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Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

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

    How to Get Prospects to Respond
    Mar 24 2026
    When you need to get prospects to respond, it’s time to fix your follow-up strategy. Think in terms of what gets your attention, what gets you to respond? What makes you want to respond when someone else is reaching out to you? That can also be a great indicator of what you may want to be saying to the other person to try to get a response from them. Now, they might not respond to exactly the same things that you respond to. But it’s possible they will, and it’s not a bad place to start… David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarlane and I will be discussing why people don’t respond. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much David. This is something that frustrates me in the process when I’ve made a good faith effort, I’m expecting a response and I get crickets and it, you know, it’s one of the hardest things to deal with in sales because you got to constantly be remotivation yourself and when you’re not getting a response back, it’s hard to stay motivated. David: It is. And it’s hard to not take it personally sometimes. Even though it’s very rarely personal. It’s hardly ever personal. It’s almost never personal, but it’s still hard to get past that when it’s happening. Jay: Yeah, I I totally agree with you. And again, I think you just kind of have to have that framework that you know it’s going to happen. It’s not personal and you just got to get through those. But I also think that you have to ask yourself some questions and reassess what is our communication system? I’ve found that there are people who will respond via text, but they’re never going to respond via email or they will pick up their phone or they’ll never pick up their phone. So you’re kind of learning, and I keep track of these notes as I’m trying to reach out to people. And if I can get somebody via text, that’s the way I’m going. I just will stop sending that person emails. So, I think learning along the way about each person and their preferred mode of contact is very important. David: Yeah, that is a huge one. such a great point. And I know we’ve talked about this in previous podcasts. We normally talk about it in terms of marketing and sales, but it applies just as much to telephone calls because they’re marketing, they’re sales as well. But we’ve talked in the past about the MVPs of Marketing. What is the marketing message we want to communicate? Which combination of marketing vehicles are we going to use to communicate the message? And who are the people or prospects that we need to reach? And when people are not responding? Well, the P part of it is covered. The people that we’re talking to, the person who’s not responding, that’s the person that we’re talking about. So if they’re not responding, it is either the person themselves, they’re just not going to do it. But if they are still potentially going to be engaged with us, then the reason they’re not responding is usually either the message or the vehicle, like you pointed out. They’re not going to respond to an email, but they very likely will respond to a text. Cool. That’s easy. Okay. Now we’ll communicate via text. They won’t pick up the phone, they won’t return voicemails, but they will respond to text. Great. Once you get something like that nailed down, you’re back in the saddle again. as the old song went. But a lot of times people don’t even think of that because your preferred method of communication might be different than mine. And if mine is to pick up the phone and call you again and again and again and again, which it is not. But if it were, and if your method of communication is text, then you’re not going to respond to me. You’re probably going to get annoyed at what I’m doing and I’m going to be annoyed at the fact that you’re not responding to me. And it’s a simple disconnect that can actually be addressed very quickly. But if somebody is not responding to any of the different methods of communication that you’ve tried, and today there are a lot. If they don’t respond to you on the phone, you can send them a text, you can send them an email, you can message them on social media. You can send them something in the mail. There are lots of different things that you can do. If they’re not responding to any of it, then it’s very likely either the message that you’re communicating to them where they just want to have nothing to do with you, they don’t want to communicate with you at all, or it’s the person themselves, they’re just not going to do it. And for me, it’s very helpful to try to break those things down and when people don’t respond, it’s very discourteous in my opinion. That’s a nice word that I’m using there. It’s very discourteous, and so I try to communicate that to people in as nice a way as I can. Not to say, “Hey, you’re being rude,” but sometimes if I don’t get a response...
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    15 mins
  • Stop Making Excuses Instead of Sales

