Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

By: David Blaise
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  • Summary

  • The Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales podcast provides tips on how to increase sales, improve profit margins and grow your business. Each week, we address issues related to important topics like targeting your ideal prospects, fine-tuning your messaging, attracting the clients you need, monetizing social media, the MVPs of Marketing and Sales and much more. From mindset to marketing and prospecting to podcasting, the Top Secrets podcast helps B2B and B2C entrepreneurs, professionals and salespeople get more of the customers and clients they need so they can do more of the work they love.
    Copyright © David Blaise, Blaise Drake & Company, Inc. | TopSecrets.com | 463414
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Economics Leadership Management Marketing
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Episodes
  • How to Get More Leads… Fast!

    How to Get More Leads… Fast!
    Nov 5 2024
    If you're in a situation where you know you need to get more leads -- you need to generate more and better leads -- there are very specific ways of doing it. One of the things that we do with our clients is we focus on, what are the different methods of lead generation that they're currently using? What are some of the methods they could be using, if they're not already using those. And then testing those out as quickly as possible to find out what actually works and what doesn't. Some people spend months or years trying to perfect something that isn't working. And simply by switching to another method, you can get incredibly better results in a much shorter period of time. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to get more leads. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it's so good to be here, David. What an amazing topic. I mean, it's got to be the question on everybody's mind, how to get more leads. David: Yeah. And I think a lot of people look at it and they think, well, they know leads are the lifeblood of our businesses. Now, if we're not constantly getting new leads in the door, then your pipeline dries up, everything gets bad. It's not an ideal scenario. Obviously, it's a very important consideration. There are lots of ways to get more leads and there's no shortage online of people who will try to sell you different methods of doing that. And, this is why I value your opinion on this as well, because I know that you do quite a bit of lead generation in your own business, and lots of people pushing lots of different things. I'd like to get a feel from you, if you don't mind, to start out. sort of the types of things that people have told you are going to help get you leads and which ones seem to work better and which ones didn't seem to work as well. Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. This is something that we rely on heavily. Our entire business model is getting people to sign up for our free consultations. And so, how do you do that? How do you make sure that they're the best leads? We started out relying heavily on Google Ads, pay per click. But even that, can be so tricky. I don't want to spend my time talking to a lot of people who really don't need my services. So, not just leads, but qualifying leads. We're going to talk about that in an upcoming podcast. But, I'll tell you, David, we don't want to pay for every lead. So our question has been, how do we get leads that we don't have to pay for, right? And then also, how do we make sure that we have the best close rate on leads? But, we get email marketing, we get people contacting us every day saying, we can do this for you and we can do that for you. And you want to try some of those, but at the same time, I'm like, oh, we have a system that works. And so I have a hard time breaking away from that and spending a lot of time on those other things because you really don't know what's going to work until you try it. David: Yeah. We've probably had a bit of this discussion in the past as well. The idea that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So there are people who like generating leads on Instagram. And so they'll put out information on here's how to get leads on Instagram, or here's how to get leads through Facebook groups, or here's how to get leads on LinkedIn, or through LinkedIn direct messaging. And so everybody's got their own little tiny slice that they're looking at to say, this is it. This is exactly the way to get leads. And in my experience, not only in our own businesses, but also working with other people's businesses, what I found is that it's very easy for people to get sold on the idea of like one particular, tiny niche solution that is going to be the solution to all of your lead problems. And I mean, I spend a lot of money on my own training, my own education, exploring, what's available, what works, what doesn't work.
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    14 mins
  • Scared of Selling? Get Over It!

