You're Going To Be Great At This!

In a recent episode of "You’re Going To Be Great At This!", I talked with email marketing expert Amy Benicewicz about the evolving landscape of digital communication. The conversation centers on how businesses can move beyond basic newsletters to create meaningful, high-converting connections with their audience. Amy shared her "awesome advice" for anyone looking to refine their strategy, emphasizing that email remains one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s arsenal when used with intention. One of the primary takeaways was the importance of "knowing your why" before hitting send. Amy explained that many businesses fail because they treat email as a chore rather than a strategic opportunity. She encourages marketers to define the specific goal of every campaign—whether it’s to educate, entertain, or sell—and to ensure that the content provides genuine value to the recipient. By focusing on the user’s needs first, brands can build the trust necessary...

In the noisy world of modern sales, standing out is no longer just about having a great product; it’s about creating a great first impression. In a recent episode of the "You're Going To Be Great At This" podcast, Elizabeth Brewington joins the conversation to dive deep into how professionals can effectively grab a prospect's attention. The discussion emphasizes that in an era of digital overload, the traditional "cold" approach is evolving into a more personalized strategy that prioritizes human connection over generic scripts. One of the foundational pillars discussed is the importance of pre-call research. Brewington highlights that generic outreach is often ignored because it lacks relevance. By taking just a few minutes to look into a prospect’s recent milestones, LinkedIn activity, or company news, you can transform a cold lead into a warm conversation. This preparation allows you to show the prospect that you have invested time in understanding their ...

In a world where automation and AI are becoming the standard, human-centric service is no longer just a "nice-to-have"—it is a competitive advantage. In a recent episode of the "You're Going To Be Great At This" podcast, Dave Gulas,  co-founder of EZDC 3PL and host of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast, tells us about how he makes customer service a priority while making the most of his competitors' complacency. We also discuss 3PL's (third party logistics) and how they help online businesses. He also  shared his philosophy on how to bake customer service into the very DNA of an organization. Dave emphasizes that you cannot provide world-class service to your clients if you aren’t providing it to your employees first. When employees feel supported, valued, and empowered, that positive energy naturally overflows into their interactions with customers. One of the simplest yet most effective ways to stand out is through responsiveness. Dave discusses the impor...

One of the biggest obstacles we face in our careers as business owners, sales reps and other self-employed folk, is getting our mental blocks out of the way so we can succeed.  Carl Willis of Remodeling Marketing Team and I talk about optimizing your mindset for hitting goals and making more money.  By knowing who your customer is and understanding what problem your product or service solves, you can get better clarity around your business.  Carl shares a good story of an entrepreneur who was undervaluing her work, and by virtue, underpricing her product. Take a listen and please follow/subscribe.  Chris Castane s is a humorous speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. His new book, "Nearly Motivated" is available on Amazon. For booking information,  click here . His new podcast,  "You're Going To Be Great At This!"  is available on most platforms.   He's also the president of  Surf Financial Br...

This blog usually has actionable sales tips and advice to help you succeed in your business. This time, I wanted to take a look at another part of your business, which is scheduling appointments or sales calls or whatever you need to schedule.  Having a scheduling calendar that your prospects can make your job so much easier. Instead of calling back and forth to pin a time to meet down, you can let your prospect/client pick their own time. According to FinancesOnline.com, online scheduling can lead to 26% more customers, so sharing your calendar is a real no-brainer. I have a Google calendar that I use to book appointments, but I have also been using Calendly and sharing it on my website and social media. The two calendars are supposed to sync up to avoid double bookings, but recently I discovered an issue.  I had blocked out a couple of days on my Google calendar for a business conference, but Calendly was still showing those days as available. After trying to find a way to f...

A friend of mine recently did some contract work for a company. The project took several weeks and the work was much more detailed than my friend anticipated. Not only was the work itself difficult, but so were the other people who he had to deal with while completing the designs and other specifications.  When he was done he did something very important. He waited a few days and then took an objective look at the entire process, where he discovered what worked well, what didn't work well and the lessons he learned in the process. He even posted all of this information in a "bullet point" style on social media. With that information, his future projects will be somewhat easier if he runs into the same issues. Many people in sales and marketing fail to do this. If something works well, they just move on to the next deal. But if they hit a snag and fail to get the sale, they complain about something, usually the client or the working conditions, without having an honest ass...

Let me start with saying that there are only two times when someone is okay using profanities. The first is if the "curser" is under 3 years of age. There's something oddly adorable about a toddler dropping f-bombs, especially when the parents of said child feign any knowledge of "where she heard that". Fun and cute at the same time. The other situation would be if the person using blue language is over the age of 85 and female. Hearing grandma threaten to "stomp a mudhole in your ass!" would make every kid laugh because they knew she wasn't that serious. This example is only made better by memories of my Greek grandmother watching professional wrestling and yelling at the TV.  Get your copy of "Nearly Motivated" here  https://tinyurl.com/3tp37psa In other than these two situations, keep the cursing to yourself, or your friend group. And maybe that group of guys from church you hang out with. But definitely keep it away from work and prof...

