The trouble with targeting in business is that a lot of people don't do it well. It reminds me of that line from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone says something along the lines of, "if history has taught us nothing else, it's that you can get to anybody." Right?

And that is now true in terms of advertising. You can get to anybody, but what is the cost?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I discuss the trouble with targeting. Welcome back Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, once again, I'm excited to be here and I'm really excited to get your feedback on this, because when you first said we're going to talk about the trouble with targeting, I kind of thought in my head, well, isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?

Aren't, aren't I supposed to be targeting?

David: Oh yeah. Yeah. We definitely have to target. We definitely need to target. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with targeting. The trouble with targeting that I was thinking about is that a lot of people don't do it, and a lot of the people who do do it maybe don't do it as well as it can be done, and as a result, they don't get the results they're looking for.

Some people think they're targeting and they may be doing that, but if you're not targeting to the point where it's resulting in better quality prospects, better quality clients, and conversations that lead to sales, then you might need to hone in a little bit better in terms of your targeting efforts and your targeting approach.

Jay: Yeah, so as I think about targeting, there's a lot of work to be done upfront, right? If you're going to target somebody, you've got to know who the target is. And that can take a lot of research on your own part. A lot of experimentation, a lot of looking at past contacts, how those contacts came into your funnel, and understand those things before shooting arrow in different directions. The odds that you're going to hit anything that looks like a target are pretty slim.

David: Exactly. And I think a lot of the reason for that is, many people think of the term targeting in terms of what you said, targeting's like aiming at something.

But it's not just aiming at something, it's having an idea in advance of what it is that you want to hit. And if we think in terms of some of the more common ways of targeting. Some people don't even get this specific about it. But if you look at the different ways to target, I mean some people target geographically, I'm going to target everybody within a certain geographic area.

If I'm a realtor and I'm working in a particular neighborhood... Great example of geographic targeting. Some people target by industry. If I'm selling B2B, I might target a particular group of people in a particular industry. I might target companies that deal with technical kind of things, or I might target education, or I might target finance, right?

So that's a different way to target, by industry. I can target by need if I'm selling something like whatever, insurance, and I'm targeting people who need insurance. Okay. They could be wherever they are.

Now, it's harder to do that when you target by need because so many people might need it and you might have to pare things down a little bit to be able to get to the people that you want.

In the promotional products industry, where I do a lot of work, people can sell by program specialty. In other words, people who are looking for a specific result. If you're selling to people who are looking to increase safety in the workplace, then you could potentially be selling them a safety campaign, a safety program.

There are some people who target by product specialty. There are different companies who might be looking for a specific kind of product. There is a company that's been in the promotional products industry for ages. You've probably received pens from them in the mail, and they've been doing that for years.

There's a cover letter. Very often the pen will have your company name on it, and they'll send that to you in advance. And then there was just a sheet of paper and a place where you could say, all right, if I want 200 of these, I send a check, I mail it in. And that was an example of targeting by product.

So you can have a very successful business that does just that, right? Targeting by a particular product. And then some combination thereof. I could target a particular niche, a particular group of people. I could target financial institutions within a certain geographic area, or I could target a certain type of industry with a specific need. So, industrial companies that need safety programs.

So lots of different ways to slice it, but if you don't think through your options, then a lot of your targeting can just leave you confused.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. But I think it's important to know, I mean, never in the history of the planet, have we had the ability to target like you can today.

If you know what you're looking for, you talked about geographic areas, age groups, people who listen to a particular radio station, people who shop at a particular store. Never in our history has there been the ease and ability to target people.

There are people whose profession, and think about this, their profession is SEO, search engine optimization. That's all they do is they look at your company, and who your targets are, and they figure out how to reach that specific group.

I think about what we did 20 years ago for targeting, and I'm like, how did we even do that?

I think part of the problem is that a lot of people are just going in and they're kind of faking it until they make it.

SEO is complicated and you have to first know your target, your needs, and then you have to know how to turn that into keywords and other things. It's a real process, real powerful, but a real difficult process many times.

David: Right. And when you're talking about something specific like that, like SEO, yeah, it's really a specialty. And even targeted advertising, if you're looking for a certain group of people on Facebook or whatever, you're right, it's easier than ever to target those people with paid advertising.

But for salespeople who are in the field who aren't doing SEO, and they're not doing targeted ads, and they're looking for prospects, looking for people to sell to, and still, to some extent, having to do it rather manually, then at least having a clear idea of who you're after gives you a much better chance at potentially reaching some of those people.

Jay: Oh yeah. And we talked about this in the last podcast. If you know who to target, you're not making a hundred calls today. Maybe you're making 20 calls today and you're increasing your close rate.

It is hard for me to think, you know, that there are still so many people out there picking up a phone and dialing it and cold calling.

David: Mm-hmm.

Jay: But it is still a regular part of businesses everywhere and it's a successful part and can be successful. But if you don't know who to target, you're going to be wasting a lot of time.

David: Right. Which brings us back to the title, the Trouble With Targeting. If you're not doing it well, no matter how you're doing it, whether you're trying to do it with SEO or paid ads. Because there are people who really want to get the paid ads thing dialed in, and many of them are still spending enormous amounts of money to make that work.

And as the algorithms get smarter, theoretically it gets easier, but it also then becomes more expensive because more people are doing it, which drives the costs up.

So even those who now understand that, yeah, you can probably reach pretty much anyone you want to reach with targeted ads you might not be able to afford to do. It reminds me of that line from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone says something along the lines of, if history has taught us nothing else, it's that you can get to anybody.

Right? And that is now true in terms of advertising. You can get to anybody, but what is the cost? What's the cost in time? What's the cost in money? And are you going to be able to do it? So a lot of that has to do with what you're charging for your product, what your profit margins are.

If it costs you a couple hundred dollars to acquire a new customer, you have to make sure that whatever it is that you're selling them provides enough of an adequate profit margin to cover the cost of the product, to cover the cost of the salesperson, the overhead, and whatever the advertising is. So as long as the math works, you're in great shape.

Jay: And not just the math. I was thinking as you were talking about this, let's say you set it up right. You figured out who to target, you've got your keywords in, or whatever your advertising method is going to be, and you have actually reached the face of your target.

Well, what if your ad doesn't appeal to them at all? So you've managed to hit your target, but it just bounced off of them because you didn't have the right message.

David: Yep.

Jay: And that's a problem we see a lot with SEO, with cold calling. Are you saying the right message? And I know when it comes to SEO, that's why you do A/B testing, right?

You send out two different versions of the same ads, see which ones resonate, see which ones don't. And you have to keep track of that regardless of what your effort is.

Because man, it's really sad if you have managed to figure out how to reach that target, but you didn't manage to figure out how to get them interested. That's a real waste of time and money.

David: Right, because you may not even know that you reached that person if the messaging's off. This really all goes back to something we talked about in a podcast quite a while ago, the MVPs of marketing and sales.

What's the message that you're communicating?...

Pursuing unqualified prospects is a waste of time. Lately, I've also been on a bit of a kick in terms of commitment versus interest. If you're interested in the possibility of working with us, that's very different than if you're committed to getting the results you want in your business and working with us to do it.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the pursuit of unqualified prospects. Welcome, Jay!

Jay: Hey, it's so great to be here again, David, and I always love the topics that we get into. I think usually, or mostly, especially in my case, I'm in pursuit of just any prospect and I don't give a lot of thought to are they qualified, are they not?

It's like, just send me all the leads and all sort through it, and I'm sure that I'm wasting a lot of time doing that.

David: It's funny, isn't it? It's like just looking for warm bodies. Anybody who can fog a mirror, right? And to some extent, that's part of every process. Because we really don't know who's qualified and who's not until and unless we have a qualification procedure in place to figure that out, or if we just sort of get good at it from having conversations and hearing what people say.

So I think you're right. I think no one really sets out to pursue unqualified prospects, and yet, to some extent, we all do it every day.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. I will tell you that as a company, we've done some things. when we first started using Google ads, it was crazy. I mean, we were getting so many responses. And then after taking all of these leads and calls, we realized that 90% of them were not good.

Because, our key words that we were using for Google were bringing us the wrong type of client that we couldn't help and that we couldn't close. So once we just did something as simple as figure out our keywords, wow, that saved us a lot of time and money.

David: It really helps to dial it in, doesn't it? When you're more specific and it, you're right. It could be the difference of one additional parameter, one additional thing that you're saying in the messaging that you're putting out there. Because all of that's going to contribute to the type of people who respond to your ads when we're talking about leading with advertising.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. The other thing we found is a seasonality to it, and you and I have talked about seasonality a lot when it comes to sales. But we've found that the same keywords don't work the same all year long, that there's different motivations that things change. And so, we're kind of starting to keep track of that now for the first time, and I'm excited.

