Following up

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today I'm talking to Betsy Vaughan about the follow up after your book's been completed and specifically the email follow up, the opportunity you've got to engage potential customers, potential clients in a conversation and ways that you can really amplify the message in your book to start and continue that conversation and be presenting readers with the opportunity to take that next step and do more. So this is a great conversation. We actually ran a little longer than usual today and then we took note of a couple of subjects to follow up with around this, this idea. But for anyone that's creating a book as a potential lead generation tool or to engage new clients or to start that conversation with people where you have a next step in mind, it's really, as we've said before, the book isn't the product. The book is a way of starting conversation and the way to continue that conversation is through email. So great episode. Lots of pointers and takeaways. We go through specific example of the follow up sequence that you can create. This is something that our clients get as part of the strategy call. The follow up or the majority of the clients get as a strategy call, depending on which product you select. But this is always a great talking point with people. There's a lot of value here and some ideas that you can take for yourself and use in your follow up. So with that, excited for you to listen to this as a. Lots of takeaways. And here we go.

Guest: Betsy Vaughan, how are you?

Stuart: Good, thank you. It is, I was gonna say it's another Friday, but it's not. It's Wednesday. Oh, that was, that was suddenly.

Guest: That's weird, right?

Stuart: Okay.

Guest: Mixing things up here.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. I had the. I think maybe it's because I'm traveling tomorrow, but I thought it's just the temperatures got to me. I'm confused in my old age. Well, what we're going to talk about

Guest: today, we're going to talk about the follow up to the emails, I mean to the book. So and kind of like what we have, we have, it's called our beyond the book and sort of what to do with the book. You know, some people view the book as a product and I have to tell you, most people use a book as a product. When you have those conversations with people, they, they sort of forget. And I think we've talked about this a lot lately internally. We've talked about this a lot, I think lately talking about the back cover. So you Know, we're thinking about the end goal is not oh, I've written this book, but oh, somebody raising their hand, somebody reaching out, somebody working with you that kind of, you know, increasing your business. And so I think people do tend to forget about that and then so many things that can happen which we'll talk about today after the fact. Like you, yes, you have this amazing resource, but you have a great business already built, you know, and let's combine the two and use some of these resources and get yourself out there. You know, I think, I think we're going to talk specifically about email today, but which we love email around here. We love to communicate and push stuff out by email. And so excuse me, a lot of great examples we've had, you know, of just people saying, oh, I've been following, I had, we talked last week about the Kenny story, I believe it was, and the follow up to mailing, but I had somebody this week said, you know, I don't know how I found you all, but then I got on your list and I get these emails from you all the time. And so had never responded to any of our emails but finally, you know, just randomly picked one from like two months ago that he, he received and connected with us. So yeah, so, you know, let's talk about the email and let's talk about the follow up sequence and what we

Stuart: can do to such a perfect example. I mean we talk all the time about this idea of presenting the, the likelihood of someone being ready to go today is the minority rather than the majority. So this idea of constantly presenting an offer, having the closing opportunities presented to people so when today is today for them, when they're read, there's an opportunity, an easy opportunity for them to raise their hand and get started. That example that you just mentioned of the guy who can't even remember how he got on the list, he just is on the list from somewhere. But then one day, whether that's two weeks later or two years later, one day, today is today for him. And when we sent out the next message that reminded him to raise his hand, he took the action. The easy next step that we include in there and then the conversation starts. That I think is the perfect illustration of what we're talking about. It's kind of front of mind a little bit because I'm in a kind of Instagram filter bubble at the moment of having clicked on one or two of our competitors ads and now get inundated with them. And it's surprising how many creating a book isn't a novel idea to us by any means. But the two things that surprise me, and I'm not usually very specific about other companies, but it's getting to the point now that it's annoying and it's ridiculous. So the two things that really stand out are the absolutely idiotic prices that some people want to charge. Not pulling out punches.

Guest: No, I mean, it's crazy to think some of the services they're offering and 10, 10, 12, $20,000.

