When I say your competition isn’t that good, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to perform better.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I say, your competition isn’t that good. Right, Jay?

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Do you even know who your competition is? Do you know what they offer? Do you know what people think of them compared to you? Maybe you don’t even know if your competition is that good.

David: Exactly. And I hear, so many times, when I’m talking to salespeople, the idea that, there’s a lot of competition. Competition is very difficult. There’s a lot of online competition. There’s a lot of local competition. There’s a lot of price-cutting competition. There are all these different variations on competition.

And that’s all true. But a lot of them really, honestly, just aren’t that good. And if you recognize right up front that most businesses are average, right? There’s an average in every business, in every industry, there’s an average. And some people are better than average. Some people are worse than average.

There are a lot of average. So if you’re competing with the average or the less than average, then you should be able to do pretty well. If you’re a conscientious individual, if you’re reasonably good at what you do, if you study and practice your profession and you get reasonably good at it, you’ll be able to outperform a lot of them because to the extent that there are really exceptional competitors in your market, there are a lot less of those than there are the ones on the other side.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always believed this, you know, you can get caught up in the muck. When I was in radio, I worked for a radio station that had a built in listenership because it was so ingrained in the community. And what that did is it made it so they didn’t have to work hard to get sales or to get numbers.

Now you would think, oh man, that’s an amazing place to be. But what happened is, they started to get complacent, right? Everything was so easy, and then all of a sudden ratings started to shift and suddenly they realized, we don’t know how to sell. Because we’re so used to sitting at a desk and the phone is ringing. And we’re just taking orders.

So you’re not a salesperson, you’re taking orders, right? And their competitors started to eat them alive because their competitors had to sell all the time, and they were very good at it.

So sometimes you’re successful just in spite of yourself. And that may be what your competitors are in, what state they’re in.

David: It really could be as simple as that and as difficult as that, in either situation. But, you know, the idea that the competition is excellent, or the competition is terrible, or the competition is average. In a sense, none of it really matters.

Because this is life. This is the world that we’re in. These are the cards we’ve been dealt, right?

So our competition is there. We’re there. The question is, how are we going to make sure that we are outperforming our competition in all the key areas of customer contact? I mean, if you were to boil it down and say, okay, let’s say my competition is very good.

Let’s say you completely disagree with the premise of this podcast, that your competition isn’t that good, or that it’s average or whatever you say. “No, I’ve got a lot of competition.”

Okay, then that’s your question. How do you outperform your competition in all key areas of customer contact?

Some people may say, “well, I don’t know. What are the key areas of customer contact?” And if you’re asking yourself that kind of question, that indicates that there’s work to be done in your organization.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And do you even know how the competition functions to be able to compare yourself? I mean, that’s got to be at least half the battle, right?

David: Yeah, that’s part of the battle. Maybe it’s a third of the battle.

Jay: Okay.

David: I was gonna say a quarter, maybe it’s a quarter to a third of the battle.And the only reason I say that is I don’t think we should spend a ton of time overanalyzing our competitors.

I mean, if there’s a really, really good one, yeah, you can take a look at what they’re doing. But ultimately, sure, we all want to outperform our competitors. But what do we really want?

We want to get to the point where we’re so good at what we do that it’s no longer about outperforming our competitors.

Now it’s a matter of outperforming our past best, right? What’s the best we were able to do? When you’re leading in a market, when you really are the market leader, you’re doing things right, you’re doing things well and efficiently, you’re already better than a lot of your competitors, then the goal you want to reach for is how can I do what we do better in our own organization?

Right? How can we initiate contact better? How can we leave messages better? How can we send emails that are more compelling? What are the very specific things, all these points of customer contact that could potentially change for the better to get me better results?

Jay: Yeah, I love this idea that your true competition really is yourself, right?

It’s kind of like golf or, you know, another single person sport where you’re, really competing against yourself. And, if you can identify constantly ways to get better and you’re not falling into that complacency, then you’re probably going to do better than most of your competitors.

David: Yeah, exactly.

Something else that I read recently, was talking about the idea that a lot of us want to try to beat our best month ever, our best year ever. We’re always looking to top that top line, which makes a lot of sense.

But I read this in a book by Nic Peterson. He said that, ideally, our goal should be to beat our bottom.

In other words, sales are going to go up and down, right? That’s going to happen over a period of time. Sales are going to go up and down. We’re going to have peaks and valleys, and hopefully it works on an upward trajectory, and as you’re doing that, if you can make sure that the floor is constantly rising ,then eventually you get to the point where your floor is higher than other people’s ceiling.

And if you think about the idea of being better than your competitors, that’s really what you want. Cause if you have a great month this month, an exceptional month, then it’s like, okay, now the new month starts.

Now you’re at zero again. You got to start from scratch. Right? But if you know that your first goal for that month is to make sure that you’re above your previous floor. Then it seems a lot more doable. It’s like, okay, we might not have another peak month this month, but if we can stay above our floor, then we will continue to grow and grow.

Jay: Yeah, I really like that. I’m somebody who tends to look at records, right? Like we just finished a record month and I’m like on a high, right? Things are great, but you’re exactly right. I mean, next month beating that every single month, month after month. Is that realistic? I think you’re pointing out, no, it’s probably not, and it could be counterproductive.

David: Yeah, it’s probably not realistic that each month is going to be higher than the last, and there are not going to be any that are lower. But I think it’s also realistic to say, okay, can I beat our worst month? Or a recent worst month? It’s like if you look at a stock chart and you see how there are these different…

Jay: let’s call them peaks and valleys, ups and downs.

David: Yeah, peaks and valleys. So if it’s bottoming out at a certain point, you want to say, okay, I want to get in higher than that. It’s a terrible explanation, but you kind of get the drift.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And again, we kind of always fall back to this, is what systems do you have to track these types of things?

Do you understand the cause and effect? I mean, so often, yeah, you had a good sales month, or yeah, you increased the baseline, but do you know why you did that? Was it just the phone rang more? Or was it something tangible? Because if it’s not something tangible, how are you gonna repeat it?

Was it more calls? Was it more advertising dollars? What was it that got you there? If you don’t know, then the business is driving you. You’re not driving the business.

David: Exactly. And each of those things are some of these different areas of customer contact, right? Whether it’s the advertising, whether it’s the phone calls, whatever it is, when we’re looking at that, we’re saying, okay, where are these key points of contact and what can I do to make each of those better?

Can I make the messaging better? Can I tweak the messaging? Can I reach a different or better group of people? All these different things. Can I reach them using different marketing vehicles? Can I reach them online? Can I reach them offline? Can I reach them on the phone, via text, via email?

How can I reach them? And look at what you’re doing, look at what’s working well and what may be not working as well as it used to, and then say, okay, how could I tweak some of these things, the messaging, the combination of marketing vehicles we’re using, or the people we’re reaching, the MVPs, we’ve talked about that a lot in the past.

Which of these can I adapt, can I fine tune, like tuning in an old fashioned radio where they used to have dials on them, right? That type of thing. So you’re able to dial it in clearly and make sure that you’re getting the right people, saying the right things, using the right combination of marketing vehicles.

Jay: Yeah, we talked about this last time, avoiding assumptions, figuring out why you got that customer, right?

Cause you may be thinking, “oh, I had a new ad campaign or new marketing and this is why they came in.” And maybe it was a contact you had made with them a year ago. Maybe it was a bad experience with one of the competitors. Maybe it was something that changed in their business cycle. I think that type of communication as to why they’re there, why you were able to close them, you need to have systems to track this and, be open and honest with your customers to find out. What was it that motivated them to come to you?

David: Yeah, in our work with our clients, we talk a lot about intelligent repetition of contact, being in touch with people again and again and again, but without saying the same thing, without getting boring, without getting tedious, without driving them crazy, right?

If we can do that, that’s intelligent repetition of contact, and it makes it far more likely that you will be in front of someone when they’re ready to make that buying decision.

Jay: Yeah, I love that idea, but you’re still going to have competitors. So do you need to have some awareness of what they’re doing?

Or do you kind of say, I’m going to focus on me and I’m just going to be the best I can and compete against myself?

David: Well, I like that better. I like the idea of focusing on ourselves. What I’ve found though, is that in most markets, you don’t have to look too far to hear about what your competitors are doing.

Because if you’re reaching out to a new prospect and you hear about one particular competitor again and again and again, that tells you who is actually pretty good in the market. If you hear those names again and again and again, if you hear different people, each time you talk to someone, then it’s like, okay, well that’s sort of the average, that’s the industry.

But if you’re talking to a lot of people and they’re all saying the same thing and they’re all saying great things, that’s an indication that you have now found the leader in your market. So that’s what you need to target, then.

Then you may look at, okay, well, what are they doing? How are they doing it? How is it better than what we’re doing? Or is it? Is it not better than what we’re doing? But they don’t know what we do, so they can’t compare.

Jay: Yeah, and finding out, can I even compete with them in one particular area? Maybe that exposes a different lane for you where you can be competitive, right?

So it’s not like you have to play chicken with everybody. That may not be the best solution. We’re in a very unique industry because our products and services are so defined that I only have probably three competitors nationwide. And so when I talk to people, oftentimes, our competitors will come up and sometimes it’s in a good light.

Quite often, like you said, my competitors aren’t that good. It’s not hard at all for us to offer better customer service, better products, everything. I have found, that, a lot of people are like, oh, I hope they don’t go and research and talk to my competitors and get outbid.

I’m like, go and talk to them. Go and have that experience because I know you’ll be back and I’m in a better position when you come back. So that’s made us more confident than less confident.

David: Yeah. And when you have a small number like that, it is easier to know what each of them are doing. I remember in our promotional product business, back in the day, we had a situation where there was one competitor that wasn’t really known for answering their phones.

You try to reach them and you couldn’t get through to them. And so, if a sales person of ours, or if I was in a conversation with somebody and they say, “Oh yeah, we use this company,” sometimes I’d say something like, “Oh, are you able to get them to answer their phone?”

And very often they’d laugh. Because if you know this about a company, you can say something like that. Like, “Oh, well, they don’t usually answer, but I can usually get a call back.”

“Oh, okay. Well, if you ever get tired of that, or if you ever get voicemail and you’d like to talk to a human, here’s my card, right? That’s just a small example, but you basically look for the things that you know to be true about a competitor.

And I’m not saying you’re picking on them. I’m not saying you’re dissing them or anything, but you just point out a very obvious truth about them. And very often that will get their attention.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love it. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call and watch the video on that page. See if it makes sense to have a conversation with myself or my team.

When I say your competition isn’t that good, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to do things better. And if you’re in that camp, if you’d like to be able to do things better and differently than your competition, if you’d like to be seen as the leader in your market, then by all means, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Always a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Your Competition Isn’t That Good.
Ready to Outperform them in All Key Areas of Customer Contact?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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’re at a point right now where you know you need to be selling more, but for whatever reason you’re not — and you could feel like it’s the economy, you could feel like it’s the competition, it doesn’t really matter what it is — If it’s either of those things or if it’s something else, there are ways around it. There are specific things you can do that will help you to get through to the people that you need to reach, and drive them to either a yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down decision. Sometimes the answer is going to be no. But sometimes it’s going to be yes. If you’re not even giving them the option to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, there’s no way you win.

David: Hi, and welcome back. Today, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Don’t Wait for the Economy to Improve. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, Dave. As always, it’s a real pleasure. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about the economy, and it’s really kind of unique because there are parts of this economy that are really struggling and there are parts that are really booming.

So depending upon where you’re at in that spectrum, you could be getting hit really hard or you could just be celebrating, right? In our case, we’re definitely feeling the effects of inflation. I can feel it in our client’s willingness to make purchases. Cause things are a little bit tighter than they normally are.

David: Yeah, it’s interesting. Like you said, some people are really struggling right now. Some people are having their best months ever. It really kind of depends. But when we talk about the idea of not waiting for the economy to improve, I think there are a lot of good reasons for that. The first reason I would say is that your smart competition will not, they’re not going to wait, they’re going to be out there, they’re going to be in front of people.

And if you’re not in front of people, then that just means you have absolutely no opportunity to get the business. So I’ve heard a number of people talking about the problems with the economy. And I’ve heard a number of people talking about the fact that they’re waiting for things to improve. And I saw that comment online the other day, and I thought, we need to talk about this because essentially we have to be selling all the time, right?

I mean, most businesses can’t afford to wait around until things get better. Reminds me of that old Zig Ziglar line where you don’t wait until all the lights turn green before you head into town, right? It just doesn’t work.

Jay: Right. Right, right. It’s a great point. And I also think that part of any of your business strategy, you have to be prepared for the ups and downs.