You know, we probably won't reap the benefits of that until next year, but that's how far ahead we have to be, to know when and how to start pivoting and adjusting.

David: Yeah, I can see exactly how that could be the case. And it's something that you discover through doing it, right? Through iterations. You try different things and you say, Hey, this isn't working. This used to work. What's the reason for that? So a lot of it too is sometimes talking to people.

One of the things that we've done for a long time is when people make a decision not to work with us, or sometimes, if someone expresses interest in working with us, but then doesn't follow through, we'll reach out to those people and find out.

"Hey, it looks like you were thinking about contacting us. Looks like you were maybe thinking about scheduling a strategy session with us. You didn't do it. What was it that held you back?

And the answers you get from that can be extremely helpful in terms of finding out what might also be holding other people back.

Jay: Yeah. That is so powerful and I think sometimes people are afraid, because they've turned you down and they're afraid that if you make another phone call you're going to be bothersome to them.

But if you do it in the right approach, or it can even be done in a form, a survey after the fact. You know, some way to kind of gather and harness that information. Something really obvious might rise to the top and you're like going, "oh my goodness, why didn't we think about that? It should have been so easy for us to see," but we get that tunnel vision so often.

David: Yeah, and everything's obvious in hindsight, right? Once we figured it out, I was like, "oh, of course. How did I not know that?"

You know, one of the things, too, that I think about unqualified prospects is that they're everywhere. Right? They are everywhere.

And I know one of the early mistakes that I made in my business was assuming that everybody was going to be qualified until they proved otherwise. And that's a tough mistake to make, too.

Jay: Yeah, totally. I mean, you have to be proactive about this process. If you're letting them decide if they're qualified, well then again, you're going through a pile of paper, a pile of leads, whatever it is, and you're honestly just wasting time and time is money.

And if you can get that down to where, your close rate you know, instead of one out of a hundred, you can get, five out of 20 because you've got 20 good leads instead of a hundred anybodies.

That could change your whole life. It could change your whole business with just that one simple adjustment.

David: Yeah. And numbers like that frequently do. They change everything. They change your life, they change your business, they change the number of sales you're going to make. They change everything.

And when we look at it, and think in terms of the fact that, yeah, we have to determine if somebody's qualified to do business with us. But on the flip side, they are also deciding whether or not we are qualified to do business with them.

So as you pointed out, sometimes people think they're qualified. They think that perhaps they want to do business with us. But then when we have questions, when we ask them some things, we may determine that it's not a good fit on our side.

It has to go both ways. One of the things that I've always maintained is that when two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they will figure out a way to do it. But if one of them doesn't, it's not going to happen.

If you and I are talking about putting something together and we're both pretty excited about the idea, we'll make it happen. But if one of us, even if he or she's not saying it, if one of us doesn't want to make it happen, there will be excuses, things will come up and it just won't end up happening.

So when you realize that and you say, "okay, well these people think they're qualified to do business with me, I'm either going to have a conversation with them or not." I mean, if you can determine that somebody's not qualified ahead of time, you can potentially avoid a conversation. Normally, if somebody is excited about doing business with us, we want to at least have the conversation.

But very early on in those conversations, you can usually figure out whether or not it's going to be a fit. And if is, then great. You move forward and you work with them. And if it's not, you determine that as early as possible and you either recommend another solution for them, or everybody just sort of moves on and goes from there.

Jay: Yeah. This is such a unique and powerful, perspective. David, I wa s talking to a financial planner the other day and I was asking him, "so what is your criteria for a new client?" And he said, "well, we sit them down and we interview them to see if they meet our standards for a new client.

I was sitting there going, wait a minute, you interview them? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around that they're assessing you to see if you're good for their business? And he's like, no. We've decided years ago exactly what our potential client looks like because we know who we can help and who we can't.

And if we choose the wrong client, then both sides are going to be dissatisfied because we didn't do the work upfront to see, like you said, if there's going to be a cohesive, kind of gel between the two parties.

David: Right. And the other reason that I think he's right is that we can only ever decide if we feel that someone is qualified to do business with us.

We can't decide it the other way. So if you think about it from the standpoint of a financial planner, yeah, they need to decide is this person going to be a good fit for us? Do they have enough money to invest? Do they have a similar philosophy to the way that we operate? And if those answers are yes, then it makes sense to work together.

On the other side, the client is thinking, "okay, is this person on the same wavelength as me? Am I going to trust this person with my money?" But those are the decisions that that person gets to make, right? The client makes a decision. And the organization, the salesperson makes a decision. They both have to come to positive decisions if they're ever going to move forward.

And the thing is, we can't decide for the person. We can try to convince or persuade them to do business with us. But generally, it's far easier to find people who you resonate with and who resonate with you so that you can just put it together.

Everything becomes a whole lot easier when you're on the same page. Like I said, when two people want to do business together, they'll figure out a way to do it.

Jay: Yeah. An d it's because, you know, and we've talked about this so much, it's about relationships. no matter how you slice it, there's going to be a long-term relationship between the two of you. It is going to be about more than just picking up the phone and calling you.

It's going to be, "Hey, how's it going?" There's going to be understanding of each other's lives and each other's needs. I will tell you another point is I'm getting really good, because I spent so much time on the phone,...

When we think in terms of what makes us different from our competitors, a lot of it should be addressing who is our ideal target market? And it's largely going to consist of people who want to do business the way that we do business, and then matching up our style of business with the way that they want to do it.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will ask the question, what makes you different? Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Thank you for asking me to be with you again. David. I love this question because if we don't know what makes us different, I think it becomes harder to sell or to present yourself or anything else, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and playing to your strengths.

Well, that's obviously something that we should be doing, but I've met a lot of people that don't have a self-awareness. They wouldn't be able to answer this question, and so they don't really know where to focus and they're kind of haphazard.

David: Yeah. In the promotional products industry in particular, people struggle with this because you have all these distributors who are essentially representing very similar lines of product or the same lines of product from the same manufacturers.

So a lot of people look at that and they say, well, how can I be different if I'm selling exactly the same products as all the other people that I'm competing with? And if you ask that question in a rhetorical sense, well, how can I possibly do it? You're doing it wrong. You need to actually ask yourself that question in a way where you demand results of yourself and sit down.

Bullet point it out. What is it that makes me different? What could make me different? What can make me different? A lot of times when I ask the question in live seminars and I say, what is it that differentiates you from your competition? And sometimes people will shout things out and sometimes somebody will say service, right?

And I'll say, who here feels their service differentiates them and sets them apart, and 40% of the hands in the room go up? And I say, okay, keep 'em up and look around. You know, can you all be right? Can your service differentiate you from the other people who have their hands in the air?

And it's kind of a rhetorical question, but the answer kind of has to be yes. It has to be yes. I have to be able to differentiate myself in a way that justifies my existence in the market. And so I can be different. I can be different than you. We can both be great potentially in different areas. You know, if you think in terms of the Walmart approach, you know, their thing is cheapest price.

Ideally, we don't want to be that in our market, right? But there is probably something that we can do that will better serve the clients that we're looking for than what other people in our market are doing.

Jay: Yeah, it's such an important question if we're all selling the same product. Then what's going to make somebody choose me over somebody else?

And we talked about it in the last podcast. Relationships can be a, a certain part of that, but our systems are turnaround. You know, there's so many things we can look at internally to say that we live up to that.

I think the other hard part, and maybe it's an important part, is to figure out how to assess what your competitors are doing.

If you're losing sales to your competitors, can you try and assess what they're doing that is making them win and you not?

David: Yeah, and for a lot of people, the difference between an online business and an offline. Is like night and day. Very often there are offline businesses that are trying to compete with online businesses, which have a completely different set of rules and a completely different set of benefits.

So very often, rather than saying, how can I compete with this website or whatever, it's often better to say, how can I be competitive among the people who aren't really interested in buying from a website, the people who are actually interested in buying from a human? If I'm selling as a human, right? If I'm selling through a website, then I have to ask the opposite question.

But there's always something that we could and should be doing that will differentiate us from our competitors, and that's what we need to find out.

Dan Kennedy, the marketing legend, I remember he said in a seminar one time, the question that we really need to ask ourselves:

Why should I do business with you versus any and every other option available to me, including doing nothing? And I was like, wow. Mind blown. Right?

But I've considered that question so many times over the years. And the last part of it, "including doing nothing" is huge. Because the biggest thing that people tend to do when they're not buying is they're deferring.

They're delaying, they're not doing anything. So the answer to that question has to position us in a way where doing business with us is better than them continuing to do what they're doing or doing nothing.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And such a great point. I'm just sitting here thinking about ways to differentiate myself. I personally am somebody who I don't want to talk to anybody. I want to do it all online.

