Show notes
If you're at a point right now where you know you need to be selling more, but for whatever reason you're not -- and you could feel like it's the economy, you could feel like it's the competition, it doesn't really matter what it is -- If it's either of those things or if it's something else, there are ways around it. There are specific things you can do that will help you to get through to the people that you need to reach, and drive them to either a yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down decision. Sometimes the answer is going to be no. But sometimes it's going to be yes. If you're not even giving them the option to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, there's no way you win.
David: Hi, and welcome back. Today, Jay McFarland and I will be discussing Don't Wait for the Economy to Improve. Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Hey, Dave. As always, it's a real pleasure. You know, I've been thinking a lot about the economy, and it's really kind of unique because there are parts of this economy that are really struggling and there are parts that are really booming.
So depending upon where you're at in that spectrum, you could be getting hit really hard or you could just be celebrating, right? In our case, we're definitely feeling the effects of inflation. I can feel it in our client's willingness to make purchases. Cause things are a little bit tighter than they normally are.
David: Yeah, it's interesting. Like you said, some people are really struggling right now. Some people are having their best months ever. It really kind of depends. But when we talk about the idea of not waiting for the economy to improve, I think there are a lot of good reasons for that. The first reason I would say is that your smart competition will not, they're not going to wait, they're going to be out there, they're going to be in front of people.
And if you're not in front of people, then that just means you have absolutely no opportunity to get the business. So I've heard a number of people talking about the problems with the economy. And I've heard a number of people talking about the fact that they're waiting for things to improve. And I saw that comment online the other day, and I thought, we need to talk about this because essentially we have to be selling all the time, right?
I mean, most businesses can't afford to wait around until things get better. Reminds me of that old Zig Ziglar line where you don't wait until all the lights turn green before you head into town, right? It just doesn't work.
Jay: Right. Right, right. It's a great point. And I also think that part of any of your business strategy, you have to be prepared for the ups and downs.
Good businesses know how to pivot, they know when to pivot. So if you're a new business, this is going to be hard for you, but it's one of the reasons why you want to always be tracking, right? Always be watching because there's seasonality, there's economies of the country, of your local economies, all kinds of things that can impact your business model.
David: Yeah. And the truth of the matter is that we only ever have right now. We can't sell in the past. We might be able to sell in the future, right? Nobody knows their future. But yeah, we can plan to sell in the future, but we can't sell in the future right now. All we can do is sell now. We can make plans, but sometimes they happen, sometimes they don't.
Right now is the only thing we've got. So it's always the best time to sell. Right now is always the very best time that we have to sell, because we really have no alternative in the moment. Well, I guess the alternative is wait. But when you're waiting, you're not selling, and other people are.
Jay: Yeah, and I'll tell you, I'm not in a business model where I can just stop selling.
I mean, that's not an option, right? So, we're in the process of talking about our pricing structure, talking about the different products we offer. We are seeing that some products suddenly are of more interest to people. So it's amazing how economies impact people's overall perspective.
And we're really trying to key in on that and decide, you know, are we meeting the needs of current day customers, or are we still trying to sell to yesterday's customers?
David: Exactly. And I hear some people say, and not just now, I've heard this all the time, over many years, and lots of different ups and downs of the economy.
I've heard people say, "no one is buying right now." Have you ever heard that one? No one's buying right now. There's always someone buying, okay? Don't tell yourself there's no one buying right now. Our job is to find them.
It's like a game show. I remember I recorded a video about this years ago. I was talking about how life in sales is like a game show and your goal is to find the buyer. Right? That's the goal.
And sometimes it does feel like needles in haystacks. Sometimes there are more needles. Sometimes there are fewer needles, but regardless, our job is always to find them. There are people, right now, who need the products and services we offer.
And if they don't know that we're available as a solution for them, then they can't buy from us. They have absolutely no opportunity to do so. And one of the other things that I feel very strongly about is the fact that invisibility is only a good thing in the movies, right? Invisible Man? Well, it didn't work out too well for him, as I recall.
Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak. That worked out okay for him sometimes, but not always. It's not always great. And in sales, it's just deadly. When we're invisible to the people who could potentially buy from us, there's nothing that can happen that's good for our businesses.
Jay: Yeah, it's absolutely deadly.
And I think the other thing that's deadly is making assumptions that are not founded on any type of reality. We tend to assume that we know what our customers are going through. We're like, "Oh, I know my customer base. I know exactly what they need. I know exactly what they're going to respond to."
If you're in unique times, then you probably don't. One of the things that we're experiencing is I think our natural tendency would be, well, the economy is not doing well, so we need to lower our prices or we need to appeal to a lower end type customer. David, we're actually doing exactly the opposite.
We've decided that the people who can buy and afford our services are the higher end customers. So we're going back through our lead base. And we're re-approaching people who are really probably less likely to be impacted by the economy in the short term, but they still need our products in the long term.
My initial assumption was maybe we need to just lower our prices and get people through the door.
David: Yeah, and for some businesses that might work, but the truth of the matter, and you really just nailed it, is the fact that the people who are impacted most, whenever there is a recession or recessionary trends or inflation.
A lot of the things that are happening right now, the people who are always impacted the worst are the people who have the least amount of money. It always works that way because people who have money will still have no trouble buying gas. They'll have no trouble buying groceries or medicine or any of that kind of thing.
The people who are impacted worst by these policies are the kind of people who are not going to be able to spend money because they just don't have access to it. So when we're in sales and we talk to a lot of people who are saying, "I can't afford it. I don't have the money," all that sort of thing. We have a couple of options.
One is if we have the option to be able to charge a little less and we want to be able to make that sale, it's a free market system. You can choose to do that, right? But generally speaking, if we're able to interact with more prospects and clients who actually have the ability to pay now. Then it's really a matter of focus.
When we're able to focus in on the people who can actually spend money with us now, then all that other stuff goes out the window. And so much of it is about recognizing that, which kind of goes back to the needles and haystacks, right? There will be fewer of those kind of needles. But when you find them, it makes everything a lot easier.
Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is you might've already found them, right? Cause we were talking, we often talked about having a good customer management system, a good CRM, a lead base, right? We're in a situation, I know a lot of businesses are where they're like, they can't afford to market, right?
Marketing's always the first thing that gets cut in a business. Which is just, I would recommend that that's the last thing that you cut, right? But you could change your type of marketing, right? So we're scaling back on Google Ads, for example, but we've really ramped up our emails to people that we've already talked to about different products.
We're finding success with that. So that's a short term pivot that we couldn't do if we hadn't spent the time to not just intake our leads, but also classify our leads so that we know the different types of products that we can send to different types of customers. Can you imagine doing that on a spreadsheet?
I mean, you can do it. And starting out, maybe that's where you start, but that would have been madness and we're finding success with that in harder times.
David: It makes a whole lot of sense. And another thing that I think people should be looking at right now is your messaging. It's very likely that your messaging has to change.
And some people, the messaging could be about lower prices. Again, I'm not necessarily recommending that. It's more likely that what could potentially be more effective is if you're able to talk to them about why now is exactly the perfect time that they have to do this, right?