Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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

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

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

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

To improve business communication fast, consider this… If nothing that you convey in your communication, instills any sort of belief in the other person as to why they should take the action that you’re requesting, then it’s not at all likely they’re going to take that action. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the TBDs. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it’s such a pleasure to be here with you again, David. We’re talking about communication here and I’ll be honest. Oftentimes we’ll discuss a podcast that we want to do, or you’ll send me the topics and I sit here and think, you know, I’ve never once thought about this type of thing. How to improve communication. I just kind of fall in the trap. You know, I talk to people, I send them emails. I’m guessing that that’s good communication, but I’ve not really thought about it, David. David: Yeah. I sort of introduced this topic backwards, I guess, at the top of this podcast. When I say we’re going to be talking about the TBDs, what we’re really talking about is improving our communication with the TBDs. And for those of you who are saying, “what are they talking about?” Allow me to elaborate. A lot of times when I’m working with clients, one of the things they’ll ask about is how to improve the results they’re getting with the communications they’re having with prospects. That could be anything from the messages they’re leaving on people’s voicemails. It could be not getting responses to emails. It could be the things they’re posting on social media, any form of outbound communication, whether it’s one-to-one or one-to-many. What you say in those communications is going to determine what happens. We touched on this a little bit in the previous episode. But if you want to really think about what is likely to get you the best results? I boil it down down for myself and my clients as what I refer to as the TBDs. Now, when people think of that abbreviation “to be determined,” that’s often what’s used there. That’s not what I’m thinking in terms of. When we want to communicate with other people and get a result, we should ask ourselves: “As a result of this communication, what do I want this person to think? What do I want them to believe, and what do I want them to do? Okay? If you structure your communication to address those three points, you’ll be far more likely to get the result you’re looking for. If I send somebody an email, and there’s nothing I want them to think, believe or do, there’s no reason to send that email. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: If I make a phone call, leave a voicemail message, or do anything to initiate contact with another human being, if there’s nothing in particular that I want them to think, believe, or do, then what’s the point of having the conversation? Now, if you’re calling a loved one, Okay. You know? Jay: Yeah. David: You want them to know that you love them. You want to know that they love you, all that sort of thing. But, in business in particular, in our communications, if we don’t have a reasonably good idea of what we want the other person to think, believe, or do, then there’s not a whole lot of reason to communicate. Jay: Yeah. That’s so powerful because how often or is the temptation I’m calling a client? Hey, just checking in, seeing how you’re doing give me a call back. It’s like, that’s the trap. I think so many of us fall into. I’m not thinking at that moment, what I want them to be thinking is, please call me back because you need me. But I sound kind of desperate and not like there’s a priority. There’s no urgency, there’s nothing really being conveyed. Right? David: Yes. And when we’re doing follow-up calls, when we’re doing check-in calls, and just even using those words in a voicemail message. There’s nothing really compelling for them to respond to there. Is there? Jay: Mm-hmm. David: If you’re saying to somebody, “Hey, I’m just checking in,” it’s like, “okay, well they’re just checking in. I’ve got nothing for ’em at this point. I guess I don’t need to respond to that.” But when you leave a message like that, We have things we want them to think, believe, and do. We want them to think, “oh, I’m going to get this message and I’m going to call this person back.” Ideally, we want them to believe that it would be in their best interest to pick up the phone and call us. We want them to do, we want them to pick up the phone and call us back, right? So it does kind of tie together, but when you’re conscious about it, It requires you to think differently and to speak differently and to approach the whole thing differently. If I want them to think that it’s important for them to call me back then saying, “Hey, I’m just calling to check in,” is probably not the best approach to take. And in most of our communications, it’s good to have some sort of call to action at the end of it. Give me a call back, drop me an email, send me a text, whatever it is, that’s the “do” portion of it, and that usually does come at the end. You want to have a very specific call to action at the end indicating what you would like or appreciate for them to do. Are they always going to do it? No, I leave messages for people who don’t call me back. Even people that I’ve known for a long time, who I’ve worked with and things like that. For whatever reason, that still happens. But if you are at least clear, on your end, about why you’re calling, what you’re looking to accomplish in that call and what you’d like them to do next, then at least you’ve got a shot. Jay: Yeah, and I think it’s probably a, discussion more for a future podcast, but things have changed dramatically over the last, say, 15 years. It used to be people expected a voice phone call. We get almost zero results now, in our business with the return voicemail. All of the results come through the return email or the return text. And now, I find it’s easier for people to get back to me because they respond right when they see that text. But it makes it harder to define, you’re not in person, they’re not hearing your voice, and so now making sure they’re going to think what you or believe it and do what you want them to do, you’ve got to be able to condense that down and share that message in a powerful way, in fewer words. So there’s some wordsmithing needs there that have to happen. David: Yes, and the belief portion of it, I think is pretty key. And it’s important to differentiate that from the think portion. And what I mean by that is if I want you to think that we should do business together, it needs to go deeper than that. You need to believe that it’s really in your best interest that we do business together, because