Compelling Conversations

Stuart: Foreign. Mr. Bell, how you doing? I'm fantastic. What do you have for us today?

Guest: So in the last show, which I'll link in the show notes if people have missed it, we were talking about the kind of difference between leads and sales. So we're looking at the structure of setting up the book, which is a fantastic episode. So this time I thought we'd look at another acronym that we've got that we use internally, so spear emails. So we talk quite a lot with people about that. Follow on sequence. There's a lot of time and attention on writing the book, but obviously if you then do nothing with it, it's a bit of a waste of time. So I wanted to grab your thoughts on how people can best use the book after it's been created and then engaging people, engaging in a dialogue, a conversation after that.

Stuart: Well, that's really the thing that's the most important thing when I look at this, that the, and I've always said it, and I have to really take the time often in conversation with people about the concept of the 90 minute book to continually reinforce that the purpose of the 90 minute book is to give you an opportunity to be in a conversation with somebody who by the very act of them asking for your book has indicated that they are somebody that you want to be in a conversation with. So we talked a lot about that with the book title. So that's why it's so important to title the book. Something that your ideal prospect would definitely want to have in their library, that they would say, that's the book for me. And so the, you know, just to kind of reiterate my position on the way that we look at these things is that the purpose of a 90 minute book, it's not to write the definitive book of everything you know about and carefully researched and cross checked and fact checked and you know, all of the efforts that people go into to create a book book, the big capital B book. It's to really understand the fact that what triggers the mechanism in somebody to want your book is the title of the book and the fact that you're offering it to them. Right. That you've exposed them to it, that they see that there's a book available and that they can get it by leaving their name and their email address. And the only purpose that I look at it for the book is to trigger that mechanism. And we can trigger that mechanism of somebody taking an action to get possession of this book. And it's not really about getting possession of this book. It's about anchoring or identifying with the title, the concept, the idea of this book, for them to say that's for me and to leave their name and email that. Now they, that gives us the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with these people. And you mentioned one of our acronyms that we use is a spear email. So it's short, personal, expecting a reply, S P E A R spear. So that's one of our, that's one of our most effective marketing abilities is to engage with people one on one. Now there's nothing better than a book to identify somebody who would largely be an invisible prospect. You know, if somebody, if we don't know. I use and I'll continue to use as an example some of the, some of the things that kind of best illustrate this, that when we talk about the adult acne cure as an ignorant, a clear example of this, that somebody. That's a book that the only reason and the only person who would be interested in that is somebody who is experiencing the thing that your the book is about that's experiencing adult acne. We had a podiatrist who's just joined us in our in the email mastery program and is coming to the Breakthrough Blueprint in Orlando and he has a, he has a book about heel pain that is particularly interesting to me right now because as I was explaining to him on our email mastery call this week, I've been experiencing some Achilles heel tightness, some things. And so I am very interested in that. So by me, you know, there's no way to get a list of people who are experiencing adult acne or who are experiencing acute onset Achilles heel, you know, pain. And so the, the very best thing that we can do, the thing that a 90 minute book allows us to do, is to build our own list of those people by getting that book title. And the fact that you've got a book in front of the general population of people so that the ones who have that identify with that want that kind of information will raise their hand, self select and by asking for your book, essentially tell you that they're an ideal candidate for what it is that you do as a podiatrist. If you're looking for people who have heel pain and you know, it's interesting because we talked on the email mastery call that heel pain is certainly probably the most popular or common type of foot pain that people have. But when you think about all of the different possibilities there like ankle pain or Achilles heel pain or plantar fasciitis or bunions or ingrown toenails or toe joint pain or, you know, all of those things. The only thing that I'm not interested in a book about ingrown toenails right now, because I don't have ingrown toenails, I have acute onset heel pain. And so I'm very fascinated by that and I'm very interested in that. And by signing up for it, that gives Dr. Mielke the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with me. You know, that's what we were talking about.

