Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
How Small Businesses Can Get What They Want By Asking For It with Kelly Glover
Show Notes
Background
Today our guest is Kelly Glover, and Kelly is from The Talent Squad.
Kelly Glover specializes in booking podcast tours for entrepreneurs and authors. She started podcasting in 2007 and has an 18-year track record working in media and talent management. She hosted her own syndicated radio show, worked as a talent agent, celebrity interviewer, and has produced award-winning podcasts. Kelly is the founder of The Talent Squad and is here to teach the benefits of the podcast guesting strategy, and how you can not only get ready to pitch and get booked but also how to actually ace your interview.
How Small Businesses Can Get What They Want By Asking For It
Today we are going to be talking about how small businesses can get what they want by asking for it.
The problem for a lot of people is they know what they want, but they don’t know how to ask. So here are some of our top tips on how to ask for what you want.
Who are You Asking?
I think you first you need to look at who are you asking and what are they getting out of it? So you want something, but who is the person? So whether you’re pitching the media, for example, if you’re pitching a podcast, which is what we did to get on this show, the first thing we would look at is what the audience is, what their needs are, what the host is and what we have to offer. It’s always looking, it’s a buying and selling situation. And in the situation of pitching something you are the person selling yourself and the person you are pitching to is the buyer. What have you got and why should they say yes to you and buy it?
It needs to be a win-win. You’re pitching your services, but what is the win for the buyer as well?
Think of it as, I want to come to your party and well, what do you got to offer? What plate of food are you bringing to make my party awesome? Are you bringing the entertainment? Are you bringing the decorations? If they’ve already got somebody with a house full of balloons and you’re saying, “Hey, I want to bring the balloons.” “Sorry, that’s already covered.” Then you need to figure out what would be valuable to them. Party pies? I think I’m thinking of Halloween, because that’s happened recently, but it’s still a good concept. Yeah, what are you bringing to the table? What are you bringing to the party? And you need to position yourself, “Well, I’ve got this, and these are amazing, and this is what the guests would really love. This is going to be the best thing.” You need to position yourself and or your business and or your product, depending on which angle it is to get that person to say yes, but you also need to actually deliver, right?
Make Your Pitch Unique
When we talk about pitching with regards to pitching the media, the subject line needs to be clickbait that actually delivers. So what subject line is going to get that person to open their email in order for them to say yes, especially if they don’t know you and it’s a cold pitch.
That’s where people go wrong, is they’re thinking about what service they can offer, but they’re not thinking about the benefit to the person. In your media example, is why would they promote you? Why would they do an interview with you? Why would they come back and ask you more questions if they don’t know what you’re actually all about? Particularly, when it’s a cold-call and they haven’t actually heard from you before.
It’s called it poking holes in it, that’s what we call it at The Talent Squad. You can flip it around and reverse-engineer it and ask yourself, “If this email came in to me, would I say yes?” I would say that with regards to pitching and cold emails, you can definitely warm the person up before you even send that email. Maybe it’s interacting on LinkedIn, maybe it’s interacting on Facebook, maybe it’s writing a review on the iTunes, listening to episodes. So there’s ways that you can demonstrate and get a pre-relationship with the person before you do that ask. Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s obviously super famous, hugely popular, he calls it the jab, jab, jab, right hook. You can’t just go in going, “Hi, I would love to be a guest on your show, and this is all about me.” If the answer is, “So what? Who cares?” Then you’ve lost them. You need to go in going, “Hi, I see this is your audience and the last few guests spoke about this and I think that your audience would be really interested in this, or is that something that you’re interested in?”
Your expertise and or product is always the same, but it’s how you package it up for the individual audience, is how, what’s going to stand between a getting, even getting opened and the yes. We don’t doubt that you know what you’re talking about and you’re an expert, that’s not a question, it’s how you package it, present it to get the yes to get in the door.
Articulate Your Talents
That’s where people sometimes go wrong, they go, “But I know all of this. I’m an expert.”
But the person at the other end of the email or the phone or the conversation doesn’t know that. You’ve got to remember, even though it’s industry standard, people outside of the industry don’t always know it. You definitely need to articulate it.