Good businesses know how to pivot, they know when to pivot. So if you’re a new business, this is going to be hard for you, but it’s one of the reasons why you want to always be tracking, right? Always be watching because there’s seasonality, there’s economies of the country, of your local economies, all kinds of things that can impact your business model.

David: Yeah. And the truth of the matter is that we only ever have right now. We can’t sell in the past. We might be able to sell in the future, right? Nobody knows their future. But yeah, we can plan to sell in the future, but we can’t sell in the future right now. All we can do is sell now. We can make plans, but sometimes they happen, sometimes they don’t.

Right now is the only thing we’ve got. So it’s always the best time to sell. Right now is always the very best time that we have to sell, because we really have no alternative in the moment. Well, I guess the alternative is wait. But when you’re waiting, you’re not selling, and other people are.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ll tell you, I’m not in a business model where I can just stop selling.

I mean, that’s not an option, right? So, we’re in the process of talking about our pricing structure, talking about the different products we offer. We are seeing that some products suddenly are of more interest to people. So it’s amazing how economies impact people’s overall perspective.

And we’re really trying to key in on that and decide, you know, are we meeting the needs of current day customers, or are we still trying to sell to yesterday’s customers?

David: Exactly. And I hear some people say, and not just now, I’ve heard this all the time, over many years, and lots of different ups and downs of the economy.

I’ve heard people say, “no one is buying right now.” Have you ever heard that one? No one’s buying right now. There’s always someone buying, okay? Don’t tell yourself there’s no one buying right now. Our job is to find them.

It’s like a game show. I remember I recorded a video about this years ago. I was talking about how life in sales is like a game show and your goal is to find the buyer. Right? That’s the goal.

And sometimes it does feel like needles in haystacks. Sometimes there are more needles. Sometimes there are fewer needles, but regardless, our job is always to find them. There are people, right now, who need the products and services we offer.

And if they don’t know that we’re available as a solution for them, then they can’t buy from us. They have absolutely no opportunity to do so. And one of the other things that I feel very strongly about is the fact that invisibility is only a good thing in the movies, right? Invisible Man? Well, it didn’t work out too well for him, as I recall.

Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak. That worked out okay for him sometimes, but not always. It’s not always great. And in sales, it’s just deadly. When we’re invisible to the people who could potentially buy from us, there’s nothing that can happen that’s good for our businesses.

Jay: Yeah, it’s absolutely deadly.

And I think the other thing that’s deadly is making assumptions that are not founded on any type of reality. We tend to assume that we know what our customers are going through. We’re like, “Oh, I know my customer base. I know exactly what they need. I know exactly what they’re going to respond to.”

If you’re in unique times, then you probably don’t. One of the things that we’re experiencing is I think our natural tendency would be, well, the economy is not doing well, so we need to lower our prices or we need to appeal to a lower end type customer. David, we’re actually doing exactly the opposite.

We’ve decided that the people who can buy and afford our services are the higher end customers. So we’re going back through our lead base. And we’re re-approaching people who are really probably less likely to be impacted by the economy in the short term, but they still need our products in the long term.

My initial assumption was maybe we need to just lower our prices and get people through the door.

David: Yeah, and for some businesses that might work, but the truth of the matter, and you really just nailed it, is the fact that the people who are impacted most, whenever there is a recession or recessionary trends or inflation.

A lot of the things that are happening right now, the people who are always impacted the worst are the people who have the least amount of money. It always works that way because people who have money will still have no trouble buying gas. They’ll have no trouble buying groceries or medicine or any of that kind of thing.

The people who are impacted worst by these policies are the kind of people who are not going to be able to spend money because they just don’t have access to it. So when we’re in sales and we talk to a lot of people who are saying, “I can’t afford it. I don’t have the money,” all that sort of thing. We have a couple of options.

One is if we have the option to be able to charge a little less and we want to be able to make that sale, it’s a free market system. You can choose to do that, right? But generally speaking, if we’re able to interact with more prospects and clients who actually have the ability to pay now. Then it’s really a matter of focus.

When we’re able to focus in on the people who can actually spend money with us now, then all that other stuff goes out the window. And so much of it is about recognizing that, which kind of goes back to the needles and haystacks, right? There will be fewer of those kind of needles. But when you find them, it makes everything a lot easier.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is you might’ve already found them, right? Cause we were talking, we often talked about having a good customer management system, a good CRM, a lead base, right? We’re in a situation, I know a lot of businesses are where they’re like, they can’t afford to market, right?

Marketing’s always the first thing that gets cut in a business. Which is just, I would recommend that that’s the last thing that you cut, right? But you could change your type of marketing, right? So we’re scaling back on Google Ads, for example, but we’ve really ramped up our emails to people that we’ve already talked to about different products.

We’re finding success with that. So that’s a short term pivot that we couldn’t do if we hadn’t spent the time to not just intake our leads, but also classify our leads so that we know the different types of products that we can send to different types of customers. Can you imagine doing that on a spreadsheet?

I mean, you can do it. And starting out, maybe that’s where you start, but that would have been madness and we’re finding success with that in harder times.

David: It makes a whole lot of sense. And another thing that I think people should be looking at right now is your messaging. It’s very likely that your messaging has to change.

And some people, the messaging could be about lower prices. Again, I’m not necessarily recommending that. It’s more likely that what could potentially be more effective is if you’re able to talk to them about why now is exactly the perfect time that they have to do this, right? And that may seem counterintuitive.

It may seem like, well, why are they going to want to do it now? But, if you’re selling advertising, like a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are in the print and promotional products industries, you said something a moment ago about how people want to cut advertising right at the time when they shouldn’t.

Jay: Yes.

David: It really should be the perfect time to advertise. And so, if your messaging is going to change at this point, the messaging should be about the fact that now is the perfect time to get in front of your ideal prospects and clients with a promotional item, for example, that’s going to stay in front of them.

You pay for it once, it stays in front of them for years, unlike a commercial, which disappears after a few minutes, goes off into the ether, things like that. So when you’re able to reframe things, like now is the perfect time to do this because… and just write down your becauses, figure out why would now be the perfect time to buy.

And if you just think about it at a glance, you might say, “it isn’t. It’s terrible. It’s not the right time.” Forget that. Just set that aside for a moment and write out, now is the perfect time to buy because… and just force yourself to write down 3, 5, 10, 50 reasons why now is the right time to buy. And if some of them don’t make perfect sense, that’s okay. Keep writing.

And if you write down 30 or 40 of them, you can probably come up with at least half a dozen that are actually worthwhile. And so when you’re talking to somebody and you run one of them by the person, they say, “well, that doesn’t really apply to this.” Oh, well, what about this? Or what about this? How about this reason? Right?

There are lots of reasons. And it’s all about results, ultimately. What is the result the person is looking to get? If their result is, we want to save money right now, Meaning we don’t want to spend. Okay. That’s one potential result. But as an alternate result, hey, what if you could bring in business that you wouldn’t normally be able to bring in, while other people aren’t advertising?

Would it make sense for us to do some sort of low cost promotion now that will allow you to get in front of people while others aren’t? You make the reason for not buying, the reason for buying.

Jay: Yeah, I love the practical exercises. One of the reasons I love what you do, David, because you give practical explanations, right?

Sometimes we talk about conceptual things. We go, no, get out a piece of paper and write down why is now a better time to buy? To me, that’s brilliant. And I think that if you do this exercise, you may discover some reasons why this is an even better time to buy than normal circumstances, right?

If you’re really good, this could be a time where you, shine, where you excel, right?

David: Absolutely. And the other thing that it does, is it really changes the paradigm. When you’re talking to somebody who’s feeling like, well, no, this isn’t a good time. And you say, oh, well, what about this? And what about this? What about this?

And you point out like all these different things. You’ve got a list of 30 of them. By the time you get to number six or seven, they’re going to go, “wow, you’re pretty optimistic.” I mean, I’ve had conversations like this with people, and they’ll say things like, you’re really quite the salesman.

It’s like, it’s not about being a salesman. It’s about does it make sense? Is it true? Is it true or not? Is it true that now is actually a pretty good time for you to be able to get in front of the people that you need to get in front of? And if the answer is yes, then we’ll put something together that makes sense.

And if the answer’s no, it’s still no, but it just allows them to see the other side of the coin. And very often people aren’t going to do that for themselves. They’re not going to come up with all the reasons that they should buy right now. They’re not going to do it. And if we as salespeople are not helping them to come to that conclusion, if not just doing it for them, then we’re not going to get the results.

Jay: Yeah, now you’ve become a cheerleader instead of a salesperson, and now they look at you totally differently. I mean, that could just be a game changer for years to come. Such a great conversation. David, how do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call, check out the video on that page, see if it makes sense to have a call with myself or my team.

We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you’re at a point right now where you know you need to be selling more, but for whatever reason you’re not, and you could feel like it’s the economy, you could feel like it’s the competition. It doesn’t really matter what it is. If it’s either of those things or if it’s something else, there are ways around it.

There are things you can do, specific things that you can do that will help you to get through to the people that you need to reach, and drive them to either a yes or no thumbs up or thumbs down decision.

Sometimes the answer is going to be no. But sometimes it’s going to be yes. If you’re not even giving them the option to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, there’s no way you win.

Jay: Yeah, such a great, great service, David. As always, it’s a pleasure. Thank you.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Take Action Now, Instead of Waiting for Things to Improve?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

We get results from social media when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, and identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to have them raise their hands and express interest. When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where nearly everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing getting results from social media. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. This is a big topic. Talk about opening a can of worms. It’s something everybody wants, and we talked, last podcast about learning online and what great resources there are.

This is a place where there may be such an overload of information and different ideas that I don’t know if you’re going to find the answer online. I really don’t.

David: You’ll find a lot of answers online. Yeah., Right? Whether or not it’s the answer you’re looking for, whether or not it’s the answer that solves your problem, that is the big question mark.

But I feel like this topic is so important because everyone’s on social media. Everyone’s trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. And the reason that I believe the word results is so important is that it narrows your focus. It forces you to think in terms of, okay, what is the result I even want to get here? What am I trying to do?

Because as we talked about in a previous podcast, you can go on social media and it’s nothing but distraction after distraction. And if you just turn it on and go in there without a really strong focus in terms of what you want to accomplish, what result you want to get, you’re not getting any sort of result, except you’re going to get pulled into other people’s experiences.

So from my standpoint, the first thing we need to do is to identify what is the result that I would like to get from social media? And then you can look at how much time that I spend on there is actually allocated to getting that result. That’ll tell you a lot right off the bat.

Jay: Yeah, and I think that there is a misguided focus that you need a large audience, right?

Like if I can get up to 10, 000 followers or whatever, that’s not true. it could be better to have a thousand dedicated followers who are potential clients than having a hundred thousand people who may just clog up your pipeline and who really never are going to be your clients.

David: Right. And if they’re not responding to what you do, if they’re not liking, if they’re not replying, then the algorithm says people aren’t interested in this. So you’re exactly right. If you just had the hundred people or so who are going to click today’s link on there. You’d be seeing everybody, everyone would be seeing your stuff. But of course it’s impossible to do that.

So you’re exactly right. It’s about saying, all right, well, how can I get to more of the right kind of people who resonate with the material that I’m putting out? And I am not speaking as an authority on social media. Okay. I want to be really clear about this. I’m not coming to you and saying, oh yes, I’m the guy for social media.

No, not saying that. However, what we have been able to do is to identify specific things that our clients have wanted to accomplish, and we’re very good at helping them accomplish it, once we decide exactly what those results are.

Jay: Yeah, I’ll tell you where we’re at right now in our company.

As you know, we offer Tax Services to a very specific group, so, I’ve told you in the past, we have spent two years identifying keywords for paid ads, and it’s been a constant process where we’re refining, I do the consultations, And so when I see that we’re getting consultations that are not in the strike zone, I go back to our keyword, you know, the person doing our Google ads, and we refine, and we refine, and refine.

And I’ve told you, We’re to a place now, it’s kind of like our secret recipe, where we don’t get a consultation that is not in the strike zone anymore. We’ve been that focused.

But it costs us a hundred dollars per consultation. That’s what we’re paying. And that’s a pretty steep fee. So obviously we’re like, okay, how do we get organic people to come to our website from social media, where they’ve seen something that we’re providing, and they’re clicking through and that doesn’t cost us anything, right?

So that’s the goal, that’s the dream. But now we’re in another problem. We could probably get tons of people coming to our site. But now I don’t want everybody clicking on the schedule a consultation.