Guest: Exactly. That specificity and starting the conversation. I know you've used the example of when we talk about writing in general, whether it's books or emails or any other communication, that putting yourself in the mindset of someone who had just walked through the door. So if Dr. Milkey had written a book called Trying to get a clever title called Flex the Solution to the Non Surgical Solution to Foot Problems, even though there's a subheading that does capture the attention a little bit by trying to be too clever in the title and not just say the words that are in your head. As someone who has heel pain, that specificity, it might not sound as clever, it might not be a book that you would typically associate with being on a best selling list on Amazon, but none of this is the job of work. The job of work is the first sentence in a conversation that hopefully leads towards some business further down the track.

Stuart: Yeah, and there's the thing it's never. And the fact that when you're thinking about it, that the book has to be focused on your audience. Right. Focused on what is it that. That they would want. Like. So one of the mistakes I see people make is they want to make the book about them, which certainly, you know, there would be like Dr. Mielke writing a book called Confessions of a Soul man or something. Sol. Right, like that, trying to be clever and you know, those kind of put a little soul in it.

Guest: Yeah, yeah. It's doing a different job, isn't it? If you want to write that type of book, that's fine. But don't mistake mistakenly think that it would be as effective as writing it in the language that resonates with the, the audience that you're trying to engage with.

Stuart: Right. And that's the thing. And I look at it that my intention, my purpose, my, you know, the way that we set this all up, set up the whole operation, our whole organization, the whole 90 Minute Books team is geared to just, I think, get people the best possible tool to grow their business. Right. As a As a. Using a book as a pre suiter. And in a lot of ways it's not even about the book being the pre suiter per se, but the fact that it's titled and it's offered to the people who would be your ideal candidate, that they raise their hand, that that in itself has value in how you're able to then engage with people in the dialogue. So. Well, I'll let you use the example of what happened with Dr. Mielke. So we had the conversation and I always say to people, imagine that your book and the landing page that we set up for you for the book so that people can leave their name and email to get it, that that is a portal to your office. And as soon as somebody fills in their information, they, they press the send me my book. But. And they are magically and immediately transported into your office, your physical office. And they open the door and they poke their head in and say I'm here about the heel pain book. And what would you say to those people? What would you actually physically say to them? And that is the basis of these short personal expecting reply messages. Because if somebody came into your office like that, you might say, well, welcome. How long have you had the heel pain? That might be something that you would. How you might start it out, right? Or you might offer them a choice. Did it just start or have you been experiencing it for a while? Oh, is it more on the bottom of your heel or on the back of your heel? You start diagnosing or having some conversation with somebody to get some clarity about the scope of it and about what the actual issue is and start formulating an idea of how you're going to be able to help people. You know, I think there's a lot

Guest: of concern that people have very unfounded concern that entering into an email dialogue that is more one on one based, there's a concern that they won't be able to get back to people, that it will be overwhelming. But I think often the case people overestimate how effective any one campaign is going to be. And on the Right, right. If it is overwhelming and if there is a lot of people entering into this dialogue, it's a dialogue with five star prospects. The example you had of people teleporting into the office, I can't imagine someone sitting there thinking, well you know what, the doors open at nine. But if we have more than two people come in the door, we, we're going to have to shut for an hour or two until we get through them. There's no way in the physical world people would have the same concerns. But it's surprising how often people use it as a barrier. And I always wonder whether it is a legitimate concern that or whether that's just kind of projective or manifestation of.

