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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
  • The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 4

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 4
    Dec 2 2025
    David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will continue our discussion about the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is part four in our series, and today we’ll be talking about learning, segmenting, and the Three Ds. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I really, really enjoyed this. I know I’ve said that in previous podcasts, but it’s true. After each one, I’ve gone into my own business and I’m like, okay, I got to apply this and apply that because these conversations are of such value. So I appreciate your time. I love this. And hopefully it’s been helpful to everybody else. David: I’m glad, I feel the same way, and I’m really looking at this almost like a mini-course. If people were to put together these four episodes and say, “How much of this stuff am I doing in my business?” You can probably implement some things very quickly that can probably help you get some great results. Jay: 100%. David: All right, so let’s do the quick review. And again, what we’re talking about here is we asked AI what will help you to multiply your business because that’s been a focus of our conversations recently. AI came back with some different responses, and then we’re talking about what AI says and how we’re able to help implement those things in business with our clients. And so let’s just recap. Number one was refine your target audience. Number two, develop a compelling value proposition. Number three, optimize your marketing channels. That was our first episode on that topic. In episode two, we covered points four, five, and six. Number four was enhance your customer experience. Number five, implement a referral program. And number six, leverage the power of content marketing. In episode three of this series, we hit utilize upselling and cross selling strategies, which was number seven. Analyze and optimize your sales funnel, which was number eight, and invest in customer relation management software, CRM, which was number nine. Now we’re going to be doing 10, 11, and 12. Eleven and 12 are really bonus because originally I asked it for 10 and then I realized that doesn’t break out well if you’re doing three in a podcast. So I went back to the AI and I said, give me two more. And it did. So we’ll be talking about numbers 11 and 12 in this podcast as well. So number 10 in the list of things that AI says will help you to multiply your sales is: 10: Continuous learning and adaptation. Stay updated with industry trends, attend relevant workshops or conferences, and be open to adapting your sales strategies to meet changing market demands. Well spoken AI! Continuous education. It’s a good call! Jay: It is, and some professions actually require it. But again, that continuous education is often on a service or a specialty or things like that. It’s not really on customer service or the technology or things like that. I feel like in that regard, so many of us are a hamster on a wheel. You know, we’re just trying to keep up with what today is giving us. We’re putting grease on the squeaky wheel and we don’t have time to really think about staying up on, you know, all the latest trends and those kind of things. David: Yeah. And a lot of people just don’t like continuing education, because they feel like so much of it is platitudes. It’s like, I already know this stuff. I already know it, right? But knowing what to do is very different than knowing how to do it. And that’s really what I’ve been trying to differentiate in this series of podcasts is that, yes, these are great statements. Continuous learning. That sounds great. But what are you learning? Are you learning things that you can implement immediately? Are you putting in place processes that will allow you to start getting results right away so you can gauge those results and then adapt, change, or tweak the process as you go to make sure that it’s working for you? So once again, we’re focusing on all the little details that make these general recommendations profitable. Jay: You know, I don’t know where I get it. I think I get it from my dad, but I am on a never ending quest to make things more efficient. I am always looking for the next software, the next device, the next system. I’ve done it since I was 15. My first job was in a burger barn at an amusement park. And I was watching how they put everything on the grill and what they would do is they’d cover the whole grill with burgers And then they would flip them all at the same time, and then they would pull them all off at the same time, and while they’re preparing them, the grill is sitting there empty. And so the line would move, and then it would stop, and I’m like, this is crazy. Put down two rows, wait a second, put down two, put down two, and at 15, I changed the whole thing. I’ve been doing that stuff my whole life, so I I love the tech. I love the next thing. ...
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    21 mins
  • The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 3