Analogies are everywhere in business these days, but the sales profession has some of the best ones. One I have used for years is that when prospecting and marketing for clients, you should be leaving landmines everywhere, because sooner or later, someone will "step on it" and your sales will blow up. Recently, Davan Johnson, a coworker and friend of mine, appeared on my YouTube channel and we discussed prospecting for clients. He used the analogy of "planting seeds" while "preparing for a harvest". I chuckled as I explained that I preferred my more violent analogy. "I'm attaching life insurance applications to the landmine," I said. Feel free to use either analogy when you consider your prospecting plans. Both have the same principle, which is to always look for opportunities to meet people and tell your story.  You never know when one will blossom or explode. Ch ris Castane s is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through...

In my first book I told the story of going on a call with my sales manager, Tom, who was obligated to observe each of the people on our crew every few weeks or so. Fortunately for me, the manager was pretty cool, even though he was a couple of years younger than myself. He had apparently gone to work for the insurance company not long after getting out of high school and had done well enough to get a small promotion. With that being said, these "ride alongs" weren't as horrible as I expected them to be. We'd usually take his car, which saved me gas money, because driving around in the middle of nowhere doing door-to-door sales could rack up a lot of miles and waste fuel. On our first stop Tom taught me an important lessons in sales. When making a sales call with a coworker, make sure that only one of you is doing the talking . The best way for this to succeed is to decide before going into through the door who will make the presentation.  If we decided that I was to g...

One of the biggest hurdles I've faced in my career has been finding prospects, moving them through the sales process, and turning them into clients, all while constantly being on the hunt for more prospects. It's an endless cycle. (In my industry, it can be even harder to sell something when people ultimately don't want to buy. If your client is a young couple with kids and a mortgage, do you think they would rather spend money on a vacation or a life insurance policy?) Having a good referral system and making networking effective are the best ways to start the process of keeping the pipeline full. Having a center of influence or creating a friendly relationship through networking can save a lot of time and be much less expensive than buying leads.   One of the most effective things you can accomplish is to establish a "referral network". This may take some time to get going but if you can find four or five good sources who are willing refer to each other, you can...

Several years ago I was arriving to a networking event a bit late.  I parked my vehicle near the back of the lot and walked past all of the other attendees' cars with their wraps and sign magnets. I noticed a few realtors had attached business card holders to their cars. For some reason I kept thinking about how smart it was to let people grab a card while I could be doing other things, like shop. A few years later I bought one of these card holders from a local office supply store. I measured out how much room I had on the back of my car as well as the size of the card holder. Next I went to Vistaprint and designed a sign magnet with enough room for the card holder to stick on without blocking my message. You can see the results below.   I quickly realized that the sun and rain would make my cards look "weathered" after a while so I learned to only leave 2 cards in there at a time. (Cards costs too much to throw out a dozen at a time because they got soggy.) This also ma...

I've been off the grid for a while, and for good reason. In a nutshell, I had hit a wall. Creating content for this blog, along with memes (which I hope are funny) and short videos takes a toll. And since I have another role as president of Surf Financial Brokers , which can involve lots of travel, my time and mental energy had nearly gotten wiped out.  However, I have also used that time to decide what I wanted to focus on in my next book. My only other book, " You're Going To Be Great At This! " was written and published in 2017, so you would think I have more to offer. But I didn't want the follow up to be the throwaway information. In a lot of ways it's like a musician who releases several albums and then the record label wants to release the stuff that sucked and didn't make it to the other albums. I don't want to do that to you. Also, my master plan is to use the next book as a link to my future speaking engagements. Hopefully Covid is behind us ...

While coaching youth sports at the local rec center years ago I met one of the parents on an opposing team. He gave me his business card and a few days later I met him and his business partner for an introductory meeting. Nothing much came from it as they were just starting out with little to no money to spend. I promised to keep in touch.  About a year went by when I ran into Jeff at a local networking function. He said he and his business partner had split up, as there were differences in business philosophies. However he implied that he was now running the business much more successfully by himself. I invited him for a lunch meeting at a local sandwich shop (my treat, of course!) and he accepted. The sandwich shop was in a strip mall. I liked taking people there to meet because it was quiet and reasonably priced. Over the years I've learned the chances of someone buying from me increase if I treat them to a meal or coffee.  Across the parking lot of the strip mall was a cha...

