A good brand, product or service by itself can never guarantee success if it doesn’t sell on the market. But with strategic sales and marketing, an average product can become the top item. This is how rapid growth expert Matthew Pollard has proven that introverts can outsell extroverts. As a podcaster himself, Matthew shares why potential podcasters need to first find a strong message that will resonate with their demographic to separate them from the rest. One of his strategies for podcast sales acceleration is using his Netflix model of podcasting that will help podcast become a show that entertains, inspires and earns money. Find out how you can niche strategy so more people will not just listen, but also connect, take action and accelerate sales.​

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We’ve got an interview with someone that Tracy had known for quite a while. It’s a great interview with someone that I think has got some very interesting perspective and experience on things that should be very relevant to pretty much everybody who listens to Feed Your Brand. We’re going to talk with Matthew Pollard. I don’t even know how to describe how amazing he is in rapid growth strategies but he is probably the expert in rapid growth strategies and sales strategies and monetization strategies for marketing. I met him a couple of years ago when I was doing some interviews for just different small business growth conferences and things like that. He was one of the organizers of the Small Business Festival, which was in Austin. It was just an amazing program that they had put together there. We would have these coffee conversations. I would have coffee on my end, he would have coffee on his end and we just have this amazing fast-talking because he can talk as fast as I can. He’s a great person and we’re very happy to have him on the show but he speaks 150 words a minute with gust to 200. It’s packed with great information. That’s really the key there. Just a recommendation to anybody listening to this episode. If you typically listen on double speed or even higher when your player lets you do that, if you’re one of these podfasters that really tries to go through things really quick, this is an episode you may want to slow it down to normal speed because you’re going to miss something so great.

Matthew Pollard is an internationally-recognized authority. You’ll hear his Australian accent, so his definitely not originally here from the US. He specializes in differentiation, niche marketing and sales systematization, which I think is so critical. It’s an analytical approach to marketing and sales and I really like that about it. It’s probably why he’s developed what he calls The Introvert’s Edge. His new book is The Introvert’s Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone. This has been a hot topic. I’ve been to a couple of different events recently where introverts are being talked about. Through all the clients that we’ve been touching lately in Brandcasting, I have seen that a lot of them are what I would call introverts and the ones that are actually doing really well with their podcast because they have a system for how they’re going to podcast. They’ve thought this through and I think it’s working for them. That’s really what I’m looking forward to talking with Matthew because he already had a successful podcast and he has a new one starting up. I’m sure that he has a system for it. 

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Utilizing Podcast Sales Acceleration To Outsell Anyone with Matthew Pollard

Matthew, so glad to talk to you again.

I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me on.

I am really excited for your book launch. Before we get into that though, The Introvert’s Edge, I wanted to define introvert by your definition of it. Because on your book, you put How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell and I thought that not every introvert was quiet and shy. I’d love to hear your definition.

The Introvert’s Edge

The easiest way to answer that question I think, because introversion versus extroversion is something that people have talked about for really well more than my lifetime and there are so many different definitions. The way I define it is really how you recharge, how you replenish your batteries. I think the best example I can give you is a good friend of mine, Jim Cathcart, he’s the number one most award-winning speaker in the world. He’s an ex-president of the National Speakers Association. He came and spoke at Small Business Festival, which is a festival that Tracy wrote about. The difference was that he and I both spoke from stage. At the end of both of our days speaking from stage, he wanted to go out on Rainey Street, the event is in Austin, and party and enjoy himself and celebrate his successes and the fact that he spoke on the Small Business Festival stage. I wanted to go to a dark room and switch off all the lights and put on the TV and not listen to anyone else and just be in my own space. I think the real definition or if you want to separate what really defines an introvert versus an extrovert is, it’s not that an introvert can’t sell, can’t present, can’t network. It’s that once they’re done with that, they want to go home, and they want to recharge as opposed to go out and speak to more people.

I heard somebody and it’s very similar like that, “One feeds off the audience and one is drained by it.”

That’s exactly it. A lot of people, because of that will say, “Introverts don’t have the gift of the gab, so they can’t present. They can’t do a keynote presentation. They can’t go to a networking event and be successful. They can’t sell.” That is just not true. However, just like somebody that is a really great runner, it doesn’t mean that other people can’t run. It just means that they might need to learn the process of running. It’s like when I learned how to ski. It wasn’t that it felt completely natural having my feet on these two boards going in different directions a lot of the time. The first few times, I fell into the snow and it was quite painful. After a while, I really developed an enjoyment for it, but I wasn’t one of those naturals that just got onto the snow and could skate. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t do it, it just means that it was harder. I think that’s the thing that happens is people assume that sales is one of those natural abilities, that all of these extroverted ability, they’re things that we either have or that we don’t have. That’s just not true. The difference is that we actually need to learn skills and strategies to be able to do that. Don’t get me wrong. Extroverts have their own disadvantages. Introverts, the disadvantage is if you don’t have a strategy, you’re going to suck at this stuff. With a strategy, you’ll actually beat the extrovert hands down.

