S. 3 Ep. 15 – High-Touch Selling In A High-Tech World

Intro: You know those moments when you’re doing what you love in your business, maybe it’s standing onstage or creating content, whatever it is, you’re totally immersed, and time just seems to slip by? This is called the Flow State. At Speaker Flow, we’re obsessed with how to get you there more often. Each week we’re joined by a new expert where we share stories, strategies, and systems to help craft a business you love. Welcome to Technically Speaking.

Austin: Drum roll, please.

Taylorr: And we did it. Look at us go, we know how to click buttons. Phil, it is amazing to have you on the show. Welcome back, second round, to Technically Speaking, you are crazy enough to join us for a second time, so I don’t know if that says more about us or more about you.

Phil: Yeah, I’m just a glutton for punishment, I guess, guys, and plus, I like you guys a whole bunch, so that helps.

Taylorr: Yeah. Well, okay, great. It’s awesome to have you, man.

Austin: I have to throw this out there live for the listeners, for anybody in the Orlando area, I suppose. You have to talk to Phil if you want good restaurant recommendations.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Austin: We were taken to FK Your Diet, which is truly the name. And I still think about the breakfast burrito that we ate there to this day, Phil.

Taylorr: Never had a better one. Yeah.

Austin: I’ve seriously, that was top few experiences relating to food in my life, so thank you for that. And I’m sorry to you for the people that are now going to be hitting you up about burritos.

Phil: Okay. Doug and Amy do great stuff for foster kids there, so FK Your Diet is a place to go do good and eat good. I love it.

Taylorr: Yeah, for sure.

Austin: You even have the motto down.

Taylorr: Yeah, for real.

Austin: You inspire me.

Taylorr: Oh, man. So, Phil, this is going to be a super fun conversation. I think this topic is, it’s a black box for a lot of people. There are a lot of shoulds out there and gimmicks, as it were, and we’re really looking forward to demystifying a lot of this stuff. And, as you know, we like to do our research, right? We know you really well, which really helps as far as structuring the show, but we still like to poke around and dig some things up. And one of the things that we found that was particularly interesting is you wrote an article recently about ChatGPT, right? And how that kind of plays into sales. 

And obviously that’s been a buzz lately; they just were the largest application as far as acquiring users on the planet. NSA and all of the speakers have been mad hyped about it over the last few weeks. So, what’s your take on using tools like ChatGPT for sales?

Phil: Yeah, well, I think it’s a great idea generation place. You can throw in a good prompt and get 10, 12, 20 ideas; I think that’s super useful for you. I think you can come up with different headlines that you might not have considered, I think that’s great. You can check to make sure that you covered enough bases. ChatGPT is not meant to be Google, let’s be clear. But it is meant to condense things. And maybe we take the show notes and we might pop them in there from our time together or the transcript I mean, and create some show notes out of it, so that it summarizes a segment of what we talked about. 

What ChatGPT is not, though, and I think this is important, is it’s not human. It’s meant to be artificial intelligence, augmented artificial intelligence, augmented from humans, right? You just put it in, but you still have to do the work yourself. If I just published an article from ChatGPT, first of all, it doesn’t sound just like I sound. Right? That’s the first thing. It doesn’t sound how I talk and it doesn’t sound how I write, so that’s not as helpful. Secondly, it doesn’t include stories that are relevant to me and my audience. Yes, I can ask it to say, okay, well, give me a story about X, Y, or Z, but unless you can connect it to the internet, which there are now plugins through Chrome that allow you to do that, well, that’s not hyper-relevant for your audience. 

So, you’re providing generic information. And as a speaker, as a consultant, as a thought leader, you’re being paid to contextualize a ton of information. So, ChatGPT is not meant for that, it’s not meant for sales that way, but certainly ideation. Let’s say I want to write a 200 word intro to my product, and I’m going to dump in my product all of the great stuff that my marketing team put together, maybe that I put together myself and say, Hey, take all of this stuff, 1500, 2000 words and condense it down to 200 words in a persuasive tone with a call to action that says, call Phil at (414) 640-7445. 

