Episodios

  • Choose Your Business Partners & Colleagues Wisely
    Sep 30 2025
    It's important, no matter who you're partnering with, from a business standpoint, from an employee standpoint, from a VA standpoint. Whoever you choose as your business partners and colleagues have to have the skills that you lack, if you want to be able to accomplish the things that you need to get done. David: Hi. Welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the topic of choosing business partners wisely. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: It's good to be here. David. I'm excited to talk about this because this is always an interesting topic. David: Yeah. When we think of business partners, we tend to think of people that we're actually going into business with. But there's really sort of a wider group of people that could potentially fit the bill here. So I think it's important to cover that as well. Kevin: The first one you spoke of, the actual business partner, business partner. I mean that can test a friendship. It can test a relationship, it tests all kinds of stuff. So in your experience, just from that side of things. What are the biggest mistakes that business people, entrepreneurs make when choosing a business partner? David: Well, I've made them over the years. My very first business partner was a guy that I worked with in another business. We decided we were going to start our own things. And so we just started out renting the same office space and splitting the rent on that sort of thing. Then we got involved in projects that required both of us working together. It didn't work out well. I started from the standpoint of we got along well, we interacted well. But neither of us took the time to consider our strengths and what each of us would bring to the table. A lot of times when people start working with friends or family, they think, "well, I know this person really well. I trust them." That's a good start. But unless you have similar visions for what the business is going to be, how you're going to get there, and who's going to do what, you can really end up with a lot of problems if that part of it doesn't work out. Kevin: Yeah. it can go downhill fast. It can definitely go downhill fast. So, in any business partnership, you know, you talked about the fact that there's varying types of them. What qualities do you feel matter most in a potential partner and which maybe are overrated? David: Well, I would say, starting out, you need to look at: Are our core values basically aligned? Do we sort of view the world in a similar way? Are we viewing business in a similar way? Do we view the relationship with our potential customers and clients in a similar way? Because if there's a disconnect there, then you're going to have problems starting with the very first decision. So I think that compatibility is very important. Making sure that everybody wants to go in the same direction, right? If you're in a rowboat, you want to make sure everybody's pulling in the same direction. That's extremely important. If you have complementary goals, essentially that's going to be a very important aspect of it. I think also, what is the expertise? What are you good at? What are they good at? If it's exactly the same things, you need to make sure it covers everything that has to be covered in a business. So, if I'm really good at generating ideas and you're really good at implementing those ideas, then that's going to work out well. If we're both great at generating ideas, but neither of us are great at implementation, we're going to struggle with that. And so you want to look at complementary skills. I think that is probably one of the most important aspects of it. You've got the same vision, but you have complementary skills. So that one or more of you are not doing things they hate, right? If you have to engage in a skill that you don't like, or if your business partner does, then it's not a good recipe. But if one of you is really good at idea generati...