    Stop Making Excuses Instead of Sales
    Mar 17 2026
    I’ve seen situations like that where people are making excuses instead of sales. Somebody planned to sell something and was talking about it for a long time. But all the dominoes had to be lined up just right before they’d flick it. Flick one of them and get it going. And ultimately, nothing happened. Sometimes we have a great idea, but then it’s like, “oh, it seems like too much work” or “I don’t want to do it,” or “I’m scared,” or whatever the deal is. And unfortunately, you’re building bridges to nowhere when you do that. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing making excuses instead of sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. Such a pleasure to be here. And I’m excited about this topic. And I’m just going to be brutally honest upfront. I’m guilty of this very thing. As I’ve been involved in sales and sometimes numbers would drop, and the first thing I’m saying is, “well, it’s this,” or, “well, it’s that.” And the truth is it, might be. And so I think it’s important to always go back and reassess what you are doing and have you changed something or has something changed in your system? David: Yeah, it’s very easy to do. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Because whoever really wants to say ” it’s my fault?” And yet, our behavior is one of the only things that we really, truly have control over to the extent that we can get control over it, right? We can’t control a lot of outside factors, but we can largely control what we do and what we promise to do, and then try to connect the dots between those two things. Jay: Yeah. I remember I was in a training and they pointed out that so often when a mistake happens or say sales have a problem, we’re looking for the person to blame. And so often it’s not a person, it’s a system. It’s something that needs to be tweaked. But it’s so easy to just pick somebody and say, you know, “you’re the problem, you solve it.” Maybe you’re the frontline salesperson, and so you need to fix it or there are going to be consequences. And oftentimes I think that’s the wrong approach. David: Yeah, I agree. And I think the reason that this topic even came up is I had an experience, fairly recently, where I was just sort of blindsided by someone’s ability to blame every single outside factor rather than just the fact that they essentially weren’t selling. And this is common in a lot of different businesses. It’s common in a lot of different sales industries. A lot of times, “well, it’s the leads.” And if you ever saw Glengarry Glen Ross, “it’s the leads.” And I remember when I was first watching that movie, I was like, oh, that’s brutal. You know, it’s probably not the leads. And then you find out, in that particular movie, yeah, it was the leads, because they were giving them bad leads. That’s really the exception, rather than the rule though. It’s the leads, it’s the market, it’s the product, it’s the supply chain. There have been a lot of really, potentially very good excuses, a lot of different things that people can blame for their lack of producing, but none of that empowers the salesperson. None of it empowers the person who is making those excuses to actually address the issues that potentially need to be addressed. In other words, if there’s a problem with the leads, what can that person do to track down better leads? If it’s the market, are there other markets they can approach? Or are there segments of the market that they could and should be approaching? If it’s the product, are they representing the right product? Is there another product they should be selling? So for every excuse, there is normally something that the salesperson can do to address some aspect of the problem that they’re citing as being the real issue. Jay: Yeah, I think it’s so important what you’re talking about. Because I’ve been in a situation recently where we did a Google ad campaign and man, the leads were just coming in. But then we looked at our close rate, and it was just miserable. And so we had to assess, is this the type of lead we want? Because we’re spinning our wheels here. And so we had to change keywords and go through a lot of thought processes and reassess. Because in that case, it was the leads. But I also think it’s important, especially in sales, to constantly be reassessing your own performance and what you’re going through. because we fall into traps, right? And also it’s hard, the grind can be hard. And so things that you know you should be doing, you’re not this time because it’s just hard. So checking every box, every single time can be monotonous. So I think a lot of times the breakdown can just be with us. David: It can be. And it can be our failure to look at the other options that are available to us. It can be our failure to look at the issues that we’...
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    15 mins
  • Dealing with Indecisive Prospects

    Dealing with Indecisive Prospects
    Mar 10 2026
    When dealing with 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? What 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 recognize 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. 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 do that and they still sort of go 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. That 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 spend 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. 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. 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? If 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. Listen to what people tell you. If you’re having an interaction with someone who’s considering working with you, pay attention to what they say. If their story changes dramatically from day to day, that is a huge red flag. I had a situation recently where someone talked 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...
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    13 mins
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