If you are like me and carve out time from your schedule to work the phones booking appointments, you know how frustrating it can be when people don't show up. I'm not sure what the statistics are but if I book five meetings, there's a good probability that only three or four will actually keep their appointment.  Yes, there are legitimate reasons why people don't always keep their appointments. Emergencies happen. Cars break down, people get sick and a litany of other reasons can keep your prospect from seeing you. However, the reason that most often prevents me from seeing someone is that they forgot about it. Apparently, these folks don't think that the appointment is important enough to put in their calendar. When you are "smiling and dialing" to fill your calendar, you can tell by their tone if someone is actually going to keep their appointment. If they say something like, "I may be busy but you can come by." In my opinion that doesn't ...

A few years ago I was working with an insurance company that provided a "book of business", which consisted of clients who already had our insurance policies. These "orphaned" policies were written by agents who had left the company (which is not unusual in the least as the industry is rife with turnover). The hiring managers would try to attract new sales reps by offering up these clients as "people who need to be serviced", which was to mean that we could call these people and set appointments to try to sell more insurance to them. I learned quickly that my time was better spent prospecting locally, mainly because the vast majority of this book of business was over an hour away. Apparently an office had closed in another city and these clients were from those accounts.  One of my co-workers had, on the other hand, been working the phones and trying to see these people. He would try to set appointments to make his driving time as efficient as possible whi...

Covid is starting to show a steady decrease in cases, hospitalizations and deaths, which I hope continues. Of course, the Debby Downer in me sees the cold weather and holiday gatherings around the corner, which can mean that people are gathering indoors again. Let's continue to think positive thoughts though. With that in mind, I have been considering in-person networking events that have begun again or will soon. I have attended a few online events that really didn't give me an opportunity to really network, as we had to wait for our turn to speak, which can dampen a spontaneous conversation. One of my concerns is that for those who have not done any networking in person, this skill set can be rusty. Also, there are those who haven't gotten into a field during the pandemic and have never even been to an event before.  There will be those people who will jump right back into networking and say "It's just like riding a bike!" Bless their hearts! For the rest of...

Over the years I have moved around a bit working for several companies. The reasons for doing this have varied, but mostly it came down to a couple of factors. The first one being money.  For example, I went to work with a very large insurance company years ago. They offered me a base salary and a commission based on my sales. My job was to contact current clients and have them come by the office to purchase life insurance. When these people would come into the office the other staff members would write the policies seeing notes I had already put into the client's file. I didn't get my commissions and brought this up to my superior, who didn't care. After seeing this happen again and again I left with no explanation.  Another reason I have left jobs is because the recruiting manager was less than truthful about the job. As I have mentioned in my book, when I interviewed for my first sales job (I was right out of college) the recruiter said all kinds of things that weren...

Sales people know that one of the hardest parts of the job is prospecting. As a former colleague of mine used to say, "I spent most of my day just trying to find someone to talk to." Prospecting is what keeps the sales pipeline full. An empty pipeline can mean trouble.  Of course, there are different ways to solve the issue of the pipeline. One is to cold call, which can work for some people. I spent the early years of my sales career calling on people at their homes, which was a horrible way to work. Putting yourself in the prospect's shoes, you probably wouldn't want someone to come to your home unexpectedly while you were relaxing after a hard day at work, much less someone trying to sell you something. Personally speaking, I have no problem whatsoever with cold calling businesses. As a matter of fact, after calling on people at their homes for a year of so (and having guns pulled on me), any fear of cold calling an office building was non-existent. The battle was ...

For those of us who work on a "commission only" basis, it can be difficult to make a budget for household expenses or other personal financial decisions. Not knowing from one month to the next what your income will be can be tough. With this in mind, many sales professionals have decided to supplement their income with extra income, by either working a part-time job, starting a business on the side, or working as a "gig" employee. Years ago when I was just getting started selling insurance, I would work a part-time job in a retail store. This extra income helped to pay some of my expenses, which helped out tremendously until I could get my career off the ground. As soon as it looked like I may be okay, I turned in my notice. The funny part was that my retail manager asked if she could keep me on the payroll in case one of the other employees called in sick. I worked about once a month for them for another 2 years. A friend of mine who is also an insurance agent, has...

It doesn't matter what you sell, or whether it's a product or a service, we all deal with people who just will not commit to buy, much less keeping an appointment. Some people would say that these people are not ready to buy or they are on the fence. One of my co-workers would just call them "flakes". And as she says, "No one likes a flake." When I lead a sales training session I mention that my definition of sales is a bit different than most people's. To me, sales isn't a transaction, but an attempt to convince someone to do something that may or may not want to do, but do it as soon as possible.  Let's use the example of a family that needs a new car. The old one is on its last legs, high mileage and needs to be serviced quite frequently. The purchase of a new vehicle keeps getting put off for several reasons, but more than likely this family just doesn't want to spend the money on a car.  Or we could use the example of a young family that...