S. 2 Ep. 52 – The Ultimate List Building Resource

Taylorr: And we’re live. Jackie, welcome to Technically Speaking, it is awesome to have you here today. Thanks for joining us.

Jackie: I’m delighted to be here with both of you guys, this is so much fun.

Austin: Aw, man, I’m so glad. We hope that it is, as the hosts of the show, we have questions sometimes. Are we making this fun enough? But I think we are.

Taylorr: Yeah, I think we’re doing okay.

Austin: Thanks for participating.

Taylorr: Yeah, that’s right. Let us know in the comments, guys.

Austin: Yeah, right.

Taylorr: So, Jackie, this is going to be an awesome episode today, very excited to pick your brain. You’ve created some awesome work in our industry with SpeakerTunity and list building and all of the marketing materials people need to, successfully, book gigs. But tell us about your background, how did you get into this world? How did you identify the need for what SpeakerTunity does? Did you just wake up one day and say, wow, this is what I want to do when I grow up or did you stumble into it? What was that story?

Jackie: Well, I’ll tell you the backstory. I started out at 11 years old when I decided that I was going to be a sports writer, there were no women sports writers then.

Taylorr: Heck, yeah,

Jackie: And at 20, I was at the Detroit Free Press; in 21, I was at the Associated Press in the front pages of the LA Times; in 22, I was at the Washington Post. I then went on from there to create one of the largest sports special events in cable TV PR Agencies in America for over 20 years with a world class client list. Everybody from the National Hockey League to the golf channel to Toyota Motor Sports, and I can go on and on. Last thing I did was the worldwide poker phenomenon with the world poker tour. And, at the same time, I was writing a couple of personal growth books, realized that my heart lay with the people who were making the world a better place. 

And so, I rebranded my company to Conscious Media Relations and we started doing radio podcast tours, which we still do, where we introduce authors and leaders to 9,000 radio shows and podcasts with a minimum guarantee of 30 interviews. And about eight or nine years ago, some of those clients said to me, can you book me for speaking gigs? And we said, we don’t want to do that, but we know where they are, why don’t we tell you? And that’s how SpeakerTunity was born, we started getting all of the information that we knew about speaking, at that period, it was just transformational leaders; and, of course, now we serve a much wider community. 

But we started putting it in into subscription services that we would feed people leads every single month. And then, it just grew like crazy from there, and so now we have about 15 or 18 different products and we, really, help provide curated speaking opportunities in various different areas. So, it’s everything from podcasts and radio shows to virtual summits, to virtual networking, to live and virtual meetings, to conferences, Tedxes; so we’ve, basically, gone out and done all of the work for them.

Austin: Wow. So, what I think, I just heard you say was like, you were doing this radio and podcast show booking, and you, basically, just got asked for this enough that you figured you might as well solve the problem, is that right?

Jackie: Well, I’m one of those people that I believe the universe lays breadcrumbs for me, and I, finally, said.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Jackie: Hey, the universe is trying to tell you something, why don’t you, actually, pay attention?

Taylorr: Heck, yeah.

Austin: Yeah. Wow. Well, there’s something to be said about market demand.

Jackie: Yeah, exactly. Well, and that’s what it, really, is, for me. I say I’m a serial pioneer, because I’ve always been ahead of the game doing something that nobody else does. But it’s because I see a need, it’s because I hear what the audience is telling me, what the perspective clients are saying. And then, I’ll go try to fill that and that’s what we’ve done right from the beginning, and that’s what we’ve done at SpeakerTunity. Every time somebody says, well, God, we need this. And I realize there’s nobody else out there doing it. We just picked up and created it.

Taylorr: Heck, yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: There’s no better way to find the products that the market needs.

Jackie: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Jackie: Exactly.

Austin: That’s, exactly, right.

Jackie: And then, we discovered that people needed training, once we gave them these things, they needed to know, well, how do I book myself? So, we created training programs, and then they said things like, well, okay, so what’s a speaker one sheet and what do we do about that? And so, we started creating speaker one sheets and podcast sheets and all of the different resources that they need; speaker handouts and roll-up banners and now we help people with their slides. 