Let’s step back a little bit though and tell a little bit about your story, Matthew, because you do not seem like an introvert at all.

I’ve got a podcast called The Introvert’s Edge. The reason why I put together the podcast was the book’s coming out and I really wanted to create a dialogue around introversion. I started reaching out to people that I knew were introverts and I said, “I would really love for you to come on my podcast because I know you’re an introvert and I would really love you to talk about it because you’re a great public speaker, you’re a great networker, you’re a great salesperson.” Here’s what happened though. I started talking to some of my other friends, people like Jaime Masters, Ryan Deiss, people who I thought were extrovert. Ryan Deiss speaks in front of thousands of people from the stage. Jaime Masters is probably one of the best podcast interviewers I’ve ever witnessed. When I spoke to her, she was like, “You know I’m an introvert, right?” I was constantly surprised by people like Brian Smith, the Founder of UGG boots, also an introvert. The founder of BNI, the largest networking group in the world, 8,000 different networking groups, is also an introvert. What happens is we see ourselves and we look at all these people and we’re like, “That person can speak from stage, they must be an extrovert. That person can sell. That person can network and they’re so good at it. They must be an extrovert.” That’s not true. The difference is they’ve learned a system, they’ve learned a strategy to make them successful. The introverts that haven’t, aren’t. It’s that simple.

My personal story is I had a reading speed of a sixth grader in late high school. I had terrible acne. I had braces in late high school. Because of all of that, I was horribly introverted. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I took a year off school because I wanted to find myself. I took a job at a real estate agency. When I say this, the first thing that people hear is, “You were out in the front, selling.” No, I wasn’t. I was the guy in the back office with a sign on my face that said, “Please don’t talk to me. I’m here finding myself for the year.” That was me. I was eighteen and I really didn’t understand my place in the world. I had to figure it out really quickly because I remember my boss came to me a couple of weeks before Christmas and said, “Matt, I’ve got some bad news. The company is shutting down and you’re out of a job.” I’ve worked there for a few weeks. This was supposed to be my year of finding myself and now I had to find a job on the quick. For people who don’t know Australia that much, it’s a very different place. We have our summer break and our Christmas break all at the same time. What that means is that there isn’t a decision maker to be found between the 20th of December and about the 15th and 20th of January. The only job I could get was commission-only sales. My father had broken his back from looking after us financially his entire life. I was not about to tell my father, “Sorry, dad. I’m not going to be able to support myself like I promised. I’m going to need your help with that for the next year.” It just wasn’t a possibility for me.

I went and took this commission-only job. After five days of product training, not a smidgen of sales training, I’ve got told to go out into this road. It was called Sydney Road. When people imagine door-to-door sales, business-to-business, they imagine you going through like a shopping mall or there’s Palazzo Versace and there are all these really great brands. No. It was like a whole bunch of little junk cheap shops. I went door-to-door and I was told to get a real job. I got sworn at. People can be lovely sometimes especially around Christmas time. It was 93 doors before my first sale. It was 93 doors of rejection, really just wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Then I made that sale. I remember I made about $70. I was ecstatic for about 45 seconds until I made the realization, “I’ve got to do this again for the rest of the year.” That really was not okay. It was horrible. I couldn’t exactly pick up a Zig Ziglar book or a Brian Tracy book. It was taking me a year to read the book, let alone actually apply the skills. I had a reading speed of a sixth grader. What I did discover is YouTube. People who think of YouTube for cat videos, there’s a lot more to it than just cat videos. I learned the strategies of sale. I learned the system for selling. Within the space of six weeks, and no one believes that it only took six weeks, I went from a person that was introverted, who had no business being in sales, to a person that was working for the largest sales and marketing company in the Southern Hemisphere. My manager pulled me in and said that my sales had now put me to the top of the list. I was the number one salesperson in the largest sales and marketing company in the Southern Hemisphere.

Podcast Sales Acceleration: Introverts, the disadvantage is if you don’t have a strategy, you’re going to suck at stuff. With a strategy, you’ll actually beat the extrovert hands down.

How do you filter through all of that though to come to a system?