Because I’d be back in that same problem. I’d be talking to a lot of people who I can’t help. So this is the dilemma. This is where we’re at in our company right now, moving to social media, but we have to be very strategic about how we do that.

David: Yes. But you’re very clear on the results you’re looking for. Yes. You’re looking for a very specific type of client.

You’re looking for a very specific criteria. And for you, you know that even though a hundred seems expensive, you know that it’s worth it because you know that each client is going to be worth quite a bit more than that. If the service that you were offering cost 50 dollars, you could not do what you’re doing.

And that’s something else that I think is important for people to understand. Not every product, not every service is going to work in terms of social media advertising, no matter how great you get at it, because there’s always going to be competition for various keywords.

There’s going to be a number of factors that go into it. So if you don’t have a product that justifies that kind of investment, if you’re selling a pack of gum at a time, right? When you go into a grocery store and you check out, there’s a pack of gum, they’re like, Oh, I’ll have a pack of gum. You take it as an impulse buy, right? That sort of thing. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to run ads on social media and sell a pack of gum, right?

I mean, just the shipping costs on it, it’s not going to work. There’s some things that don’t work. When you understand that, then you can recognize that if you want to sell something that doesn’t sell particularly well on social media, you need to find other ways to do that. And of course, that’s the subject of a totally different podcast.

But when we think about the results that we’re looking to get. There are a number of different ones, right? The first one is, in your case, it’s about getting someone to have a conversation with, who is qualified. Getting a qualified person to raise their hands and express interest. And you’re talking about your secret recipe.

And I’ve always maintained that any business that does not have some secret recipe in it, is not going to last very long. And I’ve had people argue with me about this a lot. It’s like what are you talking about? You know, we’ve got a commodity business, essentially, like if your business is a commodity, that’s going to be a reflection on your sales, right?

If it’s just a total commodity, it is going to reflect in your numbers. There’s got to be something special, something different that you bring to the table, either in terms of the product or service that you’re offering, or in terms of the way that you sell it, right?

Because if you’re selling a commodity, Then you need to be better at attracting the type of clients who want to buy that commodity.

We do a lot of work in the promotional products industry, in the print industry, and a lot of people view that as a commodity. I sell print services. I’m an offset printer. Everybody sells offset printing. It’s like, that is correct. But what are the types of clients that you really want to bring in, right?

Who are the kinds of clients who are going to spend the kind of money with you that you want to actually encourage, right?

You don’t just want to take anyone with a pulse, anyone who can fog a mirror. You don’t want to just take anyone who comes through the door. When you’re building a business proactively, you’re deciding who you want to work with and who you want to choose to leave to your competitors.

So again, I want to stay focused on our topic, which is social media. We need to recognize that there are specific results we want, and then once we’ve identified what those results are, we can start to figure out what the specific plan is for getting those things to happen.

Jay: Yeah, and I’ll tell you, I don’t say this very often, but I really think this is a situation where you may be better off not trying to learn it yourself.

You know, I’ve watched videos, I’ve taken online courses, and everybody’s like, even down to the thumbnail you put on your YouTube videos and the, you know, what do in the video where I’m pointing at the, you know, taking all these pictures, I’m, looking like surprise and look, this is amazing and the clickbaity titles and all of those things,

but that’s always changing. That target is always moving, right? I’ve used something as simple as Fiverr, right? Where somebody who charges me 50 bucks a week, but this is what they do. I’ve gotten more results from that than I have ever gotten from trying to follow somebody on YouTube, and so I’ve just decided I’m not going to learn it. I’m paying somebody else to do it because I want to focus my time on what’s most important.

And that’s what we’ve found. Again, I’m not saying everybody that’s the solution for you, but we have spent a lot of time in this arena, and that’s how we’ve gotten results.

David: It makes perfect sense. I think it was Dean Graziosi, who I originally heard this from, he was talking about the fact that when you have the money to solve a problem, you no longer really have that problem, unless you’re too cheap to spend the money, right?

And so if you can pay somebody 50 dollars and you can get ad results that allow you to multiply your ad investment, it’s silly not to do that.

That also goes to the topic of “who, not how.” Dan Sullivan wrote a book about that. If you’re looking to do everything, every aspect of your business, you shouldn’t, because there are going to be things that you’re not going to be naturally good at.

But I think the core of this particular topic, when we talk about getting results from social media, The biggest problem is not social media. The biggest problem is people don’t know exactly what result they want, right?

They may think, “Oh, I just want to get more sales.” Well, yes, you do want to get more sales, but there are steps to that. And the first step, particularly if you’re using social media is going to be figuring out a way to somehow identify who those people are, whether you’re doing it organically, whether you’re doing it with paid ads, there are specific things that you need to do.

If those things don’t happen, you’re not going to get more clients. And whether it’s you coming up with the how on how to do that, or whether you’re paying someone else to do it for you, you’ve got to be able to convey to them what you want, and that’s where a lot of people get stuck.

They’re just so unclear on exactly what they want to have happen that they can’t get it done because they can’t even convey it to someone who can help them do it.

Jay: Yeah, such an important point. I mean, I’m just sitting here thinking, if you imagined our business with a storefront, you would think I want to line out the door and down the block.

I don’t. Right? I want the door locked and I’m buzzing you in, once I’ve decided that you fit in a specific category. That seems to go against everything. that we’ve learned about business, but we know that because we’ve spent so much time defining exactly what you’re talking about.

And what I think is the core, if anybody takes away from this podcast, and that is, if you don’t know what you want, how are you going to craft social media or any type of marketing towards that specific thing? That’s got to be job one.

David: Yeah, and the truth of the matter is that that situation you described about buzzing people in versus having the line, anyone who has been even remotely successful at identifying their audience and identifying ways to attract the right people into their organization would much rather have the buzzer, right?

Because otherwise you’re having to swat people away, and that is time consuming and it’s difficult. So when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to get them to raise their hands and express interest.

When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where you are, where nearly everybody you talk to or everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you.

Jay: Yeah, I mean think about it. We’re literally saying how do we get fewer leads? You know what I mean? It just seems like it’s such a different approach.

And I want to add one more thing. We’re about out of time here. And I think we should talk about this in another podcast. People who do have successful social media programs, you don’t want to rely on social media. They change their algorithms all the time. And your goal should not be just to get a sale.

It should be to offload them onto one of your properties. Your mailing list, your website, something else. Because you could spend all this money and have a great system and then an algorithm changes and you’re sunk.

So I’d love to dive into that a little bit more in the future.

David: Yeah, that’s a good one. And also the fact that the people who do this extremely well are not just running one ad forever. It’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. There are constantly going to be changes that are necessary because either the market has seen it and it’s gotten stale or there are approaches that work better and differently, or as you indicated, the algorithm could change.

There are a lot of different factors that go into it. So if you think you’re going to come up with one magic thing that’s going to work forever, it’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. But when you’re aware of the factors that you need to be able to focus on, you’re going to be a lot more likely to get the results you want.

Jay: Yeah, eventually competitors are going to steal that secret recipe. And what are you going to do then, right? How do you define yourself? David, as always, it’s a pleasure. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call. Check out the video. See if it makes sense to have a conversation with myself or our team.

We love having conversations with really sharp, motivated entrepreneurs, salespeople, those who are looking to grow their sales and profits in a way that is sustainable. You’re not looking for just the next new thing, the next whatever it is that somebody says is going to get you the business you’re looking for.

It’s unique to everyone, and we need to be able to recognize and utilize your unique strengths in your solution. Otherwise, if you say, well, the solution is Instagram, the solution is Facebook, the solution is this, it’s that. No, the solution is identifying what is going to work best for you, and that’s what we do with our clients.

So, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: Fantastic. David, as always, a pleasure. Thank you.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Start Getting Better Results from Social Media?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

David: When we talk about learning from failure, it doesn’t just have to be our failures. We can learn from the failures of others.

Jay: Oh yeah.

David: We can learn from the failures of our friends, our family, our parents, our children. We can learn from any type of failure that we meet along the way. And when we do that, when we learn from other people’s failures, we are saving ourselves a lot more aggravation.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing learning from failure. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Once again, it’s a pleasure to be here. This one, again, another important topic. I think we have a tendency, when we have failure, to not want to try that again, as opposed to saying I don’t know who said it, but fail forward. Right?

So like it or not, we’re a result of our failures, and we’re probably going to fail more than we win. So defining what we do in failure, I think, is very important.

David: Yeah, I think this particular topic for myself, I know, has been absolutely critical in every aspect of my development from the time I was a child.

When I was in grade school and I wasn’t always the most motivated student because I wasn’t interested in some of the topics, I would not do well in certain areas. And that wasn’t great. I mean, what I should have learned from that is do a better job of it, anyway,

I didn’t learn that at the time. And maybe that’s why I’m an entrepreneur today, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs start out the same way.

It’s like you’re on a path. There are specific things that just really interest you that you can focus on diligently. And there are other things that you can’t.

But also just an example, I know throughout my own life, you’re going to be able to learn something from everyone you meet, whether it’s positive or negative. So you might as well take advantage of that.

And if you recognize that you can pick up on these things fairly early on in most relationships and decide to learn from them, everything gets a whole lot easier.

Jay: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. Once again, I think all the podcasts we’ve been doing recently self awareness. So important. Personal inventories, so important.

Do you even recognize the failure? Are you deliberate about what your response is going to be? And if so, I think you can turn it around and make it a positive. If not, I think it’s just by nature going to become a negative.

David: Yeah, and whenever we’re going through something in business that we would categorize as a failure, and that varies widely in business, as you know, to a complete business failure, I mean, that’s something you’ll learn from for a really long time, when that happens.

It can be small things, it can be large things, but if we look at each of those things as an experience, there is very likely a lot that we can learn from that.

What was it that caused this problem to begin with? I know in business for myself, most likely cause of issues and ultimate failure has always been, In some way related to communication.

We weren’t communicating properly with the other people, or they weren’t communicating properly with us, or they weren’t communicating honestly with us, or however it worked out.

But a lot of it, for me, boils down to communication failures. And when you’re aware of the areas where these failures likely happen, you can then pay closer attention going forward so that you don’t repeat those types of things.

Jay: Yeah, I grew up kind of in the retail industry and, when a failure happens, you have managers who want to just find the closest person and, yell at them and blame them.

But then you have others and I’ve learned that usually it’s not like you said, a person problem. It’s a systems problem.

So is it your communication that’s bad? What is it? And if you can fix it, is it your training? You didn’t train, you know, whatever it is, and that goes for yourself as well.

Finding and identifying that you’re actually going to accomplish something, as opposed to just the visceral, you know, I got it off my chest, but now I’ve destroyed somebody.

David: Yeah. And when you’ve got the right processes in place in your business, it becomes a lot easier to determine was the problem with the process or was the problem with the employee not following the process.

Jay: Yes.

David: Right? Because if the problem was with the process, it gives you an opportunity to fix the process so that it doesn’t happen again.

If the problem is with the employee not following the process, then you can encourage the employee, and you can train the employee to follow the process more closely next time.

And if you have an employee who continues to not follow process after process, then you’ve got a hiring problem, most likely on your hands.

But it’s a whole lot easier to identify when you’ve got the systems in place and you’ve got the people in place following the systems or not following them to identify where things are going wrong.

Jay: Yeah, and the danger is if you do this wrong, and again, I think it happens in our internal persona and also with other employees, if you’re constantly blaming people and it’s really a system situation, what happens is you create a “why try” or “you can’t win” atmosphere, right?

So if employees are constantly being blamed, when they weren’t trained, when there wasn’t a good system, they’re going to start saying, well, why should I even try?

It’s something I call minimum expectations mode, right? I’m going to show up, I’m going to do as little as possible, stay under the radar, and collect a check. I think we do that personally as well.

If we keep hitting a wall and we’re not aware of it, we’re not trying to learn from it, we’re not deliberate about it, we adopt a “why try” attitude as well, right? Well, every time I try something, I just fail. So I’m not gonna pursue this anymore.

David: Yeah, I agree. I think if most people in an organization take personal responsibility for their actions, whether it’s the employer, whether it’s the employee, doesn’t matter.

If an employee has something go wrong and they take personal responsibility and say, “okay, what could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? Oh, I should have followed this procedure better,” or, “oh, I missed this,” or “I missed that.”

If they recognize that there’s something they could and should have done better, then they are learning from that failure.

Same thing if you’re the employer. If something goes wrong, you look at yourself, you take personal responsibility and you say, “what could or should I have done better? Should I have taken a longer amount of time to train this person? Should I have made the instructions more clear?”