Stuart: I mean, 30, 35, 40. I mean, yeah, we've seen to kind of immediately then backtrack and caveat slightly. It's. It's what is the job of work of this thing that's being created. So I think if you're trying. Well, although even then I just kind of mental math in my head still struggle to get to such large numbers, but to create something that has a lot of work going into it. So we know ourselves that editing and kind of like cover design back and forth, those two things are things that can be death by a thousand cuts to a project and really just suck resources away. So if you're in a position where you need hours and hours and hours and days and days, even of that, the kind of traditional book sense of, okay, it took me 10 units to write it, but it's now 100 units of editing and 100 units of back and forth with all these different stakeholders. All of that does burn human capital and financial capital. So suggesting that these prices are insane. I mean, they are absolutely insane. But every penny of that money might be being spent somewhere. It's not, not suggesting that it's just 99% profit, but it's the value in all of that other work that's being done, the activity there, and the kind of economic value that's being created for the people doing the work, well, that's one thing. But unless you're going into this project wanting to altruistically support all of these other people doing this work, which is, I'm going to say unnecessary, then that's a lot of money being spent on something that you yourself could spend in a better way. So this idea of how much is the right amount, the whole strategic coach approach of the 80% rule, the biggest changes in the first 80% and then getting the next 80% and the next 80% only moves you incrementally further forward. And the problem is that a lot of these other products out there are either trying to get it to that 100% mark, which is very inefficient and wasteful or they're taking advantage of people. And this is what I think. So some of the bigger, again, I don't want to name names, but there's a couple of bigger competitors out there where their position is. Absolutely. They want to get it to 100%. They want to put a lot of time and effort to get this kind of Rolls Royce of a product out there. So I don't think they're trying to pull wool over anyone's eyes. They've got a premium product that they're pricing at a premium amount, and their value proposition is that it's worth this effort. Now, my counter, that Dean's counter to that is that it's not worth it for the majority of people out there. You don't want to spend the money on Rolls Royce. You want to spend the money on a very reliable F150 or Camry or something more running the mill that's far more cost effective. But then over time, start with one, but then build a fleet of these things for the same money that you're spending on one of another one. So there's a slight different value proposition there. And again, not that those particular guys are trying to pull a wool over people's eyes in terms of just it's a pure profit, but it's just the purpose, the job of work of what it's trying to do isn't worth it for the majority of people. So as you're listening to this, you're thinking about creating a book and what it's going to do, what the purpose of it is, which we'll get into and look at some of the beyond the book stuff in a moment. But the purpose isn't to have. For most people, the purpose isn't to have a Ferrari or Rolls Royce and cruise around looking like. I was trying to think of a more polite American way of saying it, rather than the more impolite British way of saying it. But look, go driving around, Fill in the blank on that sentence yourself. But you know what I mean. Unless the job of work is that you actually want to be driving around in that, then for most of us, the more effective business tool is to have a fleet of F150s doing the job of hauling the prospects from their invisible locations to the front door in order to have that conversation. The counter to that is that I think, and I'll just quickly say this before I forget, but the counter that is. There's an increasing number of ads that I see now for companies which are absolutely pulling the wool over people's eyes. They look out there in the marketplace and see the average position of a company selling a book. The average price position is relatively high. And these people coming in and the copy on their ad, the details on the websites, the specific they're talking about, if that's all they're offering, then they are ripping people off because they are charging a lot of money for something that doesn't necessarily. If they complete the project, yes, it's done and that's good. But they are charging a lot of money for something that isn't that expensive. And that's what's starting to get slightly more frustrating now because I think more and more people are being taken advantage of. We see it sometimes people will come back to us having worked with outsourcers. And again, I don't want to blame the outsourcers, but it's this effort proposition of they've spent months and weeks and weeks and in some cases months and months of going through burning 4, 5, 6, $7,000 with a person getting through the project. And what they're left with is something that isn't fit for purpose. It's a well written piece of something, but it doesn't, there's no job of work behind it. It doesn't do anything.

Guest: It's just, that's important. And we've had, we have had so many, we've had a good handful of people who have done those things. They've, they've, you know, used outside sources or, or different companies or whatever and they, they find, you know, they're so unhappy with the finished product because it doesn't sound like them. It's not their voice. They couldn't, you know, if Joe Schmo read the book and then met with someone in person, they would think they were talking to different people completely. And. Right, that was, that. That's a, you know, that's, that's really, you know, important, you know, to think about. But just the work, you know, that put into it and then, and the financial aspect that's put into it and then not to have a product that you're even 80% okay with, you know, we don't have to get to 100, but you know, it's, it get a little closer than, you know, something that it's a good representation of you, I think, you know, and we see that unfortunately. Too much.