So, we just wanted to make sure that if you’re a speaker, we have you covered so that you don’t have to do any of that excess work and you’re spending more time on stages and less time, actually, doing all of the background stuff that requires so much time and effort. So, we call ourselves one-stop shopping for the speaker leader.

Taylorr: Yeah. Well, that’s what they need too, no one wants to spend countless hours researching all of those individual needs; if you know there was one place to go to get your leads and get your marketing collaterals done and know that it was done by a source that had context for our industry, what more could you ask for?

Jackie: Well, and during the pandemic, we realized too that everybody was speaking virtually. And that opened up a whole new world. And so, we decided, for example, this is an example of how things get started in our little business. We realized that people could speak anywhere, at meetings, venues, and associations, all across North America. They didn’t have to be within driving distance and they didn’t have to be paid a fee to go all the way to Philadelphia from Los Angeles. So, we developed niche directories. 

So, if you just want to speak to women’s business meetings all across the country or entrepreneur meetings or real estate, or spiritual centers or parenting meetings; we just identified over 60 different places and options that, recovery and addiction centers, for example. So, it made it, really, easy for you to do that. So, we got down into, we got regional directories, we got niche directories, so we want to make sure that you weren’t overwhelmed by your choices, you could just get the ones you wanted.

Taylorr: Nice.

Austin: Yeah. I know this is such a confusing and challenging subject for so many people, it’s like a, I don’t know what I don’t know mixed with where do I start?

Taylorr: Yeah.

Austin: It’s, kind of, a perfect storm of people feeling left confused and I find that so many people let themselves sit in that confusion and the resistance because there’s no clear path forward, and then their business growth suffers because of that. So, what I love about what you do is that, at a bare minimum, you’re giving them a jumping off point and you’re helping them, sort of, see a path forward and, well, I’m sure we’ll get into this, but it’s an iterative process, being able to do outreach and prospecting, really, well and knowing who you’re best suited to help and stuff, but it starts with just taking some action. 

And if you can remove a barrier of entry so that people are more willing to just start taking action, well, now that iteration process can set-in and results start happening a lot faster.

Jackie: And we did a couple of things that are, really, helping people out, first of all. If anybody, really, comes to us and doesn’t, really, know, because they’re looking at all these different options; myself and Kelly O’Hara, particularly, Kelly, our speaker relations manager, she will, actually, walk you through and help you figure out what’s the best. The other thing we did was we created a membership program. And you can come into that membership at the lowest level and get one product and become also exposed to speaker bookers in our speaker showcase. Or you can move up the line and you can get multiple products. 

Okay, I’m ready for all of these now. And now I want to go to the next level and I can get all of this. So, we, really, figured that it was a simpler way to make it easy for people, rather than looking at all of our resources on their own. So, two options; get some help from us or just start at the lowest level of our silver membership and you get to choose whether you want 5,000 conferences, that’s what we are at now in conference connections. 

You can choose our radio podcast insiders for either life-enhancing or B2B shows or our virtual summits or our, kind of, aggregator of all, kinds of, different things for the transformational leader. You can pick one of those, start there, and then, move up, makes it simple. So, that’s, really, where we’re heading, at this point.

Taylorr: Heck, yeah.

Austin: For sure.

Taylorr: So, one of the things, you may have addressed this just by, kind of, actually, breaking that down, but we’ve noticed in the industry there are, kind of, maybe, two models of how list generation services happen. The one model we see is like, Hey, here’s a giant list of all of the leads or here’s, on a monthly basis, we’re sending you X number of leads for X dollars. Also, the directory route, where here’s a whole database of things that you can, then, search by, and then pull the leads that you want for X amount. Do you have a blend of those two things happening or is it all leads and directory, can you explain the model of which people get leads from you, I guess?

Jackie: Well, actually, that’s all three that you just mentioned.