Because if everybody is looking to themselves in terms of what they could do better, then you’re not doing the whole blame game thing. You’re literally taking responsibility for yourself. And when everybody takes responsibility for themselves, Everything’s better.

Jay: Yeah.

David: And when nobody takes responsibility for themselves and everybody’s finger pointing and I’m blaming you and you’re blaming me and we’re blaming other people, it just doesn’t accomplish the result.

So learning from failure is something I think that we all have to try to concentrate on? To say to ourselves, all right, if this didn’t work, what can I do better? What should I do better? Who else has helped me? Could I have asked for, should I have asked for? And you may go through something and say, you know what?

I really feel like I did everything I could possibly do in this situation. And sometimes you’ll do that and things will go wrong anyway, but at least you’ll know, and then you can get feedback. Well, listen, this is what I did. This is the process that I followed. What else could I have done? What else should I have done?

And if you can get positive input on that, then it’s helpful because it allows us to grow. And I think the whole idea of learning from failure is that it does allow us to grow. It allows us to advance, allows us to get better, and ideally it prevents us from failing again the next time.

Jay: Yeah, one thing I know for sure, failure is going to happen. It’s going to happen.

And so having a system, having a recognition, okay, failure just happened. If it’s in an organization, this is how we handle it. Let’s look at our systems, our training then our individuals, or if it happened internally, okay.

You know, you’ve talked about writing things down. What did I learn from this? What should I do next time? Because a lot of times like you said, you did everything you can. And so sometimes you don’t need to beat yourself up. You don’t need to make changes. It just, it’s going to happen. that’s the reality.

David: It is. And when we talk about learning from failure, it doesn’t just have to be our failures. We can learn from the failures of others.

Jay: Oh yeah.

David: We can learn from the failures of our friends, our family, our parents, our children. We can learn from any type of failure that we meet along the way. And when we do that, when we learn from other people’s failures, we are saving ourselves a lot more aggravation.

I remember growing up as a child and noticing things in adults, where I would say, “I don’t want to do that. When I grew up, I never want to do that.” And you see things in other people where you go, “I want to do that. That looks good. I’d like to be more like this person or I’d like to be more like that person.

And if not doing that, if you’re only noticing, “Oh, I’d like to be like this. I’d like to be like this. I’d like to be like this,” and you’re missing out on the things that you don’t want to do. Those are the biggest traps, right?

Those are the things that are most likely to mess you up. So, when you’re able to recognize failure at a relatively early age, recognize that you don’t want to go there, and then determine the steps that you can avoid, to not fall into those traps, you’re going to be doing much better.

Jay: Yeah, I love this. I love this.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. In today’s world, I mean with resources like what you provide with YouTube, I mean, I see somebody in my house and they’re trying to fix something and they’re just trying to figure it out and I’m like, have you gone on YouTube yet?

Because there’s gonna be 50 videos on how to do this. I have a plasma television in my house. It’s gotta be 20 years old. The screen is still spectacular. I had two of them. They both died after I had them for three years. And I’m like, these are expensive. I don’t want to…

So I went on YouTube and I found out first you can solder new capacitors into the board. And I’m like, I’m not soldering anything. But then I found another website that said you can buy the PowerBoard for 50 bucks, and it just plugs in.

I did that to both TVs. They’ve gone on for another 15 years, each of them. And I’ve fixed a washer, I’ve fixed our fridge, I’ve replaced shocks, I’ve learned how to code.

I’ve learned how to do all of these things because people have put together these systems and you’ve put together resources where you should be able to fail less, or be more focused or more advanced before you get to those places.

David: Yeah, no question. And I’ve said this to so many audiences over the years when I’ve done presentations.

I would say the reason I’m standing up on this stage today is not because I’m particularly smart. It’s because I feel like I’ve made every single stupid mistake you can possibly make. And if I can keep you from making just one or two of those, you’re going to be light years ahead. And so, so much of what I teach to my clients, is based on the potholes that we want to steer around, the things that we want to avoid, because it can save you years.

It can save you decades of your time. And that’s what I find so rewarding in our work with clients is that when we’re able to identify specific things that they can avoid doing or specific things that they can do that will allow them to advance their goals and their outcomes and what they’d like to accomplish for themselves and their families, it’s incredibly rewarding.

Jay: So how do people find out more about how you can possibly help them out?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call. Check out the video on that page and see if it makes sense to schedule a call with us. If it does, great. You can schedule a call right on that page. If it doesn’t, at least you’ll have a good idea of what may be possible for you. Some things that you might not have considered in terms of the growth of your business.

There are things that you either don’t yet know or don’t know the intricacies of that could be slowing you down, right? Because it’s not always about, “well, I didn’t know that.” It’s about, “oh, I didn’t know exactly how to do that.”

Those minor details make a huge difference. Could be something like that. Or it could be that you know a lot of what you need to do, but you’re not doing it consistently.

Our work with our clients is designed to address both of those things. What to do and how to do it is one part of it, and then actually getting it done is the critical part. Because that determines what’s working for you and what’s not.

Jay: Such a great service that you provide, David. As always, it’s a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Learn from Other People’s Failure so You Can Succeed?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

Investing in yourself isn’t always easy. It is a matter of finding the time to make these investments in ourselves and to say, “okay, if I can’t go to a cabin for a week, what can I do? When can I do this?”

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarlane and I will be discussing investing in yourself. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey David. It’s so good to be here. I feel like lately we’ve been going after things that I really struggle with. We talked about controlling your internal monologue. Now we’re talking about investing in yourself.

It’s really easy for me to invest in other people. That is very easy. But taking time to invest in myself… when I need something, I will go and find it and I’ll learn how to do it. But being proactive about it. I’m reactive, just about in every way.

David: Interesting. So when you think in terms of investing in yourself, you mean investing what? Time, money?

Jay: All of it. you know, investing in myself when it comes to just taking time to learn new things, or I think investing in yourself can be just reading on a regular basis, or instead of watching social media, be listening to productive podcasts, or, taking a walk, those kind of things.

We talked in the last podcast, controlling your internal monologue. Those are all things that require proactivity and honestly, I don’t know if it’s pride or stubbornness or whatever else. I’m like, oh, I’m good. You know, I’m good.

David: That’s interesting because we are actually on completely opposite ends of the spectrum on this one normally we’re agreeing with each other not that we’re disagreeing here, but I am at totally the other end of the spectrum.

I’m constantly reading stuff. I’m constantly investing in programs and audios and videos and courses. I can’t tell you, and I’d be embarrassed if I could tell you, how much I spend on that type of thing. Just because, I don’t know if that is like a FOMO element of mine, where I’m afraid I’m going to miss something, but I’m conscious of it to the point where I recognize that you don’t want to invest in everything, right?

There’s looking at investments that are designed to help you with right where you are now. If you need help getting over a particular challenge, that’s where I find the investments most worthwhile.

And then there are investments that sort of just in case learning. I’m learning this skill just in case. I’m going to learn how to do whatever, something related to social media that may or may not help. Or that sounds like the catchy thing of the day.

Because when you’re online, you will hear all kinds of people talking about all kinds of different things that are the solution to your problem.

And one person is going to tell you that it’s Instagram. And another person is going to tell you that it’s Facebook ads. And somebody else is going to tell you that it’s organic. And somebody else is going to tell you that it’s something completely different than those things.

Everybody’s got a solution. And it reminds me of the old adage that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

So depending on who you’re listening to, who you’re paying attention to, you may end up investing in things that are not actually designed to get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

Jay: Yeah. And I guess I have to clarify a little bit of what I’ve said. If it’s something I need or want, I’m a dog with a bone. For me it’s the difference of, do I learn how to do exactly what I want, or do I go to college and learn all of these broad subject matters, and then focus.

I think both are important, and I’m never the broad subject matter guy, right? I mean, Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve learned how to make video games and released over 100 apps. I got into talk radio. I started several businesses. I have training courses. So, I certainly invest in myself, but unlike you, you’re kind of like, this is the world that you live in.

I only do it on very specific things and I only do it when I feel like this is something that will help me or my business or my family immediately.

David: Yeah, well, I think that’s a great way to approach it, because otherwise you can go down a lot of different rabbit holes, and you can end up following other people’s priorities, as we talked about in a previous podcast.

So, when I think about the idea of investing, it’s What are we investing? Is it our time? And in a lot of cases, it’s definitely going to involve time. Is it money? And in some cases it can involve money and it can involve quite a bit of money depending on what you’re investing in.

I know I’ve done online courses that have cost a lot of money and some of them have been really worth it, and some of them have been kind of worth it, and some of them… they just weren’t worth it for me at all.

It doesn’t mean the product was bad It may just mean that it wasn’t suited to my personality or whatever.

But I think as business owners or as salespeople, we consistently have to take the time, take the energy, take the money in some cases and invest in ourselves to be able to say, if I’m at a particular point and I need to get to a different point, a higher point, a better point, I want to be able to provide more and better for my family, as you mentioned, then what’s it going to take to get there?

Because in a lot of cases, what we know now has gotten us to the point where we are. So if we want to get further, we can either just try to keep doing more of what we already know, pedal faster, essentially, pedal the bike faster to get farther, or we can say, “well, what can I do to shift gears?”

And a lot of times that involves looking at the things that we don’t know and correcting that and saying, “well, if I fix this one problem, then I’m going to be able to go a lot farther and a lot faster.”

Jay: Yeah, so often, when we do these podcasts, we end up with self awareness as being such an important element here, right?

If you are going to invest in yourself, well, are you aware enough internally to know what you need, right? Where you stand? And you kind of mentioned this, I think what happens is, every once in a while I’ll get on this thread of self improvement or things like that, and I want somebody else to tell me what I need.

And I want them to just give me the secret sauce, right? And so that’s what I’m looking for. It’s like a get rich program, but for self improvement or for task management or goal setting, right? I want the quick and easy. And I think so often investing in yourself is not quick, nor is it easy.

David: Right. Particularly if you end up investing in the wrong things. And I think, to some extent, It’s really important to identify the areas where we’re stuck. To say, “okay, this is the specific problem that I’m trying to overcome.”

So with our clients, we work with primarily business owners and sales people who are at a certain level of sales and profitability in their business, and they’re looking to get to another level.

And they recognize that there are things that they are not doing, and they’re not quite sure what those things are. And so when we have conversations with people like that, and we’re able to identify those areas and say, “okay, is that something we can help you with?”

And if it is, we’ll tell them that. And if it’s something we can’t help with, we’ll tell them that as well. When we do that, It’s better for everyone. Because at that point, they either have a solution or they have to keep searching for a different solution. And we’re totally fine with either of those things.

We’re not looking to try to be the end all solution to everything. But because there are so many options, it’s important to be able to have conversations to find out exactly where the people are stuck so that we can determine If or how we can help them.

And that goes for myself, that goes for anybody who is offering you any sort of investment in yourself. You want to make sure that it lines up, not with what they want you to do, but with what you want to do, with what your objectives are, what your outcomes are.

And a lot of times in the conversations that I’ve had with people, I’ll ] talk to people who will say, well, I don’t like doing cold calls. And there are some programs where it’s like, well, you have to do cold calls.

And it’s like, well, that’s not going to be helpful to me if I don’t like doing cold calls, right? Or social media. ” I hate doing social media.”

Well, if you hate doing social media, you definitely don’t want to sign up for a course that requires you to do social media. And so in our work with our clients, one of the things that we’ve looked at is to say, “okay, let’s look at what you actually enjoy doing, what you’re naturally great at doing.”

And can we create a curriculum for you that is based around your strengths and your areas of interest, so that you’ll be a lot more inclined to do it?

In an earlier conversation, I’m not sure if it was this podcast or I think it was the previous podcast, you were talking about sort of the difference between school learning and business learning, right?

And in school, we’re forced to take subjects that might not resonate with us. Whereas once we get out, and once we get to call our own shots, we can focus on the activities and the skills that we want to develop, to get us to our next desired benchmarks and our next goals.

Jay: Yeah, I think it’s so important what you talked about, and that is, if you are going to use somebody to help, If they don’t take the time to get to know you and where you’re at and your strengths and your weaknesses, then, I’m not saying it’s not going to be helpful because I think anything that causes you to reflect and look at your own systems and kind of do an inventory, I think there is value to those things.

But I think we also fall into the trap of looking at somebody who’s successful and assuming we can do exactly what they do the way that they do it.

Like, I looked at Elon Musk and Bill Gates, and I look at the schedule they run, and how Bill Gates, once a year, locks himself in his cabin away from his family, with just all of his books, and he just reads and reads and reads and reads, and I’m like, I need to tell my wife I’m going up in the mountains for a week, and I’m gonna do this thing, right?