Here’s the thing that everybody needs to understand. YouTube is a great resource but there are a lot there. The first thing you need to do is understand that there is an overall system for anything you want to learn. If you speak to a Jaime Masters, she read hundreds of books on how to network and how to be a great interviewer. If you speak to a Brian Smith, he read hundreds of books on how to sell, most of them he threw on the floor, going, “Yuck,” about a chapter or two in, but he understood that there was a system. That’s the thing that introverts are really good at doing. They have great analytical skills. What I did is I went looking for the map. What I found were a few videos that talked about the overall system. I wrote down what I believed at that stage to be the steps of the sale. There were a couple of elements missing but I got most of it down on paper. What I did was I then started to look at each one of those elements and then learn that skill. Step by step, I’d focus on each one of those steps. I would go out the next day and I’d spend eight hours selling, getting rejected but the number of rejections I got before I made a sale went down. Making sure I was speaking to the right person was a huge epiphany. It really cut the timeframe down because I found that more than a third of my time, I’d spent talking to the wrong person. Just by learning all these little steps, I got better and better. It was eight hours of out there selling, followed by eight hours of learning, and not a lot of sleep for about six weeks until I absolutely mastered it.

Here’s the key. I went from no business in selling to being the number one salesperson but then I got to teach hundreds of people how to do it. Now through my podcast, through my book, my blog, all the different things that are out, I teach thousands, hopefully one day, millions, on how as an introvert you can outsell your extroverted counterparts. Yet, most people have this belief that they can’t do sales. By learning the system, it’s something I’ve carried with me my entire life. It doesn’t matter who you talk to. If you were to ask any successful entrepreneur what is the number one criteria for being successful in business, it’s the ability to sell a market. That is just 100% sure. If you look at Peter Thiel, he says that a good product by itself doesn’t guarantee success. An average product with a great sales and marketing plan, you’ve got a lot more chance.

As a product person, you can have the best product in the world, but what happens is people start to copy your product. Even if you’ve got first-mover advantage and you’ve got the first product to market, people are coming to copy. If you haven’t created a message that resonates with your ideal demographic, if you don’t understand your niche so that people understand that you speak to them, and created a sales system that attracts buyers to get them to chase you, by that stage, it’s only a matter of time until you’re closing your doors because the low-cost providers will beat you. You’ve got to have all of that mapped down. That’s what I find a lot of product-based companies don’t do. They’re either second to market in which case, if they don’t have a great message, they’re never going to beat the cheaper provider. They shouldn’t try to be the cheapest. They should just get their branding, and their marketing, and their sales right. Or they’re the first to market and then they spend the rest of the time complaining about all these people that copied their brilliant idea and did it better and cheaper, and now they can’t sell in the market that they created.

Matthew, we tell potential podcasters all the time that the one thing they really have to have figured out first is their brand, at least for their podcast. Their brand and their mission for their show. We also find many of them, similarly to what you experienced in just needing to sell to make a living, that many podcasters are really apprehensive about just getting on the mic and starting to record their message or interview people for whatever it is their mission is. I would imagine you came to podcasting after you’d really gotten over this hurdle of being introverted. What would you say to those that are really just starting in podcasting and are apprehensive about getting started?

There are a few things I would give you here. Firstly, don’t start a podcast unless you know how to monetize it. That is the first piece of advice that I’ll give you. What I’ll do is I’ll explain what I call Netflix model of podcast, which is a great way to leverage. I turned a 25-episode podcast into a six-figure business within the space of six weeks. I can tell you I keep seeing highly successful podcasts, in theory, stop because they don’t make any money. We can talk about the fact that you’ve got to monetize but the second thing that you really need to understand is that if you don’t have a strong message that separates you from everyone else and you don’t understand what it is that people will buy from you, then you’ve got no business creating a podcast. A podcast is a distribution method very similar to Facebook advertising, very similar to cold-calling. You are going and knocking on people’s doors and you are telling them to listen to you or to someone else. If you get them to listen, why are you doing that? Imagine me going and cold-calling, walking into somebody’s door and getting their attention and them saying, “I can see you. What would you like to tell me?” I can keep telling them things but eventually I need to make money. If I don’t have something for them to buy, if I don’t have a way of them buying it, then it’s never going to work.

The number one criteria for being successful in business is the ability to sell a market.

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I want to unpack that a little bit before we go into the other part of it because that is so much information. We agree with you that you should have a plan for a podcast. You should absolutely have a plan for what you’re going to do and what its purpose is. However, I think we disagree a little bit on one hand. On one hand there’s, I’m going to call it, must-have marketing. You’ve got to have a website. You’ve got to have a place of business. You’ve got to have a social media profile. For that same purpose, you have to have SEO ranking, so Search Engine Optimization. You have to have content that helps you rank. There is a purpose for podcasting that may be outside of actual business sales but is the purpose of having people find you, which is a business sale purpose.