Okay, it can do that, but you still have to reread it. You still have to make sure it makes sense. You still have to give it your energy. It’s not yet, and maybe one day it will be, right? It’s not yet to the point where it can replace your emotion, your energy, and your inflections. So, until it gets there, and it might be sooner than we think due to tools like Synthesia and stuff like that, that actually recreate humans. Well, until it’s there, we’re still just using it as a starting point, not as an ending point for sales.

Taylorr: Oh, man. Yeah. Nailed it. We also think like, man, sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong generation. I don’t know if you guys ever feel like this, but one of the things I can’t get over when it comes to AI chat-based tools, and even the idea that this can replace emotion and tonality, it’s never lived my experiences, it’s never lived my interpretation of those experiences; good, bad or otherwise. Yeah. It just seems unlikely, again, I’m probably old and I’ll be having a newspaper in my hand when I’m old telling people about my lawn. But at the same time, we have to add the element of your own perception to your thought leadership. 

And that just seems like a cop-out, quite honestly, to use a tool like ChatGPT, let’s say, fully, to let’s say, write all of your email templates and write all of your blogs and all of these things, because we’re quite, honestly, to your point earlier, Phil, doing people a disservice by not putting in our perception of our own experiences, you know?

Phil: Yeah. I totally agree. Right? And not to mention there’s no nuance there. Things like, if we’re on video, you might never say that you’re both wearing baseball hats today. You might never say that. But if I’m paying attention and I look at the video, I can see what’s on your baseball hats and I could then make mention of that later on. Well, with ChatGPT, it’s just data, it’s just text, so I can’t do that. So, it might give me a good format and a good structure, and it might even give me a basic process from which to work from. So, if you’re starting from zero, well, ChatGPT is a great place to start. 

Again, it’s a starting point, not an ending point, so use that for maybe steps one through four, but then massage them and make them your own and add your experience and your insights and your own flavor to that, because otherwise it’s just white bread, right?

Taylorr: Right. Yes.

Austin: That’s so true. Yeah, that’s a good visualization there. What I love about what you just said too, and I think this actually mirrors, we had Ford Saekes on a couple of weeks back, Ford, if you’re listening to this, shoutout, and we were talking about lots of different marketing tactics and hacks and things that people talk about out there. And every time we brought him a new does this work type of question every single time it was like, it’s not, does it work or does it not work? It’s the context for what you’re doing with it and the outcome that you’re chasing. 

And I think what you just illustrated there is an important note, because what you didn’t say is, yes, go use ChatGPT, or no, don’t go use ChatGPT. You said, like, in these specific scenarios, you could find it useful because. And I think that’s really the outlook that we need to take with not just ChatGPT, but any, sort of, technology or tool that’s available to us today. And I think that actually probably segues into some of the other things that we want to talk to you about today pretty nicely. But I really want to point that out. It’s the nuance. You said nuance. It’s really the nuance as it relates to this, because that’s where the works part of the statement comes from.

Phil: That’s right, absolutely right, Austin.

Austin: Yeah. So, yeah, there are a million places we could go with this, but I’m curious for you, there are so many of these different technology systems coming out, and you talk a lot about social media as well, and we just watched TikTok explode out of nowhere, which I think was unexpected for a lot of people, especially to the grandstanding platforms out there. And I think that there’s a sense that can come for entrepreneurs of FOMO, the fear of missing out, as it relates to all of these things, and because of that, I think people find themselves very distracted and, sort of, watering down their efforts because rather than focusing in one area or another, they’re, sort of, trying to do it all. 

So, what’s your take on that? Should people be trying to chase every new shiny object that comes out? Should they be ignoring them entirely? Is the truth somewhere in the middle? what do you think?

Phil: Yeah, well, the truth is always in the middle, let’s be clear; no matter what, it doesn’t matter the platform. I would say certainly you might be missing out if you’re not on TikTok, if you’re not using ChatGPT, if you’re not using some of these tools to create images, that’s true, you might be missing out. But the truth is, do you know what you’re trying to accomplish? And does this tool, does this platform, does it help me get more of what I’m looking for? Or does it not? Now, that’s not to say you shouldn’t experiment. I’m going to tell you right now, I really like the idea of short video. I can’t stand TikTok. It just freaks me out. I don’t like how much access they get to all of my stuff. But at the same time, I also don’t really like the amount of access that Facebook gives it. 