They’ve found ways to make it work for them and to invest in themselves. if you’re living by comparison and not really finding out about yourself, that’s a difficult road.

David: It is absolutely difficult. Yeah. And not everybody’s going to be able to do that. Not everybody can afford to take a week or two weeks or a month by themselves or even have a cabin. Right?

So, there are all those elements. I know for myself, what I find helpful is I’m able to take in a lot of information while I’m on the treadmill in the morning. I’ve got a Sony speaker and I just crank it up so that I can hear it over the noise of the treadmill and so I can take in information while I’m exercising.

So that’s kind of a twofer. And I’ve got a little digital recorder so that when I hear something that I need to remember, I’ll record it.

So I’ve got endless recordings of myself panting and recording messages to myself about things that need to take place. But it is a matter of finding the time to make these investments in ourselves and to say, “okay, if I can’t go to a cabin for a week, what can I do? When can I do this??

For me, again, early morning is great because it’s a quiet time. I’m able to focus on it. And it also gets my brain in gear for the day.

I’m not thinking about other stuff. Like if I watch TV? I don’t. I haven’t done that in years. But if I were to watch TV at the beginning of the day, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s entertainment, then that’s in my brain. If it’s news, that’s the worst, right? Definitely never want to do that at the beginning of the day.

So I find that when I’m listening to something that’s helpful to the business, in the morning, it allows me to get myself into gear a lot more quickly.

Jay: Yeah, I love it. Great discussion, David. How do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team, or just check out the video on that page and see if what we’re talking about makes sense for you. If it does, schedule a call. We’d be happy to have the conversation. If not, that’s fine too. We have lots of resources available on our website. Feel free to have at it.

Jay: All right, David. Always a pleasure.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Take Control and Start Investing in Yourself?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

Your internal monologue is critical. The worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your internal monologue. What’s going on in there, Jay?

Jay: Hey, David. I’m not sure what’s rattling around up here, but I think this is an important topic. I think that often we are a result of what we allow to rattle around in our brains.

And if we’re not aware of it, if we’re not conscious of it, then that can kind of define who we are and what we do each day.

David: Yeah, it really does. And I’ve read a lot about this topic over the years. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts on the topic. Of course, we all live this on a day to day basis. I remember reading in one of Michael Singer’s books, he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul and he was talking about your internal roommate and how basically you’ve got all these thoughts going on in your head and half the time you don’t know where they’re coming from and what they’re saying to you.

And a lot of times we tend to interpret what’s going on in our heads as us. We think that’s us dictating that stuff. And he says, no, it’s basically, our brain generating thoughts, but it’s not really. necessarily us.

So when something goes through our minds and we’re like, what on earth made me think that? It’s just your brain. Don’t take it personally.

Jay: Yeah, it is random, right? I mean, your mind’s gonna just be all over the place. And until you kind of do an inventory of what you’re thinking, And I don’t know that we’re necessarily talking about affirmations.

I think that some people are like, look in the mirror and say these things to yourself.

I don’t know if we need to go that far, but certainly be aware of what you’re thinking and take control of it. Because you are what you think.

David: Yeah, and taking control of it starts with just being aware of it. Recognizing the different things that go flashing through your brain on any given day and how that then impacts our actions.

Because in business, if we’re not aware of that, if we just sort of go along, thinking we’re on autopilot and just doing things as they come up and not paying attention to what’s going on in there, we can find ourselves either distracted, or maybe doing the wrong things, or taking the wrong actions, or responding inappropriately.

Lots of different things can go wrong if we’re not aware of what’s going on in our own brains.

Jay: Yeah, for me it’s a matter of demotivating myself. My brain is very good at identifying the reasons not to do something. I don’t know why that is, But I think that I’m not alone, right? So, I have something that I want to do today or that I’ve scheduled today, and my mind will just tick off the reasons why I can’t do it, why I shouldn’t do it, why I should be doing something else, why I should be doom scrolling on TikTok instead.

And I don’t know why that is, but I feel like my brain always defaults to the here’s why you shouldn’t do it mode.

David: Yeah, and it’s good you’re recognizing that. I remember I was listening to a podcast, the Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo, and she was talking about the fact that our brain generates sentence fragments.

So it might just be a few words that go by in your brain and you internalize it. It might be that you’re looking at a project and you know that you need to be working on it. And you might get a sentence fragment like, “I don’t feel like it,” or “I don’t feel like doing that.”

And if you have the kind of job where you can determine what you do and what you don’t do, that can significantly impact your actions.

But when you recognize these little sentence fragments going through your brain and you identify it, you can then choose how to sort of reprogram.

So if you catch yourself saying, “I don’t feel like it,” you can then say, “yeah, well do it anyway” and start on it. Right? Take some initial action toward that.

And at that point, you’re very likely to continue because once you get yourself engaged, you’re a lot more likely to move forward.

Jay: Yeah. I love that you brought up for those that are responsible for their own schedules. You know, for years, I had a job where I had to be there at a certain time, and I was there at that time.

I mean, I didn’t have a choice. And now, I’m in complete control, and I’m only accountable to myself. And this is where those thoughts are just completely magnified.

David: Yeah. That’s why I think when we pay attention to what’s going on in there, and try not to take it too personally, because again, going back to the original thought where that’s not really, necessarily you.

I mean, it’s your brain. Sure. It’s our brains generating that stuff. But it doesn’t mean that’s who you are. It just means that your brain’s job is to generate ideas to come up with different things that you can then decide whether or not to take action on.

So when it comes up with things that are counterproductive or unhelpful, and you’re able to recognize that, then you’re able to take far more control of your life than you will any other way

Jay: Yeah, one thing I learned from my parents is the “and then what” game, right?

So instead of telling myself what’s gonna happen? I ask myself, because, you know, I still have fear and anxiety and those kind of things, and I don’t like rejection, and I don’t like failure, and so a lot of times it feels easier not to try. But if I ask myself about that fear and say, okay, let’s say you do it, and something negative happens, and then what?

And you kind of play that game, and you just keep asking yourself, and then what? And you get to the end, and you realize, the reality is nothing is going to happen, right? Something positive can happen, but the fact that something negative is going to happen is not very realistic.

David: That’s true. I think sometimes taking notes for ourselves is also helpful, particularly when you’re in a place where your brain is trying to take you in different directions than you actually want to go. To be able to just sit down, jot down some notes about either why the thing that you need to work on is more important, or just writing down the thoughts that are in your head, writing down those little scraps of dialogue that are derailing you, and then coming up with alternatives to those, so that when you notice them appearing, you can then proactively create your own responses to that, to get you to take the actions that you want to take.

I think one of the things that’s most interesting about this is, very often, it’s our best selves, our plans. Well, today I’m going to work on this, this, this, this, and this, right? Those are our best laid plans versus the impulsive part of our brain, which just wants to run off in all kinds of different directions, and to be able to stay focused on the things that are most important to us.

One of the other things that’s helped me a lot is going back to the why. Why do I want to do this? Why was this important to me at the beginning of the day and seems less important now? And when you’re able to reconnect with the why of why you’re doing it, you’re going to be a lot more likely to stay on course.

Jay: Yeah. You mentioned the word reprogramming. I think that you can eventually get to a point where it’s automatic. That when you hear these thoughts, you’ve got something there to replace them with. And that can be just as subconscious as these negative thoughts coming up, right? Your brain can start to recognize what’s happening and you’ve reprogrammed yourself to replace that negativity or whatever it is with something positive.

David: Yeah, it reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer’s in a meeting and somebody mentions the word chocolate and all of a sudden you’re inside Homer’s head. He’s going, chocolate, right? And he has these fantasies about chocolate going on in his head, and it really demonstrates how things can go very wrong, very quickly, if you don’t notice what’s going on in there and take positive actions to change it.

And once again, as business people who have some flexibility sometimes with our schedules, it becomes so much more important to us than people who may have less flexibility, whose jobs are more dictated. “You must get this done in this amount of time,” because even if you have a thought like that, you’ve got to figure out a way to get it done.

And particularly when you’re talking about small business owners, or you’re talking about salespeople who do have some flexibilities with their schedules very often, this can come into play a lot.

And as you mentioned, if you’ve got alternatives to that, or if you’re, first of all, able to recognize it and notice that you’re not happy with the way that it’s going, you’re going to be a lot more likely to be able to fix it.

Jay: Yeah, I also think in today’s world that controlling your thoughts. might be a little bit more difficult because we have so many distractions readily available. And I tell myself I’m an incredible multitasker.

And so I have, Dave, I have like eight screens in front of me because I don’t want to miss an email. I don’t want to miss a text. I’ve got the news going. I’ve got all these things. And I do find myself in a place where I’m kind of the chocolate thing, right? Or the squirrel thing, right?

I’m like, “squirrel!” And so I’m starting to implement these focus modes, these do not disturb modes, because there are very few emails that I have to answer right away. There are very few texts, and how are you going to control that inner monologue If you can’t even control where your attention is going.

David: Yeah, and when you talk about something like that, which essentially is input versus output, and you recognize that you’ve got all these distractions set up, and in many cases, it’s just an organizing system for other people’s priorities that you’re seeing. Your inbox, right, is what other people want of you, what other people want you to do.

I want you to read this, and it could be anything. It could be spam and what they want you to do is see the subject line, be enticed by it, open it up, read the email, click on whatever it says, whatever it is they want you to do.

Now, you’re no longer even in your own head. Now you’re getting somebody else’s internal monologue forced into your brain and accepting it.

And that’s about the worst thing we can do is delegating our internal monologue to someone else. Let alone someone we might not know, like, or trust.

Jay: Yeah, yeah. And for me, it’s like, I have a fear of missing that thing, right? A FOMO, like, maybe if I don’t respond now, that’s going to fall off of my to do list, and then I’ll have some accountability there or something.

And so, you do want to have a good system. I think that’s another part of what we’re talking about, having a good way. Remembering things, offloading them from your brain, but they’re still tracked so that you can, still focus and those kinds of things.

Again, in today’s world, this is not the easiest thing to do.

David: No, it’s definitely not. Sometimes I think it’s good for us, when we’re getting a lot of input, to maybe put the phone in airplane mode to disconnect from the web, so that if we have to focus on writing something that is not web connected, we can just do that without those distractions.

Because it’s like a casino. You’ve got the dings coming in on the phone. You’ve got things coming through on your computer. And every time that stuff happens, if we’re not aware of it, and if we’re not proactively focusing on our own thoughts and what we want to do and what we want to take action on, then the likelihood that we’re going to stick with what we originally intended is pretty much slim to none.

Jay: Yeah. Or you’re going to be, you know, pushing a rock uphill, right? Making it hard on yourself. David, how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself and my team. Actually when you go to that page, even before you schedule a call, there’s a video there that you can watch.

You can get an idea of what we do and how we do it. You may watch that video and say, “I don’t want to schedule a call.” That’s perfectly fine. Or you may watch it and you may say, “Oh, now I really do want to schedule a call.” Go there, watch the video, see what you think. If it makes sense for you, let’s have a conversation.

We’ll basically take a look at where you are now versus where you need to be in terms of visibility and sales and profits. We’ll take a look at the markets that you’re looking to go after. Who you’re looking to sell to, those types of things. Regardless of whether or not we ever work together, the conversation will be very helpful in allowing you to put together a proactive vision of what you want your business to be.

So if it makes sense for you, TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right, David, thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Take Control of Your Internal Monologue?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

For me, in identifying and attracting ideal clients, I need people who have the motivation, who have the desire, who have the discipline, and just the willingness to move forward. People who are decisive enough to be able to say, “yes, I want to do this. Let’s move forward on it.” Because the people who just take forever to make up their minds and who don’t respond to calls and all that type of thing? Been there, done that. No longer my ideal situation, or even close.

David: Hi and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be dealing with the topic of attracting ideal clients. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey David, thank you so much. Another great discussion here. If we could all only deal with ideal clients. I think that would be ideal. See what I did there?

David: I think so too.

I love the idea of ideal clients. I love the concept of it. And in nearly everything that I do with our clients, I try to keep that the focus. It’s not about bringing anyone in who can fog a mirror. It’s not about bringing anyone in with a pulse. It’s about saying, okay, how do I put together a situation, an environment in which all the very best prospects for my products and services know who I am and know what I do so that they can make a thumbs up or thumbs down decision about whether or not they want to work with me.

And along the way, can I identify whether this person is my ideal client or something very close to it?