Stuart: Yeah. And it's all of that wasted opportunity. The money that's been spent, the time that's been lost, it's just unnecessary. I think the, the focus that We've got of sharing people that it's. It's a tool to do a job. So it's not the book isn't the product. The what it does is the product, the starting the conversation, the leading people to. Leading the invisible people to your door so you can have that conversation when they're ready. For most people listening to this, most people that we deal with, that is the case now that's not 100% of the case for sure. Some people write the kind of legacy book type projects that we've got where they want to tell a story. So we're not really going to talk about those people today. But again just briefly touching on those. If you're looking at helping people not get to the stage where they're spending a very lot of money on something that's not going to do the job. Because the job in that sense is to share a story and make some points and move the conversational needle with a group of people who you probably they know or the outcome isn't necessarily to start a conversation for a business transaction, but it probably is for most people if you think about it, to start a conversation towards an outcome, even if it's not a commercial outcome, even if it's just kind of sharing, bringing someone to the position of they understand the different emotional impact the for that group of people. Again, thinking about the 80% model, having your tone come across, your voice, having it edited so that it's grammatically correct and it makes sense, but not spending tens of thousands of dollars on editing, that's just going to move it from 80% of the way there to 85% of the way there were 90% of the way there. That extra additional time and effort is very, very, very, very costly and may not be worth it. So jumping back to the focus that we've predominantly got on people who are trying to move people towards a commercial transaction, whether that's financial or not, but kind of this transactional beginning of a conversation, then the job of work and creating something that is in your voice because that is a tick in the box of the rapport building. It is fast and effective to do because then that's quick to market. It does answer one question deeply and comprehensively because that gives someone the promise of what you've. What you've promised in the title. You've delivered on that. But then also it has the next steps and the easy next steps so that people can in a very obvious way continue the conversation. All of those things isn't what's seen in a lot of these. These other products. And it does just get frustrating. I know it does for you when you have conversations with people and they've just. A lot of time and money has been spent on something that isn't fit for purpose.

Guest: Yeah, it's. It is. It's frustrating, but it's also, you know, it's like I feel bad that people, you know, that are. They're looking for something, they're searching for something, and. And then they think they found it, and then there's such disappointment, you know, that and what they have. And so, you know, just saying we do. We fix mistakes around here. And so. And we've had to do that, you know, and it's sort of this going, you know, it's one thing for someone to come to us after the fact and say, you know, maybe we haven't had a conversation or whatever, but they said, oh, I've done this, or I've written this, and then so. And so worked on it or another company or a person or whatever, and it's not good. Can. Can you help? And of course we can. You know, but the ones who come to us, my favorite are the ones that come to us typically, you know, January, February, they want to write a book. And then, you know, they think, well, that, that, you know, this amount of money, you know, is more than my budget's gonna allow. And then when they return in October, November, they've spent, you know, $2,000 more and they don't have a product, and so they need us to fix it. So I always tell people, don't, you know, I'm happy to give advice as far as if you want to do it someplace else, not, you know, on your own kind of thing, like the best way to do it so people don't get ripped off. But typically we find that by the fall, people have, you know, they come back around and it's not just a financial loss, but as you said, it's time loss. And the time, from our perspective, is so valuable that you could have put a book out in, you know, eight or nine weeks, and here you are eight or nine months into the year, and you haven't been able to do that, you know, and so the time itself is costing you money, plus the financial investment you have in it, you know.