So, it’s not just that some of it is old guy stuff, right? I’m an old man, I don’t want to necessarily be everywhere, but I want to at least understand. So, I would say, read about it. Look at what might happen; look at what you might be able to do with that. See how you might be able to get more of what you want from any of these platforms. Again, ChatGPT being a good example, where you can get outlines and things, you can take your existing content and spin it new ways that maybe you haven’t considered it. Because sometimes I think we get so inside our own baseball that we forget that other people are playing on different fields, right? So, we have to look at it that way.

And what I do. Can it be amplified by this? And do I even want to play with something new? Or am I pretty happy here? But am I paying attention still? That’s the key. You have to still pay attention; you have to know what else is out there. You have to talk to people that know what’s going on and say, I don’t see a use case yet for me, but what do you see? Talk to a Ford Saekes, Patrick Allman, talk to me, talk to you guys, right? Who are on more of the cutting, bleeding edge of this technology. Don’t just poo poo it. Don’t just push it. And also don’t jump all of the way in either if you have something successful. 

I would encourage you to take, like Google does, right? 10 or 20% of your time, if you’re already making enough and invested in some of those side projects, invest it in a ChatGPT, invest in Mindvalley, invest it it in TikTok, invest it in that and see. And if it totally sucks, then stop. If you hate it, stop. Not because you’re afraid of missing out, because frankly, I love the joy of missing out, I don’t miss TV. I cut the cord years ago. I don’t miss it at all. Right? I have joy of missing out. So, don’t do it for the FOMO or the JOMO, instead, do it because it doesn’t make sense for your business after you’ve experimented.

Taylorr: Yeah. Also love JOMO. Have to throw that in the back pocket, Austin. So, thank you for that, Phil.

Austin: For sure, that one is now part of the vocabulary.

Taylorr: For sure. No, I think you expressed it nicely, right? We just have to figure out the things that work. And I think one of the key things, I just want to emphasize this, if you’re making enough, do you have the time to invest elsewhere? Yeah, it’s probably worth experimenting, but chances are there are some criteria to hit if we’re not hitting that first benchmark of am I making enough and where should I focus my efforts as a result of that? Which I think a lot of, yeah, right, Maslow’s, which I think a lot of people can find themselves in that position of, and it might seem like a magic wand, which it most certainly is not. 

Speaking of magic wands, on your website, Phil, one of the things that you express is that a lot of companies or individuals, right? Speakers, coaches, consultants, we’ve all heard it. There are these gimmicks that we hear, as it relates to sales, we were actually just venting about this rabidly before the call, so I’m really excited to vent more about this here in a minute. But I’m curious from your perspective, Phil, what are those gimmicks that are often told to us?

Phil: Well, we think that quantity is more important than quality a lot of times, whether that’s being content, whether that’s the number of contacts or connections that we have, the number of emails we send, we hear people all of the time, oh, yeah, send daily emails, get a hundred million, this, that or the other thing, go viral. Why? What the heck does that do for you? Really, I think about the stuff that goes viral, they’re often cat videos; they’re people that you don’t think could sing that really bust out of that. One of the first NFTs that got sold, wasn’t that Mikey, the baby that was biting on his little brother’s finger? Is there any value of that for anything related to what you do? 

If there is, fantastic, go for it. But there’s probably not. I know there’s not for me, right? I have a seven year old, a video of him kissing me goodnight. Well, I really love that, but that’s not going to go viral, nobody else cares, right? So, that’s not valuable and it’s even less valuable if I focus on the quantity. Oh my gosh, seven days a week, 365 days a year, I have to put out crappy content. Well, that’s not sure anymore. I don’t know that it ever was, but it’s especially not true now; ChatGPT now makes SEO really easy. I can create a hundred articles about any topic and get SEO, right? That’s the whole thing, right? Isn’t it quantity? You have a hundred articles about pickle farming and now they’re all on my website on picklefarmingus.com, and now I’m going to rank number one for pickle farming.