if you just sort of think it, if it sort of flies by in your brain, then it can just as easily fly out. But if you’re able to instill some level of belief, even just a little, a little bit of a belief, which is more than a thought, it’s actually a strong consideration that this might be in my best interest, then you’ll be a lot more likely to get the return call, get the return communication, whatever it is. So it’s a small distinction on some levels, but it’s a really deep distinction on others. If nothing that you convey in your communication, instills any sort of belief in the other person as to why they should take the action that you’re requiring in the third step or requesting in the third step, then it’s not at all likely they’re going to take that action. Jay: Yeah, I imagine like for example, if you in promotional products are trying to get somebody to believe something, I would think what I want them to believe is that the longer they wait, not using your promotional products, the longer they’re not going to experience the benefit of the sales and the growth that those things can provide. If I can convey that, I’m guessing for you that would be a win. David: Yeah, that’s an excellent example of a belief system that we would like to be able to install in other people. That it is absolutely in their best interest to do it, and if they’re not doing it, that in some ways it could potentially be harming them. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: Particularly if those things are true. We’re not just looking to try to make things up to manipulate people into responding to us. If what we’re offering actually has value and has the ability to help the other person, and we don’t create that belief, we don’t convey that belief to them, then we are doing them more harm than we’re doing to ourselves. Because they don’t get the benefit of what it is that we could help them with. Jay: Yeah. And so being lackadaisical, that’s probably not going to help. Are there any tips or guidelines on how you can really identify that thing? Because I’m asking myself, “okay, what do I want my potential clients to believe?” I don’t know if I know the answer to that question. So spending some time on just that could be very valuable. David: Yeah, literally if you grab a sheet of paper and you write, “Think” at the top, “Believe” in the middle of the page, “Do” near the bottom, and then say, okay, what is it that I want to accomplish in my next communication? And when you’re reaching out to a lot of different people with a similar message, for a similar purpose, then this becomes that much more critical. Because every call that you make without doing this decreases the likelihood that you’re going to get the result you want, because you haven’t defined the result you want. I mean, yeah, you know that you want them to call you back, but you haven’t identified what you want them to think about that, what you want them to believe about that so that they will actually take the action that you’re requesting. Jay: Yeah. And then what’s probably going to happen, because you haven’t done that, you’re going to sound desperate and like you’re begging. And that is, that is the worst place to come from in a sales call. David: Yeah. Or that you’re careless, that you’re just, “oh, I thought I’d give you a call.” Like I have nothing better to do. When you convey that sort of a message Into somebody’s voicemail, particularly if that’s somebody who’s busy, who actually has things that need to get done to improve productivity and make things happen, and move things forward in their business. They’re going to listen to that. I’m going to say, I don’t have time for this, Jay: Right. David: But if that same message conveyed a thought that resonated with them, a belief that would motivate them, and then a call to action that would actually happen. Now you’re using exactly or at least roughly the same amount of time to leave that voicemail message, but improving your results and your responses dramatically. Jay: Yeah. And it’s a legitimate place where you can use the phrase game changer. It’s often overused, but this is a process, right? So you may want to do some A/B testing, I think. You’re not going to nail it the first time. But it’s another place, and we talk about this very often, tracking the messaging that you’re using and seeing which types of message are most effective. Because if you’re not doing that, you’re not going to know when you’re really hitting that sweet spot or not. David: Exactly. And if you have the ability to track your most recent calls, your last 10, 50, a hundred calls. If you’ve been doing the same thing on those, how many of them got a return call? Say you made a hundred calls and three people called you back, that’s a 3% rate. If I change the approach, if I incorporate the TBDs, what does that do? Does it convert it to 6%? Maybe it converts to 8%? Does it convert it to 20%? Or does it reduce it to zero? Any of those things are possible, depending on what it is we’re conveying in that message. It could make it better. It could make it worse. But if you do this, if you test it, as you’re talking about, an A/B test. The A test was what you did before. The B test is what you’re doing now for a certain period of time. You’re tracking those results. You’re comparing it. That gives you the answer. It gives you the answer better than any guru, than any marketing Sherpa, whatever it is that’s going to tell you because the market always votes with their wallets. Or in this case, they vote with their phones, whether or not they’re going to call you back. That’s what tells you the answer. So it’s very easy to define once you’ve got it set up. Not always fun to implement. Not always easy to implement. Probably easier than it seems, but once you do it and you’ve got those numbers, now you know. You don’t have to wonder. Hmm. I wonder if that would work better. You know. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the most important part. That’s the difference between just shooting stabs in the dark or conveying a message of, you know, “Hey, I’m just your friend,” instead of somebody who has a product that can change your business or improve your business. So how do people find out more? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re looking to initiate more conversations, improve your communications with people, get a better response to your emails, your voicemails, your phone messages, anything you’re doing in that regard, then let’s have a conversation. Our Total Market Domination course is all designed to get you better results from what you’re currently doing. Jay: Fantastic. David, thank you so much for sharing your information today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Improve Your Communication to Get Better Results? If so, check out a few ways we can help you grow your sales & profits: 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.

