So I think for the rest of us, for those of us who just need to be able to generate clients, qualify them quickly, get them sold into our process, and keep things moving in our businesses,…

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