We encourage people to start as early as possible in their businesses because without content today, you can’t get ranking. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a plan for what you want to sell them later. You absolutely should and you should be gearing towards that goal and everything should be focusing towards that and doing all of that. There’s also a long-tail marketing benefit to podcasting that most podcasters, the ones who are passive income podcasting especially, are not taking advantage of which we have found outrank sites 30% higher than anyone else. Just to make you aware of where our perspective is on that. We see two reasons for it. Using it like a design of experiment, that trial and error of trying to figure out what’s working, you can use your podcast for that same purpose of trying to figure out how to get your message to resonate. It’s a much lower cost and cheaper way of doing it than knocking on doors.

Firstly, I wouldn’t suggest people have to knock on doors these days. Let me give you an example of what I mean. I think that’s probably interesting because a lot of people don’t do any market validation and then they go out and they start doing and the amount of people that I see who create websites and create podcasts and do all these things without doing any validation. I can give you an exercise that you can do at home with five steps. It’ll take you an hour and a half. I did this in 45 minutes in front of 200 people. By the time I was done, 97% of people put their hands up and said they finally have an understanding of what their message is and they feel more comfortable whenever going out and sharing it. The sad part about that was that over 85% of people kept their hands up when I said, “Is this the longest amount of time you spent on structuring your marketing?” That was 45 minutes.

This is the problem. I’m not saying that you should wait. Actually, that is what I’m saying but I’m saying you should wait two hours before you start. What happens is people say, “I need to do something to develop my following.” Trust me, podcasting is the right thing you can do to develop your following, but what type of following? Who are your customers? Who are the people that you want to listen? That’s the problem. I can give you an example of a person that created one of the top ten iTunes podcasts for all America. The problem was he was interviewing a load of people that were actually his competition. It gave him credibility but the podcast would be a great way to get them customers. I can tell you about other people that just do interview-based podcasts, but they’re on so many different topics. That the podcaster gets this reputation for being such a great interviewer but a master of nothing because no one knows what that specific person does.

At the end of the day, you can do 100,000 things to get people to your website. Podcasting is probably one of the best ways to do it. Podcasting should not be about getting people to buy your product. It’s a great way to get people to your website. It’s a great way to get SEO to your website. It’s a great way to develop a relationship with a first-time possible prospect. The goal of a podcast is to do nothing more than to get somebody’s email address in the future in exchange for more value. Most people get that confused. They create a website and they think the website is for selling, or they create a podcast and they’re like, “To monetize what Matt is saying is that I need to sell on my podcast.” No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m suggesting is that a podcast’s job is to do two things. One is educate and inspire action. The second thing is to highlight the underlying value that you provide through you sharing hugely valuable stories that embed the underlying value of what you do and your credibility. That’s where people get it wrong.

To do that, you need to understand, A) Who the customer is that you want to sell to, and B) What message you want them to understand. The process is actually available at MatthewPollard.com/Growth. There’s a five-step process that I suggest everybody does when they’re trying to work out what their podcast is about. The stepping stones are work out, look at the customers that you currently have, and write down the names of the people, just the names of the people that absolutely sing your praises. These are the people that if they go to a networking event and somebody says, “I’m really looking for somebody that can do this service or deliver this product for me,” they’re the ones that say, “You’ve got to try this company.” They go on for 30 minutes about how great your company is. Or you ask them for a one-line testimonial and they give you a page. These are the groups of people I’m talking about. Then write down the names of the people that you make phenomenal money from. These are the people that when they ring your phone, all you hear in your head is “Today is going to be a great day.”

Once you’ve got the names of these people down, what I want you to do is I want you to look for the similarities between these groups. This would be step three of the process. You start to notice the similarities and you can put them into little circles or little groups. This is what we call customer segmentation. What you’ll find is that of those groups, you’ll notice that there are going to be some where there’s an overlap of people you make great money from and sing your praises. What I do is I suggest to people to pull out a red and a blue pen. Red and blue don’t work specifically better than any other color. They just tend to be pens that people have on their desk. I say, “Circle the groups in blue that sing your praises. Circle the groups in red that you make great money out of.” Generally, there’s at least one group. As I said, I did this in front of nearly 200 people and there wasn’t a single person in that group that didn’t have at least one group that had both a red and a blue circle around it.