Taylorr: Okay. Okay, great. Good.

Jackie: So, the four subscription services I just mentioned; you, basically, get handed PDFs twice a month by email.

Taylorr: Okay.

Jackie: Then we have directories like our regional directory, where we’ll give you 1500 to 3000 speaker leads just in your market. You can get that as, you download that, all at one time, as an Excel file. The same thing happens with our niche directories. And things like the TEDx and our virtual networking, you download it once, you own it. And then, our new conference finder is where you go into the table, find your category, and then you can see the ones that are right for you and download just that section. 

And we have 60 different categories and subcategories, so it should be pretty easy to see; if you want business, and then, if you want a, particular, industry it’s, really, download or if you want personal growth or health and wellness, any of the other categories that makes sense for leaders.

Taylorr: Gotcha. That makes sense. So, they get to choose their best mode it sounds like. That’s cool.

Jackie: Yeah. And the best, kind of, speaking stages for them, that’s, really, what the choice is going to be, not the mode so much.

Taylorr: Okay.

Jackie: We’re locked into the modes that we have, but it’s, really, designed to serve a, particular, audience, each one of those.

Taylorr: Nice.

Jackie: Not everybody.

Austin: That makes sense.

Jackie: Is going to want a podcast, and other people are going to want conferences. We’ve given it to them in the best way that we can assemble the information.

Austin: It’s a lot of information, so I imagine it’s a tough job sometimes to figure out how the best method is going to be used, given the dataset that you’re working with. I can’t help but wonder. Go ahead.

Jackie: I was going to say, the other thing is, it all has to be kept fresh. But sometimes with some of those directories like the regionals and the specialty directories; we know that people are going to find stuff that’s out of date, it’s just the nature of the beast, even though we’re constantly updating and we do a refresh every year on each one of them. So, what we tell people, all you have to do is send an email to [email protected] with whatever you find that’s out of date. And we’ll update it for you because we believe this is a relationship, this is not, here’s your directory and sayonara. It’s something that we are there to help continue to be of service, and we always want to make sure people have value.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Austin: That’s a concern I know a lot of people have, so I’m glad that you touched on that. Do you find that there’s a right time slash place slash set of preparations that are already done that make somebody a good fit for this type of lead generation service? Who would be qualified to work with you, do you find?

Jackie: Anybody that needs to get in front of an audience to grow a business, essentially. Most of our resources are for what I would call speak to enroll or speak to sell leaders who need to get in front of a stage. But now that we have conference connections, now we, really, have things for keynoters as well. And so, that, kind of, elevates us to add that element for people. But for the last several years, it’s, mostly, been people we serve that are growing a business through their speaking, as opposed to being professional speakers. And so, I think that that’s, really, the common denominator of the majority of our clients, and now, of course, we’re adding on the keynoters as this being another resource for them as well.

Taylorr: Yeah. That makes sense.

Austin: Yeah. Okay.

Taylorr: So, one, oh, Austin, you go, I know we have so many questions.

Austin: I know, we do. Yeah.

Taylorr: Our gears are spinning, so you go first.

Austin: Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m thinking from the perspective of somebody that might be earlier on in their business, where outreach, really, has to be the primary way that revenue is being driven. That also means that person may not be very seasoned as a salesperson, at that point in the process, and so, certainly, there’s an amount of just experience and, as I mentioned ago, iteration that has to happen to, sort of, improve those skills. 

But if I were in your shoes running SpeakerTunity, one of the concerns that I would have, would be our decision-makers that we’re doing research on are getting spammed by a bunch of people that are unskilled salespeople that are more or less just filling their inbox with, I would say junk stuff that’s not relevant to them. So, is that something that you find happens or what is the mechanism that you use to protect the decision-makers that you’re researching from getting spammed, more or less?

Jackie: Well, we don’t feel it’s our mission to, actually, police the quality-level of the person who is buying our resources, but we’d rather help them along and help get them get better, which is why we developed the training programs that, basically, says here’s how to write your pitch letter, here’s how to follow up on that phone call, so they’re not hounding people. And we also have a booking system, basically, to give them some templates of what the lead should look like. And the one thing we also haven’t talked about yet is our strategic partner, Book for You Virtual Assistants. 