Well, except Google caught up and they beat your pants off and they know that they’re all automated and nobody links back to them and nobody’s read them, we have no time on page and they have other stuff. So, why not write one quality article about pickle farming and really focus on that, promote the crap out of that, cut it up into a bunch of different pieces, turn that into some different articles. Maybe you do make a TikTok, maybe you make an Instagram reel, maybe you make a couple of YouTube videos about it, maybe you do some guest posting other places where you link back to that wonderful article about pickle farming on some adjacent farmers’ websites. 

Well, okay, now I took my quality and I turned that into quantity, but it starts with the quality. Well, same with connections, I believe that one is greater than a thousand when it comes to connections. One is greater than 1000. Because I can know everything about one person. I can do the research; I can use my CRM, right? I can use SpeakerFlow and I can see what do I know about this person? How are they connected? I go onto LinkedIn and I see, oh, look at that. They know Austin and Taylorr. Great. Hey, guys, how do you know this person? I’m going to ask you, okay, you don’t know them well, great. 

I’m going to find somebody else that does. I’m going to look at their company page. I’m going to do some more research. I’m going to find out what do we have in common. What, sort of, insight does this person have? What am I interested in about them? What can I look into about their company? What can I look to about their industry, where they work? And last but not least, what is their customer thinking about? I can do that research, that’s one. I sure can’t do that on a thousand. But if I can do that on one and I can figure out the process and I can find out that I collected 40 pieces of data and only 12 of them are important, well, maybe I can do that on the next one and the next one and the next one. 

Or if I sift down and I look for what’s in common, maybe I have 7 instead of 7,000 people, and now I can talk to those 7 in a similar way, still being a person, still talking to them, but instead I can do that. So, that old trick about quantity mattering more than quality has never been less true than today. So, I have a bunch more, I don’t know, do we want to go deeper on that one or do you want me to share some more?

Austin: Well, man, yes and yes. I want to point out this whole like, I don’t know, quality over quantity, as in terms of relationship building, not only because that works, and I’ve seen so many of our clients prove that, that works. Taylorr and I have personally experienced that, that works. You, the expert are saying that works. So, I really hope people listen to it. But there’s this meta layer, I think; that it might be worth pointing out as it relates to this subject. And that at least a lot of the people listening to this show have an aversion, I think, at least to the term sales, because there’s this sense of being sleazy that goes along with sales. 

You’re trying to get something; you have to be manipulative or something in order to make sales work. And I think if you’re looking at sales at scale, where you’re doing the opposite of what you were just talking about here, some of that can be true. You can be more successful if you’re kind of a crappy person when it comes to selling to the masses. However, if you do sales the way that you’re explaining sales should be done, I think that it removes a lot of that sense of feeling like you’re being manipulative, because you’ve taken that time, initially, to really understand the person that you’re connecting with. 

And so, you can truly come at it from the place of service as opposed to coming at it from the place of trying to extract value from the other person. And so, though the effort, I think, per individual is much higher to do what you just described, it seems like the comfort, in terms of actually doing it, should also be increasing. Do you find that that’s true?

Phil: Yeah, I do. Right? So, the more of service you are, the less of sales you need to be. That certainly is true, right? You need to be of service more than you need to be of sales. So, for those that are listening that have an aversion of sales, every time that you hear the word sales, I want you to think about being of service to people. And that wouldn’t you be doing them a disservice if you had a product that could save their life or make them better and you didn’t tell them about it? I would say absolutely, you would be doing them a disservice. So, understand that you have something of value that you can offer to people. If you didn’t, why are you doing it? Okay? That’s the first thing that you have to understand. 

With that, understand that sales conversations are a performance. Sales conversations are performance, much like a speaker performs onstage and you’re like, what? What do you mean, Phil? Well, let me explain. By the time you get onstage, hopefully you’ve practiced for 10, a hundred, a thousand, 10,000 hours before you’ve done it. This is not your first thing. This is not, I wrote a speech this morning and I’m going to give it this afternoon. If that’s you, you’re not a speaking professional, you’re a speaking amateur. So, don’t do that, okay? Same with sales. So, let me talk about that. 