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    15 m
  • How to Get from Ideas to Actions and Systems
    Sep 23 2025
    We'll basically help you to look at where you are now and where you're looking to be in terms of getting something from ideas to actions and systems. Because without those three levels and without prioritizing it correctly, you can spend a lot of time, invest a lot of effort, and not get to the results you're looking for. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the topic of ideas, actions, and systems. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: Good to see you, David. Let's dig right in. Why do so many businesses get stuck at the idea stage and fail to even move into action? David: It's a great question. I think ideas in a lot of ways are kind of the easy part. We have a brainstorm, we're like, this is brilliant, let's do this. And then we have another one has this, brilliant, let's do this. And here's another one. This is brilliant. Let's do this. And then the question becomes, okay, what are we actually going to do? I know this has happened to me over the years in my own business. It's happened with a number of people that I've worked with over the years. You have a lot of ideas. And then the question becomes, what are we going to take action on? And then, which of the things that we take action on, will we systemize? Get into place so that we can take those actions consistently? So that's really the purpose of our discussion today. Kevin: Yeah. how do you personally decide, which ideas are worth pursuing and which to ignore? Because I can find myself to be an idea guy a lot of times too. I'm like this, I got this, I got this. But sometimes it's hard to prioritize what is actually a good plan. Then put it into action versus maybe we just skip that one. David: Yeah, it's helpful if we start out with essentially a data dump of all the different things that we're considering. Just write them all down. Then have internal conversations initially about which ones of these are going to be our priorities. What are we definitely going to lock in? Which ones will we save until later? And which ones are just kind of out there? We don't really have to look at those at the moment. Kevin: It seemed like a good idea last night... David: I find that by, Kevin: before I was falling asleep. Not so good the next day. Yeah, . David: That happens a lot, doesn't it? Kevin: Yep, it sure does. David: I have a digital recorder. I take it with me wherever I go and keep it next to the bed. When I get one of those brilliant ideas at night, I record it on there. Then you listen to it the next day and you're like, that was horrible, what was I thinking? Kevin: What a terrible idea. I can't even understand what I was saying. David: Yeah, exactly. But, I think it starts with that. It's about gathering all those ideas, because some of them are going to be great. Some of 'em are going to be brilliant, some of 'em are gonna be terrible, but we don't know it. Now, a lot of times, it's a good idea to sort of evaluate them yourselves before you start sharing them with everyone else, so that you're only talking to your people about the things that you've already kind of thought through and believe are the best ways to go, and ideally to prioritize those. And then do another round with your people and go through it and ask for their opinion on which things should be prioritized and which things should be deprioritized as it were, so that you can sort of work your way through and have everybody be on the same page as far as what we should be working on sooner rather than later. Kevin: I feel like a lot of times ideas can get just stuck in sort of a neutral. Do you have to put a sense of urgency into turning ideas into action? David: Well, I think you definitely have to prioritize it. So to say that, we give it a sense of urgency, I would say yes for the things that are most important. But again, there's this discernment process that needs to happen on the ideas t...
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    14 m
  • Let Ideal Clients Know You’re Alive
    Sep 16 2025
    We're going to interact with people who are not ideal clients. But salespeople have trouble when they're afraid to disqualify a prospect. To say, okay, I'm no longer going to follow up with this person. I've always viewed it a little like the game musical chairs that you played as a kid? You have a certain number of people going around, and a certain number of chairs. When the music stops, everybody scrambles to get a chair. If you don't have a chair, you're out, right? I view prospecting that way in some respects. Where you have to, at some point, start to prune the list. You have to start to get rid of the people who are not likely to become clients. If you're afraid to do that, you will continue to leave the same number of people and chairs. Jay: Yes. David: And if none of them are buying, it's not going to work well. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing letting ideal clients know you're alive. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, so good to be here, David. And I think this is, again, such an interesting topic. I find that I'm so caught up in the daily. I'm taking calls and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And some of those ideal clients kind of go by the wayside sometimes. David: Yeah. A lot of times we don't even know who they are until we first try to identify them. So, in a sense, the topic itself goes kind of deep. You can't know they're an ideal client until you know they're alive. Then you have to let them know that you're alive. Then you have to determine if they're an ideal client. Jay: Yeah. David: So there are actually a few steps in this. Jay: Yeah, and I think that's such an important thing to know. You need to have a system, like you always have, of identifying those ideal clients. It's hard for me to really figure out if they're ideal up front. But I'll tell you one thing I can tell is when they're not ideal. I was on the phone call with somebody yesterday. He's going to become a client. But I regret the relationship I know I'm going to have with him, because he's already so demanding. And I'm like, this guy's not ideal, but he's a customer. And so, how can I not sell him the product? David: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's harder for some than others, I think. You get to a certain point in your business or a certain point in your career or whatever and you weigh it. Well, I guess we all do that. We have to weigh it. How much of a pain is this person going to be? And what's my tolerance for pain essentially, right? Jay: Yeah. Yeah. David: But you're exactly right. You don't really know that necessarily upfront. So a lot of times when we're working with our clients, what we'll do is start with the people they think are likely to be their ideal clients. And whether that means in a certain geographic area or in a particular industry or in a certain sized company, if they're selling B2B, You can make some initial judgments based on who has been a good client for you in the past, and then say, okay, how can I get more people like that? And then when you're introducing yourself to those people who meet those similar criteria, as you're having those conversations, you can then start to make those determinations about whether or not they are an ideal client, or if they just sort of fall in that general ecosphere of people who could potentially be ideal clients, but maybe aren't. Jay: Yeah, exactly. And not just finding new ideal clients, turning your existing ideal clients into more business. Because if they were ideal the first time, if you can keep that to be a generating ongoing revenue source and relationship... Man, I'd rather do that every day than deal with the other type of customer. David: Yeah, no question. And when you get to the topic we started out with, which is letting ideal clients know you're alive, that does go for your ideal clients as well.