What does it mean to install a Market Domination Engine in your business? Is that a real thing? If so, what is it? What does it do? What does it consist of? And what does it allow you to do, that your competitors are likely to struggle with? Hi and welcome back, in today’s quick episode, we’ll talk about what it means to install a market domination engine in your business. But before we do, I want to address the elephant in the room. If even the idea of a “Market Domination Engine” sounds strange to you, or unrealistic, or if it sounds like a bunch of hype. It’s okay… Let’s start by defining what I mean by market domination. That doesn’t mean that everyone buys from you. It means that the people who could buy from you, know who you are, and know what you do, so they can make a thumbs up or thumbs down decision about whether or not they want to work with you. Think about Amazon. Everyone knows who they are. Some people love them, and some people don’t. It doesn’t matter. They dominate their market because the people who could buy from them know who they are, and know what they do, so they can make their own decision about whether or not they want to buy from them. And it’s exactly the same with you. The reason you likely struggle to get the clients you need is that they don’t know you’re alive. Or if they do know you’re alive, they don’t know exactly what you do, or why they should buy from you, or why you’re better than whoever they might be using now, or why you’re better than any or every other option available to them. Market Domination is about creating an environment in which your very best prospects know who you are and know what you do, so they can make a decision about whether or not they want to buy from you. But how do you create that environment? That’s where the market domination engine idea comes in. If that idea, the idea of a “Market Domination Engine” does sound strange, or unrealistic, or like a bunch of hype to you. it’s understandable. Becuase very few business owners have never seen a sales and marketing system that actually functions like an engine. They’re used to a patchwork of random activities. Doing some networking, waiting for referrals, making some phone calls, posting on social media, prospecting when they have the time, following up when they have the time (or when they remember they should have reached out to someone.) What is that? It’s not an engine. In an environment like that, the idea of a market domination engine sounds like fantasy or hype, because they’ve never seen their business run like an engine. That doesn’t mean it can’t. It just means it’s never been designed to run that way. The engine has not been installed. And by the engine, I mean the very specific components that create the consistent result they’re looking for. I’m going to keep this episode very short. Because this topic is likely to either make perfect sense to you, or it’s not going to make any sense at all. If you’ve ever gone from sales meeting to salesmeeting, from training to workshop, from podcast video to YouTube, from Facebook Group to Skool Community, from Google to AI, asking questions, taking notes, collecting ideas, gathering little bits and pieces here and there, and wondering how it all fits together… Then you may be ready to understand the value of installing a Market Domination engine in your business. It’s about replacing all the scattered bits and pieces you gather with proven systems and processes designed to get results. It’s about creating that environment where your ideal prospects know who you are and know what you do so well, that they can choose you over every other option. It’s about trading in your anonymity for recognition among the ideal clients you want to attract. Most business owners never experience what it feels like when everything is deliberately connected. When the hodgepodge makes way for clarity, and structure, and profit. Think about any system that works well. It’s made up of components, steps, and repeatable processes. So your outcomes are consistent. Your Market Domination Engine is exactly the same. So you can either convince yourself it doesn’t exist. OR you we can work together to install it in your business risk-free. That means if it doesn’t work for you. You get your money back and then some. If you’d like more details on that, go to TopSecrets.com/engine. That’s TopSecrets.com/engine. Once you see it in action, it stops feeling unrealistic and starts feeling obvious. Talk to you soon. Are You Ready to Install Your Own Market Domination Engine in Your Business? If so, click here. Or check out a few of the other ways we can help: 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.

Choosing worthy clients for your business means making decisions about whether or not a prospect deserves your time and attention, whether they’re worthy of follow up, and you are bound to make some mistakes in that process. When you do this, you have to recognize that some of that is going to come with the territory. You may make a wrong decision that will cost you some business down the line. So you have to weigh that against quality of life issues. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing choosing worthy clients. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be back on again. And once again, I love this topic. I feel like, personally in my experience, there is a tendency to believe that you have to take every client. And you know what? In some businesses that is true, you’re going to take every customer who comes through the door. In other cases, you can be more selective and it could make your life a lot easier. It can make your business a lot better. David: Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I thought this would be a really good topic, because I believe that in many businesses they don’t even consider the idea of worthy clients. I think that in many businesses we feel like, okay, we’re going to serve whoever we can serve. We want to take whoever comes through the door, and we just want to serve them to the best of our ability. And while that is noble, it’s not always great from your own standpoint, from your own business standpoint. And I wish this was something that I knew from the beginning, but it was not. As most things, we learn it the hard way and this is no exception. At some point along the way, the idea of pursuing worthy clients, choosing worthy clients, tracking down worthy clients just really started to appeal to me. When I started using that term with some of my clients, they were like, “wow, that never even occurred to me. And what do you mean by worthy?” Things like that. So we can dive into all of that in today’s podcast. Jay: Yeah. I think that there are some things that we hear over the years and they start to sink in. We just don’t