Stuart: Well, I mean we can tell from experience like running high volume lead generation and getting lots of replies on a daily basis is a manageable thing. Once you know what's going to happen. I mean that would never. When you look at it, that if somebody's running a book offer a book campaign and they're getting hundreds of opt ins at a time, what you're really looking at is that we set all this up to be semi automated in a way. Right. Like where they can, you know, we get the book done, then the landing page, that's completely automated, the autoresponder that is set up initially is automated. And even then the message that we can send that initiates the conversation can be automated so that it's not. You know, when you're advertising or sending postcards, you're doing Facebook ads or print ads or whatever it is, you're getting, you know, 100 people to come to a website. You're getting 50 or 60 of them to leave their name and their email address or maybe it's even 30 or 40 of them, whatever it is, and then you're getting maybe 30 or 40 of those, the percent of those to respond to your initial email. But they've already jumped through a lot of steps to get to that point. Right. You think about they're a person who saw an ad or got a postcard, they decided that, that I want that they clicked on the link or went to the website they saw. This is where you can get it, they voluntarily typed in their name and their email address right away and they received an email, opened it, read it and responded to it. That's a person who's moving forward in many different ways. You know, there, there's not. I would look at, boy, that would be a great problem to have is that we've got too many people asking and moving forward, wanting to engage in a dialogue. And it's a problem that is, you know, that's a sophisticated good problem to have.

Guest: It's like the saying in a real world situation. It's like suggesting that the problem of the people queuing up with cash in hand at the checkouts is almost people

Stuart: are saying, yeah, we're too busy.

Guest: Yeah, if you go away and come back later, that would be very helpful to us.

Stuart: Right?

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: Rather than thinking let's open up, open up another register more.

Guest: Yeah, yeah. There's two things that spring to mind as you were talking there. One is that concept of five star prospects and not necessarily letting non five star prospects derail the conversation that you would otherwise be having with five star prospects. So for. Do you see a number of times before, treat everyone as if they're a five star prospect until they evidence themselves that they're not. And the other example was, and I'm not sure whether we've talked about this on the show before or not, or whether it was one of the other podcasts, but the subservient chicken example of people thinking that they may get overwhelmed with the responses, but actually the responses fall into 80 or 90% fall into the same very small group that it's easy to do.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. So I'll have. There's a couple of loops to close there for you. So just for people wondering, what are we talking about with subservient chicken? That Burger King, I mean it was a very popular campaign, but I'm not presuming that everybody knows what that, what that is that the ad agency for Burger King several years ago created an amazing viral campaign called the and a website called Subservient Chicken. And it was a play on the thought that Burger King's slogan of course is have it your way. So this, you know that the subservient chicken came in that thing and it was to announce their new chicken sandwich, that you can have it your way. And when you would go to the website, I think it's still online actually if you do a Google search for Subservient Chicken, I think you can still see this. But essentially it was a very, very simple website with a, just a big, you know, live video looking picture of a guy in a chicken suit in a apartment and the like a Google search bar that said, you know, basically welcome to some Serbian chicken. Have it your way. And you know, you can command the chicken what to do and you type in jump up and down and the chicken would jump up and down. Or you would say chase your tail and the chicken would chase its tail or do the chicken dance. Or you know, you start to think about all the different things that you could command the chicken to do. And the way that they created the database of these is, was to make up a flyer that had a picture of the subservient chicken on there with 10 lines below it and said, you know, command the chicken to do 10 things. And they did a Thousand of these, I think, was all they needed to do. They did a thousand of these. These had people fill them out. And what they found was that largely people ran out of steam. Like, we all collectively think of the same things, right? Jump up and down, spin in the circle, all these things. But even the long tail things, you know, they got most of the things that people would do. And they had a. They shot the, the video for it and then seamlessly programmed it all together so it looked like it was happening really in live time. And so this is not much different than that in that you can, when somebody asks for your book by asking somebody a question with a narrow band of responses, it makes it so much easier. It makes it very easy to automate the process of somebody managing the dialogues with these people. And so I use, and always use the word automate to include things that are not done by me. So anything that's not done by me is under my definition of automation, automated, even if it requires other people. So you start to think about that. As long as somebody knows what to do, it creates lots of options. So if I ask if somebody, if I'm offering a book called the Adult Acme Cure and somebody comes and downloads it, and then we immediately offer or send them an email that asks a short personal expecting reply message of hey, Stuart, welcome aboard. How often do you get breakouts? That is a short personal, expecting reply message with a very limited field of options. So it's going to be on some range from, oh, I never get breakouts. I was just curious about the booker, whatever, something to I constantly have breakouts. Those are the two end things. And everywhere in between is just some varying degree. People could say, well, occasionally I get breakouts when I eat fatty foods or thinking that they're related. Or I get a couple of times a month I'll get periodic breakthroughs. But somebody who is looking for the cure for adult acne is probably somebody who has it more on the latter half of that scale that they're probably more frequently getting breakouts. And so when you ask a question like that, which is a completely reasonable question, and the same thing would go for Dr. Milkey if we're offering the Heel Pain cure or Heel Pain book, Heel Pain secrets that heel pain relief, that it would be reasonable to ask somebody, did the pain just come on or have you been experiencing it for a while? That would be a very short, personal, expecting reply sort of conversational way of imagining the dialogue between you and somebody who has shown up at your office and asked for Your book. Welcome here. Yeah, certainly. Let me get you a copy of the book. Here it is. How often are you getting breakouts? Or have you just started having heel pain? Or has it been going on for a while, then when they respond. And it's going to be smaller and smaller. Right? Like you're gonna. Not everybody's going to. If you send out a thousand postcards to your ideal prospects, not everybody's going to respond, but some people will. And of the people who respond, when you send that initial short personal, expecting a reply email, not everybody's going to respond, but some people will. So you have a smaller group to that. And then when you engage and you send out another follow up question, like with acne instead, if they said we constantly get breakouts, the next step might be, well, what have you tried so far? What are you doing right now? That would be a wonderful question to find out the state of where somebody is, what the incumbent solution that they're using for whatever the issue is for your situation. But you get that sense that as these progress, the more steps that somebody has. Once somebody's responded to two of your emails, you're engaged in a dialogue now with a real person who probably after two or three of these exchanges is going to write you what I call the love letter. And the love letter will just lay it all out for you. That is the person that we're looking for to be in relationship with. And that relationship starts with being in conversation with them. And that conversation starts with being able to identify the person that we want to be in that conversation with in a way that makes it easy for them to start it without even knowing that they're really starting the conversation.