You can be an expert but there could be 10 other experts. When you’re looking at pitching a podcast, or whatever media, if they’ve had 10 other people talking about what you’re pitching, you need to kind of know the people that have pitched before you and what’s in the back catalogue, whether that be of shows, products, whatever it is with regards to the pitch. You can’t go and pitch something that’s already happened because it’s already happened. You need to find the white space and you’re able to recalibrate your message and it’s still the same expertise, but it’s repackaging it in a way that is palatable and fits in with what the client is looking for.
Like with the balloons, if you’ve got 10 people pitching balloons, why are your balloons so much better than somebody else’s balloons. And if they’ve already got balloons, do they have the streamers that go with them? Do they have the little tags that make it so that you don’t hurt your fingers when you’re tying them up? All of those kinds of things.
Going with that, balloons are super simple, but you’ve got shiny ones, you’ve got ones filled with stuff, you’ve got helium ones. That’s what we call an angle or a variation of a speaking topic on the same thing. You’re always looking to package up. And essentially, it’s still balloons, you’re still offering the same thing, but it’s a variation of the same thing. So that is a really good working example when you think, “Oh, someone’s already got that.” Well, what kind of a balloon can you offer? Maybe a personalized one with their name on it.
If you bought me to my party a balloon that had a streamer and glitter and my name on it, I’m probably going to kick out the normal Coles balloon without helium and put you in their place. And that’s the same with your talking topic and it being a guest, right? It really is.
Tailor Your Pitch To The Person
Sometimes it’s a refining it down to the actual individual. It’s all about selling yourself as the expert in your field, but knowing what the person you’re pitching to wants, and packaging it up in a nice box instead of a Coles plastic bag.
We’re thinking about how we can differentiate our product and our audience. With the actual pitch, are there tips and techniques that we should be using to actually, like you say, get the email opened, or get them returning your call?
with regards to emails, the headline is super important. And like I said, we call it clickbait that actually delivers. So, it needs to be that one line, and you can test it in your email to see what shows up, what amount of words show up and what first line shows up. We’re always doing that. And would you be able to clickbait yourself into opening that email? If not, and it just says Pitch Kelly Glover, boring. Again, if the answer is, “So what? Who cares?” and you wouldn’t open your own email, you need to think again. If you don’t want to open that email, even though you know the answer, and it’s you, that’s good, because it’s just to get it opened. That any person worth their weight in gold is going to cross-check and verify everything, so any one media, one sheet or supporting materials of the pitch is just the key to the door, and you still need the person. They’re going to go across your social media. They’re going to look at your followership. They’re going to look at the one sheet, look at your press kit. Have you done any other interviews? Have you… What other products have you done in the past?
Think About How You Can Stand Out
What other services have you done in your past to your other clients, depending on if it’s not a media pitch to other areas? That’s just to get to the, “Yes, I’m interested.” Okay. “Yes, I’m going to vet you.” But you still need to have all your media, visual and social assets and online presence in line for the next step. Otherwise, you’ve got the door open, but they’re just going to slam it in your face because you don’t have the goods to back it up. So, it’s all about the preparation before you send the pitch. Otherwise, honestly, you’ve wasted that chance and the first impression is already gone. You can’t get that back.
That’s why it’s so important to have your branding right across to be incongruent with you yourself, and as well as your brand. So, it’s no point having one set of branding on one color, and you’ve just changed your logo, so then you’ve got the old logo. And yeah, all your hard work is absolutely gone. You only get one chance at a first impression, and these days it’s very fleeting, so you need to make it work.
It’s not that people don’t think about it, or are doing it wrong, it’s just that they don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know, if you haven’t pitched the media, or pitched for funding, whatever it is. So, the other thing to think about is language. It’s not just your headshots, your coloring, your logo, your branding, your socials, the photos, the content, it’s also… If I’ve got a really buttoned-up look and I’m a news reader look and I’m very corporate, and then you write a pitch, “Hey mate? How are you going?” Well, that doesn’t match up. And if you’re pitching someone who’s a political and very buttoned-up person, and you pitch with that, that’s not matching their language. So, there’s a very delicate balance of speaking in the… Knowing the language of your audience that you’re pitching and speaking to them in a way that they understand and appreciate, and while still having respect to your branding as well. You’ve got to figure out who you’re speaking to, what your brand is, and get the delicate balance of meeting people where they are, while still showcasing who you are.
How Small Businesses Can Get What They Want By Asking For It
Listen to Small Business Talk Episode 53 for the full episode.