Jay: Yeah. And part of that process is learning to exclude, right? Not include, but learning to exclude. I think sometimes we, especially when we’re first starting out, we think I want to cast the widest net possible.

And you know, I’ve learned just the opposite. I want to be as finite as I can be in who I’m trying to attract.

David: Exactly, because it determines everything. It determines what you’re going to say to people, how aggressively you’re going to pursue them, how hard you’re going to work for them, when and if they decide to do business with you and you decide to do business with them.

I think sometimes, in these podcasts, we say things like this, and it probably alienates a segment of the market who feels like, “Oh, no, you have to really do more things for customers, and the customer’s always right,” and all that type of thing. And I’m not saying that that type of thinking is wrong. I’m just saying that that type of thinking creates a different result.

And if your goal is to attract clients, any clients, then yeah, that can work. But if your goal is to attract ideal clients, the right clients, people who fit with the way that you do business, people who are going to respect you, respect your time, be willing to honor their investments, be willing to reply back to you when you need a response, then.

The rules become different.

Jay: Yeah. I’ve stepped away a long time ago from the customer is always right. I think that in certain industries, like maybe retail, that’s more applicable. But so often, I’m like, I can’t help you or , this has come to a point where neither of us are being satisfied, so we need to kind of cut ties.

Like you talked about in the last podcast, being direct and learning how to identify when you should be direct, you’re going to help them and you’re going to help yourself.

David: Absolutely. And if you want to do this, if you want to attract the type of clients that resonate best with you and that you resonate with and that are going to result in long term great experiences, the first thing we have to do in that situation is to clearly identify or define what an ideal client means to us.

And I know for me, their ability and willingness to communicate is really high. And that’s one of the things that we also talked about in a recent podcast.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is one of those things that warrants more of your time than so many other things that you think may be important.

Because if you can streamline who is coming to you, your close rate is going to go way up. I mean, in my business, we’re paying for an online lead and it costs us, our cost per lead is high, David, it’s high. But it’s okay because we’ve honed that process so well that I never talk to somebody who is outside of somebody who needs our help.

That doesn’t mean that they can afford our help. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to close that deal, but I do not spend time on the phone with people who are not directly in our strike zone. And that is magical. And it’s such a key to our business model.

David: Yeah, because that then allows you to have a conversation to determine if this is not just something you can help them with, but whether or not this is an ideal client for you. This is the type of client that you’re going to be able to create exceptional value for. They’re going to appreciate that value and be willing to pay for it.

So I think all these things just tie together really nicely in a neat little bow when you are aware of the fact that this really can and should be a goal of your customer acquisition efforts.

Jay: Yeah. And a constant refinement, right? We just identified some new products that we can offer to our clients based upon the relationship and the calls that I’ve been taking and what people have been asking for.

So now I’m going to expand my net a little bit more with some additional keywords and things like that, but I’m not being haphazard about any of this anymore.

I’m being so careful and so specific, because I’m spending my dollars, you know, whether I get these leads or not, the money is spent.

David: Yeah, exactly. I know when I think in terms of my ideal clients, the people that I enjoy working with the most, the people who get the best results. Every single one of them is an implementer. They take action. They’re not constantly in their own heads thinking about what they might do or what they’ve done in the past or how smart they are or how, whatever they are.

They’re in there, taking action all the time. On our website, we have our Wall of Fame page, TopSecrets.com/results. And on that page are page after page of video testimonials, audio testimonials, written testimonials of people who have taken action and gotten results. To me, everyone on that page is an ideal client because they do it.

They take the action, they get the result. And as a result of that, we have a great relationship. Because when we take on a new client, we are making a promise to them. We are promising them that we’re going to be able to help them get to where they need to be in terms of their visibility, their sales, and their profits.

And we take that promise. extremely seriously. I can tell you, there are times where I’m talking to a prospect and I can recognize in the call that this person isn’t as serious about it as I am.

And in those situations, I’ll usually up the call quickly and say, okay, you know what? It doesn’t sound like we have a good fit here because guess what? I can’t want it for them more than they want it for them.

And so for me, in identifying ideal clients, I need people who have the motivation, who have the desire, who have the discipline and just the willingness to move forward.

People who are decisive enough to be able to say, yes, I want to do this. Let’s move forward on it.

Because the people who just take forever to make up their minds and who don’t respond to calls and all that type of thing? Been there, done that. No longer my ideal situation, or even close.

Jay: Well, I love this point. It’s so profound. You’re exactly right. When I’m doing a consultation with somebody, I know in the first five minutes what type of person they are.

Are they calling me in a panic because they’ve just learned something? Because we’re in the tax business, and so When, people just found out, they just saw their 1099 or something, and they’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know anything. That’s typically not going to be the client that is ideal for us.

Another type of client, where they’re being proactive, they’ve been doing research, they’re taking their time, that’s the type of customer that I’m going to close. That’s the type of customer that is ideal because when I’m requesting documents from them, or when we’re setting up something for them, they’re in that, active mode, that doing mode.

So I could tell right away, you know, I really want to work with this person. This is going to be a great relationship. And the other ones I’m like, okay, you know, we may end up signing you up, but I can tell right now it’s going to be a little bit more painful.

David: Yeah. And sometimes we have to make those decisions. Am I willing to exert the extra effort? Or am I going to say, no, you know what? This isn’t a good fit.

And maybe it’s an age thing. I don’t know if the older I get, the more likely I am to say, I want to make sure that fit is there ahead of time. But I find that it just creates a much better environment for us, for everybody who works in our organization, for the client, for the people they work with.

When everybody’s on the same page, it flows. So if you’re thinking in terms of your business and growing your business and wanting to have the type of business that you’re going to want to live in for a long time, then I would really strongly encourage you to consider what is my ideal client and how do I have to adapt what I’m doing to make sure that I’m attracting people like that and repelling those who are not a good fit for what I do.

Jay: Yeah, we’ve got a customer, we’ve, no, he’s not a customer. In fact, he’s not even a prospect anymore, but we’ve been dealing with him for the last five days. He reached out to us, he made it sound like he wanted our expertise, he was gonna use our services, but what he was really looking for is somebody to confirm something that he had already decided.

So every single time, we’re giving him free advice…

David: Free consulting.

Jay: Because, that’s right, free consulting. And he’s arguing with us about the result and he’s already decided what he wants. He’s not going to do business with us until we tell him what he wants to hear. And you know what?

That is fraught with legal situations for us. But my partner and I, after four days, we’re like, what in the heck are we doing? You know, we just need to tell this guy, look, you have received way more, that you didn’t pay for and go and find somebody who will give you the yes you’re looking for.

David: Yeah, because the moment we compromise our own integrity to try to appease someone who is a non-client to begin with, now it’s like, okay, why are we even in business? Because none of those things are compatible.

Jay: Yeah. You said something a couple of podcasts ago that really resonated with me. And that is that if they can bully you a little bit, if they figure out that they can get you to compromise, they’re going to latch onto that, right?

They’re going to say, look, I know if I push a little bit, if I’m more of a pain, if I’m a little bit more of a squeakier wheel, then they’re going to abuse that. Not everybody. I mean, we’re talking in generalities. People are generally good, but there are these types of…

David: We’re talking about non-ideal clients.

Jay: That’s right.

David: That’s what we’re talking about. Those are non-ideal clients.

Jay: Yeah, and identifying that quick and both of you getting on with your lives.

David: Exactly.

Jay: How can people find out more, David?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you.

If you’re in a situation where you’re trying to attract ideal clients and you maybe don’t even know where to begin, or don’t know how to identify who they are, or where they hang out, or how you can reach them, or what you should say or how you should say it in a way that gets results, let’s have a call. TopSecrets.com/call. We are here to help.

Jay: All right. Once again, it’s been a real pleasure, David.

David: Thank you so much, Jay.

Ready to Identify and Attract More Ideal Clients?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

When we think about prospects who can’t or won’t say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don’t reply back after they’ve gotten all the information, it’s basically two pieces of the same puzzle. When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can’t drive them to the yes. Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing prospects who can’t or won’t say no. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. You know, there’s so much to cover about how to deal with prospects. You really have to be thinking in depth about, who are these clients who can’t or won’t say no?

Do you even recognize that? Because that’s going to affect how you spend your time. Will you be working with them? Are they worth the time? Things like that.

David: Yeah. And it ties back exactly to our last podcast where we were talking about prospects who don’t respond to you.

We’re actually talking about clients who don’t respond to you. And then we got carried away with clients. We said, okay, we’ll talk about prospects in the next episode. And this really ties together nicely because in many cases, the people who can’t or won’t say no to us are the very same people who end up going radio silent and just ghosting us.

When we’re trying to get a sale closed.

Jay: Yeah, and I think it’s, again, we need to track and keep records. We need to be able to know, like, I have a system where I get a reminder. Hey you know, it’s my CRM. The last time I spoke with a potential client, I made a note. Remind me about this client in five days, if you’re running through a lot of potential prospects, you’re not going to remember your last conversation.

You’re not going to remember, are they one of these clients that we’re talking about? So tracking and, searching for this particular concept, are they saying no? Can they say no? A very important part of the process.

David: Yeah, and that’s where I think the notes that we keep for ourselves inside our CRMs or wherever we document that stuff are so important, because if we’re just saying follow up, follow up, follow up in our notes, that tells us nothing.

So a lot of times it’s really good in our next set of notes to say, spoke with Joe yesterday, he indicated he’d have a decision by such and such a date, so that when you contact him on that day, you say, hey, listen, when we last spoke, you said you have a decision today at 1230. What are you thinking? Right.

And you can move forward from there. But when we talk about people who can’t or won’t say no, I think this is where I’ve had several epiphanies along the way, because I think in sales, our desire is always to get them to say yes. But, in reality, sometimes we are better off getting them to say no. Because these non decisions are just killers.

And sometimes people, they just can’t bring themselves to say they don’t want to do it. Whether it’s fear of missing out, or they don’t want to hurt our feelings. I don’t know what it is, but I know that whenever I run into it, I find it extremely frustrating, because I’m a pretty direct communicator.

If you and I are having a conversation, I will tell you exactly what I think. I mean, I won’t be rude about it. I won’t be obnoxious, in most cases, right? But I’ll be very direct because I feel like I owe that to every person I talk to.

If we’re talking about working together, I want to make sure that people are extremely clear on what we’ll be able to do and what we won’t be able to do. And we can’t do anything until we get to that agreement.

I mean, I say this all the time, whenever two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they’ll figure out a way to do it. If one of them doesn’t, they won’t. And very often the one who doesn’t is the prospect.

And when they’re too afraid or timid or shy to say no, it is a huge time waster.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And you can’t be wasting time, right, on people. You just can’t be doing it. So, we’ve identified progress points, right? So I’ve had an initial discussion with them. I’ve followed up. Have they responded to my follow up or are they ignoring me?

First follow up is an email. Second follow up is a text. If I’m not getting any communication on those first two methods, they’re going into my drip program, right? I mean, instantly. I’m not going to waste my time with those people. I can’t waste my time with those people.

David: Yeah. And there are multiple steps to this as you indicated.

If we haven’t even made a sales presentation to the person yet, if they don’t know what we offer and how we offer it and what it costs and all that sort of thing, that’s very early stage stuff, and we have to decide our tolerance for pain in terms of how many times am I going to reach out to have those conversations?

Once we’ve made the presentation, once they have a clear understanding of exactly what we’re offering, and they’ve expressed interest in it, when they start not responding then, then I tend to make more efforts than I would in the early stages, because now I just basically want them to say, “yes, I’d like to do this” or “no, I would not like to do this,” right?

Because those are really the two best answers. Those are the answers that allow everyone to move forward one way or another. When people just don’t respond or they can’t or won’t say no, they can’t bring themselves to say no, but they can’t bring themselves to say yes. Then where do you go with that?

Right? You’re scheduling out appointment after appointment. And I think at that point, it’s really important for us to understand what is causing that delay. What’s going to happen between now and two weeks from now that’s going to change the situation. And sometimes It will be a money thing. They’ll say, “okay, well, I’m expecting something to come in so that I’ll have the money to be able to do it in two weeks. Contact me back in two weeks.”

And sometimes you do that. And then it’s like, “oh, well now it’s going to be another month or two.” And they keep putting it out. And at some point you have to determine whether or not what they’re saying is even viable anymore, or if they just can’t say no, won’t say no, have no idea of what their cashflow is actually like.

And that’s important too, because if they don’t know what’s coming in and when it’s coming in, then that creates potential friction, not just for them, but for you as well.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I do sales calls every day now. And I’ve just been thinking about my interaction with those people.