Stuart: Yeah, those eyeballs that aren't going to come back, it's. Hopefully there are more eyeballs further down the track, but it's definitely that opportunity. So let's off on a bit of a tangent then. Let's look at the beyond the book element. So let's assume that we've got created an asset that ticks that box. We've identified the group of people that we want to talk with. We know what their pinch points, their concerns, their issues are. We've written something that answers those questions in a comprehensive but relatively narrow in scope way. We've invited people to continue the conversation in, in various ways depending on what their level of commitment is. So there's two elements that really focus on this follow up. So this is for people who work with us, for the majority of our customers, anything apart from the kind of the base level signature books, everyone gets a strategy call to follow up and, and talk through. The purpose of the strategy call is specifically to talk through some of these issues and how people can best follow up. So really there's two strands, two time frames that we want to talk about. When we're talking about that initial follow up, there's the now and the not now. And if someone's now, this is when they're initially in that funnel, they've initially raised their hand and you know who they are and it's the beginning of the conversation. So kind of orchestrating those 5, 6, 7 first steps to see if someone's now is in that period. And then all of the not now ones are the ongoing things. So going to run through a set of suggestions and examples and ideas that you can do to engage these people over the period. So the first step obviously is like we said when we started, email is very heavy in what we do. Everything that we're trying to do is capture that email address so that we can continue to at no cost engage with these people in a way that's hopefully compelling so that they raise their hand. That's why we're so interested in the digital downloads of the book rather than perhaps as an Amazon listing. Because the Amazon listing you don't get opportunity, you don't get those sales details from Amazon. Amazon never tells you who an individual person is. So in separate calls and maybe next time we'll talk a bit more about how to capture the details of people who have got a copy of your book, but either electronically or digitally, but haven't opted in for whatever reason. So maybe that's, maybe that's idea for next time. But assuming that we've captured those details, the first part of that journey is the people who are potentially now. So what we're really talking about is an autoresponder sequence after people opt in and in the first week or so what information can we present to them so that anyone who is now for them, they're on the fence, they're the hottest of the prospects. What's likely to convert them in the sense of getting them to raise their hand and actually have a real conversation with you? So if we run through the sequence of what we'll typically do when we set up a funnel for people and then we can dive into some of the specifics as we go through. Sound good?

Guest: Sounds good.

Stuart: Perfect. So first thing is delivering the copy of the book. So when we, when someone opts in, the mindset that we've got is that whether people have seen a postcard, an ad and email super signature, whether they've seen that triggers them say yes, I want the book. And they go to the landing page, that landing page, like a squeeze page, a single purpose squeeze page. The sole job of that is we just want them to complete their thought. Now if we had a magic wand, ideally what we do is that they would see the ad magically. We'd register their brain waves, we'd collect their email detail and we'd deliver them the book because they've had the thought of yes, I want it. So we want the smallest, least resistance path to allowing them to execute on, on that positive thought. That's why we've got single purpose, short single purpose landing pages that repeat the language of the ad in this example, that don't introduce any new thoughts, that potentially amplify a little bit the thought that was in the ad copy. But we're not trying to introduce anything else, we're not trying to give them any reason why they would think, oh yes, I definitely want that go to the page. Oh, actually it turns out I don't want that because this new idea that's been introduced isn't actually what I want. We're not trying to filter people at this stage, we're just trying to collect to people at this stage. The filtering people will filter themselves later by engaging or not engaging. So quite often people will run an ad and then send them to a landing page, which is a normal page on their website that's got all of the other stuff around it, more new ideas being introduced. Or sometimes they'll send people to a long form sales page where there's all of this overwhelming information about why this is the best possible place to be and that the presenter is the best possible person in the world. That bridges into this idea of compelling versus convincing. We're not trying to convince anyone to take an action they've already convinced themselves by virtue of the fact that they're on the page. We're just trying to make it compel them now to put their name and email address in, in the most straightforward possible way by just having a name and email box on there and visual elements that replicate the page that they came from on that side.

Guest: So when someone uses a long form, because I know I come across things like that a lot and I, to me it's such a turn off, you know, I. Because even. And there's times I'll say, oh, I just, I really want to know more information but I don't want to do all that, you know, I don't want to take the time to put all that. And that, that's just, you know me, I mean, but I have no problem putting in, you know, just my first name and an email address. But when I start getting into little more of this and that and answer this and you know, householding all the things they add and you're like, ah, you know, it just, yeah, it seems it's not my thing.

Stuart: No. And I think some of it is personal preference and I think we're on the same page. Certainly Dean's on the same page in terms of that kind of attention, the amount of attention that's willing to give to something. There is a lot of evidence out there to say that long form sales there to convert. But I think all of that evidence, it's a minority of it that is scientifically peer reviewed. So a lot of the evidence in kind of podcast air quotes is anecdotal and self serving as presented by people who use long form sales letters. I think some of it, so much of it is personal preference and because we're not tuned into that, then we also look for the negative on that and why it's not a preference. I think if it, when it works, it potentially works more where it's on a sales page where there's an actual financial transaction and it's further down the funnel. It's not the first point. The job of work of a long form sales page is to convince someone to part with their credit card details at the end to buy a product even if that product is only like 9.99. It's to give people overwhelming information to try and overcome all of the objections. And that's what's deemed to be the purpose of it. That's the exact opposite of what we're trying to do at this stage in the funnel. And that's why it's important that there's never one answer to a question. It's not that a book is the right answer to everything, it's what's the job of work that you're trying to do. If you're trying to capture invisible leads or get people to raise their hand in a very non committed, non cost way for them, then giving them the option of a free book is both compelling because there's a kind of social capital associated with a book, there's a credibility capital associated with it and it's an easy thing for people to do. So this is a long form sales letter, the right answer. Sometimes it might be, but I can't think of a situation where it is in the context that we're talking about this idea of capturing details at the top of the funnel of people that you've got very little relationship with. The job of work of this is to capture as many details as possible because we know that we're going to filter the sift and sort at a later stage. So yeah, potentially a time and a place, but this almost certainly isn't it.