What I then do is say, “Pick one.” For a lot of people, they’ll struggle to pick which one. A lot of times, that’s because they don’t specifically understand the why of their business; the people that get stuck at that step. I’ve got a podcast called Better Business Coach. There’s a podcast episode 17 called Forget About Goals – Why is the Key to Success. That will make sure that you’re absolutely laser-sharp. In neuro-linguistic programming, we learn we’re presented with two million bits of information every second. Our brain, the super computer that it is, only processes about 126. In short, it deletes the thoughts and then generalizes everything we see, feel, hear and touch based on our beliefs, our values, our past experiences and a subset of that are our goals. In short, even though I’d like to think I’m a great coach or this exercise is great, a lot of times just getting that 126 bits all in one direction will allow you to see opportunities that are right there in front of you the whole time or in short, pick the group that you’re actually most aligned with, not the one that you should make more money out of. The one you’re most aligned with, you’ll always make more money out of.

Podcast Sales Acceleration: Pick the group that you’re actually most aligned with, not the one that you should make more money out of.

 

Now that you’ve picked that group, step four is grabbing that list and then writing down all the things you do outside the scope of your functional skill that you do for this group of people. Once you have that list, you then write, “What is the higher level benefit of that?” To use me as an example, I’m a business coach. I’m a branding expert. I’m a sales strategist. I’m a social media guru. I’m a master in neuro-linguistic program. I’m too many things and nobody cares. When I say I’m the Rapid Growth Guy, I help organizations large and small obtain rapid growth. The simplicity of that message gets me heard in a crowded market. If I was to say that I work specifically with service providers, those service providers that want rapid growth, their ears then perk up and go, “This person is for me.”

The goal of this exercise is to help you understand not only the demographic of people you should be selling to but the message that you should provide them. Trust me when I tell you this. It’s not the functional skill element, it’s the things you do above and beyond. Everybody has unique education, unique upbringings, unique past customers, both good and bad, unique everything that perfectly qualifies them to help one group of people and provide them something specific. Once you’ve gone through that exercise, you now know what your unified message is and what your niche of willing to buy clients is. This isn’t going to take you any more than a couple of hours even if you’ve got to go back and work out your why. You can then start to look at, “Is podcast the right distribution method for me?” There is a next question you need to ask yourself which is, “Is a long-term podcast the answer or is a short-term podcast the answer?” The short-term can grow but you’ve got to ask yourself that question next.

There’s a very big difference between having a short-term one and a long-term one. Quite frankly, our clients are all about the long-term ones. We want people to grow their business and we want them to feel the comfort level in how much easier it is for them to podcast as whether they are introverts or extroverts, it doesn’t really matter, but how much easier that is to get your marketing done. Without that consistent and constant marketing level, no matter what your method is, it’s never going to work for you. You have to be consistent and constant at it. That’s the goal of what we’re growing here is people who want to utilize it as a consistent and constant method for growth and future monetization or current monetization if it’s working for them now.

I think that one of the things that all people that are dabbling with the idea of podcast need to understand is which method is best for them. For me, what I do is I create multiple podcasts but I focus on short-term strategy acquisition. When you’re talking about market validation, with Better Business Coach, I did 25 episodes and the goal of those 25 episodes was to test and validate a market to move myself into the coaching space and also validate that the podcasting worked. At that point, if I didn’t have a product to attach them to, then I potentially would have continued that podcast to continue the dialogue. For me, I was interested in turning that into something that people would binge listen. I spend a lot more focus on the episodes to make sure that people would go through the 25 episodes, consume that, become addicted to that content because I spent a lot of time on it and at the end of that 25 episodes, go looking for more of my content, subscribe to my list and that directed people to my coaching business. I call that my Netflix model.

When did you do that Better Business Podcast?

That was in 2014.

Just an update for most of our listeners and for you as well, there is a new definition of binge listen. There are a segment of podcasts, people who do binge listen they’re called podfasters. If you don’t have 100 episodes, you don’t actually fall on the radar. You fall under the radar. Also because a lot of times today if you want to launch on New and Notable and make a high fast start on New and Notableon iTunes, then you have to start with 25 episodes in the can rather than three. If you start with 25 and then you podcast for a few months, you can get yourself to 100 really quickly. That is the new definition here in almost 2018.

What I did then is I went out on a bunch of different podcasts and I then did interviews and I directed people to that podcast. My new podcast that I will launch will have a lot more episodes. This is what’s called an underlying branding podcast. It’s to continue an ideology or a dialogue. The reason why I suggest that there are two methods is everybody should have an underlying long-term podcast that focuses on creating a dialogue with their ideal customers. However, the idea of creating a niche podcast that capitalizes in a market space where you create an educational curriculum that directs people back to a specific product or service also makes sense. That’s why I’m suggesting that what people need to look at is making the right structural decision. Whether the answer is 25 podcast episodes or 100 podcast episodes, the definition of what we’re trying to achieve here is understanding whether what we’re trying to do is swell a niche market where there is no competition and direct people to that so that they then flow on to other content or creating a podcast that develops a long-term relationship with your clients. The other thing that I always suggest where I see a lot of podcasters go wrong is every single podcast episode is an interview with somebody else.