First, you have to prepare. That’s the research that I talked about, right? You have to find out what’s important to them, what’s going on in their industry, what’s going on in their company? Do they have an event? Do they have a need? Are they growing or are they shrinking? All of this stuff, that’s the preparation. Then you have to practice this much like you practice your speech. So, write out some things. Heck, use ChatGPT again, dump it in there. Get some stuff out of there and say it. Say it. Say it. Here’s another way to use AI. Go to Otter.AI and record yourself. Use the Otter app on your phone, record yourself. Not only does it recorder, but it transcribes. 

As you practice more, you start sounding more like you. And by that I don’t mean that you’re pretending before, but you’re not being the best version of you that you are after you’ve practiced. So, you prepare and you practice, and then you perform. And that’s when you start making those calls. And, again, that’s where 7 is greater than 7,000. I can make 7 calls to people that have some similarities and have similar conversations. I cannot do that with 7000, first, because they don’t have that much in common. 

Second, because they don’t have that much in common, it’s not that relevant. And third, can you really make 7,000 sales calls in a day, a week, week, a month, or even a year? I don’t want to make that many, but I’ll make 7. So, that’s where that comes in, right? And that’s being of service to 7 instead of being salesy to 7,000.

Taylorr: Amen.

Austin: Preaching the good word, Phil.

Taylorr: Dropping the heat.

Austin: Yeah, I’m all about it.

Taylorr: Yes. So, one of the taglines you have, which Austin and I really resonated with this, is it’s high-touch selling in a high-tech world, right? I think people can lose sight of the the necessity of high-touch in sales. It’s like, all right, I did my research, I did what Phil said. I got my 7 people. I sent an email. I didn’t hear back. Opposite of high-touch when you bail at that point. So, can you help unpack this idea of what high-touch means and still how to then balance that in this high-tech kind of world that we’re living in? What do you mean by that phrase?

Phil: Sure. So, high-touch means that you do whatever is the hardest thing to do. That could mean video, that could mean audio, that could mean physical mail. That could mean a phone call, could be a text message. What it, typically, doesn’t mean is just a mass email. A mass text. Something that you push a button and look at that, 14,000 people just got the same exact crappy message. That is high-tech. Now, if we meld the two and we think about what does high-touch really mean? I want you to think about high-touch as high value. High value. So, how much value can you provide if you did what I just said and you take the time to do research? And you find out what’s going on in their industry, what’s going on with their customers, what’s going on with their company and what’s going on with them. 

Now, you should have 5 to 10 things that could be of value. Don’t puke them all in one message, let’s be clear. High-touch, give them a phone call. Hey, Austin, I see that something that I mentioned. I see that your company has grown 378% in the last 12 months. Congratulations. Often when companies grow at 378%, they’re struggling with blah, blah, blah. If that’s true, don’t worry about calling me back, I’m going to send you an email, you can reply to that and we can schedule some time. That’s a high-touch.

Double tap. Maybe I go to the triple tap. And now I go to your LinkedIn as well. If you’re there and I say, Hey. And I did my research there and I say, Hey, Austin, I just left you a voicemail and I sent you an email and I’d love to schedule some time to learn more about your organization and see if it might make some sense for us to spend some time together. The first call is never a sales call; the first call is a service call. I want to find out can I even help you? Because I’m not going to pitch you if I can’t help you. Again, that’s high-touch, I’m going to listen, I’m going to see, can I solve a problem. 

Michael Gelb, in his booked, The Art of Connection, made up this phrase in Latin that I live by. It’s Conjungere ad Solvendum. Conjungere ad Solvendum. Connect, and then solve. I have to connect with you, that’s why the high-touch matters, then I can solve. But in the middle there, I have to understand what the connection is between you and my solution, and if there even is a solution. So, again, that’s because I’m going to high-touch you. I can’t do that in an email. I can’t even do that, a lot of times, in a text message. My goal is to earn the right to have a high-touch conversation with you by doing something that’s high-touch from me, so you can see that I know that you’re worth the effort. 

Because if you’re just sending the same crappy message to 14,000 people, well, to your point, you might sell 10 of them, but you’re not selling to me. And if I’m the person that you really want to sell and you get 10 accidental buys because they feel bad, those are the same people that are clicking on banner ads still in 2023. Those are the people I even want to do business with.