Guest: Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: So the capturing the details on that page, the idea is that it's the minute they've already, they've already decided that they want the thing because they've clicked on it. Certainly all of the five star prospects have decided they want the things, they've clicked on it. So all we're trying to do at this landing page stages is facilitate collecting the details. That's why Facebook lead ads are very good for this type of thing because Facebook pre fills their Facebook details, their name and email address from their profile, it pre fills that on a lead ad. So rather than sending if you've got an opt in, if you've got a Facebook campaign that's running an opt in type sequence, so you're making an offer of a book or report in the ad, then don't send people to a landing page just to collect the details. You can collect the details from the lead ad type. So run it as a lead ad instead instead of as a URL redirect as a website bounce out ad because that's doing the job of work. So the next thing after that they've opted in. So the next thing is the thing that we send them and what we want to do here is think about this as a longer term play. We're not trying to send them. Here's the book that you requested and here's a massive other information as I'm trying to convince you to take another step. That very first email all we want to do is deliver on the promise that we've made to them of here's your copy of the book, hope you enjoy it. But what we actually not hope you enjoy it because there's no power words in that, but here's a copy of the book, it's a great read and that's it. It doesn't need to be any more than that positive language all the way through the follow up then, which is where my mind was jumping ahead, the follow up the next day. We do want to take that opportunity to follow up with them and see if we can engage them in a conversation because one of the five star prospect elements is are they willing to engage in a conversation? So we want to ask them questions to try and elicit that response. So the following day we've always got a follow up question or a spare email as we call it a short personal expecting a reply message of what is the next thing that they would do. So in the book sense we often will ask what business are you in? Or have you picked a title yet? In the real estate sense we often ask are you looking for home to live in or a property to invest in? All of these short questions that are very logically the next question that you were asking. Imagine that the person come into your office and ask for a copy of the book. You might say hey yeah, sure and reach into the desk and pass them a copy. And then you'd ask them a question relative to the business or relative to the book. That question should be in the follow up email the next day. Because what we're trying to do is get these people in a real conversation. We want a real person to reply so that you as a real person can reply again and this and start the conversation. And this is an important point as well because so many people try to automate all of this process and they're worried and concerned about introducing spear emails into the conversation because they're concerned that they're not going to be able to deal with the deluge of personal replies that everyone's sending. The reality is that's not going to happen. And if it does happen, then shout from rooftops because you've got.

Guest: Right, exactly. Good for you. Right, exactly, exactly.

Stuart: So people's fear of doing that means that they try and automate the process and if they do have an autoresponder sequence, then it's just non personal broadcasty type things where there are buttons on the page trying to get people to automate a transaction so you never have to deal with them until they give you money. And that is missing such a huge opportunity because the concern about getting overwhelmed isn't legitimate. And the trying to make. Trying to complete a transaction with cold traffic of people where you don't have any relationship capital with yet just means that you're not. You try to jump too far down the track. The whole kind of dating analogy of being in a bar and then handing out business cards with your room number on, saying, okay, if anyone wants to jump in bed with me, I'll be up there. Because you don't want to build that individual relationship with people is just. It's missing the opportunity for unfounded concerns. We're not talking about thousands of people. We're talking about tens of people a day. And of those tens of people a day, we're talking about a lower number who are at least to begin with, until you can scale, we're talking about a lower number of people who will actually engage. But what you want to do is give all of the people who would engage the opportunity to do so if they can. And that's the personal message. So we've got so far.

Guest: Yeah,

Stuart: sorry, I thought you can say something.