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    16 m
  • Effective Sales Follow-Up: How Much is Too Much?
    Sep 9 2025
    When we talk about the idea of effective sales follow-up, what does that mean? It’s effective in terms of making sure that we’re on the same page with the person, making sure that our conversations are moving forward, making sure that their questions are being answered, and ultimately getting to a decision. Are we going forward with this? Are we not? And if so, when is that going to happen? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing effective sales follow-up. How much is too much? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. Such an important question. And again, something that I struggle with. You know, I have a customer management system, and it shows me I talked to them three days ago. And it comes up on my tasks and it says it's time to talk to them. And I find every time I go through this emotional thing. Are they going to think I'm bugging them too soon? And a lot of times I'll say, let's give them three more days or let's give them two more days because I guess I'm not ready to talk to them or I'm afraid I'll be a bother. David: Yes, and you're not alone. Because it's pretty much impossible to know exactly how often to call any one given prospect, let alone all of them. It's not like there's one rule where you say you must call every other day or you must call every three days or every week or whatever your thing is. I mean, there are rules that have been put in place for salespeople to do that, and maybe it's not a terrible thing, but a system like that pretty much guarantees that you're going to be wrong as often as you're right. And so, if you understand that going in, one of the things that I think it's important to recognize is that people are going to sort of telegraph how annoying you're being, or how often they want to be in touch, want to have you in touch. And if you ask them more directly, they'll be a lot more inclined to give you an honest answer. If we make up our minds that we're going to contact this person every so many days, and that person doesn't want to hear from us that often, then obviously we're setting ourselves up for failure. So a lot of times, if we can find out from the prospect roughly how often they would like for us to be in touch with them, and it's easier to do with established clients, where you know them, they know you. With prospects, it's not as easy. But in the early stages with a prospect, we need to be in touch more frequently in order to get to decisions about qualification levels. Are they actually qualified to buy from us? Do they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, the interest? Do they have any of those things? And if we can't determine that in the first conversation, we need to have a second conversation. But of course, their level of interest in that first conversation will also help us to determine, well, how much time should I give this person? And when I think about how much is too much, one of the things that I've seen a lot, and I saw it myself, in my own behaviors in the earlier stages of my sales career, and then in a lot of other people along the way, is that since we can't know how much is too much, many of us in sales tend to err on the side of too little contact rather than too much. And we talked about being a pest in a previous podcast. I don't want to be a pest. Therefore, I'm not going to pick up the phone and call. And the problem with that is that if we're not in touch with them, when they're ready to move forward, then someone else is going to get that business. So we have to find this balance of, yes, I don't want to be a pest, but also I'm not going to abandon this person so that somebody else can get in there and get that business while I've been working to cultivate it over a long period of time. Jay: Yeah, and it could be that depending on what type of product, there's a time limit as well.