I will look for every last option to do it online. But if I'm looking for it online and then suddenly I get something in the mail that is a free piece of, you know, talking about promotional products. No website is going to do that, right?

And so now I have something tangible and there's a name attached to that. And if that gets followed up by a phone call, then that's a way in the door, that a website is never going to do.

A website is going to sit there. They're going to do their Google ads and everything else, and they're going to be competing for the same space in those search engines.

And so for you to try and rank even at a place where you're going to get seen can be very difficult. So, the website path, I think in many ways is the harder path if you're not already dominant in that area.

David: Right, and so many of the people that we work with are individuals or small businesses that are looking to get attention. They're looking to create awareness in their market. They're not sure how to do it. They look at all the online solutions and they get overwhelmed by that.

But it really is apples and oranges. And one of the analogies I use very often is it's the difference between the kind of person who is going to hire a contractor to put a deck on the back of their house or go to Home Depot, buy the lumber, buy the nails, buy the tools, buy the saws, and do it themselves, right?

The people who end up going to the websites are the do-it-yourselfers. And so for most business, If you don't want to compete with that, then you need to make sure that that's one of your differentiators. That you're looking for the people who would much rather interact with another human being.

And even those who might prefer to do business online, like you indicated. If I can do it quietly myself, I'm happy to do that. The only time that's really different is that if you're going to buy something and you know somebody and you trust somebody in that realm, then you're actually kind of excited to pick up the phone.

When you want to buy something from somebody that you know and like and trust, as the old saying goes, you're excited to do that. You'd rather do that than go online and find it. Which also goes back to our last discussion about relationships.

So, When we think in terms of what makes us different, a lot of it should be addressing who is our ideal target market? And it's largely going to consist of people who want to do business the way that we do business, and then matching up our style of business with the way that they want to do it.

But identifying those people and disqualifying those who don't meet those criteria are really the quickest ways to do that.

Jay: Yeah, I love that because I think so often in business, we feel like we have to sell to the whole world, like everybody is our client and that makes it very hard to zero in, very hard to market to. You're going to dilute your marketing power when you do that

And what also occurs to me, David, is that you can do both. I mean, in the business model I'm in, we have a website that gives information. But we also offer a free 20 minute consultation. So now you've got kind of both. If they just want information from the website, then great.

If they want to talk to a human being and have specific answers to their situation, then great. And we do well off of both of those models. So it's not like you have to pick one over the other. But one of the things I think is very important is you have to have somebody during that consultation who is good.

And if it's you, then great. But if that 20 minute consultation is a sales call, then you'll have blown your credibility. You need to make it a legitimate consultation where you provide a value and a service.

If they just get a sales call, man, I will hang that phone up so fast, you know, and move on to the next person.

David: Right. And I think for a lot of people, a lot of businesses, a lot of salespeople, the website is a good place for them to be able to deliver information that will advance the sale, advance the conversation.

So if you've got access to resources like that, you can say to someone who would like to interact with a human being you can go to the website, you can download that, or if you'd like, I'll email it to you.

And the people who want to do business with humans might say, "yeah, just email it to me. I'd rather do that." So identifying your target audience, letting people know the way that you do things. Those are the big differentiators that people are looking for. And at that point, a lot of it becomes simply finding the right audience.

...

Building and strengthening client relationships is critical. Some people feel like they can get more attention from a salesperson calling than they get at home because maybe they feel like this person's listening, paying attention and then asking about it.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing strengthening client relationships. Welcome back.

Jay: Hey, David, once again. It's great to be here and I think that this is another really, really important topic. The key word for me is relationships. I think that oftentimes you see people with a business model who want to "turn 'em and burn 'em," so to speak, and they don't think about that word, relationships and how important it is.

David: Yeah. And very often, even if they don't intend to do it, the tendency among many salespeople is to get in there, make the sale, move on, get to the next one, get to the next one, get to the next one. And when it happens this way, it's very difficult to really maximize the value of those relationships in terms of dollars, but also just in terms of the relationship itself.

When you do that, when you just get in there, you sell something and then you move on to the next one, you're not really building and nurturing a relationship, which is critical if you don't want to have to constantly replace the clients that you're losing because you're not maintaining those relationships in the first place.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is that there is for most companies a customer acquisition cost. And so if you've already paid that cost to get that customer, well, that goes away if you can build a relationship and they continue to use you. That to me is just such an important approach.

If you're just doing it one at a time, you're going to pay that cost every single time, and it's going to lower your profit margins.

David: I completely agree, and people talk about that sort of thing all the time. We all know that it costs a whole lot less to resell an existing customer than it does to find and sell a new customer.

We all know it intellectually, but it is rarely practiced as well as it could be and should be within most businesses. You know, an analogy that helped me a lot was when I realized that when we're building a client base, it's a little like building a brick wall. You know, you get that first brick in place and then you get the next brick in place and the next brick in place, right?

So your first year in business, you've got this sort of layer of bricks. These are each of the initial customers that you brought in. And then, your second year in business, if you're able to maintain all the customers you brought in the first time, then you can add on, you can layer in another layer of bricks, another layer of customers, and then your third year you can build in a third level and you can continue to grow it like that.

And eventually you've got this great monolith of exceptional clients who continue to pay you money on an ongoing basis. But the problem is that we are not able to retain those customers. You get a crack in that, one of the bricks disappears from the first level, then your second year in business, you're starting out by plugging the holes.

You have to replace those missing customers. And so everything takes a lot longer. You're essentially reconstructing your customer base, and a lot of it is unnecessary if we would just focus on strengthening and maintaining those client relationships.

Jay: Yeah, and there's several ways to do that, right?

Phone calls, emails, drip campaigns from your customer management system. There's a lot of ways to do that. But I got to tell you, you know, as somebody who's on the phone all day long doing sales, when I already know that person and they know me, it's just easier all the way around.

I mean, it just feels so good when I call 'em and they're like, "Hey Jay, how's it going?" Instead of, "what do you want?" You know, "I don't have time for you." It doesn't just affect your sales, I think it affects your peace of mind, right? To work with customers who know you and like you, and know you provide a good service. That's just a great feeling and it really helps motivate you, I think, to move forward.

David: Yeah, and so much of it is a mentality issue. If we go into that call with the idea of "I want to sell this person something." With every single call, then that's not going to build and strengthen the relationship. Sometimes those calls are just designed to find out how they're doing, what they need, what they're struggling with, how the last thing that we sold them worked out for them, what's working for them, what's not working for them. Because those are the types of things that many salespeople never bothered to do.

They're just so busy, as you indicated, just sort of churning and getting from the next customer to the next customer, to the next customer that they miss out on, okay, well what happened with that order? What happened with that thing you bought from me? Did that work out well? Are there things that could have been done better?

If you're buying something for me, and this is particularly true in the promotional products industry, where sometimes people will buy promotional items and we'll contact them back and say, Hey, how did that promotion go? And they say, you know what? It's still here in a box by my desk. We haven't given them out yet.

Well, that's not going to get the job done, right. Not only is that not going to get you a reorder, it's not going to get them whatever result they wanted from buying that product in the first place. And so those are the types of things that need to be corrected.

So very often, what I recommend for my clients is that when there is follow up, effective follow up on a sale, it's not just about, are you out of the thing you bought for me yet, and do you want to buy more? It's about how did that go? What might have worked better? What other alternatives could and should we consider? Because that's the type of thing that allows them to recognize that we're actually trying to solve a need for them.

We're trying to solve a problem as opposed to just providing them more and more stuff.

Jay: Yeah, I love this concept. Something as simple as a follow up call to say how did that work out? And if it didn't, help educate them on how they could do it better and come up with strategies together to make it work, and not make it sound like I'm just pressuring you for more product.

I think that that builds a powerful relationship. And maybe they don't need more product right now. But because you've taken the time to do that, it's one of the things I love about your brick wall concept is you may not even be calling the first layer right now.

But you're going to get surprise orders from them that you weren't expecting because they're starting another campaign or whatever. So it stops being just when I call, I get an order. And starts being this constant income stream from all of these relationships that I've built over time. And that's a lot less work, right?

David: It is a lot less work, yes. And one of the things that we focus on in our Total Market Domination course with our clients is the idea of creating value in every communication with a prospect or client.

So if somebody bought from you previously, when we're reaching out to them, it's not just about asking for the order. It's about creating value and asking yourself a question, how can I create value in my next communication?

Whether it's an email or a text, or a phone call. Not just the idea of "checking in" or "seeing how you're doing," but being able to say something that will actually create some value for them in terms of an idea, a thought they didn't have, a concept they hadn't considered before.

Something that allows them to think, "oh wow, that's great. I hadn't thought of that." And then for a lot of people, Potentially automating that sort of thing. And that's another one of the things that we get involved with in our program, is allowing our people to create, set up drip campaigns that are designed to create value for the prospects and clients, even when we're not physically in front of them.