ever challenge ’em in our mode of thinking. Like I think of the customer’s always, right. I’ve come to believe. No, no, that’s just not true. Do I want to do everything to satisfy the customer? Yes. Yes, I do. But there are customers who can never be satisfied or I can’t provide what they want. So, no, they’re not always right. I love that we have these discussions. Let’s start off with this word worthy. What in your mind is a worthy customer? David: Well, I think we have to decide that for ourselves, what we determine to be a worthy prospect or client for ourselves. And some of that can go back to what you talked about, in the customer’s always right or the customer’s not always right. But you can have a customer that is absolutely right about things and you can have a good relationship with them, but they may not still be a worthy client if they are taking up more time than they are costing. So if they’re not really focused on buying from you to the extent that you need them to in order to be worthy of your time and attention, it may be something as simple as that. And in those situations, I’m not suggesting, okay, well you’re just going to bag all these people. If you’ve got a relationship with someone and you like the relationship you have and you’re okay with it, then you can deem that prospect or client worthy. You can say, “all right, well, I like dealing with this person, therefore they are worthy of my time and attention.” But for me, I believe that’s where it starts. We each have to decide. Is this prospect or is this client worthy of my time and attention? Because obviously our time is the most important asset we have, and when we fail to recognize that, we can invest a lot of it, we can spend a lot of our time on prospects and clients who are not worthy of our time and attention. And it could go back to what they’re buying from us or not buying from us. It can also get down to personalities. If they’re rude, obnoxious, belligerent, then they’re unworthy in a lot of cases to do business with us. And I think sometimes as salespeople or as business owners, We don’t really look at it that way. We think, well, we have to be worthy. We have to grovel and try to get their approval and all that sort of thing. And I don’t really think it’s like that. I think it certainly has to be a two-way street. Because anyone that we decide to do business with also has to decide to do business with us. They have to decide if they think that we are worthy of working with them. But that’s their job. Our job is to determine if they are worthy of working with us. And to me that simply means being proactive about your choice of prospect and your choice of customer. Now, you can’t always know that right away with a prospect. You can’t know if they’re going to be a worthy client. But as you interview them, as you have conversations with them, as you qualify or disqualify them, you can make some judgments. You can make some decisions pretty quickly on whether or not this person seems to be a good fit for you and for your business, and whether or not you want to decide they’re worthy of doing business with you. Jay: Yeah, you brought up so many points there. I hadn’t really thought about, just like the time to revenue ratio, right? Because I grew up in the restaurant business, so we knew what our food costs should be. We knew what a plate of food should cost, we knew what our overhead should be, those types of things. And so that’s really easy to quantify. But in businesses where there’s a sales cycle, you know, those types of things, it’s a lot harder to quantify. Well, how much time did I really take to close this sale? And then what is my time actually worth? Just that thought process, just that equation can be so powerful. And I also think taking the time, maybe just get out a pad of paper, if people still use pen and paper. I don’t know, I haven’t for years. But get that out and just write down, what do you think your worthy customer is? How much time should it take to close a sale? What type of revenue should you expect from them? What should the communication look like? Those types of things. David: Yeah. And once again, making the decisions that are most important from your standpoint, for your business, for your coworkers. For me, I think people being friendly, people being nice. People being willing to engage? Willing to engage, willing to have conversation, that could be right at the top of the list. Because if they’re not willing to have conversations with you, then nothing’s going to happen. There are people who you can have a great conversation with, and then they will just never take or return your phone calls again. When you determine that that’s happened, when you’ve determined that you’re interacting with someone, or you’re trying to interact with someone, who is no longer willing to communicate, you really have to determine your tolerance for pain and “how long am I willing to continue to do that?” I know that over the years for myself, that timeframe has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter. Whereas in the early stages, you know, you pursue people to the ends of the earth. And now, you know, as I recognize the value of my own time, as I recognize the value of my coworker’s time, I don’t want them wasting time on people who are not worthy of our time and attention. So a lot of it could really start with that. Are they even willing to engage? Are they willing to communicate? Do they seem reasonably friendly, personable, able to interact with us? And if those things are positive, then, are they qualified to buy? Do they need what we have to sell? Do they have the money to buy what we have to sell? And are they willing to work with us to buy it? So those are all qualification questions and that really goes to a whole different topic when we get into the topic of qualification procedures, and all that sort of thing. But just identifying the fact that there are prospects out there, some of whom are worthy of your time and attention, some of whom are not. And so a lot of our job in the early stages is discernment: deciding worthy or unworthy? And then following through on that. Jay: Yeah, just having that mindset. I mean, I think there’s going to be a lot of people listening, like you said at the beginning. I’ve never even thought of these terms. I thought I was just supposed to deal with everybody. You also said tolerance for pain. I know of customers, like when I look down and I see the caller id, and it’s that person, if I’m going, “oh man, you know, I don’t want to pick up this phone.” Sometimes it’s easy to ask yourself, am I worthy? And I don’t think you’re saying we have to get rid of unworthy customers. I think we have to assess what we’re willing to do to continue to maintain that relationship. I think