We’re a premium product. We’re not trying to be the low cost. We’re like the Mercedes of our industry. We have more knowledge. We’re very focused on our niche. And so people get very excited when they’re on calls with me. And then I’m like, yeah, let me show you our pricing model.

And there is typically some sticker shock. Right? And when that sticker shock happens, I can tell, they don’t want to tell me that they were shocked by our prices.

There’s a pride thing. And so they’ll be like, “yeah, let me look this over and I’ll get back with you.” And they’ve already decided, and I know they’ve already decided that they can’t use us. They’re not going to use us, but they’ll follow up with me. They’ll do all those things, cause you know, I feel like I’m good enough that in 20 minutes we’ve established kind of a relationship. And so now it’s a little bit more personal. And so like you pointed out, they don’t want to hurt my feelings saying, “Hey, you’re too expensive,” when that’s exactly what I want to hear. Just tell me, and let’s both move on with our lives.

David: Yeah, I’ve had situations where I’ve given someone a price and then there was this real quiet silence. And I’ve said to some people like, did I scare you off with that? I mean, I’ve literally used those words. Did I scare you off with that? And nine times out of 10, they’ll say, “no, I wasn’t expecting that, but…” and then you continue the conversation from there.

Again, I think just being very direct in our communications, and just being very clear. Because I think when we try to couch what we’re saying and like I’m afraid to ask if they think the price is too high and they’re afraid to tell me if the price is too high, it’s not good for communication.

So I find that just by asking them questions and just being really direct, does that sound like a lot to you? Does that sound like too much? Does that sound like too little? And “well. It doesn’t sound like too little,” yeah, and they’ll tell you.

And you’re far better off having that conversation rather than saying, yeah, let me think about it for two weeks, because there’s no thinking going on during those two weeks.

I had a conversation with someone that I had spoken with previously, and we had made arrangements to talk two weeks later. And I didn’t even want to do it at the time, because I thought this is futile. But, you know, we all make mistakes, right? And sure enough, two weeks later, when I called back, he said, “Oh, I thought we were going to be talking at the end of the month.”

He didn’t even know when we were supposed to be talking again. And I basically said to him, I said, yeah, I had a feeling there wasn’t going to be a lot of thinking going on during those two weeks. I said it sounds like we probably don’t have a fit with this. And then at that point, since I kind of said it for him, he was able to agree.

And I like that. I mean, I prefer that because if I schedule another call in two weeks and he spends another two weeks not thinking about it, and I spend another two weeks thinking I’m having a conversation that could lead to a sale, then all of us are wasting our brain energy and I’m just not about that anymore.

Jay: Yeah, I really love this idea of being direct. It’s something that is hard for me. But being direct, like you said, will save you both some time. And look, they call me for a free consultation, but they fully expect that at some point during that call, we’re gonna enter some type of sales process. Right?

And so me thinking that I can’t go there is, like you kind of mentioned in our last podcast, there’s some fear there, I think on my part.

David: Yeah. And for me, it also boils down to a respect issue. Respect for our own time, respect for the other person’s time. And if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t respect their own time and they don’t respect your time, for me, that is a huge red flag.

I mean, if I’m able to pick that up early on in the conversation, I’ll tend to wrap up those calls pretty quickly because, when somebody treats you like that as a prospect, how are they going to be after they have paid you money and they’re expecting you to operate on their terms and their terms about the way they do things is terrible.

You just don’t want to put yourself in that position.

Jay: Yeah, this is a great point. And I think it’s a good point for another podcast. It’s like, do you really even want to close that sale? Right? Because you can identify early on sometimes in the process, this person is going to be difficult. So is it worth the money?

We have discovered that when we give, and this is the weirdest thing, and we should talk about it further, that when we give people a discount, they’re more problematic along the way. And I don’t know why that is, David.

So we’ve decided for our own sanity, we don’t give discounts. Because we’ve learned that that type of customer, the whole way, it’s going to be difficult, and they’re paying us less money for us to deal with that nonsense.

David: Yeah, and I think it can be that, it can be a discount, or, in some cases, it can just be any sort of compromise that we make in the process that is really different.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because they look at that and they go, “oh, okay, I can do whatever I want now.” And when you run into a situation like that, it’s just not conducive to good business.

Now there are other people, and I’ve had situations recently where there was somebody who really wanted to work with us,was really y determined to do it, but was struggling with the financial component.

And we were able to put together a payment plan that made sense for him and he was able to move forward with it and he’s been great. And I’m so glad we did that.

We’ve had other situations where I’ve done something similar for somebody and then they ghost you, right? It’s like you’re basically trying to work within the parameters that they’re setting up.

And sometimes I do this as a bit of a marketing experiment. Because if somebody says, “I can’t afford this,” and it’s like, “okay, well, let’s say we put together payment terms in place that will work for you. You know, would you do it then?” “Yeah.” “Okay.”

And then you put it in place and then they don’t move forward. So, some people are full of it. You’re just going to have that. I mean, that just happens in business.

Some people are going to be great and they’re just going to be honest with you up front. We don’t always know the difference until we have those conversations and we either offer what we’re thinking about offering or we don’t offer it. And then everything flows from those decisions.

But  when we think about prospects who can’t or won’t say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don’t reply back after they’ve gotten all the information, it’s basically two pieces of the same puzzle.

When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can’t drive them to the yes.

Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time.

Jay: Mmm. Powerful. Driving them to the no or driving them to the yes. I love that, David. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have these conversations with you. And if you’re in a situation where you’re looking to grow your sales and profits and you’re stuck somewhere along the line, if you have a lot of people who are ghosting you, there are things you can do to keep that from happening.

If people aren’t saying no to you, and you know they should be, there are ways to do that as well. Sometimes I look at it almost like musical chairs, where the music stops. Somebody is going to be without a chair. Sometimes you have to stop the music and find out who’s not sitting down so you can continue to interact with those who are going to be better suited to working with you.

So TopSecrets.com/call. Let’s have a conversation.

Jay: Great analogy. Thank you, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Need to Get Better at Driving Prospect to the Yes OR the No?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

When dealing with unresponsive clients and prospects, we have to make sure that we’re doing everything on our end to be as responsive as possible. If somebody takes a week to get back to me, that doesn’t mean I’m going to take a week to get back to them. Because if I start to fall into the trap that they’ve laid out, then that’s not good for anybody.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing unresponsive clients and prospects. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Once again, great topic here. I think all of us are guilty — anyone who’s involved in sales — of thinking, this client is going to turn into something, but really, if we looked at it, should we be spending time on somebody else instead of trying to push people through who are not ready or not able to do so.

David: Yeah. And I think, as you said, everyone in sales deals with this, and that’s when you’re dealing with prospects, right? That’s when you’re dealing with people who have not yet spent money with you. This is even harder for some people when you’re dealing with clients, people who have spent money with you and who are not getting back to you with the information that you need in order to do the job that they paid you to do.

Jay: Yeah, I actually have a client right now that is driving me crazy, because we’re in the tax business and they were like “we need to get this done because we have an extension.” And so at some moments they’re like pressing me like this is so important. And then they’ll ghost me for like three or four days.

So right now I’m in the ghost period. I’ve emailed them, I’ve called them and I’m like, where did they go? And I just know like tomorrow they’re going to be, “Hey, we need to get this done.” It’s driving me crazy, David.

David: Yeah. And again, you are not alone. I think everyone in business deals with this, and every time it happens, we’re like, why is this happening? I don’t get it.

And that’s why I think it’s important for us to take the time and sort of examine this and try to determine, okay, what are the reasons behind it?

If it’s a client, why are they not getting back to me with the information? So in a situation that you just described, maybe they don’t have access to it as quickly as they thought.

Obviously, they’re just probably distracted with other things. They’re working on other projects. They know it needs to be done, but they’re not able to do it as quickly as they’d like.

Every excuse in the book, some of them valid, some of them not. But when we are tasked with getting things done on somebody else’s behalf, and then they refuse to live up to their side of the bargain. That’s when we start to run into trouble.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I’m guilty of as we talk about this, is feeling like if I put any pressure on the client, it’s going to like affect our relationship or something like that.

So I treat people with kid gloves. And I really kind of find out, no, if I’m, I don’t know if stern is the right word, but at least,

David: Maybe firm?

Jay: Yeah, firm maybe is a better term.

David:  Yeah, because I think there is a difference between stern and firm. Firm is basically like…

Jay: They sound the same.

David: Yeah, exactly. Listen, I’m trying to help you here and I need this in order to move forward.

And in most businesses, when you’re interacting with someone, particularly in a service business, it comes up a lot. So the rapport obviously is key. We have to be able to have the rapport with people to be able to say, “listen, this is what I need. Otherwise I can’t move forward on it,” and have them be able to come back and say, “yes, listen, I understand. I’ll get this taken care of for you.”

But it doesn’t always flow like that. And that’s why I think if we start to look at what are the reasons for it, we may be able to have better ammunition in terms of dealing with it.

For some people, and I think this goes more to the prospecting aspect of it than for clients, there’s a fear aspect.

I’m afraid of doing this. I’m afraid of taking the next step. I’m afraid of moving forward. And it could be with a client as well. I’m afraid that once I do this, then there’s going to be something else you’re going to need that I’m not going to have. And I’m afraid I don’t have the time or I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to pull it off.

So there’s a fear element that enters it into sometimes. Is that what you’ve noticed as well?

Jay: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in one of the other things that I’m experiencing right now, talking about current clients is like, they’re not responsive and they’re slow. And then at the end, it’s like, they’re blaming me.

So it’s like, they think that somehow it was my product or my service. And so, there is a danger in not being firm, in not helping them along, that the product won’t satisfy them in the end and you have to guard against that.

David: Yeah, and I think part of that is reminding them along the way that when you’re waiting for them, reminding them that, “hey, if we want to make this deadline, you know, please get back to me and let me know where you stand on this.”

Because even if they say, “okay, it’s going to take me 48 hours to get this to you,” then at least you know, and you’re not sitting there going, “where is this stuff,” and wasting your own mental energy and your own time not knowing what they’re doing.

I think communication is so key when we’ve got a business relationship with someone.

And every single time I’ve had a problem with a business relationship, it always boiled down to communication. Somebody stopped communicating. Or they were really slow in communicating, or they communicated in sentence fragments instead of actual responses.

I remember having a relationship years ago, we were doing business with a really large customer in New York. And I would send out an email that was maybe a paragraph long with several different questions.

And they would come back by answering part of the first thing I asked, and none of the rest of it. And when you see a pattern like this, it very often indicates a problem. And that’s where we have to then go back to our people and say, “listen, I want to get this done for you, but in order to do this, I need A, B, and C. Can you provide that to me?”

And they either will or they won’t.

Jay: Yeah. one of the other things that I see happening is if they’re not responsive, I kind of become less responsive, that’s a mistake. I think that even if they’re not communicating, we need to be communicating.

So I’m still sending them emails. I’m still letting them know that I’m working on their project or whatever else, so that they feel like they’re getting service, even though the breakdown is on their end.

David: Yeah, and I think you’re exactly right. You need to maintain that communication and it’s tempting not to, to say, “okay, we’ll leave it to them if they’re not going to do it.”

Jay: Yeah.

David: But that’s not what we’re being paid for. In some instances we are being paid to continue to nurture that relationship and to continue to ask for the things that we need in order to be able to help them.

Because. If we do get to the point where things don’t get done that need to get done, then obviously it’s going to be a reflection on us.

So we have to make sure that we’re doing everything on our end to be as responsive as possible. if somebody takes a week to get back to me, that doesn’t mean I’m going to take a week to get back to them.

I’ll still try to get back to them within an hour or two, or as quickly as possible, because if I start to fall into the trap that they’ve laid out, then that’s not good for anybody.

Jay: Yeah. One of the things that we’ve learned, talking about communication, is setting the expectation up front with the customer.

So, right after they sign up, or even before they sign up, we’re like, “okay, here’s what’s going to happen.” Then they sign up and they get an email. “Here are the steps that we’re going to go through. Here’s what I need you to do, and here’s what I’m going to do.”

That way when they’re falling down or whatever, you can remind them, “Hey, remember we talked about this? I really need this to provide the product or meet your deadline.”

And that way it’s much easier to remind somebody than to kind let them know halfway through, you know what, we need to make changes here.

David: Yeah, and that’s great. The fact that you’re laying it out in advance, letting them know what you need and when you need it in advance, because that’s something that you can then keep pointing back to.

Jay: Yes.

David: You know, another thing that I think we fall into, another trap that we fall into sometimes is we’re used to one particular method of communication.