Because too often, one of the reasons that follow up doesn't happen is, oh, well I don't have time. I'm too busy. I'm distracted. Right? I'm busy dealing with other clients.

But when you are able to. Create value in your communications and potentially stack that value in the form of messages that are going out on an ongoing basis to create value for the specific purpose of creating value for those customers. It creates a level of loyalty that most people never see.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think, you know, when you talk about value in emails, I know from my own personal experience, going through all the emails we get, and let's be honest, we get so many emails. When they're just like, "Hey, we've got a special on this." I'm like, "delete."

But when for example, if I got an email saying, here's a promotional product success story, right? Something like that, to me I would be much more likely to read that if I rely on promotional products. Because I know that's going to help me. And educate me a little bit.

So we try that in every one of our drip campaigns as well. We've got to have something more than just a price point or a sale, something valuable that will draw them in. And also, I think it helps them know that you care, you want to educate them. So again, it changes that relationship. So, so important.

David: And when we think about the idea of building relationships or strengthening relationships, obviously it involves communication. Business relationships are very much like personal relationships. So it requires communication.

And sometimes we can even build into our nurture campaigns,...

To earn what you're worth, you need to find and eliminate the bottlenecks. Consider this: When you're outproducing what you are earning, that creates friction. It creates a bit of tension. And in most well-run organizations, the organization says, "this person needs to be compensated more."

And if that's not happening in the organization you're with, if you are outproducing what you're earning, it means that there are plenty of opportunities for you somewhere else that will actually recognize and appreciate that value and reward you accordingly.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be asking the question, are you earning what you're worth? Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, it's great to be with you again. And as I was thinking about this question, I realize I'm not sure I know what I'm worth. I know some people that say, you know, my time is worth this much money, and if I'm not making it, then I've got to change something or do something. I'm not there yet. I'm just not.

David: Yeah. I think you're not alone. I think there are a lot of people who struggle with this, and the real challenge comes in the last half of the question, you know what you're worth because can't answer the question until you determine that part of it. Are you earning it?

Well, I don't know. I have to know what I'm worth. Or I have to decide what I'm worth, choose what I'm worth. Choose what I think I'm worth. I think, and I've said this to a number of people over the years, the reason that I ended up getting into business myself is that I couldn't find anybody else who would be willing to pay me what I thought I was worth.

Right? , you work in different jobs and you say, okay, well I feel like I'm worth more than this. Well, when you start your own business, you're earning what you're worth because if you're not producing anything, you're not earning anything. And if you start earning stuff, then whatever you're producing justifies it.

And so essentially you're earning what you're worth. But still, even with all that, a lot of times, those of us in sales or those of us who own businesses, may feel like the work that we're doing is costing us too much in terms of time and energy and effort and not producing what we're looking for in terms of financial results, which is the reason I ask the question.

Jay: Yeah. I think it is so important that there's other ways to be paid for your worth. You know, if you're in a place where you get job recognition, where they listen to your ideas, where you can climb up the ladder, for a lot of people that's worth more than the bottom line paycheck. Now, if they're not getting enough to pay their bills, then obviously cash is king.

But all of the surveys I've seen say that people would really take less money if they felt like they could get rewarded in other ways. Now, when you're working for yourself, that equation changes completely.

David: Yeah. And I mean, a lot of times people start their own business. They do their own thing because they figure it's going to give them all sorts of time freedom and things that they don't have in a regular job. And very often they find out it's exactly the opposite.

I think it was Michael Gerber, the author of the EMyth who talked about the fact that there are a lot of people who work for other companies and they say to themselves, "okay, this guy's a jerk. I'm going to start my own business."

And they stop working for a jerk and they start working for a maniac... themselves. And when I heard that line I'm like, "that is so true."

So often we will do things in our own businesses that we would probably never do for another employer in terms of the amount of hours that we'll put in, the amount of thought that we put in, and all that sort of thing.

Now, there are employees who do that. There are employees who are really focused on that and who really give their all to a job. But when you are an entrepreneur, particularly if you're a solo entrepreneur, when you're kind of doing your own thing, you're the business.

And so the things that you do have to count, they have to matter. And the actions we take have to generate. enough of a result that we're able to get the kind of money that we need to make just to maintain the business, let alone earn a good living.

Jay: Yeah. And don't you think we kind of romanticize what it is to be an entrepreneur, to be a small business person?

You know, we picture all the good. , you know, all the freedom that we're going to have and everything else. And sometimes what we did is we gave ourself twice the work and half the pay. And so, it becomes hard when you think, you know what your worth, but you just can't figure out how to get there.

David: Yeah, exactly. And it is very romantic in the early stages because you have this idea of what it's likely to be like, which is often very different from how it actually works out.

So whether someone is an employee or an employer, the idea of earning what you're worth starts with identifying, okay, well, what am I worth or what would I like to be worth in terms of dollars, in terms of time freedom, in terms of relationship freedom, all that sort of thing.

Because it all plays into it. If you are a people person and you like interacting with other people, and suddenly you're forced to work by yourself from home, that's going to be an issue for you.

So for some people, currency is interacting with others. And so we have to think in terms of what's important to me as far as my work life is concerned?

Does it involve interacting with a lot of other people? Does it involve learning things? Because there are some people who are real learners and they like to constantly be learning new things and testing new things and applying new things.

And for them that can really get them fired up and that can be a form of currency as well --learning new things, growing within a job, growing in terms of responsibility. Because all of that is designed to increase your worth to the business, but really, ultimately to the market, which is the most important thing.

If you're able to increase your value to the market, the people who buy from your company, then your value goes up. And sometimes we try to increase our value to an employer, and maybe the employer just has a certain view that's not going to line up with that.

So I feel like whenever we focus on trying to increase our value to the marketplace, we're likely to create better results.

Jay: Hmm. I think that's an excellent point. I think also if you can really establish what your time is worth, if you can come up with an equation, then you can start knowing when and how you should delegate, right?

Because if you are doing things that are not worth your time, then you're wasting time. You know, we talk about time capital, right? And we talk about delegation a lot on this podcast.

But if you think your time is worth $150 an hour and you're doing something that you could pay somebody $18 an hour, well, then you're not going to make what you think you need to make. And so you've got to figure out those equations. And sometimes it takes time to do that.

David: Yeah, exactly. And it's also important to think in terms of what is it that's holding you back? We need to focus on what is the bottleneck that is keeping us from earning the amount of money we want to earn or whatever it is that we want to earn as a result of the work that we're doing.

And just as in manufacturing, in the book The Goal by Eli Goldratt. He talked about the idea that there's usually one primary bottleneck in a manufacturing organization. And it's easy to visualize, because if there's one machine in the middle of a company and that's designed to churn out the product and that machine is broken, you'll have people on the front end of the machine who are trying to load it up and they can't do it.

And people on the back end of the machine who can't unload it. And shipping people who can't ship it, and salespeople who can't sell it, because they can't produce it because of that one thing.

When you are in sales yourself or when you own a business yourself, it's not always easy to see the one thing that's keeping it from happening. Particularly when you're in sales.

Because we think of sales as reaching out to people, talking to people, having conversations, closing sales, delivering product, that sort of thing. But within the sales process itself, there are various stages.

Is the bottleneck in the prospecting that I'm doing? Am I reaching out to the wrong people? Am I attracting the wrong people in the marketing that I'm doing? Are my conversations not going the direction they need to go?

Am I not being persuasive enough? Am I not responding to questions and concerns? Am I not addressing complaints? There are a lot of different areas there, and just one of them can be the same bottleneck as the bottleneck in the manufacturing facility.

If you've got one particular thing that is slowing you down, the most important thing you can do is to identify that one thing. Because everything else you do around that is not going to produce the result. All the potential that you have for growing is behind that rock, essentially.

If you're going down the street and you come to a place where the road is completely blocked off, there's a gigantic boulder and there's no other way to get there, you got to figure out, "how am I going to get around this boulder?"

Same thing in sales. We have to. What is it that is keeping us from earning what we feel we are worth? Now, sometimes it could be we just think we're worth more than other people think we're worth, at which point we either need to start our own business or we need to prove it.

We need to generate results that are far more in excess of what we're being paid to demonstrate that we're w

Very often, inferior competitors play the price card:

Jay: I get that question. "Well, I talk to your competitor and they're less expensive than you are." Well, now I have to find a way to let them know, yeah, we are more expensive, but there's a reason. And it's because we're very good at what we do and we have certain guarantees that they don't, or whatever it is.

David: Yeah. A pack of cigarettes is cheaper too, but that can also kill you. No, that would not be a good answer. But sometimes it's what we feel like saying...

