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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
  • 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
  • Most of Your Competition Is Average

    Most of Your Competition Is Average
    Mar 3 2026
    When I say your competition isn’t that good, that most of your competition is average, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to do things better. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I say, your competition isn’t that good. Right, Jay? Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Do you even know who your competition is? Do you know what they offer? Do you know what people think of them compared to you? Maybe you don’t even know if your competition is that good. David: Exactly. And I hear, so many times, when I’m talking to salespeople, the idea that, there’s a lot of competition. Competition is very difficult. There’s a lot of online competition. There’s a lot of local competition. There’s a lot of price-cutting competition. There are all these different variations on competition. And that’s all true. But a lot of them really, honestly, just aren’t that good. And if you recognize right up front that most businesses are average, right? There’s an average in every business, in every industry, there’s an average. And some people are better than average. Some people are worse than average. There are a lot of average. So if you’re competing with the average or the less than average, then you should be able to do pretty well. If you’re a conscientious individual, if you’re reasonably good at what you do, if you study and practice your profession and you get reasonably good at it, you’ll be able to outperform a lot of them because to the extent that there are really exceptional competitors in your market, there are a lot less of those than there are the ones on the other side. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always believed this, you know, you can get caught up in the muck. When I was in radio, I worked for a radio station that had a built in listenership because it was so ingrained in the community. And what that did is it made it so they didn’t have to work hard to get sales or to get numbers. Now you would think, oh man, that’s an amazing place to be. But what happened is, they started to get complacent, right? Everything was so easy, and then all of a sudden ratings started to shift and suddenly they realized, we don’t know how to sell. Because we’re so used to sitting at a desk and the phone is ringing. And we’re just taking orders. So you’re not a salesperson, you’re taking orders, right? And their competitors started to eat them alive because their competitors had to sell all the time, and they were very good at it. So sometimes you’re successful just in spite of yourself. And that may be what your competitors are in, what state they’re in. David: It really could be as simple as that and as difficult as that, in either situation. But, you know, the idea that the competition is excellent, or the competition is terrible, or the competition is average. In a sense, none of it really matters. Because this is life. This is the world that we’re in. These are the cards we’ve been dealt, right? So our competition is there. We’re there. The question is, how are we going to make sure that we are outperforming our competition in all the key areas of customer contact? I mean, if you were to boil it down and say, okay, let’s say my competition is very good. Let’s say you completely disagree with the premise of this podcast, that your competition isn’t that good, or that it’s average or whatever you say. “No, I’ve got a lot of competition.” Okay, then that’s your question. How do you outperform your competition in all key areas of customer contact? Some people may say, “well, I don’t know. What are the key areas of customer contact?” And if you’re asking yourself that kind of question, that indicates that there’s work to be done in your organization. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And do you even know how the competition functions to be able to compare yourself? I mean, that’s got to be at least half the battle, right? David: Yeah, that’s part of the battle. Maybe it’s a third of the battle. Jay: Okay. David: I was gonna say a quarter, maybe it’s a quarter to a third of the battle. And the only reason I say that is I don’t think we should spend a ton of time overanalyzing our average competitors. I mean, if there’s a really, really good one, yeah, you can take a look at what they’re doing. But ultimately, sure, we all want to outperform our competitors. But what do we really want? We want to get to the point where we’re so good at what we do that it’s no longer about outperforming our competitors. Now it’s a matter of outperforming our past best, right? What’s the best we were able to do? When you’re leading in a market, when you really are the market leader, you’re doing things right, you’re doing things well and efficiently, you’re already better than a lot of your average competitors, then the goal you want to reach for is how can I ...
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    14 mins
  • How to Get Results from Social Media

    How to Get Results from Social Media
    Feb 24 2026
    We get results from social media when we’re able to identify the result that we’re looking to get, and identify the messaging that we need to create to be able to get in front of these ideal prospects to have them raise their hands and express interest. When we do those things correctly, then you can get to the point where nearly everybody you talk to is actually qualified to do business with you. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss how to get results from social media. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. This is a big topic. Talk about opening a can of worms. It’s something everybody wants, and we talked, last podcast about learning online and what great resources there are. This is a place where there may be such an overload of information and different ideas that I don’t know if you’re going to find the answer online. I really don’t. David: You’ll find a lot of answers online. Yeah., Right? Whether or not it’s the answer you’re looking for, whether or not it’s the answer that solves your problem, that is the big question mark. But I feel like this topic is so important because everyone’s on social media. Everyone’s trying to figure out what to do and how to get results. And the reason that I believe the word results is so important is that it narrows your focus. It forces you to think in terms of, okay, what is the result I even want to get here? What am I trying to do? Because as we talked about in a previous podcast, you can go on social media and it’s nothing but distraction after distraction. And if you just turn it on and go in there without a really strong focus in terms of what you want to accomplish, what result you want to get, you’re not getting any sort of result, except you’re going to get pulled into other people’s experiences. So from my standpoint, the first thing we need to do is to identify what is the result that I would like to get from social media? And then you can look at how much time that I spend on there is actually allocated to getting that result. That’ll tell you a lot right off the bat. Jay: Yeah, and I think that there is a misguided focus that you need a large audience, right? Like if I can get up to 10, 000 followers or whatever, that’s not true. it could be better to have a thousand dedicated followers who are potential clients than having a hundred thousand people who may just clog up your pipeline and who really never are going to be your clients. David: Right. And if they’re not responding to what you do, if they’re not liking, if they’re not replying, then the algorithm says people aren’t interested in this. So you’re exactly right. If you just had the hundred people or so who are going to click today’s link on there. You’d be seeing everybody, everyone would be seeing your stuff. But of course it’s impossible to do that. So you’re exactly right. It’s about saying, all right, well, how can I get to more of the right kind of people who resonate with the material that I’m putting out? And I am not speaking as an authority on social media. Okay. I want to be really clear about this. I’m not coming to you and saying, oh yes, I’m the guy for social media. No, not saying that. However, what we have been able to do is to identify specific things that our clients have wanted to accomplish, and we’re very good at helping them accomplish it, once we decide exactly what those results are. Jay: Yeah, I’ll tell you where we’re at right now in our company. As you know, we offer Tax Services to a very specific group, so, I’ve told you in the past, we have spent two years identifying keywords for paid ads, and it’s been a constant process where we’re refining, I do the consultations, And so when I see that we’re getting consultations that are not in the strike zone, I go back to our keyword, you know, the person doing our Google ads, and we refine, and we refine, and refine. And I’ve told you, We’re to a place now, it’s kind of like our secret recipe, where we don’t get a consultation that is not in the strike zone anymore. We’ve been that focused. But it costs us a hundred dollars per consultation. That’s what we’re paying. And that’s a pretty steep fee. So obviously we’re like, okay, how do we get organic people to come to our website from social media, where they’ve seen something that we’re providing, and they’re clicking through and that doesn’t cost us anything, right? So that’s the goal, that’s the dream. But now we’re in another problem. We could probably get tons of people coming to our site. But now I don’t want everybody clicking on the schedule a consultation. Because I’d be back in that same problem. I’d be talking to a lot of people who I can’t help. So this is the dilemma. This is where we’re at in our company right now, moving to social media, but we have to be very strategic about how we do...
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    15 mins
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