So, if somebody is, really, either to the point where they’re not confident in doing it themselves, or they’re overwhelmed, and they don’t have enough time to do it themselves; we aligned ourselves with a company called Book For You Virtual Assistants. And what they’re going to ask for is they’re going to ask for a speaker one sheet, and, of course, that’s a service that we can provide, and you don’t even have to think about what to put in, we’ll tell you what to give us. So, we’re, really, guiding you to give us the best stuff. 

And then they’re going to want, what are your speaking presentations? And what is your background? And they’ll write the pitch letter that they can send to those, once you get a directory from us, they will take that and they will go follow-up that directory with the materials that you’ve given them. The other thing is you can also come to them with a list and they will go and they pursue those opportunities as well. And these VAs, this is all they do, they don’t do other VA work; they just go and pitch people either to any of the different, kind of, services, everything from podcast to the regional directories or the niche directories or conferences. 

They’ll sit there and fill out all those conference forms, the calls for speakers, so that you don’t have to do that, and then submit to you the ones that, actually, give you a human being to do that, but they’ll have the materials, they’ll make sure that it’s quality before they go doing that. So, those are the ways that we’re trying to, basically, up-level the quality of materials that these speaking opportunities are receiving.

Taylorr: That’s awesome. Yeah. What another example of you just matching what the market needs, and then, creating a service for it, that’s, really, cool. So, can we talk about the booking services a little bit more? I want to unpack the process that, maybe, they follow or someone, if they were doing it themselves, should follow to take a lead and what the next logical step, usually, is, is get a sales conversation on the books, I would imagine. 

So, the Book For You Now, do they follow-up until that happens? Is there a, particular, cadence? Do you design that with them as the speaker, when you work with the Book For You Now? Are they only sending the first touchpoint out? What’s the process or is there one that they might follow to?

Jackie: Oh, no, it’s very specific. And they are following a lot of what you would do on your own. So, the first thing is they have a sit-down meeting with you and they determine what are the assets that you’re sending. So, you would have your own pitch letter to go, if you were doing it on your own, and it should only be about five to seven paragraphs, the rest of the information should be in the speaker sheet. So, they’ll sit down with you, really, kind of, get that information from you. And I strongly encourage people to have three different presentations, because if you have only one arrow in your quiver, it had better be a bullseye. 

If you have three, then you’re going to give people choice, and you’re going to give the bookers a choice what to submit where if it’s a conference situation, but if it’s a letter, they’re likely to list, Hey, here are the three things that he or she can talk on. So, that’ll go out to the individuals by email, which is something where you would start. And then, in their case, mostly, they do some phone following up, but today, most people don’t give their phone numbers if they’re bookers; or if they do, they give an office number that doesn’t ring through to their cell phone. So, phone calling is not nearly as effective as it used to be. 

So, the next place that they go is LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger, and that’s where they’re doing a lot of their follow-up, and that’s where they’re getting them a lot of times, if the booker has not responded by email. And that is exactly the follow-up procedure that I would recommend to anybody that is going to do this on their own. And, of course, when Book for You gets the interest, they, basically, set up the meeting, they don’t do the negotiations themselves because.

Taylorr: Right, of course, yeah, just get the sales call booked.

Jackie: They’re virtual assistants. They’re not, you know.

Taylorr: You wouldn’t want them to do that anyway.

Jackie: Exactly. They’re going to make a meeting between the person who’s interested and the client, and then, from that point forward it moves forward. Now also, some of these organizations will say to them, please fill out the form, we’ll let you know if we’re interested, and then, the meeting might happen after that point.

Taylorr: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. So, what’s, I don’t know, an average number of touchpoints that you’ve seen throughout your time helping people navigate this and what you recommend in your training before you stop following up with a lead?