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of losing business to inferior competitors. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: It's good to be here, David, and this is one of the most frustrating things for me when I know that I have a better product, I have better customer service.

I know this because I've heard complaints about my competitor and all of these things, but you lose it to them for whatever reason. Well, that can really ruin your day , and it can also affect your business.

David: It really can. And I think just this idea and even the word inferior competitors, probably anyone in business who has competitors that you've run into has had this experience. And you're like, I can't believe they went with that person instead of us.

You know that what you have is so much better and offers so much more and is going to transform the person in positive ways so much more than they will if they go the other way. And yet they go in that direction. It can be extremely frustrating.

So when we think about this idea of how to avoid this, how to avoid losing business to inferior competitors, there are a number of different things that we can do. But I think it starts with recognizing, first of all, that they're out there.

That there are a number of people out there who are not as good as we are. And then it's about, okay, how am I going to be able to communicate that to my prospects in a way that doesn't make me sound like I'm bitter, or make me sound like I'm frustrated? And that can be the challenge sometimes.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. I have people regularly ask me, what's the difference between you and your competitor? And I find that you have to be very careful with this question. And the tactic that I've chosen is to say, here's the value that we can bring you. Here's what I know we can do.

And I try and s teer it back or say, you know, I haven't worked with them directly, but let me tell you this is where we shine. And I know we're going to bring you success in this way because it's always been weird to me that somebody would believe what I say about my competitor.

I'm the worst person to ask. It's like in politics when somebody runs an attack ad, why would you believe the guy who's, you know what I mean? It 's the worst person to ask, but we put so much faith and trust in it.

David: Right. And I think, going exactly along that line, one of the things that we've tried to do when people come to us and they ask us about it, is we'll basically say to them, well, listen, anything I say is obviously going to be biased.

Why don't I fill you in on some of what our customers have said about that topic? And then we've got videos and we've got audios, and we've got written testimonials of customers who have worked with us and we'll point them to that. And allow them to hear what other people just like them are saying about the products and services we offer.

Sometimes there are situations where a customer will talk about a bad experience they had with one of our competitors and the reason they came to us, and so sometimes we'll share those stories as well. Say, well, listen, I can't tell you this personally. I've never personally dealt with this other company.

But you know, we've had a number of customers who were dealing with them in the past, and here are the reasons they gave for switching over to us. They said that they found that we do this better and this better and this better. I don't know if you've ever had any experience with that company, but if you have, you might have noticed those things as well.

But either way, I can tell you that these are the things where we're going to be very likely to provide you with better service in those areas.

Jay: Yeah, that's great. And I don't want to skip over what you said about having customer reviews and testimonials available. That's got to be an important part of your sales process because, you know, I have people ask me all the time, well, can I talk to somebody who's worked with you?

And in my particular line of work, my customers don't want to receive calls every day to give references to people. But if you have a system, you know, if you use an online customer service rating system, or if you have, as you said, recorded video testimonials, that's all very important.

But you have to make a concerted effort and have a system to get those and a place to post those.

David: Yeah. One of the places where we got a lot of them was at trade shows. We would be at trade shows and people would come up to the booth and they would start telling us a story. Oh, you know, I love your program.

You know, I was able to bring in three new accounts as a result of this. And we'd say, wait, wait, hang on a second. Would you do me a favor? Stand over here. We'd put them in front of our booth where our logo is, and I said, "I just want to shoot a quick video. Just tell your story to my camera. Okay?"

"Start out with your name, your company name, and what happened. Okay. Ready? Go!" And then they would say their name and their company name and they'd say what happened. And they'd just rattle off these beautiful testimonials that were straight from the heart. They weren't scripted, there were no bullet points.

They were just saying what they came up to us to say. And then we put those on our website. We have a page on our website. We call it The Wall of Fame, and that's for people who have had successful experiences with our program and wanted to share those experiences. It's at TopSecrets.com/results if you'd like to see our Wall of Fame page.

And so a lot of times now when we have new customers, we'll say to them, Hey, look, take a look at this page. I would love for you to be our next testimonial on the Wall of Fame. And now they can just shoot them from their own homes on their own iPhones and that sort of thing and send it in like that.

But a lot of times, when you deliver what you promise to people, they're more than happy to do that sort of thing if you just ask them. Now, some people are a little shy, they're a little more hesitant to do that. But in those cases, even if they send you an email and maybe a publicity photo that they might have on their website, you can use the photo next to the quotes of what they said.

You can pull out a headline of something they said that was particularly important. Put that at the top in bigger letters as a headline. So they see the headline, they see the person's face. And then they see the description of exactly what they said. And it just adds credibility. And it also gives them a chance to promote themselves and their brand because it would have their logo or their company name on it as well.

So it's really a win for everyone as long as what you're doing actually delivers the results you're promising.

Jay: Yeah, I think that's brilliant. And I think the other part of that is if you can have a system that encourages people who've had a good experience to refer their associates, other companies, people they're working with to you, this can either be done as you know, on your website, you can have 10% off if you refer a friend, or it could be part of your phone call process. Hey, just, is there anybody else you can think of that would benefit from our services? Because more than anything else, more than anything that I see online, if I hear a referral from somebody who has said I've used them, there's nothing more powerful in business, to me, and the way I look at who I'm going to choose to do business with.

David: Exactly. And as you pointed out earlier, it's not like you're going to be giving out phone numbers of all your best clients and having them annoy them at work because that's the quickest way to annoy your best clients.

I've had situations where people ask me that question and I said, well, we don't give out our customer's contact information, but take a look at our Wall of Fame and if you have any questions, let me know.

And they'll look at it and they'll see page after page and video after video of people telling their own words and their own stories. And they'll say, well, you know, I'd really like to talk to somebody. And I'll say, well, you know what? I'm not going to give out that information because it's more important for me to protect my customers than it is to bring in a new one who's still skeptical after seeing all that stuff.

But I've also had people who have actually dug up the information. They go to the Wall of Fame, they find the person's name, they look them up, and they call them and they talk to them. So since it's rare that that happens, sometimes the people on the Wall of Fame will call and say, Hey, I got a call from somebody.

I'm like, well, listen, I didn't give out your number. They must have checked you out. And at that point, you know, they're fine with it. They're not upset about it.

But people can be funny with that, you know, it's like, no, I must speak to the person. But I've got to tell you, the times that's happened, most of the time those people are just using it as an excuse and they don't end up becoming customers anyway, or they don't end up becoming good customers, the ones who actually insist on doing that.

If they can't extrapolate after seeing testimonial, after testimonial, after testimonial,...

When we're doing business-to-business or business-to-consumer outbound calls, those fears can be founded. Call reluctance can seem very real. They might very well say no. They might be rude, obnoxious, belligerent. They might say all kinds of things that you don't want to hear. So that's all true. That could happen.

One of the things that helped me a lot though, is recognizing that we are not doing it for them.

We are not doing this for the people who react like that. We are doing it for the people that we are ultimately going to help. And we can't get to the people that we are going to ultimately help without having to go through some of these people sometimes in between.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic, Is Call Reluctance Real?

Jay: Listen, it's a pleasure to be here, David, and let me tell you, this is one of my biggest issues. I know it's real because I have a job where I spend a lot of time on the phone and man, there are days where I just do not want to do it.

And what's funny is it's actually something that I enjoy, but it requires a certain level of energy. It requires that you are prepared and there is the occasional call that turns in a direction that I don't want to go. And so this is me to a T. I experience this on a regular weekly basis.

David: Yeah, and the title is kind of provocative and I guess I sort of did that on purpose. Because anyone who has experienced this, that feeling of, "oh, I just don't feel like picking up the phone," is going to look at this and say, "well, yes, of course, it's real."

And I think that when we just look at it as call reluctance, then it's easy to say, yes, it's real. What do we do about it? But the reason that I wanted to raise the topic is that I don't believe that call reluctance is actually the issue. if you boil it down, what does it mean? And when I did this for myself and for other people who were struggling with it, it all really just boils down to fear, right?

It's some type of fear. It's not that we're really afraid of picking up the phone. That's the easy part. It's not that we're afraid of dialing, that's the easy part. It's about what's going to happen next. It's about that unknown. And I think that's what people struggle with, without even realizing that that's what they're struggling with.

Jay: Yeah. So I mean, for me, fear of rejection, fear of the no, and I mentioned fear of the negative experience. You know, the guy who's asking the questions that I can't answer or wants to spend two hours on the phone and I only have 20 minutes for him or those kinds of things. You're right, it's all born out of fear.

David: And what's interesting, too, is that today, if you have to pick up the phone and call somebody and you don't have an appointment with that person, the likelihood that they're actually even going to answer, that you're going to get to a live human being is probably what? 30%? 20%, right? 10%. I mean, most of them are going to go to voicemail.