Austin: Yeah. This reminds me of one of my favorite stories ever, or a high-touch sales campaign. One of our clients wanted to develop some more bureau relationships. And most people, when that happens, maybe they do a little bit of research, they send a couple of emails, they send a speaker kit, say; this is what I’m all about. Let me know if you have any clients that you’re a good fit for, and maybe that could be successful. But what she decided to do was she picked 15-ish of the bureaus that she was most excited about working with. 

And then spent somewhere between 3 and $5,000, I don’t remember how much, but somewhere in that range, and put together these beautiful boxes that all tied into the location that they were in and their bureau and their brand and did include some stuff about her, obviously; in this beautiful branded box with her logo and colors. Spent a substantial amount of money to make these beautiful boxes. Sent them in the mail and then followed up and was just like, Hey, I sent you this box. What did you think? Did you see it? And, first of all, she made a lot of people really happy, they were all very excited to get that box. And because of that huge amount of effort and money that she put into that, it caught their attention. 

Several of those bureaus picked her up and she reported to me that it was multiple six figures worth of business came from just that one thing. So, monetary investment, huge amount of time invested into both the research and the putting together of these boxes, and that paid off in many orders of magnitude. I think that illustrates really what you’re talking about here, that you’re demonstrating right from the get-go, how much you care, and how much you’re willing to put on the line to show them, prove to them that you care. And that stands out because most people don’t, if for no other reason.

Phil: Well, and it’s value for value, let’s be really clear here, right? if I’m going to pour into you, you’re probably going to pour back, the law of reciprocity works, right? Cialdini’s influence clearly says that. I would say two books that I would recommend folks read if they’re interested in that. One is How to Get a Meeting With Anybody by Stu Heinecke, great book. And then Giftology by John Ruhlin. Two books that can really help you think about that. With that, Ruhlin, in his book, actually says, remember that anything, though, with your company logo on it, is no longer a gift, it’s advertising. 

So, you want to make the gift all about them. John used to give out a set of Cutco knives. If you’ve ever bought a Cutco knife, you know that they’re sold in homes door-to-door, and there are, typically, about 6 to $1,200 a set. Imagine sending that out, now many people are thinking, dude, I don’t have $1,200 to send to a thousand people. Well, think about the math we just did. 7 people you send it to, 1200 bucks, that’s 8,400, let’s round it up to $10,000. What’s your speaking fee? What’s your consulting fee? Are you willing to invest one whole fee in sending out 7 pieces of mail that could potentially net you a hundred thousand dollars? Okay. Yes. And how many of those 7 do you need to hit at a hundred thousand dollars each to make your money back? I’m not a math guy, but the answer’s less than one.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Phil: Okay. So, why are we not doing this? I really think the reason we don’t do this is because often we’re lazy and we want the shortcut, right? We want the silver bullet, we want the magic wand, we want the potion. Hey, gang, it’s all about high-touch. It’s not about high-tech anymore. Now, use the tech, use your CRM to gather data, and until you have enough data, don’t waste your shot. Use the internet. Use ChatGPT. Use AI to make something beautiful, but make sure that it’s custom to the person that you’re sending it to. Don’t send it to 50, a hundred people anymore, that doesn’t work. You might get some lucky ones, but you’re never going to get any lasting ones, and that’s really what you want. I want a lasting relationship, not a lucky one.

Taylorr: Yeah. Oh, man. Golden, golden nuggets. What I love about this conversation, and actually it kind of took a little bit of a spin from what I was originally expecting, what high-touch meant to you. So, this is really fascinating. When you hear high-touch, I think in a lot of sales scenarios, they mean hit them up on every channel all of the time, relentlessly until they say yes.

Phil: Yeah.

Austin: Oh, what reaction?

Taylorr: Yeah. And you flipped the script on that. You’re like, and I’m not saying follow-up isn’t important here, guys, let me back up. I’m going to let Phil fill in that gap for me here for a second. But you’re high-touch; that doesn’t necessarily mean just relentlessly hitting somebody up on every single channel out there. It’s providing as much value as humanly possible and making a single touchpoint as valuable as humanly possible as you’re continuing that follow-up. So, I want people to really understand what high-touch means here, because you’re going to hear it in other sales scenarios and people talking about what high-touch means, and it’s going to be the complete opposite of what you’re hearing here, and this is certainly the way, so to speak. 