Guest: I was just thinking about, you know, some. In Dean's email mastery group, there's lots of questions that come up. You know, people will say, okay, I'm going to send out this email. And they're kind of missing the whole point. Like they ask like three or four questions or they'll make three or four statements and nobody. They're not. People are not going to respond to those statements, you know, and so it's always fun to watch the interaction between people who say, no, no, I did that one time before. So just ask one simple question so somebody will respond to you, you know, so you can start that conversation.

Stuart: Right.

Guest: And it's true. I mean, we do that. And I might happen to monitor one of the email boxes. And so I see that some of the responses, you know, that. And most people really like when you get, when you send that first email, they do engage, they come back, you know, they'll not just tell you, I'm thinking about one I got. We got today, you know, not just like, oh, I'm in real estate, you know. Yeah, there's the occasional that one. But some people will really go into in depth, you know, and tell you a little bit about them and about their business and about what they're looking for. So it gives you a lot of, you know, opportunities to, you know, and again, like I said, it's not hundreds or thousands a day that you're doing this with, you know, to talk that they're the ones that are really going to do something, you know, down the road.

Stuart: Exactly. It's those, those responses we call like the love letter back, or we call, Dean calls the love letter back, take the credit for his terms. Call the love letter by those people who are happy and willing to engage and are enthusiastically about sharing the information because they feel that they can get value from you and you feel that you can get value from them and start in that conversation. So that's exactly what we're aiming to do to get to that point. Now, if that comes back on the first email, great. Those people were the hottest in the list. So now we want to consider, okay, well, who's further down that track? So some people might raise their hand and take an action from downloading the book straight away. Some people might respond to the spare email, the second email, asking them a short personal, expecting a reply question, and start that conversation there. Now we're starting to get into the longer tail, but still of this now process, still of this initial autoresponder. So thinking like a chess master, we know where they've come from, we know how these people have opted in because they've come into a specific list. We know what the outcome is. And having experience in our own business, we know often what the objections or the concerns are that people have their most pressing questions. So now for the rest of the cycle, we can start delivering more of these pieces with the opportunity to ask more questions of if they are ready to get started further down the sequence. So we're typically looking at kind of 5 to 7 ish emails. The first one's delivering the book, the second one's asking them a spare question. Are they ready to get started? Sorry, a spear question of what the question would be if you asked them, if they were physically in front of you in the moment and you said something about the language in the email mastery group of people who are of kind coming into this and saying, I've done that type of thing before, but actually when it gets down to it, they haven't. What they've done is something quite different. And this idea of just asking a personal question written in language that a human would use, not an alien or a robot would use, not writing in corporate speak with all of the caveats that go along with that. But just if you bumped in, if this person came into the office, asked you for a copy of the book, and then you asked them a question, what is that human language that would be used? And that's very telling because it's very difficult for people, if they're not used to it, to write an email in that way. Because even with the best will in the world, they'll write the question, but then they'll caveat it because they can't help but put some kind of more compelling or caveating words in there. So after that second email, now what we're going to do is kind of amplify the message of the book, amplify the thing that you promised to answer for them in the first place. And some of the easiest ways of doing that is not going out and thinking about, okay, what more information can I create, but just reuse the asset that you've already created. All of the if your book is written in a way that you're answering one question as comprehensively as possible, that book is going to have a lot of valuable though scope constrained information in it. So the next couple of emails, as you're amplifying a point, can use and refer back to the thing that you've already delivered them. So a great way of doing that is then sending another personal message saying, hey Mary, gladly downloaded a copy of the book. I actually just got a question in the office the other day that made me think about you. Someone was asking about such and such, so the answer is. And then elaborate slightly on what the answer is. Just go into details on one of the points, hopefully one of the more pressing points in a little bit more detail, but positioned in a way that hey, someone asked me a question, I thought of you and this is an important question to answer. So here's a little bit more information that amplifies something that's already in the book, the thing that they've already got. It's not introducing a whole new subject. It's not saying, hey Mary, glad you downloaded a copy of the book. Someone came in the office and asked a completely different question about something else. Or it's not sending them an email and say, hey Mary, glad to see you downloaded copy of the book. Below is my copy of my latest newsletter. I'll send you this every month. Enjoy. It's not all of this just broadcast stuff. It's personally trying to amplify a point that is important and relevant to the thing that they raised their hand and asked about. And sometimes people get hung up on this whole autoresponder thing and well, that's not a personal message.