And so voicemails are kind of easy as long as you know what you're going to say when you get a voicemail message. So a lot of it, I mean, at least 80% of it, it's like, well, there shouldn't be any fear here because they're probably not going to answer. Right?

But as you indicated, it's the fear of rejection. In some cases, it's the fear of success. And some people are like, "I've never had fear of success. I love success."

Well, we all love success, but sometimes getting to that success can be a little frightening. It can be a little bit of a struggle. And sometimes it's just, hesitation is born out of fears that just haven't even manifested yet.

Jay: Yeah. They're not real. And, for me, it's asking the question, "what if?" And this is again, something that my parents taught me. I would tell them that I didn't want to do something or I was afraid of doing something and they would say, "and then what?" Or "what if?" Right?

Okay. Let's say you do it and something happens, and then what? And they would play it out until the very end and eventually help me come to the conclusion that my fears are not rational and they are getting in my way. So I think recognizing, like you said, that it is a fear., and then having a way to process that fear in your mind can be so powerful.

David: Right, and when we're doing business calls, when you're calling people who don't know you're going to be calling... if you're doing a cold call, whether it's B2B or B2C, it's kind of the same because you're reaching out to people who don't know that you're going to be reaching out to them. The fears are all pretty much the same.

But if you recognize, well, what's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is they're going to swear at me or they're going to hang up on me and they're going to get mad at me and they don't know me at all. Right? So it's never really personal.

It's just about the fact that they're dealing with whatever they're dealing with on any given day. Their reaction is going to be based on whatever's going through their head.

It has no correlation at all to the person you are or the wonderful human being that you are, or the characteristics that you normally exhibit in conversation. It has nothing to do with that at all.

It's more about them, particularly when the conversations are bad. It's easy to tell yourself, well, you know, that was really more about them than it was about me.

I mean, unless you're doing a lot of things wrong on your call, in which case, then yeah, you want to adjust that. But simply recognizing that if this is the job, or if this is part of the job, then understanding, this comes with a territory.

Like you were talking about a situation where, as a child, sometimes our fears are unfounded.

When we're doing business-to-business or business-to-consumer outbound calls, those fears can be founded. Yeah. They might very well say no. They might be rude, obnoxious, belligerent. They might say all kinds of things that you don't want to hear. So that's all true. That could happen.

One of the things that helped me a lot though, is recognizing that we are not doing it for them.

We are not doing this for the people who react like that. We are doing it for the people that we are ultimately going to help. And we can't get to the people that we are going to ultimately help without having to go through some of these people sometimes in between.

Jay: Yeah, that is valuable. And I don't know, I've been talking about my family a lot in the last couple of podcasts, but my father was in sales his whole life and he taught me what he does for success and he reprogrammed his brain to think that a no was actually a positive.

And he knew his close percentage. And he knew that each no brought him closer to the yes. And that it also took somebody off of his list. Okay, that's somebody I don't need to call back because they treated me like crap. So, boom, they're off the list! Fantastic. I don't have to worry about them.

I can now move on to the next person. So this reprogramming has really helped me as well, knowing, yeah, I don't want to do it, but I've got to get through these and eventually, It's going to happen as long as I stick to it.

If I let the call reluctance win, then I've already guaranteed the outcome, right?

David: Absolutely. And one of the things that we've done in our business is when we reach somebody like that, who is rude, obnoxious, belligerent, whatever it is, we don't discard that person from our contact management system. We flag them in our system.

So that if that person would happen to call us back a few days later, or a few weeks later, or even a few years later, we're going to see those notes in the system that say exactly what that person did and how they treated us and how they acted in those situations so that we can then make a decision about whether or not we would like to even do anything moving forward with that person.

Because our time is valuable just as their time is valuable. And so one of the potential problems is if you reach out to a lot of people who are like that and you don't keep track of it, you might inadvertently reach out to them again and now you're just setting yourself up for trouble.

Jay: Yeah. That's such a good point.

And you're going to regret it. Boy, you really will. I think you mentioned the number of calls that go through now. You know, we all have programs on our phones, and unidentified calls don't go through.

And so it really has reduced the number of calls that go through. And so what I do is I actually use that as an excuse sometimes. Because I know I can email if I have an email list or I can text, and those are valuable.

And I still want to use them, but they're not ever as good as a call if I can get through. So the system that I have now involves all three. But calling is absolutely key because I know that's where I'm going to close more if I can speak to them, voice to voice.

But I use my customer management system for long-term drips. So if they're not interested, they're still getting emails from me. Sending out texts. You know, I have customers that only want to text. And that's fantastic. Right? And so knowing how to contact them, that's all part of managing call reluctance.

David: Absolutely. And also thinking in terms of other options. Now, not everybody has this option, but some people do.

And so a lot of what we work on with our clients in our Total Market Domination course, We refer to the topic of first contact as opposed to outbound telemarketing.

Outbound telemarketing is one form of first contact. It's not the only form, and for people who are great at it, obviously, they can and should continue to do it. For people who really struggle with it, and it's just not a good fit for them, you should recognize too,...

If you want to avoid feeling overwhelmed, it's often just a good idea to take a moment and consider: What exactly is it that I'm struggling with at the moment? What are the specific things that make me feel overwhelmed? Then, what's the one thing I really need to be doing right now and what's the next step I can take toward making that happen?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be continuing our discussion on how to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. It's good to be back and I'm really glad we're following up on this topic because after we recorded the last podcast, we kind of sat around and continued the discussion and thought, we need to share this with everybody as well.

Before we were talking about self-awareness. But it really occurs to me that who you surround yourself with, especially on those days when you're feeling overwhelmed, that's going to be really important.

David: Absolutely. And as you said, we started talking about it after the last podcast and the conversation got so good, I'm like, "we need to hit record and just keep going on this topic." Because you raised a great point, particularly related to who we're surrounding ourselves with.

And very often when we are in that negative state that we had talked about in the previous episode, where we bring the wrong "us" to work, or the wrong us shows up to work, you know, the unmotivated, unfocused version of ourselves show up.

When we do that, we limit the kind of people that we're even going to be able to interact with. Because most other motivated, focused people don't really want to be around that version of us. And so the more we bring that version of ourselves to work, the less likely we are going to be to get in front of other people who are going to help pull us out of whatever it is that we are stuck into.

Jay: Yeah, and I think the exception to that, and I've experienced this, is if you have people who know you well enough and you've built trust with them and they are able to tell you and point out, you know, is everything okay? Because you kind of feel like you're off your game a little bit today.

You know, if you surround yourself with yes men, then you're not going to get that. And if you surround yourself with people who are negative all the time, then they're going to be bringing you down even on the good days.

So being able to assess your team and hire appropriately is so critical, and I don't think people really think about it in those terms.

David: I agree completely. I also think that when people tend to give into those emotions, when they give into the overwhelm and they just basically withdraw and say, "no, I can't do it, I'm out." At that point, what are they leaving to themselves? I mean, they're really leaving the opposite.

And there are people who will unintentionally feed into that. If you say, " I'm just overwhelmed. I don't feel like doing this." They'll say, "well, that's okay," you know, "Hey, you don't have to do it." And maybe that's true, and if it's something that's not good for you, you definitely shouldn't do it.

But if it's something that you were committed to, that you really wanted to be able to accomplish, and you're having an off day and you make a decision like that, in a lot of cases, there's no going back on that.

Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. And so in that point you need somebody to say, "look, this is really important. We plan this out. You got this." You know, this is really important because if we can close this sale, then it's going to propel us forward. If you can surround yourself, at least have one person on your team like that, what a game changer.

But I think when we're interviewing people, we're thinking more about will they be able to accomplish a specific task, more than we're saying, will they fit into our culture and will they be somebody who brings me down or brings me up and helps move the whole team forward?

David: Yeah, and even in our personal lives, there are times and there are people in our personal lives where we may not be able to share exactly what we're going through or what we're dealing with.

I mean, there are people who, if you tell them about something that's bothering you , they're either going to then tell you about 10 other things that they're dealing with that are a lot worse, or they're going to tell you that why what you're dealing with isn't that bad. Or they're going to tell you that because of what you're suffering with, now it's going to make it worse for them because now they're going to be worried about you.

Right? There are all kinds of things that can happen in that regard. So your point about at least having one person, you can go to, to be able to say, "Hey, listen, this is what I'm struggling with. What do you recommend," is going to be really helpful.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me, I don't know if you remember the old Saturday Night Live skits, Doug and Debbie Downer, who were at work and everything they did, they would just find a way to make it worse.

I've worked with Doug and Debbie Downer and it becomes very hard to maintain momentum when you have those people. It's a fine balance. You want somebody who can see the other side and give constructive criticism or somebody who's just always negative. and I think that as an owner or a manager, you have to be able to identify how that person is affecting the team.