So if it’s email, we just keep sending email after email. Or if it’s telephone, we leave message after message. And I think in some situations it’s better to mix that up a bit.

We talk a lot about the MVPs of Marketing and Sales. What’s the message, which combination of marketing vehicles am I going to use to communicate the message? And then who are the people or prospects we need to reach?

Well, in this case, it’s the V aspect of it. Which marketing vehicle are we using to reach them? Because if they’re not responding to email, then maybe we leave a voicemail message. If they’re not responding to voicemail message, then if we’re connected with them in social media, maybe we message them via social media, right?

There are different ways that we can potentially get to them so that we can get a response. If they have an assistant, we can try to reach the person’s assistant and ask them to give us a call back. Right? So it’s three different methods of communication that may result in getting a response.

Jay: Yeah. And we kind of talked about this in the last podcast to kind of keeping track, keeping notes, cause you may have different people on your staff who will interact with that person in different ways or through the process.

So putting in your CRM or in your notes, “Hey, this person is better reached by text. This person is better reached by phone.”

I find more and more text is what everybody wants, but you can’t use text for long form communication or attachments or things like that. And I think it also depends on their technical skills, right?

They may not be using certain types of communication because they’re our generation, right? You know, who knows?

David: Yeah, exactly. And you hit the nail on the head because basically if you’re sending email and they’re not responding, you can then follow up with a text and say, “did you get the email I sent you yesterday at 2. 42 pm,” right?

Jay: Mm hmm.

David: And then they can respond to that. They’ll be more likely to do that. So you’re able to use these different elements in combination, to be able to get the result.

We talked a lot in terms of what clients need to do when we’re trying to communicate with them and they’re ghosting us. When it comes to prospects, maybe we should save that for a whole other episode.

Jay: Yeah.

David: it’s big, huge when it comes to prospecting, because so often you can have a great conversation with someone and then they go radio silent on you. And where do you go from there?

In fact, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s save that for another one.

Jay: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I was just thinking, if we’re not keeping track of how we’re communicating with them, we may be frustrating them, right? Because I’m trying to get a hold of them one way and they’re expecting another way.

So listening, processing, keeping track, very important. David, how do people find out more?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re struggling with this, where you’re having trouble getting clients to respond, we’ve got different methods that we use to stir the pot a bit, get the response back that you’re looking for and keep you engaged in the conversation because that’s the only way that sales move forward.

It’s the only way that business moves forward. So TopSecrets.com/call.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Repair Issues with Unresponsive Clients and Prospects?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

Knowing vs. Doing in sales is all about implementation. Implementation connects the knowledge you have to the results that you’re going to get. And without that key element being implemented again and again and again, you’re never going to get to the results, the sales, the possibility that you have in your entire career.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing knowing versus doing in sales. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. I love this topic because I think so many of us are just doing what we think we should do, but we’re like, squeaky wheel gets the grease. And so, are we really focusing and fine tuning and honing our sales.

David: Right. And doing what we know.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because a lot of us can get trapped in input, rather than output. And I know I am guilty of this myself because I am a chronic learner. I am always reading books and studying stuff, watching videos, learning from courses, I spend a whole lot of money educating myself every year.

What’s the newest, the latest, the greatest, the things that I should be paying attention to? And sometimes when we get too focused on input, we don’t engage in the output necessary to get the results we’re looking for.

Jay: Yeah, I’m exactly the same. Like I have all this technology. I’m always trying to hone my systems, but like we hear garbage in, garbage out, right?

I spend so much time on that, maybe I should be spending time on actually closing sales, meeting with clients, you know, those types of things.

David: Yeah, and keeping track of what we’re doing, keeping track of our output, I think is really important, and a lot of us lose sight of this. I’ve actually created tools in my training programs that allow people to start to capture that.

Because when you boil it down, the things that we need to be doing on an ongoing basis involve bringing new prospects through the door, getting them qualified in or out as quickly as possible. Engaging in presentations with the people who are worthy of presentations, making offers, closing sales, all those things are key.

And a lot of that is just about engaging in conversations with people. So simply by tracking what we’re actually doing on a day to day or week to week basis, we can have a crystal clear idea of where things are going wrong in our business.

But if we just sort of think in the back of our mind, “Oh, well, yeah, I know that, or I’m doing all that,” we can really be misleading ourselves more often than we think.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about tracking, I’m looking for the perfect software to track or things like that. And often a notebook, you know, start simple and work your way up. A spreadsheet, something and just reviewing your daily activities can be a very powerful thing.

David: Yeah, whatever you’ll actually use is your best contact management system, whether that’s a full blown CRM software system, or whether you’re just good at being able to keep track of your appointments and notes on a calendar or in some sort of notebook. As long as you have it all in one place and you know what’s next, that’s huge.

Knowing what’s next for each prospect and client. When do I have to reach out to them and what am I going to be reaching out to them about?

If I know that somebody has an event coming up in November and I need to be in touch with them by early October, I want to make sure that I’ve got a note for early October that says, be in touch with this client, early October, about their event mid November.

So that when I reach out to them, I’m not just calling and saying, “I’m just calling to check in” or “how’s everything going?”

No, I’m calling, “Hey, listen, I wanted to give you a call. We were talking about this event you have coming up in mid November, wanted to see where we are with that,” so that we’re able to continue the conversation where the last one left off, which is also pretty critical.

Jay: Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I tell you about an experience we’ve just had, the past few weeks, because we upped our game in tracking and kind of identifying the different categories and the conversations.

We’ve identified two new products that our customers absolutely need. And we’re excited to offer that. And we would have never caught it, if we weren’t tracking the calls and taking notes and those types of things.

David: Yeah, it’s so important to be able to listen to clients, but a lot of that doesn’t happen when we’re not taking the daily or weekly actions necessary to make sure that that’s going forward.

Years ago, I put together what I referred to as a continuum of knowing versus doing. And in the lower left corner of the grid, people who know nothing and do nothing.

It’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing. As a result, I take no action. And people who know nothing and do nothing in sales are actually not doing any harm. So they’re obeying the first law of good doctoring, you know, first do no harm. Right? So they’re not really an issue in the marketplace.

The people who know a lot and do a lot are the ones who typically get the best results.

So ideally we want to move from knowing nothing and doing nothing to knowing a lot and doing a lot. But what’s really interesting are the other extremes on the matrix because There are people who know a lot, but do nothing or do very little. They’re not taking action.

And when you’re in that situation where you’re like, “Oh yeah, I know this, I know that. I’ve known that for a long time,” It’s like, okay, but are you doing it?

Not just are you doing it, but are you doing it as, as well as you need to be doing it? Are you doing it better than your competitors? Are you doing it as well as it can be done?

Because until you get to the point where you are implementing as well as you can, based on the things you know, there’s no way you can possibly get to the money. Because implementation tells us if what we know is actually true, right?

Because a lot of times we’re taking action based on what we know and we try things and they don’t work and we’re like, why didn’t that work? But you don’t even know it’s broken until you’re actually implementing.

And that’s why in our work with clients, we are laser focused on identifying what’s taking place, what is being done, and as importantly, or more importantly, it’s how it’s being done.

Because in a lot of cases, people are like, oh yeah, I knew that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation with prospects and with clients where they’re like, okay, well, yeah, I know how to do that.

And I’m like, look, I know you do, right? Prospecting, presenting, and following up. Everybody does that in sales. It’s not about the what. It’s about the how.

How are we prospecting?

How are we identifying the targets we’re going after?

What specifically are we saying to them? Are we saying things consistently from one prospect to the next? Because if we’re not, then we don’t know what’s working and what’s not. So, the how part of it is absolutely critical.

Jay: Yeah, and I also think the assumption that you’re good enough, right? Our systems are good enough. That’s very dangerous.

I’ve been watching the Olympics and watching things where they’re separated from their competitors by one tenth of a second, right? And when they’re training, they’re not saying, well, I’ve reached this point and I’m done. They’re saying,

David: Good enough

Jay: Right. They’re watching videos about their technique. They’re training in a different way. They’re watching what their competitors are doing. So I think just the realization that you can always improve, always, is so important.

David: Yes, and implementation is key to that because implementation is what connects the knowledge you have to the results that you’re going to get.

And without that key element being implemented again and again and again, you’re never going to get to the results, the sales, the possibility that you have in your entire career.

Jay: Yeah. And I also think the understanding, cause this can feel really overwhelming for people. And I think it’s important to simplify, but I also think it’s important to know you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

There are people who study this type of stuff. You, who are always looking into this, always improving, always looking for systems implementation, and you’re passing this onto your customers. So don’t think you have to do it alone.

David: Yeah, exactly. And it’s not that I’m some particular genius, but when we’re working with our clients, we’re working with their specific situations, their specific issues. So when they run into something, it’s not a vague generality where we’re saying, “Oh, make more calls,” right?

We’re looking at what is the specific situation? What’s the bottleneck, and what are the best possible solutions to blowing through that bottleneck.

But that requires two way communication, right? It’s not about me saying, go make more calls, go do this, go do that. It’s about saying, okay, what are you doing? What are you currently implementing? How are you taking action on this thing?

Where are the bottlenecks that you’re running into? What are the specific situations that are keeping you from being able to get more people qualified in or qualified out? What’s slowing you down in terms of being able to make more presentations and making more offers so that people have something to say yes or no to.

And those basic points along the continuum are what’s really critical. So if you feel like, “Hey, I really know a lot, I should be making more.” It goes right back down to implementation.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. So how can people find out more about implementation?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team.

We love having these conversations, because the first thing we’re going to do is take a look at where you are now in terms of visibility and sales and profit, and where you’d like to be, and then see about helping you to connect the dots between here and there.

That’s all just part of the diagnostic. That’s just part of the call. So you don’t have to buy anything for that to happen. We have these conversations to help you think through your current situation so that you can determine what are the best next steps? So if you go to TopSecrets.com/call. That’s the best place for you to go.

Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Thank you so much.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Ready to Fully Monetize What You Know and Implement Like a Pro?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. 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.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. 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.

A lot of people just think broadly in terms of expanding their market, without asking themselves a really important question, which is why? Why do you need to expand your market? Am I not doing things well enough in my existing market that I haven't been able to mine that as effectively as I could? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Expanding Your Market. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you, David. Once again, I'm excited for this conversation. I know we always kind of learn from each other. We're in a process in our business where we're trying to expand from the inside, from our current customer base. Like right now we have a great Google Ads program, but we don't have an organic program, right? So that's one area that we're looking at right now. How do we get those organic leads? So we're right in this process right now. David: That's really interesting because there are so many different ways we can talk about expanding. I mean, the first thing you mentioned, just expanding inside your own customer or prospect base, right? You could just look at your Excel spreadsheet of all these people say, how can I expand within the people on this sheet, right? Or you could be talking, like you mentioned about an ad campaign. How can we expand this ad campaign to reach more of the high quality prospects that I need to reach in order to have those conversations, in order to do business together. So yeah, lots of different ways to do it. I think the appeal of a topic like expanding your market is that a lot of people tend to want to do it. I want to have more customers. I want to have more clients. Not quite sure where that's going to come from. That's sort of the generic thought, I think, for a lot of people. I want more customers. How am I going to do that? And a lot of it boils down to this. minute stuff that we're talking about, identifying who these people are, how we're going to reach out to them, and how we're going to get them on board with us. Jay: Yeah. And I think that's something that a lot of people fall prey to, and I catch myself sometimes as well, is thinking that movement is doing something, right? I'm busy. I'm writing a check. We're doing something and we're just moving. But ultimately, are you getting results and are you monitoring those results and fine tuning them? If not, you're kind of wasting your time. David: Yeah. Confusing movement with progress and they're two different things. You don't even realize you're doing it, but you're like, Oh, I should really do this, I should really do that. And we've also talked about the fact, in previous podcasts, that many business owners suffer from entrepreneurial ADD. Where you're working on one thing and then the whole squirrel, squirrel, squirrel! and we're doing that. And now we're off on something else. I think a lot of us have to reel ourselves back in when it comes to that, because there are so many different ways to expand your market. So many different ways to get in front of different groups of people, and so many different things we can say to those people. And there are too many variables. And I think when you're looking to expand your market, you can't be changing all of the variables. You can't say, okay, now I'm going to go after a totally different group of people with a totally different message and promote a totally different product or aspect of my product, right? Or a different approach to describing my product, because you will have absolutely no idea at that point of what's working and what's not. I mean, in some cases we can do some minor tweaking of maybe one of those variables. If we've got a sales presentation that has worked historically for us, for a long time, then it makes perfect sense to test out that presentation in front of a different group of people who have never heard it.