Now, Phil, I know you have some opinions about this. The thing I want you to help us understand here is there’s still a follow-up process involved, right?

Phil: Of course.

Taylorr: You reach some people. How does somebody approach that? Knowing that there’s a balance between relentlessly hitting somebody up and just doing a single touchpoint and realizing they ghosted you, even though we haven’t done the follow-up. Do you have a service to sell? You got your first high-touch, value fill email out, or LinkedIn message or video. Now, what happens?

Phil: Yeah. Well, so first, before you even get started, map out your touchpoints. What are you going to actually do here? I’m not telling you that the first touch has to be that magic box. I want to be clear here, right? It can be. It can be, and that could be enough, but it isn’t always it, right? So, it isn’t always it. You might not be able to find enough information to fill that magic box up, but make them as valuable as possible. What you don’t want to do is chase, right? You absolutely want to go for no, right? Andrea Waltz wrote the book on this, you absolutely want to go for no, because if they give you nothing, well, nothing isn’t no, and nothing isn’t yes. No is the second best answer you can get, but map out. 

Okay, so what am I going to do here? Think of this as a campaign, not as an event, right? Think of this as a campaign, not as an event. So, I’m going to have 7 touchpoints; again, 7 touchpoints over how much time? Let’s say 60 days, let’s say 30 days, whatever the number is, there’s no perfect number here, but pick a time, right? No more than 90 days, 7 touches is fair over 30 days, if we do it that way, that’s about twice a week. What you don’t want to send is a message that says, following up, checking in, circling back, touching base. [Blows Raspberry – 31:45], those suck. Those are messages that are sure to get thrown in the garbage, because those are all about you as the sender. 

The touch that you want really is like they give you a big hug when they see you, that’s why that that value box that you’re talking about, Austin, is so valuable, because if somebody would give you a hug if you gave it to them in person, well, that’s my goal. I want that high-touch back. So, what do I do with a follow-up? Okay, what do I do with a follow-up? So, this is the, I sent you this package and here’s what’s inside. And I was wondering if you looked at page 136 of this, if you’re sending a book. Because I thought that was really relevant to your situation. If you send a set of Cutco knives; again, that’s probably a thank you after the deal is closed, you can certainly confirm delivery of that. That’s fine. 

Austin, did those fit you? Did they work for you? Did you have them with the stake that I also sent along? Okay, that’s a fair question. As we think about this, though, I’m going to add value and value and some more value and some more value and some more value. And this is why I need to think of this as a campaign. So, I might record a video, I might record an audio, I might write an article, I might include a physical magazine, perhaps that I was featured in, that I showed off, if I’m looking for a sponsor, right? That I mentioned the sponsor’s name in this, I might send them a recording, but it has to be relevant to them. Value equals relevancy. Value equals progress. 

So, think about this. If they’re hiring for the 2024 June 1st sales summit that they’re having, one of the things that they want to do is get the agenda buttoned up as quickly as possible. Because most of the organizations do not have event professionals that do this full-time. Some do, but very few if you’re selling corporate, okay? So, if that’s true, they want to get the agenda button up as quickly as possible. So, part of your value is not only can I help you by me being a speaker, but perhaps I can help you find an MC.

Perhaps I can help you find some other speakers to fill in some of your breakout sessions. Perhaps I can help you drive butts in the seats by hosting a pre-conference webinar with your team. Perhaps I could interview your executives and I could find out what’s important to them so that I can make sure when I talk, I reinforce their messaging. This is all value. And I can show you how I’ve done this before. And that’s high-touch. Now, is some of this high-tech? Is video high tech? Well, maybe. Maybe it is, but maybe it’s not, right? Everything does not have to be an amazing production. 

Some of this can be hold up your phone and talk to the phone and showing you the energy. Maybe I do like Shawn Rhodes does, and I go out there and I record a video, and then I just put in a virtual background of your location of where your event is. That’s high-touch, with high-tech for sure. So, that’s what I’m talking about. But do map out a campaign, don’t make this a one-shot event where all you’re doing is following up, following up, following up. Think about the value that you have. Think about the different catalog of information that you have that’s valuable and relevant to them, and use that for your follow-up; not following up, circling back, touching base, checking in.