back, and I’ve actually had times where I’ve picked up the phone to a customer who’s taking more time and I said, listen, this is what I can offer you. If that works for you, great, let’s continue the relationship. But if it doesn’t, maybe you should find somebody else because I can’t. You can bring somebody into the worthiness zone. I know. I’ve done it. David: Yeah, I think that’s very true. I also think that when you have a situation where you’re looking at your phone and you’re dreading answering it, if you at least have this in the back of your mind now, that there are worthy clients and there are unworthy clients, if somebody’s causing you to cringe when you look at your phone, you have to decide, “okay, does this make this person unworthy of my time?” Jay: Yeah. David: And if the answer is yes, then you make the appropriate decision. If it’s not quite that bad. Again, you make the appropriate decision for you. You stick with them or you decide to trade them in for somebody who is going to be a better fit. And we can use words like that, better fit. This isn’t a good fit, that type of thing. Worthy, definitely sounds judgmental. Jay: Yes. Yeah. David: And so that’s part of the reason I like the word, and it’s part of the reason that I don’t like the word. I don’t like the word in the sense that it’s not about judging people. It’s about judging someone’s worthiness to do business with us. Right? It’s about judging the validity or the likelihood of a good relationship. And we all have to do that. We all have to do that every time we meet someone. We decide, “is this the type of relationship I would like to pursue?” And if the answer is yes, we pursue it. And if the answer is no, we can make that decision to not pursue it. But again, I think particularly for salespeople who think “I have to sell anyone with a pulse, anyone who can fog a mirror,” this could be a bit of a change in approach. Jay: Yeah. I love that you make a distinction between is it judgmental ? Because you’re really talking about it from your point of view. You’re not saying this person’s a jerk or an idiot, or anything like that. What you’re saying is, for my business to keep going and to do our best, is this somebody who we want to have a relationship with? I think that’s an important distinction because I know people who like will put in their CRM system, they’ll make notes like, this person is a complete, dot dot dot, you know what? And you’re jading other employees towards that person. Maybe you should rethink about your process, about how you’re going to classify them, so that it doesn’t turn into a situation where somebody who could be a good customer or who could be moved into that worthiness zone, we’re guaranteeing that they’re not worthy because our systems are just judging them, instead of judging how good they are for us. David: Yeah, and that is such a great point. Because when you think about the fact that when you are making these decisions about whether or not a prospect is worthy of your time and attention, whether or not they’re worthy of follow up, you are bound to make some mistakes in that process. And so when you do this, you have to recognize that some of that is going to come with the territory. You may make a wrong decision that will cost you some business down the line. So you have to weigh that against. Quality of life issues. Jay: Yeah. David: Whether or not it would be worth it for you to cultivate this person to come along and to become the type of person that you would like to have as a customer. And again, if you’re willing to do it, you should absolutely do it. But simply by keeping that term in mind, and again, if it sounds too judgmental to you, you can come up with a different word for it. But the advantage of it is that if you look at your phone and you dread the call, if there’s a particular customer that you’ve been servicing for a long time, that you’ve been thinking about possibly trading in for another one ,then just asking yourself, is this person worthy of my time and attention? Answer it for yourself. You get to make the call. Maybe you decide that they’re all worthy clients. That every single person that you ever come in contact with is worthy of your time and attention and worthy of your focus. You can absolutely decide that. But we’re not judging people here. We are judging their ability to buy from us, their ability to interact with us, their ability to utilize our products and services correctly, so it’s going to benefit them. You know, there are people who I’ve talked to who have been interested in joining our Total Market Domination program, but based on the answers to the questions that we’ve asked them, we’ve said, “listen, I can’t really recommend this to you at this point.” Jay: Mm-hmm. David: And here’s why. And we’ll tell them why. We’ll recommend other solutions for them. And to me, that’s actually being conscientious. It’s not about saying, okay, we’re just going to take your money. It’s about saying, if this makes sense for you, if we really believe we can help you, we’re going to tell you that. And if we’re not sure we can help you, we’re going to tell you that, too. Because the one thing we don’t want to have happen is we don’t want to take people into the program that we’re not confident we’re going to be able to help. And so to me, that goes into this equation as well. Is this person at a point where they can benefit from what I’m offering them? If the answer is yes, then by all means it sounds like it’s a good fit. They’re absolutely worthy clients, worthy of our time and attention because we can help them. If we can’t help them, then at that point, I think it’s our duty to disqualify them. Jay: Yeah. And it benefits both sides. And I also think it depends on where you’re at in your business cycle. I mean, early on to pay the bills, you are probably going to take everybody regardless of how much time it takes. And then as you grow and progress, hopefully you can become more choosy. It’s a great place to be as a business owner. Great discussion, David. How can people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, register for a call with myself or my team, and we can walk you through it. If this is something that interests you, if this is potentially a focus of yours or even if it’s just something you want to consider. If you’d like to start today, looking at the opportunity to attract, qualify, and convert the type of clients you want, more worthy clients, if that sounds good to you, then schedule a call with us. We would be happy to do that. Jay: All right. I love it. Thank you so much, David. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Start Choosing Worthy Clients? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: 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.