Have an underlying long-term podcast that focuses on creating a dialogue with your ideal customers.

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We discourage that as well. We encourage a good balance.

You’ll see people like Pat Flynn, Mike Dillard, Jaime Masters, these are all people that have podcasts and monetize. The reason why you know that is they can continue going on and they live quite great lifestyles. Pat Flynn will list how much he earns on his website. You see people like John Lee Dumas do the same. What people do is they’re like, “I want to be a famous podcaster. I want to create a relationship with people and I want to become a great interviewer.” That makes sense to a point because you need to be able to interview great guests. John McIntyre is a great example of that. He had a podcast called The McMethod. By law of association, when he interviewed some of these massive names that are a lot easier to get on your show than you think, their brands were associated with him and people would work with him and they would say things to him like, “When I think about internet marketing, I think about this person, this person and you.” He’s like, “These people had twenty years of experience. I’ve got twenty weeks.” It made such a difference because those interviews related him with those people.

However, one of the things that I always suggest to everybody that is creating a podcast is I do what I call three milestones. One is that I’ll do what I call the sermon on the mic, which is where I will talk about a specific topic of relevance to don’t go outside the scope of what the audience that you pick in the five-step process actually wants to learn. Teach them one element of that. A lot of times I’ll then bring in a worksheet or a template, which doesn’t take anywhere near as much time as you think that you will allow people to work through. One of the things I talk about in Better Business Coach was how to sell and get your own coaching clients. I created what I call a Business Needs Analysis, which is the form of all the questions that I ask to direct people through the process of understanding that they needed business coaching. Then what I did is I interviewed a guest that was an expert on teaching people how to get clients as a business coach. What you then do is you’ve created three parts of curriculum. One is the learning activity where people go, “This person is amazing.” Then you create a template where they have to download the template. They’ll watch the video of you talking about the template, but then they’ll give you their email address in exchange for the template. Now they’re part of your email marketing world, which is where you actually get the opportunity to not sell to them but give them more value but also highlight from time to time that you do have something to sell.

Then you have the interview with the guest where you don’t do an interview the way you see a lot of people do it, but you have a meeting of the minds conversation on this piece of topic. What will then happen is your audience will go, “He had a meeting of the minds conversation with this person that only does this.” Next week, it’s a different topic. The week after that, it’s a different topic. They start to develop a relationship with the level of your expertise. That’s what allows you to develop that further relationship. I think a lot of people just focus on doing interview-based podcasts. There are two major problems with that. One is you don’t sell your expertise. The second is there is no differentiator between you and anyone else. It’s your personality that differentiates the interview that I do with your show versus the interview I do with somebody else.

I’ve got to ask you, Matthew, do you have the same introvert draining that happens after podcasting or do you feel still energized? Does it feel like it shifts for you?

Actually, I’m enjoying this show for one reason. When people ask me different questions, then it allows me to think. If my brain is engaged, then I don’t find it draining. This is a one-on-one conversation. A lot of people that I interviewed on The Introvert’s Edge will say, “I find that this is just like us two having a dialogue.” What does drain me is when I feel like I’ve got to be a robot and repeat the same questions. That’s one of the things that I would always suggest people. I’ve been on over 100 podcasts now and there is about 40%, maybe 50% where they send me their flow document and they ask you to read it. I quickly flick through it and I notice that every single one of those questions is off John Lee Dumas’ show or somebody’s show that is popular and it’s the same set of questions. I almost feel like I should submit them an audio recording of the interview I did on John Lee Dumas’ show and say, “Just place this in after your questions.”

We have a lot of podcasters in our network and I can tell you the ones who do any pre-program questioning do significantly worse than the others. There is a definite energy to the flow style of interviewing that we’re doing right now that works on both ends. Both for the interviewer and for the person being interviewed.

There are a couple of elements. I know the business that you’re in and you’re letting me talk about my Netflix model of podcast and short trajectory podcasts. We’re having a conversation and a dialogue and you’re allowing your audience to listen and learn. I’ve seen people send through flows saying, “Here is the product or service. Please don’t talk about anything that contradicts with this. Here are the questions that I’m going to ask.” They have no relationship to the products and services that they offer or even to do with even a motivational podcast. They want to talk to me about something that’s so far removed from the core topic matter that I’m an expert in. It doesn’t make sense.