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    14 m
  • Creating Desire in Sales: It’s All About Them
    Sep 2 2025
    If you want to create desire in sales, it has to be about them. Their wants, their needs. The things that they're looking to accomplish from the relationship, because that's where all their desire comes from. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss creating desire with your communication in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. It's great to be here, as always. read this title and I've been thinking about it, but I'd love to hear your perspective up front. What do you mean creating desire with your communication? David: Well, I think if we're In the business of conveying value and providing products and ultimately selling something to someone else, the only way that happens is if there is enough desire created in the other person to make them want to move forward. Without the desire to move forward, it's never going to happen. It's kind of a funny word, particularly in sales. We tend not to use words like desire a whole lot. We tend to think in terms of qualification and segmentation, and we keep it all very clinical. But without the component of wanting it, if the prospect or client does not want what we're selling, then absolutely nothing is going to happen. And the only way that desire is either created or channeled is generally with our communication. Now, if we're offering something that they already want, then the desire is already built in. But if not, if they don't see all the benefits, if they don't see what it can do for them, then they might not be feeling it enough yet to pull the trigger. And at that point, it becomes our job to say, all right what do I need to do in terms of my communication with this person to help either create some of that desire or ideally uncover the desire that's already buried inside there? Jay: Mmm. That's great. I think about my own sales process. One of the things we do in our company is we offer a free consultation, and that's my job. I give the consultation. And there's nothing I hate more than when somebody says free consultation, and what they really meant was free sales call, right? And so the minute you get them on the phone, they're pitching you their product, and I don't. I listen, I ask questions, I tell them about their circumstances, I tell them what steps they can take to make their life better. And I always start the call saying, "just so you know, this is not a sales call. My goal is to give you the information that you need." It never fails. I've never had a call in my life, and I've done probably a thousand of these. At the end of the call, they say, "well, how much do you charge for these services? And I'd like to move forward with you." I never, never tried to sell them on anything. And to me, if you can do it, you can't do it with every situation. But to me, that's just ideal. They're asking me how much I charge. I've created that desire in them without one word that sounds like a sales pitch. David: Right. Because if you go immediately into sales mode, if you start out with that, if you lead with a sales pitch, it's not going to create desire in anyone. Because a lot of the desire that we're going to be able to uncover in our prospects is going to come from the answers we get to the questions that we ask them. And so, you know, the whole diagnostic approach to sales, just like the diagnostic approach in medicine. First, you have to examine the patient to find out where it hurts. Examine, and then diagnose, and then and only then can you prescribe, right? So you have to examine the patient, find out where it hurts, find out what their needs are, find out if they need what we have to offer. If they don't have a need for what we have to offer, then yeah, there's no need for a sales pitch, right? And once we've done that examination, then we make the diagnosis. Based on what you've told me, it sounds like you're looking to accomplish this, and this,
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    13 m
  • Helping The Zero Accountability Salesperson
    Aug 27 2025
    Last week's discussion about The Zero Accountability Salesperson seemed to resonate with a lot of people. And the biggest questions I got were related to how to fix this. How can I help myself and/or my salespeople to be more conscious of the actions we need to take, and to take those actions on a consistent basis? Hi and welcome back. In our last episode, we touched on a lot of important points related to what I would call The Zero Accountability Salesperson Culture: Most businesses don’t deliberately create a zero accountability culture. It just happens when systems and processes are missing. When salespeople say things like, "It’s going great, I'm having a lot of good conversations. I’ve got a lot of people in the pipeline," that tells you nothing. Without metrics, it’s just wasted words. Accountability is not punishment. It’s about providing clarity on what’s working, what’s not, and how to fix it. If you haven't thoroughly reviewed that episode, I encourage you to go back and check it out now. But today, I'd like to give you a quick, bullet-pointed list on the things you can do right now to start creating a culture of accountability for yourself and your sales team. To get started: ✅ Start with one key metric. Don’t