To get off to a flying start in 2026, we can start by taking responsibility. Whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you’re just going to feel better about yourself. You’re going to feel better about your situation. Because you’re allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you’re a victim and there’s nothing you can do about it. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to hit the ground running in the new year. Happy New Year, and welcome back Jay! Jay: Thank you, David. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I think everybody has a desire, you know, at the beginning of the year, to say this year’s going to be different, you know, we’re going to make all these changes. It’s going to be fantastic. But do they really have a way to translate that into action? I picture myself hitting the ground, you know, it’s like the cartoon when they start to run, you know, their feet are moving, but they’re not moving quite yet. I think a lot of us are in that place. How do we get from spinning to actually moving forward? David: Yeah, it’s a great question. I know in the promotional products industry, we have trade shows that start at the beginning of the new year, the ASI Show in Orlando, the PPAI Expo in Las Vegas. And, There’s one in Fort Worth as well, an ASI show in Fort Worth. So we got three trade shows in the industry that are really designed to help people get off to a flying start. But as we look at today, you know, this first week of the new year, even aside from that, whether or not you’re attending a trade show, chances are you’re probably pretty reasonably fired up. Okay, here we go. It’s another new year. What are we going to do? This is exciting. And if we think about the types of prospects that we want to interact with this year, the types of clients that we would like to attract, the types of customers that we might want to let go this year, and really focus on building our businesses as proactively as possible. Building our client lists as proactively as possible can really help to improve our quality of life in a dramatic way. Jay: Yeah. I love that. in the restaurant business, there’s something called a theoretical food cost and an actual food cost. Theoretical is, what would things be like if you ran perfectly? If there was no waste, everything was perfect. And then actual is where you’re at. The goal is to constantly be trying to close that gap. So to me, I think about it in any business, what does your ideal look like? Your ideal client base, your ideal staff, your ideal sales? So if you can know what that is and then track a course to get to it, I think that’s a great way to feel progress. Because that’s what I tend to miss when I’m running a business is sometimes it’s just a daily grind. And I don’t feel like I made any progress today. And if you do that over and over again, it’s hard to continue to press forward. David: It really is. And I think a lot of that goes to the fact that very often we’re just tied up in the day. Whatever it is that’s going on in the day, we’re just facing whatever is happening to us moment by moment, day by day. And that can get very frustrating. I remember, I think it was Tony Robbins was talking in a seminar one time about the idea that in order to create our future, we need to envision it first. It’s like if you are going to build a house, you don’t just start nailing boards together, I think was the analogy he used. I thought it was a great one. You have to envision it first. You have to figure out, what do I want this thing to look like? Where is it going to be located? How many rooms are going to be in it? All that sort of thing. And at the beginning of a new year, it’s really nice to start thinking about what do I want my life to look like this year? Who do I want to be surrounded by? To interact with? Who do I no longer want to interact with? What types of customers do I want to work with? What types of customers have I decided I’m no longer really interested in pursuing anymore? Simple decisions like that can have an amazing impact on your life and your career. If you simply change the quality of the prospects that you’re targeting. If you go from interacting with a whole lot of small dollar clients to interacting with a smaller group of high dollar clients, particularly if those high dollar clients are people that are actually enjoyable to work, everything changes. Because now you’re not running around like a crazy person. You’re able to focus more on a smaller group of people that you can serve to the best of your ability and all of that impacts everything you do going forward. Jay: Yeah. Quality of life, frame of mind, stress level, home life, all of those things can be impacted. You were talking about your Tony Robbins analogy. I’m a big sports fan, and in football, typically when a coach comes out, they have their first 15 plays planned. They know exactly what they’re going to do. And the reason for that is so that they can kind of assess the skills and what the rest of the team is doing. I kind of was thinking, maybe that’s a great way to kind of start the year. because you’re not going to plan out every step of the whole year. because things change. We’ve talked about pivoting. But if you’ve got a plan for your first 90 days, this is what I’m going to do and this is how I’m going to go about it, then maybe that can set you up better for the rest of the year. David: Yes, and it makes us just feel better about ourselves because we’ve actually given it some thought. We at least have an idea of what we want to do and where we want to go. There’s that great quote from wartime, which basically says, “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” right? So we know that even if we put everything together, we want to do things a certain way. We know that it’s not necessarily going to happen that way. However, if we at least have some things in mind and we say, okay, I would like to do this and I’d like to do that, and I’d like to do this. You may not be able to do it immediately, in the order that you’ve chosen, but it gives you something to go back to after you’re dealing with putting out the fires or whatever else you have to do. If you’ve got that basic plan laid out and say, okay, I was able to accomplish this first thing, then I got sidetracked, but let’s go back to that second thing and then I got sidetracked again. But let’s go back to that third thing and work through it systematically. It just allows you to probably live more the kind of life you want to live. Because you’re deciding, in advance, what it is that you want to do, who you’re going to be doing it with, where you’re going to be doing it, when you’re going to be doing it. And even though you will not be 100% successful in accomplishing