And let that person know. And if you can coach them through it, great. If not, they just may not be a good fit.

David: Absolutely. So looking around and deciding, okay, who am I interacting with? Who should I be interacting with? Who could I be interacting with to be able to help me out of whatever issues I'm dealing with in terms of feeling overwhelmed?

That's a big one. Another one that you raised in our time between the podcast was the idea of utilizing delegation. So let's dig into that a bit.

Jay: Yeah. Also so important, especially if you're starting out. We've talked in the past about doing the things that are most important that only you can do. But if you are on your own, you know, or if it's you and your wife or you know, starting out.

You have to do everything. But it's not true in today's world anymore. It is so easy to hire a part-time virtual assistant. There are websites like Upwork or Fiverr that I've used many times now because I realize doing this one task is something that I shouldn't be doing, because there's so many other things that are more important for me to do.

And so, I think people often think, well I don't have money to hire a full-time or part-time employee. Well, you don't have to in today's world, and I love that.

David: Yeah, that's exactly right. You really can find most of the skills that you need in a way that is affordable and temporary.

I know for decades, a lot of the people that I worked with in the promotional products industry really struggled with the idea of being able to get additional help. Where can I find somebody to help with sending out invoices and that type of thing? Because 20 years ago it meant you had to hire someone and have them sitting there in a chair in your office doing the work.

Well, that is now no longer the case at all. It is so easy to delegate work to temporaries or virtual assistants who can do it from wherever they are, as time allows, and you get the benefit of being able to just utilize whatever time they have to do it without having to pay them to be there for 40 hours a week, to do what might just be a five or 10 hour a week job.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. But the other part of it is that's their skillset. That's what they do every day, right? So if you're doing it, it's probably not your skillset. It's something that you have to do, you don't want to do. When you hand it over to a professional, like in promotional products, maybe somebody will ask you for logo design or creative layout or something like that.

If you're not a graphic designer or even if you are, I've had stuff produced on Fiverr that it's amazing. Because there are so many talented people there. So you can improve your product and get things off of your plate at the same time.

David: Yeah. In the early days of my promotional products business, I invested in a program called Corel Draw, which of course allowed you to do graphic designs. I had no talent for doing graphic design, but I had Corell draw. And I made the mistake of thinking that if I had a tool that would allow me to create art, that I should actually create art, which was not the truth at all.

It's like saying, "here's a bunch of paintbrushes, go paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel," right? Just because you have the tools doesn't mean you have the skill. And so I learned fairly early on after that experience that it would make a whole lot more sense for me to pay someone to recreate a logo than for me to try to do it pixel by pixel, not being an artist, not being good at it.

Because I could spend six hours on a job that would take somebody who knew how to do it, 15 minutes. And I did that very often in my business and I'd never go back to that again.

Jay: No, and you don't have to, and the product is going to be better. So finding those little ways to offload things that you shouldn't be doing.

I always feel like your goal should be doing the things that only you can do. And then if you can delegate the rest to other people, you're going to have fewer of those days when you're overwhelmed. But then, probably the subject of another podcast. How do you then keep that team moving forward?

How do you delegate and follow up? Because if you do that wrong, if you micromanage, things like that, then you could be destroying everything that you're trying to build. So these are all building blocks that we're talking about.

...

To avoid feeling overwhelmed, consider which version of you is showing up. Some days we start out and the you that shows up is the focused, motivated, energized, action-taking you. And some days the you that shows up is the unfocused, unmotivated, lethargic, non-action-taking you.

And when we recognize this in advance, we can do a couple of things. One is to say, okay, I don't really like the me that showed up today. You know, can I get myself in gear? Can I take some sort of action? Can I get myself motivated? Or will I at least take the next step?

Will I take one small step in the direction of accomplishing what I've told myself and others that I intend to do?

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of how to avoid getting overwhelmed. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. It's great to be here, and this is such an important topic, especially for the entrepreneur. There are so many different things going on, and you know, oftentimes you have to be the front office, the back office, you have to fulfill the orders.

I mean, there are just so many things, and keeping track of it can be very difficult.

David: It can. And before we even really dive in too much, I just want to point out, first of all, we are not experts in the mental health field at all, right? So if you're struggling with actual mental health issues, this is not the podcast to listen to.

But if you're in sales or marketing or business ownership, or just dealing with the day-to-day and occasionally feeling overwhelmed, that's what we'll be talking about. If you're feeling a little overwhelmed or stressed in business, that will be the discussion at hand today. And yeah, as you were saying, Jay, I mean, most of us have this situation at one point or another when you're in business, particularly when you're in sales, it's easy to feel overwhelmed on some days.

It's like, oh, I don't feel like making the calls, or I'm struggling with this, or I'm struggling with that. And just that thought alone can stop some people in their tracks and cause 'em to not move forward.

Jay: Yeah. I think first of all, it's important to tell people it's okay to feel overwhelmed. I mean, that's the reality for most people.

But if that feeling becomes a stress paralysis, like I've experienced, like there are so many things going on. I don't know which one I should be focusing on, so I end up doing less instead of more. That can really be damaging to your business.

David: It absolutely is. And what I find is that in a lot of cases, the things that cause us to feel overwhelmed is when we focus on all the different things that we have to do or all the different things that have to be done. And the fact there are too many things coming at us at once. And it's this habit of looking at everything as opposed to looking at the one thing or the next thing that I can do, which would actually allow us to move forward.

And that I'm sure sounds very simplistic, and to some degree it is. But when we're struggling with that, a lot of it really becomes about our focus. How tightly can we narrow our focus so that we can actually concentrate on doing just one thing?

What's the one, tiny, next thing I can do to move forward so I don't just give up?

Jay: Yeah, and a lot of people I think, sometimes want to give up. But I think it's really important to do some work in advance here.

If you don't have a list or a plan that talks about all of those things that need to be done and maybe prioritize them.

If you don't have that done, then it's going to be very hard, like you said, to say, what is the one thing I should be doing right now? Because you haven't taken the time to plan ahead and even know, so, then it becomes "the squeaky wheel gets the grease," right? And sometimes that squeaky wheel is just the last thing that you should be doing.

David: Yeah, that is exactly true, and it happens to probably all of us at one point or another where there are a lot of things to do, and as you said, whatever's making the most noise, whatever's rattling our cage at the moment gets done when in actuality, that might be something that either shouldn't be done at all, or it should be something that should be prioritized or deprioritized to move down farther on the list.

I think it's also important to understand that all of us have good days and bad days. And whenever we make life-altering decisions on bad days, it's usually not a good outcome. So part of it also is just recognizing when we're having the kind of days where we are feeling overwhelmed when we're feeling like things are too much, and then maybe just sort of holding off on making big important decisions until we feel like we're in better control of our thoughts and our direction and our focus.

Jay: So I think what you're really talking about, this pre-planning and being aware of how you feel, it's self-awareness. And I think that may be one of the hardest skills to master is understanding at all times how you feel and are you prepared to do something. Often, even that bad day, as you said, is going to send us in a certain direction and the next day we're going to regret it.

And that's what we're trying to avoid. Right?

David: Yeah, because what also happens is that a lot of times when we give into these feelings, if I'm feeling overwhelmed and I say, okay, well I'm just not going to do that. I'm going to bail out on this and I'm going to bail out on that. Right? What we're doing essentially is we are programming ourselves to be able to do less, to be able to perform less, to be able to tolerate less.

And each time we do that, it can really become a downward spiral because now instead of saying, okay, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, but what's the one thing I can do? What's the one action I can take on this particular project to keep this important thing moving forward? If we just give up on that or any other project that is important to us, we are training ourselves to do that going forward.

Because the more we get used to and the more we create a habit of bailing out on things that make us feel a little uncomfortable, the less likely we are going to be able to do anything like that going forward, which is absolutely harmful if the goal is personal and professional growth.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point.

And for me, one of the tricks I learned, and I learned it from my mom, is sometimes when you feel like you can't do anything or you're stressed, just do something very small. I remember when she was really stressed about something and instead of sitting there and just stewing in it, she's like, I'm going to vacuum.

You know? And to me, getting the vacuuming done provided a sense of forward movement and the feeling of productivity will often feed more productivity. But sitting there doing nothing that's just going to feed doing nothing.

David: Yeah. And a lot of that I think is about getting out of your head and getting into your body, right? Getting into any kind of movement, taking action is almost always better than just, you used the word stewing, you know, stewing in your own brain and churning stuff over and over again, that's only going to make you less efficient, less effective, less productive. And we need to avoid that at all costs.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, one of the things that I did, because I realized that I suffer from this kind of stress paralysis, is I made a list of little things that I could do. Because I realized my mood, as you said, really determines what I want to do. So sometimes blocking out your schedule is very important, and I think it depends on your personality, whether or not that works for you.