That’s where we spend a lot of time because it’s really important and I’ve learned this from writing almost two years’ full of articles for Inc. That having an editorial plan, a very, very clear plan for who your listener is or who your reader is and screening people against that and thinking about your questions against that. I maybe make three or four bullet points of something that I maybe want to touch on and ask you, just so that you can start the conversation off in case it starts at a weird place. That’s about it and we let it flow from there. Because you set that intention as you go into it and you understand clearly of who you’re speaking to, you naturally will ask the right next question.

I think that a podcast interview is all about being interested. A lot of people listening today have probably never heard of me at all. As a byproduct of that, the questions called that interest you about me is what your audience is going to be excited about. The only thing that I get my executive assistant to do every single time I interview someone is I ask her to write me one dot point about why I care that I’m interviewing this person, and what one thing they’re well-known for. It’s so important because for me, I want to know why I care. With Jaime Masters, I wanted to know why I care about interviewing her. The answer was that she is one of the best interviewers that I know. What is the one thing that she should be proud of? The one major element there was that she’s interviewed over 100 millionaires. She was a nobody person from Portland. How is she interviewing millionaires and getting access to so many people? This is something that a lot of introverts would probably like to know. I asked her the question. I was interested because even I would like to know how she got that many millionaires to interview. Just be interested in what they should be proud of. It’s that simple.

Just be interested in what your guest should be proud of. It’s that simple.

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That’s such great advice for our audience. Thank you so much for sharing that, Matthew.

No problem.

Utilizing Podcast Sales Acceleration To Outsell Anyone – Final Thoughts

I’ve got to be honest, the five steps, he went through them so quickly. There are a couple of them I’m not so sure I grasped completely. Let’s unpack them. If you are thinking about starting a podcast or thinking about starting a business marketing method of any kind, you need to screen whether or not it’s the right method for you. What you really need to do is dial that down to who you want to reach. That’s the basis of where this starts. We talk about that a lot. You’ve got to know what your brand promise is. Part of that is who is it are you trying to talk to, who are you trying to attract. Sometimes you may not know and I think you can use podcasting in a different way. He was really adamant that if you’re not going to monetize a podcast, in his opinion, you don’t have any business podcasting. We have it different because we’ve launched so many products and we’ve launched so many things over at times, we just have a different take on it.

Sometimes in the process, you need a market test. You don’t need to be in it for the long haul and that’s where I think people fall apart. They didn’t have a plan. They’ve gotten into this. Somehow, they feel that audience energy and they feel like they need to keep going but they still can’t figure out their plan for it. I think that’s really where you find somebody, as Matthew talked about who have been podcasting for four years and then it falls apart on them. That was really disappointing to think about, somebody that has been building this great audience and they’re engaged with them and they’re providing great value for them over a four-year period of time podcasting, but they really aren’t getting enough out of it from a business perspective for them to be able to continue. That’s too bad. There are some differing opinions but I think he had a lot of really wise things to share.

Let’s go over these five steps just so you can really unpack them for yourselves. The people who sing your praises are the first people you need to make a list of. Thinking about them as the people who are referring you. That’s the way I look at them. We have a couple of our podcasters who cannot stop telling people who produces their podcast. It’s awesome business for us. This is where you hit into the second thing, the people who you make the most money from. That doesn’t mean that they write you the check. They might refer the most people to you who write you checks. Those may overlap. That’s really what we find is that there’s a gigantic overlap in the people who are singing our praises and the people who we are making money from. Again, maybe not directly from them because, in our case, you could earn your podcast for free if you’ve referred us enough people. We have those two things going on.

When you look at that overlap, you look at the similarities between the two groups. Step number three is when you look at the similarities between them. If you’ve got multiples, you need to pick one. I think that’s really a key there. Most people refuse to pick one and then they spread themselves too thin. Pick one and that’s going to be the focus for you. Matthew suggested that you pick the one that you’re most personally aligned with. I think that’s a great way to do it. It’s a great piece of advice because we always talk about how in podcasting you need to be real, you need to be you. If you don’t pick the one that you’re most aligned with, I think it can be really contrived.

Number four is you make a list of all the things you do for them. I guarantee you, if these are your special customers, they’re the ones who make the most money for you and who are singing your praises left and right, then you probably are doing a little bit of extra for them. Whether you realize it or not, there may be a little extra service you’re putting in there. Make a list of what all those things that you do for them are. Number five is to have a higher level benefit for that. Understanding why that’s important to them. You’re getting at that why. Because you do all of this, you’re making their life easier. You’re giving them more free time. Whatever that might be, that’s your bigger why. In Matthew’s case, he gives people rapid growth, which they really desperately need. They need to grow fast. They’re out of time. They’re out of money. They’re at that place where they have no choice like Matthew did, “You’ve got six weeks and you better make it work.” Otherwise, you’re starving. In his case, he would have had to go tell his dad, which I can understand and personally would be the worst thing. It’s a big motivator. When you’re in that place, what is that bigger why that you’ve given them freedom for, you’ve given them something for? That’s your real motivator. That’s your real why. That’s your underlying brand promise to get out of that. That’s where you’ll dial in that message for them.