that, if you get 70% of the way there, or 80% of the way there, or 86% of the way there, whatever your number is, you’re going to be a whole lot better off than if you start out with a blank slate. Not knowing, not deciding where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, then just taking it as it comes. Being reactive like that is okay for some people, but generally for business people, business owners, salespeople, reactivity is not a tremendous asset. Jay: Yeah, I agree. But I also think we have a tendency to look at losing in a negative way, because it’s losing, right? But losing is learning, right? And that’s one of the reasons why a coach runs those first sets of plays because they find out, will the run game work? Will the passing game work? Is their defense strong on this side of the line or that side of the line? So as you try things in business and you do lose, in some areas, it should be losing is learning, right? David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And then you can pivot and you can adjust. And the goal is to win more than you lose. But if you think you’re always going to win, you’re setting yourself up and that’s going to be very hard for you. Or if you only focus on the losses and not learn to grow from them, that’s also going to be difficult. So learning from losing I think is such an important part of starting a new year. David: I agree completely. And even the word lose or the idea of losing, I mean, if you think in a sports analogy, you can be losing in the second quarter, in the third quarter, and then you can end up winning at the end. And you haven’t lost until the game is over, right? So Jay: yeah, David: in life and in business, we haven’t lost until the game is over. We’re still in it every single day. We are still in it. We’re still in life, we’re still in business. We still have opportunities. So, It’s difficult to even say I’ve lost, because if you’re still breathing, the game is still going and you haven’t lost. You may feel like you’re behind. You may feel like you need to change the plays, but you haven’t lost yet, right? Jay: Yeah. You haven’t lost yet. And one of the other things that I find to be valuable, maybe especially at the beginning of the new year, is to challenge some of the assumptions that kind of creep around your business. Like I’ve been somewhere and I’ll say, what about this? And they’ll say, oh, we’ve tried that. That doesn’t work. Right? You’ve heard that how many times, right? And then I’m like, well times have changed. Things are different. Maybe we can tweak it a little bit. And then you try it and there’s amazing success there. It’s almost cultural within a company, sometimes. “No, that doesn’t work. We can’t do that.” I think challenging those assumptions can be of great value. David: Yes, absolutely. And there are a lot of times when people will do that. They’ll say they tried something, they’ll say, that didn’t work, and they will assume that it was that thing that didn’t work, when in fact it might have been the way that they implemented that thing. It might have been the way that they used that thing. Maybe they didn’t implement it as well as they thought they did. In the promotional products industry, salespeople run into this all the time. They’ll come up with a recommendation for a product that somebody can use, whether it’s a custom imprinted whatever, mug or t-shirt or cap or doesn’t matter, whatever the item is. And people will say things like, “oh yes, we tried mugs. Mugs don’t work.” It’s like, okay, well there are hundreds of millions of custom imprinted mugs that are working for businesses all over the world. If it didn’t work for your business, why didn’t it work? Right? What did you imprint on the mug? Who did you give those mugs to? What did you do with them? Did they stay in the box by your desk and they were never given out? That’s not going to work, right? So there are a lot of times where people think they did something, they feel like they’ve done something, and they either really didn’t do it, or they didn’t do it as well as it could be done. And I think for most of us, that’s something that we have to reflect on. Not just, was this done? But did I do it to the best of my ability? Did I do it better than my competitors? Did I do it to the extent that I’m capable of doing it? Or did I just sort of turn in a half-baked performance? Jay: Yeah, kind of haphazard. And what I found oftentimes is it was the employee, you know, you tried a new sales pitch or a new program to get leads and it was just the person who was doing it wasn’t into it. David: Yeah. Jay: And then we all decide, oh, that doesn’t work. Let’s move on. Instead of always assessing your systems and your returns and saying, well, wait a minute, let’s listen in on what you’re doing and let’s find out if there’s ways to tweak or improve your close rate. So challenging assumptions. I just love that concept. Especially several times a year, and especially at the beginning of the year. David: There’s a quote that I thought of that really kind of cracks me up. I’ve used it with my kids a lot. And whenever I say it to my kids or whenever my kids say it back to me, it always makes us laugh because the quote is, “it’s a poor artist who blames his tools,” right? I don’t know if you’ve heard that expression or some variation of that. And the way that we say it is, “’tis a poor artist who blames her tools,” right? If I’m talking to my daughter and she’ll say, “oh, this didn’t turn out the way that I wanted. This paintbrush stinks,” or whatever. “Oh, it is a poor artist that blames her tools!” And in business, we just have a tendency to do that. Everybody in business has a tendency to do that. When something goes wrong, well, it was this circumstance, or it was this person, or it was this prospect. This prospect was unqualified. Or this person was, whatever it is. And it may very well be the case. But whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you’re just going to feel better about yourself. You’re going to feel better about your situation. Because you’re allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you’re a victim and there’s nothing you can do about it. Jay: Yeah. Yeah. So, perfect. And, and the other thing I would add to challenging the assumption is just try stuff. You know, sometimes we say, you know, you’re on the whiteboard and you’re like, no idea is a bad idea, which I’ve never believed is true. There are bad ideas that end up on the board. Right? But sometimes something sounds a little crazy or a little wacky, you know, trying some of that stuff, you just never know. I have some good friends and they’re part of a major software game development company and they used to spend five years, six years developing these vast