But for me, I found, well, I'm going to make a list of things that I can work on and my mood kind of dictates the thing that I'm going to focus on in that minute. Now I have the type of work where I can do that, other people don't. But that has been very helpful to me so that I can just get that moment of productivity in. And then I feel good about myself and now I can go on to other things.

David: Yeah, and I think the whole idea of taking action based on our feelings, that by itself is a privilege that not everybody has. Like you were talking about, if you have a particular job and you are required to do things, then you may not feel like it, you may not be in a great mood, you may feel unmotivated, you may feel overwhelmed, but in order to keep that job, you have to continue to take action and move forward.

And I don't think that's a bad thing for people who even aren't in a situation like that. Those of us who do have a little more control over our schedules should probably not use that ability to take our own power away from us by giving in, by yielding to whatever negative feeling or whatever negative temptation it is that we have, whether it's the temptation to give up or give in, or eat an entire chocolate cake or whatever your temptation is. Now we're veering into other territory, but I think that sometimes people look at overwhelm in business as being separate or different than any other type of either not wanting to do something or wanting to do something.

But ultimately it boils down to, you know, what are you committed to? What have you said you are going to do? What are you planning to do? And if you are continuing to take action on that stuff, then you're honoring your own stated goals. And when you stop taking action on your own stated goals because you feel, whatever, overwhelmed or tired or exhausted, or whatever the words are, you just continue to disempower yourself.

Jay: Yeah, disempower. That's a great word for it. What comes to mind for me when I'm in these modes is sometimes I tell myself, "fake it until you make it." You know, just like you said, because if I've got something scheduled and I don't feel up to i

When we think about how to handle indecisive prospects, we each have to recognize our own tolerance for pain. How long am I willing to chase? How long am I willing to wait? How much am I willing to sacrifice in terms of my own time and my own self-esteem? Right? And it's different at different stages of life.

I spent so much time in the past just trying to accommodate people who, ultimately, it wouldn't have made sense to accommodate in the first place. And so for me, I've recognized that it's not always a good idea to just do that.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing indecisive prospects. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Thank you so much. This is the bane of the existence of so many salespeople because you think you have somebody, they see the benefits, but they just can't seem to make up their mind and you know that you can help them.

You know that if they would just do this, they would be on their way to a better place, but you just can't get 'em over that finish line. It's so frustrating.

David: Yeah, Jay, you know, I was really struggling to decide if we should do a podcast on this topic. It was weighing on me and I'm thinking, should we do it? Should we not do it? And I went back and forth and I spent eight months, and then I decided, yeah, maybe we'll do it. No. That approach it's brutal and we've all dealt with it.

The term wishy-washy comes to mind where they just can't or won't make a decision and it's frustrating. But it's also kind of unnecessary because when you're dealing with someone who really is just not able to make a decision, it's almost a disqualifier for me. And it very often becomes a disqualifier for me. Because if we've laid out our best-case scenario for why it makes sense to move forward with something we're doing or not to move forward with something that we're doing.

If we've done that and they're still sort of going back and forth and they don't know why or they can't put their finger on it, then they're probably not a good prospect. Because the problem with indecisive prospects is they go on to become indecisive clients, which means every time you want to sell something to them, they're going to have to think about it or go away and meditate on it or whatever it is they're going to have to do.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for everybody. They're not getting the result of whatever it is that they were thinking about buying from you. You're spending a lot of time chasing them. They're spending a lot of time either being chased or avoiding being chased or dodging you.

So for me, it can become a disqualifier pretty quickly.

Jay: Yeah, and I think you've actually kind of zeroed in on a larger recognition, and that is, are we thinking about what type of customer this is going to be while we're talking about them initially?

Because it may not just be that they're indecisive. We may through the conversation find out this client is going to be very hard to work with because they have a bazillion questions, or they seem so demanding or whatever. I think that kind of pre-assessment in the process can be very important.

I also think with indecisive people, you know, you have to have your steps. Have I gone through every step of the process? Have I tried every skillset that I have in the book, and they're still waffling back and forth, then you're exactly right.

Is this somebody that I want to be working with on a daily basis? Is it worth my time? And I think the answer is probably no.

David: Yeah. And when you listen to what people tell you, if you're having some sort of interaction with someone who's considering working with you and you're actually paying attention to what they say, and their story changes dramatically from day to day. That to me is a huge red flag.

I had a situation recently where someone was talking about how determined they were to grow their business. They wanted to get it to a certain point as quickly as possible, and the reasons that they were doing it were all very noble. They wanted to do it for their family and they wanted to reach this particular level of sales, and they wanted to do it sooner rather than later. And then two days later they decided they weren't going to do it because they needed to do something with their house first.

They needed to, you know, fix up their house before they could focus on this. And it's like, okay, well that's perfectly fine. Right? Everybody gets to choose their own priorities. And the person said, Hey, I'm not saying we're not going to work together. I'm just saying that, you know, not right now.

And my response was, well, you know, listen, as of the other day, your focus was on growing your business, doing very specific things to achieve a very specific result to benefit very specific people. And now your priority is to do something completely different.

I understand you're saying that we could work together in the future, but based on what you're telling me, I'm not your guy. You know, I can't help someone whose priorities change from day-to-day, minute to minute, second to second, I can't help someone like that because if today you're headed toward Goal A and tomorrow you're headed toward Goal Z and they're in completely opposite directions, I can't do it.

You know? No one can do it because you can't operate in multiple directions at the same time. And so I think some of indecisiveness comes from people not being extremely clear on where they want to go in the first place. Or not being committed to where they say they want to go in the first place. So for me, when people are committed to going in a certain direction, I know I can help them get there faster.

I know I can help them get farther in that destination. But when they're all over the place, wow, it's a lose-lose.

Jay: Yeah. what's so frustrating about that is in the moment when they're focused, they're in, right? They're going to buy your product. And then the next time you talk to 'em, it's like none of that ever happened, or they've completely changed their mind and you're like, wait a minute. You know, we had this figured out. We had put together a plan, and now they're on a different planet. Man, that can be a frustrating process.

So if you can identify that type of behavior earlier on, then you can move on to other people. I do think that you still want to maintain some type of contact with that person through a drip campaign or something, because eventually they may want to come back to you. But when they do, hopefully they're ready then.

David: Yeah. And I would say earlier in my career, that would be the kind of thing that I would probably continue to chase out. But again, I think you get to a certain point and you recognize certain behaviors.

And for me, with what I do, we have to have congruity in our communications. We have to have congruity in our actions. And so when I noticed that that's the case, it says to me, this is not a good fit. I'm not going to be able to help a person like that. And so if yeah, if they want to come back and if they say, Hey, now I'm really focused on it, and if it makes sense, I'd be happy to do that. But for me, I'm not chasing that out and I'm not saying other people shouldn't, I'm just saying that's the way that I'm approaching it now, because there are so many people who get it, who are focused, who are able to maintain their focus. And those are my peeps.

You know, those are the people that I'm looking to work with. And it is a relatively small subset of the population. And so when you have somebody that you think is like that, and then they may or may not turn out to be that way, you have to make those decisions according to your own guidelines and according to who you think you can help and who you think you can't.

Jay: Yeah, I totally agree. And it depends on the type of business whether or not you can do this, but I've seen where people have steps that identify if the customer is serious. So we've had an initial call and I've said, okay, I'm going to send something over for you to look at. And then you call 'em up and you're like, have you looked at that?

And they're like, well, no, I haven't. Okay, they're not progressing to step two. So I'm not going to try and progress them to step three yet, because they're not showing that they're moving in my direction. Not every business has clear steps like that. But if you can identify, you know, okay, in our sales process, I've requested information from the client so that I can get them a quote, for example.

Well, if I'm having to beat myself up every day to get that information, that's a very quick indicator that this is probably somebody that you're not going to be able to get over the finish line right now. And so I love it if you can identify individual places where you can say, ah, it's time to move on.

David: Yeah. I also think that as a salesperson, we each have to recognize our own tolerance for pain. You know, how long am I willing to chase? How long am I willing to wait? How much am I willing to sacrifice in terms of my own time and my own self-esteem? Right? And it's different at different stages of life. I'm feeling like some of the things I'm saying on the podcast today are dating me in terms of the way that I do things now versus the way that I used to do things.

But I spent so much time in the past just trying to accommodate people who, ultimately, it wouldn't have made sense to accommodate in the first place. And so for me, I've recognized that it's not always a good idea to just do that. You know, we don't want to wait forever. We want to be able to have respect for their time and for our time and just ask ourselves, do these people even do what they say they're going to do?

If they say they're going to respond back, do they respond back? Are they communicative?...