overwhelm your team. Begin by tracking a single activity, like the number of new targets acquired or prospects qualified in or out each week. In our Total Market Domination program, we have an Activity/Results Audit that our clients use to track the ten most important activities that lead to sales. But even starting out small will begin to create a sense of accountability for yourself and your people. ✅ Define what counts. Be clear about what “initiating contact” means in your organization. Making a phone call and not getting an answer doesn’t count if no contact is initiated. Real contact, conversations, and interactions count. The rest is meaningless. ✅ Add one metric at a time. As you start getting consistent application on the first key metric, introduce the next one that flows from there. What are steps you and your salespeople need to take to move a new prospect from total stranger to paying client? Those are the activities that need to be taken and tracked in your business. ✅ Create a cadence of accountability. Establish a weekly rhythm where salespeople report on the metrics you require. Make it consistent, like a drumbeat. Miss just one or two and the whole thing will be forgotten in no time. ✅ Build accountability into your systems. Use your CRM or even a simple shared Google Doc to capture and share activity. The easier it is to track, the less resistance you’ll face. ✅ Focus on metrics that matter. Don’t waste time with busywork stats that don’t impact sales outcomes. There are a lot of those, so be sure to measure only the activities that truly drive sales results. ✅ Link activity to outcomes. Help salespeople understand how improving even one single metric (like initiating new contacts) drives the next step (like getting those prospects qualified in our out as quickly as possible.) When you do this correctly, accountability feels more like a reward than a punishment. ✅ Frame accountability as support. Make sure your team understands this isn’t about a lack of trust. It's about you helping them to systematically identify and eliminate the bottlenecks that keep them from selling up to their potential. ✅ Stay consistent. Don’t let reporting slide over time. The moment accountability becomes optional, the culture of zero accountability will come roaring back to life. ✅ Adapt for individuals. High performers might require less oversight, but everyone benefits from clarity. Make sure everyone in your organization knows that you're there to help them thrive. This means customizing expectations of your team, without ever lowering standards. The best salespeople want to succeed, and they'll be open to any of your efforts to help in that regard...
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    5 m
  • The Zero Accountability Salesperson
    Aug 20 2025
    The zero accountability salesperson is at a big disadvantage. Selling is all about being able to produce. And the only way you're able to produce is if whoever is doing the selling has some level of accountability, whether it's to themselves or to a sales manager, or to your spouse, whoever it is, right? If you get home from work, and you didn't sell anything as a salesperson, you might get in more trouble at home than you got in at work. So accountability is always big. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the zero accountability sales person. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: Good to see you. Zero accountability salesperson. What does that look like in a sales team? David: Salesperson? Salespeople? It's not pretty, man. It is not pretty. And it's nothing that anyone deliberately sets out to do. In most sales organizations, the problem is that the company itself does not have the systems and processes in place to allow their salespeople to become more accountable to anything. I mean, a lot of times salespeople are held accountable for sales. Are you hitting your numbers? Are you generating the sales that you need to generate? But if they're not tracking other things, then they really have no idea what it is that's going to get them to the numbers that they really need to reach. Kevin: So how does that lack of accountability affect the overall sales performance of the team? David: Well, it's not good because it's just erratic. It's all over the place. You'll have some salespeople who are very good and very consistent because that's the way they're wired, and you'll have other salespeople who are all over the place. And the reason I thought this was a good topic to have, is that I was having a conversation with someone earlier today, someone who's considering joining our Total Market Domination program, and she was talking about the fact that she's got a number of salespeople in her organization, and she doesn't feel like they're all sort of on the same page. They're not doing the same things. And when I started talking to her and asking her about what sort of accountability was in place, she was sad to admit that there wasn't a whole lot of it. And what happens when you're in this situation, as a business owner or as a sales manager, if you find that you're having conversations with your salespeople and you're saying to them, so what's going on? How's everything going? And they say, oh yeah, it's going great. Having a lot of great conversations. Got a bunch of people on the fence or people I'm working, got