Guest: The elements of persuasion that you mentioned in there, both in terms of helping people to self select and identify because it's language that resonates with them, but also knowing, like the chess player example, knowing the three or four moves ahead and then working back from that end point in the little steps that are conversational, engaging by the time someone's reached the. The point that it has to become automated, manually automated versus machine automated. You've sifted and sorted so many of the previous steps whilst at every stage still building rapport with people where the time's not quite right for the. For them, and then switching people into more of a flagship broadcast type funnel. But it's such a straightforward way. I think the love letter of example, that might not necessarily resonate with some people might not understand what that is. If it's. I think we've Got a couple of examples of those that we use in email mastery. So I'll grab one of those and put it into the, into the show notes. I'm conscious of your time. We're just coming up on, on half an hour, so I think we've, we've hit a good place to, to draw a line under it. But I'll make sure that in the show notes of this episode. So if people head across to 90minutebooks.com podcast and this is episode 34 in the show notes, I'll make sure that we've got an example of the love letter example that we were talking about. A link across to the email mastery book because that's a great resource for anyone who's thinking about taking the follow on from their book. How to start this engaging conversation and just closing then on the titles, the importance of picking a good title. So we have a great titles workshop that we did that. I'll make sure there's a link to that in the show notes as well.

Stuart: Perfect. I love it.

Guest: Fantastic.

Stuart: So much good stuff.

Guest: It is. And it's such an amazing opportunity for people listening in now who've maybe heard Betsy and I talk on the last couple of podcasts, have heard some of the interviews that we've done with authors. It's always great to get you on and listen to your perspective, bringing it together, kind of stitching all of those elements together because it really is all about that opportunity to engage the five star prospects that are out there but invisible.

Stuart: I love it.

Guest: Fantastic. Well, the only thing left then is for anyone who hasn't started yet to head across to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links. Be great to help you get the title dialled in the book written and out there starting these conversations. So thanks again, Dean.

Stuart: Always fun.

Guest: I will catch you soon.

Stuart: Thanks, Stuart. Bye.

Guest: Cheers. Bye.