Podcast Sales Acceleration: When you set out an intention for your podcast, when you figure out who your audience might be, you might have to pivot and shift it.

 

We’ve been going through this actually because we’ve been going through a rebrand this year. We’ve been going through a lot of this. When you do this, when you set out an intention for your podcast, when you figure out who your audience might be, you might have to pivot and shift it. I think that’s really a critical thing to understand. If you stay hard and fast that, “This is my rule and this is all it’s going to be,” and 150 episodes later, you find it’s not in alignment with you or it’s not in alignment with this goal and the plan you made. If you haven’t shifted yourself and perhaps the way that you monetize, then you haven’t taken advantage of something you’ve built. That’s really where we see people go wrong with podcasting that they’ve gone on a long time is that they actually didn’t shift their business because they grew an audience, it was thrilling, it was feeding them and they were getting a lot from it, that’s why they kept going past 25 episodes. It’s almost 500,000 podcasts on iTunes. When it was a lot less a couple of years ago, the statistic was somewhere around a quarter of them. 25% of them would stop podcasting at 25 episodes or even before they get to 25, 23 was the average number of episodes that they would get to. That’s really where a lot of people stop because they try it and it just isn’t a fit for them, they didn’t have a plan, they didn’t have a system, all of those things weren’t determined for them.

If you had sat back and said, “What did I learn? What did I get out of these first 25 episodes or first 100 episodes?” which is where I really think you have to be today. When you get there and you sit back and you say, “What did I learn? My audience is different than I thought it was but I’m adding such value to them. They’re happy about this.” Is there a monetization opportunity? Don’t say this from, “I want to make money from them,” but a service to monetization opportunity, then you’re making a mistake if you’re not reevaluating that. We reevaluate our podcast every 100 episodes. We sit back and we look at it and we say, “What’s working? What’s not working? Let’s make a change. Is this serving us? Is this serving our audience?” It needs to do both. It absolutely needs to serve both of you. It’s all well and good to be putting out this wonderful show that people really appreciate and they comment on social media or they write an email to you and say, “Thanks so much for doing this.” Most of us can’t really justify the time, effort and expense if it’s just to create this nice audience of people that are enjoying it. You’re doing it for them more than you. It’s got to be doing something for you. It’s got to be doing the right things. It’s got to be the right attractor. It’s got to be in alignment with your goals and needs.

Otherwise, then you are in that place where it’s draining you, as Matthew was talking about the difference between the introverts and the extroverts. It starts to drain you instead of feed you. That’s why we call this Feed Your Brand. We want it to feed you. We want it to feed the revenue stream. We want it to feed your marketing because that’s also important. That’s something I look at. If you took podcasting away, you would have to spend money on marketing in a different way because you’d no longer have content creation. Do you have to pay blog writers? What do you have to do to replace that? Would that cost you more time and energy or money? Would it be as effective? Those are a consideration as well. That’s where you get that strong branding podcast plan, that long-term plan where you still get that, where it is feeding your brand, who you are. It is feeding your website and your social platforms and all of those things that you need to have marketing messages consistently and constantly for. As long as those marketing messages resonate with who you are and how you make money as a business. That’s really where I think Matthew has got it all dialed in here.

If you’re struggling to figure out what your profit maximizer is or how you can make money podcasting, if that’s what you’re looking for or what’s next for you? Do you need a sales model? Do you need a system for things? Believe me. We know better than anyone that when you have a system, it makes everything easier. Those without the system are the ones that fall apart the fastest. The system can really be the glue that holds everything together for you and makes this enjoyable, makes it easier for you, makes it effortless. Really makes it serve your business instead of just you serving only. It’s got to serve your business as well.

If you need any of that, please come to BrandcastingYou.com and/or check this out on Facebook @FeedYourBrand. We hope you enjoyed that interview as much as we did. It was exciting. Although it was fast, it was energetic. I hope you enjoyed that. We will be back for another great episode soon. Thank you so much for listening. This has been Tom and Tracy on Feed Your Brand.

About Matthew Pollard

Called the real deal by Forbes, Matthew Pollard, CSP, is an internationally-recognized authority in differentiation, niche marketing, and sales systemization. His Rapid Growth strategies have resulted in five multi-million dollar success stories of his own, as well as profitable businesses for 3500 clients and counting. He is the founder and Executive Director of Small Business Festival, ranked as the #3 business conference in the nation by Inc., and the author of The Introverts Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone.

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