a lot of leads I'm working and everything like that. That tells you nothing, right? It tells you nothing. It's feel good talk, but it's wasted words. Because until you are able to provide any sort of metrics, any sort of numbers, any sort of accountability that turns those comments into something real, you just don't have anything that you can even help them with. Kevin: I think a lot of times salespeople have their methods. They love their methods. That's their tried and true, understandably so. Is it hard to get sales teams on the same page when it comes to accountability when people want to kind of do it their own way? David: Well, it certainly can be, and if you've got a sales person who is a high performer, that person may just want to do it their own way, and they might not be open to a whole lot of conversation or a whole lot of interpretation Kevin: And you might not worry about it. David: Exactly. And that's very true. And I'm not saying that you should have different standards for different people in the organization. I'm just talking about what actually happens in the world. And so when you've got salespeople who are very good at what they do, and they don't need to provide you with some of the additional data that would allow you to help them figure out where things might be going wrong,
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    14 m
  • Your Biggest Bottleneck to Sales
    Aug 12 2025
    There's always going to be a bottleneck in sales. There's always going to be something that is not working as smoothly or as ideally as it could or should. And our job is to constantly identify, what is it now? What is it today? Now that I got this other thing fixed, what's the new thing that's slowing us down? David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss your biggest bottleneck to sales. Welcome back Kevin. Kevin: Great to see you, David. And this is definitely one that I think anybody can relate to no matter what business you're in, but you're talking about your biggest bottleneck to sales. Let's not bury the lead. What is it? David: In every business there is generally, more than one bottleneck, but there's one big one that is going to keep you from hitting the next bottleneck, or the one after that, or the one after that. And if you don't tackle that first one correctly and get rid of it, then you never get to down the line. It's like an assembly line. If you think about a factory that's manufacturing something and there's an assembly line, if there's a problem at the first station in the assembly line, everything stops, right? Because you can't move to step two until you've done step one. And so for most of us, when it comes to sales, there is a bottleneck. And it might not be at the very beginning. It might be towards the middle, or it might even be near the end. But until you identify what your biggest bottleneck is, you cannot apply the appropriate resources necessary --the time, the energy, and the focus --to blast that thing out of there, so that you can then move forward with everything you need to do. Kevin: All right, so you couldn't just give me the one thing. That's fine. Can you give me some of the more common bottlenecks that you see when it comes to sales? David: Well, sure. When you're in a selling situation, what are the biggest bottlenecks you run into? Well, I'm having trouble reaching the person that I need to reach, right? They're not responding to me. Or some people, toward the end of the sales process, they get right up until the point of closing and then they choke. So that's an example of a bottleneck where if you don't get that one nailed, you can go all the way through a sales process, then get to that point and then not be able to close the sale and everything is kind of wasted. So looking at the steps along the way, what are you going to look at? You're going to look at the people that you're interacting with, the conversations that you're having with them, the timeframe that it takes you to get them from point to point. Because for a lot of people, that is a big one. Not being able to set a pace, set a tempo that allows you to be able to get to that sale sooner rather than later, that could be a big bottleneck for people. A lot of times we have an idea of how we would like the sales process to go. But if the client has a different idea, we're going to have to follow what they're going to be willing to go along with. So in those situations, if we say, alright, I'm going to try to do everything I can here to advance the process to get them to the next step. Maybe it's just a matter of, in the promotional products industry, will they send me the art? They may have agreed to the sale, they may have agreed to the quantities, they may have agreed to the colors and the Pantone color matches and the tight registration. They've agreed to all that. And you can't get them to send the art. That's really frustrating. And it can be a bottleneck that holds up everything. And these bottlenecks that I'm referring to are the things that hold up everything that comes past it. So by simply taking some time to identify what are the biggest bottlenecks, because if you find in your business that it's, "I can't seem to get art from the client," then you need to make sure you put a process in place tha...
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    13 m