games, you know, and it would take forever. And they have no idea if they’re going to be liked. One day they said, “what if we just put out some kind of small games to see how they would go and if people would like them. Then if they do, we would expand on them.” And they had hit after hit after hit. You may know their most recent hit, it’s Fortnite, one of the most popular games ever created. Fortnite was a side project that they were just kind of saying, “Hey, what if we did this or that,” while they were working on one of these massive projects. “Just something we’ll try. We’ll throw it out there, see what happens.” And that’s such an amazing concept to me. Sometimes you’re like, no, it has to follow these guidelines. Sometimes try something new and see if it works. David: Yeah. And sometimes the thing that we have to try that’s new is exactly what you talked about, which is listening. Jay: Mm-hmm. David: Listening more than talking and not making assumptions about what people want. Just actually asking them, what do you need? How can we help? And whatever it is that you’re selling. Sales ultimately boils down to solving some sort of need or some sort of problem. And if you focus on the product, if you focus on what it is that you’re selling instead of “what problem needs to be solved for this client,” you’re never going to be as successful as possible. So much of it is about trying to get inside the prospect’s head, client’s head, by asking them questions about what they really want to accomplish. What are they looking to do? And then prescribing the appropriate solution to help them do it. This kind of ties into the idea of features and benefits. I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day, where back in the fifties and sixties and seventies where features and benefits were considered premium, amazing ideas in selling. A lot of years have passed since then. And people have gotten more sophisticated. Their needs have changed and developed and evolved. And so the way that I view it now is that you start out with features and benefits, and that’s going to be somewhat helpful. But then you need to start getting into the emotions and the experiences. You know, talking to them about what’s it going to be like to have this result, or what’s it going to be like to have this product and the result that this product is going to create for you? That’s the emotions, it’s going to feel great to be able to go out and attract more clients with this promotion that we’re going to put together for you. So you can really tie in not just the features, not just the benefits, but the emotions, the experience of what it’s going to be like to do that. And ultimately, what is the transformation? What are we going to do to transform what they’re doing so that when they buy whatever it is that we’re selling, they’re going to experience something completely different and better than what they experienced before. Jay: Yeah, so true. I was thinking about the end of the year and that my inbox was inundated with surveys from companies saying, “how did we do?” And I was like, “oh my goodness. Not another one.” You know, as a consumer, I’m like, really? Another one? But when you think about what the businesses are trying to do is they’re making a genuine effort to try and understand their customer experience and how they can improve. And so as much as I don’t like those forms, I do appreciate what they’re trying to do. And you can do that. You know, if you’re a smaller organization, you can just make a phone call and say, “Hey, you know, how are we doing? Are we meeting your needs? What else can we do for you? I just want to see if you’re getting, you know, good service from your account executive,” those types of things. But making an honest effort to find out. Because oftentimes our perception of the product we’re delivering is very different than what the customer is experiencing. David: Yeah, exactly. And when you have companies like Amazon, for example, who will send out an email after every delivery, “how was it? Was it great? Was it not great?” It’s like, “oh boy, again?” Like, “I have to do this again?” But for most businesses, you’re not doing it every time. You’re not doing it every order. So if you do it once or twice a year, it’s not going to be as dreaded as the type of experience that you’re talking about. And another thing that you can do, when you are a small business, is you can basically send out a one or two sentence open-ended question kind of email, so it doesn’t come across like a survey. But if I just sent you an email that said, “Hey Jay, how did we do for you last year? Hit reply and let me know. Thanks. David Blaise,” right? You’ll reply to it or you won’t. Some percentage of the people will reply to it, but the ones who reply are going to just tell you what they thought, whether it was positive or negative, and it’s very non-threatening. They don’t even view it as a survey, because it just comes across as a very informal communication between two people who happened to have been working together. Jay: Yeah, I love this suggestion that you just made. Just a letter. The more it looks like a form letter, the more it looks like something that everybody received, the less likely I am to respond to it. But if it looks like a personal note, “hey, just checking in,” I am much more likely to respond. Such great feedback, David. So how do people find out more? David: Well, you can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. Then we can see what you’re dealing with, see if we can help you through it as we begin this new year. It’s just such a great time to be able to focus in on where we want to be, where we want to go, what we want to do. It’s an exciting time. Exciting time to be alive, right? Every day is an exciting day when you’re focused on the right things and interacting with the right people. And so that’s another thing. If you have been watching this podcast, listening to this podcast for any length of time, you’ll know if you’re the right person for this. You’ll know if we’re a good fit. If we’re not, you’ll know that. You’ll listen to you go, “ah, I don’t like what these guys are having to say.” All right, unsubscribe. Right? But if what we’re talking about makes sense for you, schedule a call! Let’s have a conversation and see what happens. Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. David, thank you so much. I hope you have a great year and for everybody who set those resolutions, you can do it! Just keep pressing forward and make it happen this year. David: Stick with it! Thanks, Jay. Jay: That’s right. Thank you. Are You Ready to Get Off to a Flying Start in 2026? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: 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. </ol