Guest: It is.

Stuart: It's just being delivered in an automated way knowing that, that knowing that Mary came in on the cycle and the spirit of question you asked on day two and the amplifying message that you send on day three or four, you know, in your business, hopefully that message that you're sending them is absolutely the message that you would key out, type out individually every single time. Because that's the most useful information that you can give to Mary. The fact that it's, it's scheduled, that you've done the thinking about that beforehand and now you're just automatically delivering it, doesn't detract from the value that you're providing, doesn't detract from the fact that it is a very personal message that you're sending to them. It's just that you know the journey, you know when they've come in and you can anticipate what their previous move or you know what their previous moves were and anticipate what their next moves are or should be. So this idea of delivering more value but not delivering new information, you're amplifying something that you know is important, is key to keeping this relationship building because it's a personal approach, it's keeping the, your own message to what you're talking about. It's not just a broadcast that you're blasting out to everyone. This is if Mary had come into the office, asked for a copy of the book, you'd asked her the spear question, and now you're following up with the, the most important, relevant, useful information to Mary, then that is amplifying this relationship to the best possible place. And it may well be the case that Mary's not interested now isn't now for her, and it won't be now for her for another two years. But if it is now for her and for all of the other people where it is now for them, structuring the sequence in this way is going to make the best possible use of this resource that you've got in terms of the book and this asset that you've got in terms of, of the new lead where you're understanding where that conversation is going. The follow up email after that will often include something like a testimonial or a personal story because that is again, it allows people, it allows Mary to see herself in the position of someone else who also has gone through the journey. So sending an email on day five or six now might be something along the lines of, hey Mary, glad you've had time to read a copy of the book. Now I just wanted to highlight something on page seven because we had A situation which is similar to yours. Dave came into the office with looking to talk about this subject and then go into an anecdote about his story which kind of serves the purpose of being part anecdote, part testimonial, part allowing people to project into their situation, part personalizing your what's important, why it's important that you're able to help people but all from the position of the of the clients what the benefit was to them and kind of tacitly what the benefit could be to to Mary at the bottom of those two emails we've got the opportunity to then include something like a PS or super signature that says by the way, whenever you're ready we've got an onboarding process called whatever it's called, just hit reply and I can I'll get you all the details to get started down this journey. Giving people a very clear next step is kind of optimal even if we're delivering a value message. So kind of like the Gary Vaynerchuk jab, jab, jab, right hook type thing of where jabbing by giving additional content, providing additional value. But we're also including a small right hook in the PS and then the message after the Dave stories one of our term the message after that can be another direct ask. So hey Mary, I've got some time next Wednesday I'm going to go through the onboarding sequence. I mean obviously don't call it the onboarding sequence, call it whatever you would call it a friendly name. But hey Mary, I've got some time next Wednesday. Are you free for 10 minutes to talk about such and such that asking people specifically in the follow up, this kind of path of kind of 5 to 7 ish emails depending on on how much asset, how much capital you've got if you want to extend the sequence. I think I just ran through maybe five examples. Then if you want to extend out to seven or eight, then the opportunity is to present some of the same information from the book, just in different ways. So if you're talking about if you're a financial advisor and you're talking about annuities, then have a PDF which is the annuities table and send that to Mary as part of the follow up. If you're a florist talking about floral arrangements, then send a lookbook type thing of various images as a PDF again amplifying all of the things that have been referred to the authority of them being in the book. Now that you're referring back to that authority flows down to the message that you're sending now. So the opportunity to add to that initial sequence all comes from amplifying a message that's already there. The other benefit for you is that it's easier for you to create. We're not saying that you've got to write the book and now you've got to go off and write seven emails on seven other subjects or write seven blog posts on seven other subjects. All of the messaging is just repeating in a different format. Stuff that's already in the book, which is again, much easier for you to do.

Guest: I mean, that, that's, you know, that is, that's great information, thinking about using the book. Because a lot of times people will say that, like, what can I, what can I do with the book? And so you say, like, take it pieces and parts. You know, it's a great marketing strategy, you know, to give the people what they're interested in. Specifically, like you said, if someone's talking about floral arrangements, and that's, oh, chapter seven happens to be about floral arrangements, you know, you send them that. So I think there's, there's so much they can do then to think about other than just putting the book out and waiting for it to magically, you know, I mean, you have to do some.