    Scared of Selling? Get Over It!
    Oct 29 2024
    When I say "get over being scared of selling," that doesn't mean that you have to engage in methods of contact that you're really, truly uncomfortable with, right? That means finding a path, finding a path that works for you, finding a path that works for your people. Finding a path that works for your prospects and clients, right? And there's always a path. There is always a path to get there. David: Hi and welcome back. Are you scared of selling? If so, get over it. Today, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing that very topic. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, it's a great Halloween topic, right? Being scared. My kids are watching scary movies all of this month and I participate in a scary movie all day long when I have to pick up the phone and I have to talk to people who I don't know and convince them why my services are what they need. Please write me a check. That is a scary prospect when you think about it. David: Yeah, entrepreneurs basically are facing Halloween every day. In a lot of cases, a lot of ways, whether it's making phone calls or making payroll or making decisions, making rules, it's always about making something. And the whole idea of being scared of selling, I hear this from so many people that I thought we needed to address it. And when I say get over it, that sounds very insensitive, and perhaps it is, but it's also very necessary. Jay: Yeah, I mean, it's the reality. If you're in a business model where you have to sell, then you have to get over it. It's just that simple, and if you don't, then you're going to constantly be struggling. And it's not something that you're going to do from day one, but it is something that you have to be determined to do. David: Yes. And when I say this, I don't mean to put anybody down, right? There are a lot of really good people who have really good reasons for being scared of selling. Certainly in their minds, they've got really good reasons for it. And I'm not taking any of that away. It's a fact. The fact that there's a term called "call reluctance" indicates that there is a level of fear based here to the point where they had to create a term for it. So, what I find is helpful -- particularly if I'm interacting with salespeople who are running into this situation -- and a lot of times they won't even say they're scared of selling, but ultimately that's what comes out. One of the things that we have to look at first is why are they scared? Why are they scared of selling? Is it fear of success? Is it fear of failure? And a lot of times we hear blanket terms like that and they're like, "Oh no, it's not that." But sometimes it is. Sometimes it's variations of that. I'm afraid that if I call and they say no, it's going to hurt my self esteem. That's fear of failure. I'm afraid if I do too well, people are going to resent me and think ill of me, right? Some people think that way. So any of those preconceived notions that we have about what our sales success will do to us, for good or for bad, are going to impact our actions. And that's why I say we need to get over those things, right? We have to get past those things and once again, deal with reality. I've been on a sort of truth quest lately in terms of let's not look at what we think about. Let's not look at what we fear. Let's look at what's true. Let's look at what's real in the market right now. If there is somebody in the market right now who is afraid to interact with prospects or clients, it's going to impact their performance because it's going to impact what they actually do. If you're scared to pick up the phone, you won't pick up the phone. If you're scared to send an email, you won't send the email. Or if you do, it'll take a lot longer than it should. And then that's four other emails that you wouldn't have sent in the meantime. So we have to get over it. And a lot of it starts with the why. Jay: Yeah, the why is important.
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    15 mins
  • Change is Coming. Don’t Make it Harder.

    Change is Coming. Don’t Make it Harder.
    Oct 22 2024
    Change is coming... because change is always coming. And we need to try to stay ahead of it. And we're not always going to be able to do that. But we do have the ability to anticipate things that could potentially happen in the not too distant future and say, okay, if this happens, then what am I going to do? How am I going to adapt to that? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Change is Coming. Don't Make it Harder. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: It's good to be here, David. Change is hard. Change is not easy in life, in business. We like comfort zones. We like to get in a groove. And I am the first to admit it. If I could find a way to not have to change in business and just cruise, I'm not opposed to just cruising. David: Yeah, well, status quo can certainly be comfortable until it's not, right? It's very comfortable until it's not. And when I say change is coming, I mean, so much of what we've been hearing lately is about all the potential changes that could be coming. And regardless, and I'm not going to get into politics ever at all on this podcast, but regardless of the outcome, there is going to be change coming, because it always does. It's the nature of life. It's the nature of business. Change is always coming. And so, When we try to fight it, when we try to avoid it, we make things harder on ourselves, right? The change is going to come. Now, we're going to have to change our approach very likely. We're going to have to do things differently. We're going to have to plan differently. There are all types of things that we are actually going to have to do. But if we focus on that, rather than the indignity of the fact that change is coming, we make it a lot easier on ourselves. Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. I think about a change that we all had to go through, and that's the pandemic. And how that was all a change that we wondered if we were going to survive. It was going to destroy our businesses, our workplaces, our way of life, everything. You think about, we're home office now. And we're going to stay that way. And if you had asked me before the pandemic, I would have said, no, that wouldn't work. I look at my friends in the restaurant industry who pivoted to drive through only, and when the time came back to open up their dining rooms, they didn't want to do it. They really liked the drive thru model or the delivery model so sometimes being forced to change and being ready to change. You're going to discover, things that you would have ruled out otherwise, and you're going to be better for it, ideally. David: No question. That exact example, there's a restaurant that we go to in our area a lot, and when the pandemic came and you were no longer able to go into the restaurants, they started a pickup service. And it had never occurred to us to pick up from that restaurant before. We always went in, sat down, enjoyed the meal, and that was it. But after a while, you're like, well, I could really use some of that food. We don't feel like cooking. Okay, I'm going to give it a try. I'll go pick it up. And all of a sudden, that door was open for us as well. And so after you were able to go back into the restaurant, there were still a lot of times, and there are times now where we'll still pick things up and bring it home because now we know that it's possible. So what it gave them is a new revenue stream, right? At the time they had a new revenue stream, but they didn't have their primary revenue stream. So they were hurting. But then after things opened up again, they got the regular business back and now they have this takeout service that people are using more and more, it actually allows things to grow. So it's a perfect example why our topic is so appropriate. Change is coming. Change is inevitable. It's happening all the time. And the more we resist reality, the more problems we have. Jay: Yeah,
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    11 mins

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