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 3
    Nov 25 2025
    David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will continue our discussion about the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is episode three in our series, and it’s about upselling, sales funnels, and your CRM. David: Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. This has been fascinating for me as I look at what AI recommends. And even just apply some of those basics to my own business but also realizing that these are kind of general, and figuring out how to apply them to everybody’s individual circumstances is no easy feat. David: Exactly. And one of the things that I’ve really liked about this series is having the opportunity to talk about the “how” of a lot of this stuff, because as business owners, as salespeople, we’ve heard these recommendations forever. But the question is always, “well, how do you go about doing it?” And so what I’ve been trying to do in this series is to say, okay, here’s the general what you ought to do, but then there’s the, how do you go about doing it? And this is exactly what we help our clients with. So it’s been really fun for me to be able to go through these and say, okay, there are probably lots of ways to do these things, but this is how we do it. Because our goal is to simplify it for our clients. So you don’t have to say, Oh, well, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I do this? It’s like, okay. Implement this, gauge the results, see how it goes, report back, if we need to tweak it, if we need to do something different, we can, but you have an instant starting point, and that allows you to get actions taken, get results back quickly, and then be able to adapt as you go. Jay: Yeah, I love that, that you’re able to kind of cut through all of the noise out there because there’s so much noise, and help them identify for their individual situation what they need because they may have asked AI and we have some of those lists here and items from AI, but again, it’s just a starting point. David: Exactly. So let’s take a look at the things that we already discussed in the previous episodes. And once again, what we’re doing here is we asked AI, what are the things that will allow us to multiply our sales? It came back with number one, define your target audience. Number two, develop a compelling value proposition. Number three, optimize your marketing channels. We covered that in previous episodes. Number four was enhance your customer experience. Number five was implement a referral program. Number six was leverage and the power of content marketing. So now in this episode, we’re going to tackle numbers seven, eight, and nine, which is upselling, sales funnels, and your CRM. So let’s get to number seven. 7. Utilize upselling and cross selling strategies: Offer complementary products or services to increase the average transactional value and maximize customer value. What do you think? Jay: Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I will tell you this was much easier to grasp in my mind when I was in the restaurant business, right? It’s like, you want fries with that? You know, let’s make it a value meal. Let’s make it a, you know, a combo, whatever. I will tell you, we’ve spent a lot of time in my current business identifying what are the other things, other products that we can offer that our customers will want, not things that we can shove down their throat, but what other things can we add that they may be looking for because they came to us? David: Yes, exactly. And I think people hear about upselling and cross selling and they’re like, Oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Most people are familiar with the restaurant, the McDonald’s example, “want fries with that.” So it makes sense, but it’s like, okay, how do I apply that to my business? And one of the ways that we help our clients do that is to identify, okay, well, what does this mean? What is upselling versus cross selling and all that sort of thing? And in a nutshell, the way that I view it, upselling is when you’re selling them a better version of the thing that they’re considering buying or a more expensive version of the thing that they’re considering buying. Cross selling is the idea of “want fries with that.” It’s okay. You’re already getting this. This goes with it. Would you like to do that as well? In the promotional products industry, where I do a lot of my work, cross selling is, “ah, you’re buying t shirts, want sweatshirts with that.” Or if you’re buying sweatshirts, want sweatpants with that, right? Want caps with that. Shirts and caps go together, that type of thing. So, It’s pretty simple when we boil it down, and it’s even better and it’s even easier when we turn it into a process so that everybody knows the words you say when someone is ordering a particular type of product. Jay: Yeah. So I think that there’s two steps, right? Identifying what those things ...
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    14 mins
  • The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 2

    The AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales: Part 2
    Nov 18 2025
    Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be continuing our discussion on the AI approach to multiply your sales. This is part two in our series, and today we’ll be discussing service, referrals, and content marketing. David: Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you so much, David. I’m really enjoying this discussion about AI because I think we’ve already established there are some great tools and resources with AI, but it’s not exactly to the point where it needs to be. But more specifically, can it really speak to your individual situation? How do you pick through that and know what’s right for you? David: Exactly, and last week we were talking about the first three recommendations it made, which were define your target audience, develop a compelling value proposition, and optimize your marketing channels. This week, we’re going to be talking about its next set of recommendations. And it starts with number four on its list is: 4. Enhance Your Customer Experience. Focus on delivering exceptional customer service and creating a positive experience at every touch point to build loyalty and encourage repeat business. That sounds nice. Jay: It sounds fantastic. Again, just do that. You know, but how do you do that? I think I mentioned in the last podcast that so often people go into business not because they’re great at customer service, but because they have a great recipe, or they have a great product. And they don’t really think about how to offer that in a great way. I’m in the accounting field now, which kind of blows my mind and is a different conversation. But I find generally, David, that accountants don’t know how to give good customer service. And they kind of feel like they have a captured audience and so they don’t even try to give good customer service. David: And a lot of accountants also really struggle with marketing because they feel like it’s Jay: Yes, yes. David: Kind of, if not beneath them, they feel uncomfortable with it. They don’t want to come across as a salesperson. They’re very good at what they do and they’re less good at finding the people they need to do that sort of thing. And that’s why a lot of them, a lot of small business accountants struggle, because they’re great at accounting and not so great at the things that we’re talking about here that will actually allow them to service more customers. Jay: Yeah, you’re exactly right. Where I’ve come from, the retail side, the customer service side, that’s been my whole background. So, we’re kind of owning our little space in the marketplace, because we’re focusing on that up front, and people recognize a difference immediately. David: Yeah, exactly. So, one of the things we talked about in the previous podcast related to AI telling us how to multiply sales is that some of these recommendations come across as rather general. Okay, so enhance your customer experience is not really the kind of thing you would think of as “okay, this will allow me to multiply sales.” It’s a necessity. You have to have exceptional customer service in your business if you want to survive, let alone thrive, let alone multiply business. But it doesn’t seem to me to be a multiplier in and of itself. However, when we think about this idea, what can we do to make the experience better, what can we do to expedite the experience, make these things happen better and more consistently, that will allow us to get the velocity we need, in my opinion, to be able to then Multiply your sales. In other words, it’s not enough to just do a great job with customer service. We need to be able to do it with a cadence of accountability. We need to be able to do it in a way where it’s happening consistently. People are able to move through our process, get what they need, feel like they’ve been extremely well taken care of, and then we can move on to the next person. Jay: Yeah, when I hear enhance their customer experience, for some reason, I think of Disneyland, like better rides or better signage or, you know, things like that. It’s very ethereal, like, how do I apply that to my individual experience? I think a key here is that our attention span with TikTok and all of these things is so low. And so when somebody lands on your website or when they’ve picked up a phone to call you, if they’re not moving through that process fast enough, you’re going to lose them. And that’s just the reality of the world that we live in. David: Absolutely. And I think this general idea of enhancing your customer experience is good. And again, some of the words they use are delivering exceptional customer service and creating a positive experience at every touch point to build loyalty and encourage repeat business. So those are all great recommendations. But again, the question is, how are we doing those things? And in our work with our clients, the way that we do those things is ...
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    15 mins
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