Stuart: Magically do something.

Guest: But yeah,

Stuart: right. All of the product authority of having a book and the author authority of being a published author, all of those two elements that a lot of the other companies focus on and you want to do it because of this, that's complete nonsense. Those two things are additional benefits which amplify the job of work that we're trying to do. And the job of work we're trying to do is get people to raise their hand so that, you know, they're broadly interested. And whether that's to buy your widget, employ you as a consultant, vote for you in a campaign, unless you know who they are, you can't continue that conversation. The fact that you're starting that conversation by giving them something, giving them a book is valuable. There's relationship capital in that. You're building rapport. The fact that you are the published author and you are the person that wrote the book, the book on it, those are amplification elements. That's not the job itself, that's not the purpose for doing it. That just amplifies the message that you then send, send through the follow up and the ability to customize and very much personalize in a collective way in a, in a numerically significant way, but still have a personal message. Because you know where they're coming in, you know what their questions are. Because you're experienced in this business, you can write something that engages them over the, over the longer term. For this initial period of when now is now for them, or if now is now for them, it's going to engage them in this period. And then after that, after that it comes the kind of flagship broadcast type thing, this way of regularly checking in with people, like we do with the podcast. We send an email out to everyone on the list saying, hey, everyone, here's the latest version of the podcast. Latest episode of the podcast. We talk about using your book after it's complete. By the way, whenever you're ready to get started, here are three ways that we can help you. So. So that flagship broadcasting. We'll maybe touch on that next time. I've just looked at the clock and realized how long we've been going for, which accounts for my croaky voice, but we can talk a bit about that next time. But this initial sequence of amplifying the message that you've already got out there by benefiting from all of the social cues of being an author, of having a book, of delivering something in the first place, of starting with leading with the giving hand, all of these pre suasion type social cues underneath are all amplified by the book. The book isn't the thing, it's just the fuel to the fire of a sensible sequence of presenting people with the opportunity of saying, hey, you know what? Now is now for me, let's get going. And I want to get going with you because of the relationship that we've built over the past two minutes, two hours, two years, whatever that is.

Guest: Great, great. So there, so there.

Stuart: I've just written down a couple of things.

Guest: Jackson. Too long. So there.

Stuart: Yeah, I just written down a couple of things because there's so many things we could go into. This idea of the flagship broadcast that we transition into next, that's something that we'll pick up on a future show. The element before of getting people to opt into something if they've got a version of, if they've got a copy of your book by not opting in, whether that's the digital version or whether that's a physical version that we can touch on that as well. So I think Ben Dean's here on the next show, but the ones after that we'll touch base on some of these elements and go into a bit more details. A lot of the most recent episodes, on the more recent episodes we've talked about creating the book itself and the actual asset. But this. Let's spend a bit of time over the next few episodes just really talking about how it's been used and how to make the most of it, which is. It's really the most important thing.

Guest: Yeah, I had just picked up before our call, I think beyond the book was on my shelf and flipping through it, you know, and I'm like, oh, wow, there's, there's so much great information. There's so many things we can talk about. And so we definitely have a few episodes in us that we could, can get through this. So, yeah, look forward to that.

Stuart: Perfect. So with that, then, let's, let's wrap up for the week. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you've got any, any of these questions, raise any, if any of these points, raise any questions, then just shoot us a message to either podcast at 90 Minute Books or support at 90 Minute Books. Probably supports Bobby a little bit better. If you've got any questions, just reach out and we'll be either Betsy or myself. We'll answer those. If you've got a question or subject that you want us to cover on the show, then send that to podcast at 90 minute book and we'll just differentiate the two there. We'll answer that on a future show and as always, that kind of PS or super signature to the podcast. When you are ready to get started, when now is now for you, then either head over to 90 Minute Books and follow the get started list. If you're ready to pull the trigger, shoot us an email to support if you've got any questions. And we're always happy to jump on a call to talk through some things or if it's not quite now for you and you haven't yet done your scorecard, your book blueprint scorecard, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and we've got the eight mindsets of a great lead generation book. And we'll talk through the. The various elements, including some of this beyond the book ideas of how you can follow up with people, having positioned it in the best way to the best group of people. So any last words?

Guest: No? Okay, good stuff.

Stuart: Great. Okay, well, with that, thank you everyone. Thank you, Betsy, as always. And we will catch you in the next one.

Guest: Take care.