Jackie: Before you start following up with the lead?

Taylorr: Before you stop following up with a lead. How many touchpoint would you?

Jackie: I have a rule of three when it comes to phone calls and emails. So, it’s either one email and two phone calls or it’s two phone calls and one email.

Taylorr: Gotcha.

Jackie: So, one of three. And then, once you get past that point, then one touchpoint on LinkedIn, one touchpoint on Facebook Messenger and if you don’t get a response after that, you’re done.

Taylorr: Nice. So, five touchpoints?

Jackie: Five total. Five total.

Taylorr: That’s healthy. Yep. For sure.

Jackie: Yeah.

Taylorr: Nice.

Austin: Is there a point that you’d recommend recycling? Is there a point that you would recommend somebody recycle these leads that you have? Say somebody buys that list; they’re the directory of conferences, right? And they reach out this year, do you recommend that they, then, go back after it the following year and keep doing the outreach, or would you say if you’ve reached out and they didn’t get back to you that you just leave that in the past and go find somebody else to reach out to?

Jackie: It may just be a matter of the subject matter isn’t a match. So, if you have another subject matter six months later, then go back after them. Give them something different. And here’s another thing too, sometimes when you pitch; so example, some organizations fill their calendar in the last three months of the previous year and the first month of the first year. And then they don’t do anymore filling until November, December comes around the next year. So, if you hit them at the wrong time, it isn’t, necessarily, the fact that they’ve rejected you, it’s just that they don’t have space for you right now. 

So, if it’s something you, really, want to do, mark down when they’re rebooking, and then start then. Book For You Virtual Assistants right now have a whole series of things that they’ve been reaching out to on behalf of clients all year long, and they have said, okay, return in September, return in October. And they’ll start on those now to try to get those people booked for next year.

Taylorr: Nice.

Austin: That’s an important note to make. Yeah. The decision-making window is tough and I think that people forget that, you’re not reaching out to the conference a month before it happens, you need to be thinking about that three to six months in advance, probably, if not within the given decision-making window, they’ve already expressed they’re looking at for you. People fall down on this subject, I think.

Jackie: And most conferences have a specific window. And so, they’ll tell you what the deadline is. So, if you’ve missed it, just make note of when it reopens for the next year and be there at the beginning, because the people at the beginning get more consideration than the people at the end. And that’s, really especially, true of a TEDx. So, be as early in the process as you, possibly, can.

Austin: Yeah. I love that. I know I’m asking myself this personally, and I’m sure our listeners are thinking about this too, but what are some realistic expectations that people should have from this type of outreach? And I’d love to look at this from, probably, two perspectives because you made a good point earlier, that there’s, definitely, a segment of people that you’re working with that are going after paid speaking opportunities. There’s also a segment of people that are going after just speaking opportunities for the sake of marketing, whatever else it is that they’re selling. 

So, we might have to make a differentiation between those two things, but in a perfect world, somebody grabs your databases potentially, hires this VA team; we could talk about if they wanted to do it themselves separately, but let’s say they get your databases, they hire the VA team to do outreach, what should somebody expect to be getting out of that?

Jackie: Well, the hope is to get one a month.

Taylorr: Nice.

Austin: That’s solid.

Taylorr: Sales call, is it one a month, right?

Jackie: Yeah, yeah. Good.

Taylorr: Not a confirmed gig, but a sales call on the books.

Jackie: Exactly. And I’ll just give you, some of the people we work with, it’s a challenge to get them because their topics are, kind of, generic and we try to get them to make it more distinctive and unique. And we tell them also that your title needs to have an outcome. What is the actual outcome that you are going to have from this? And so that it, really, speaks to something that’s needed. So, sometimes we’ll tell them to tweak their subject matter, but in some case, we have five women that are already set up and a bunch of other women’s groups. We have one guy that’s, we’ve had 30 different organizations interested in him. 

The problem is that his asking price was too high. And most of these organizations couldn’t deal with his ask asking price, so we’ve asked him to reduce it. And now we’re going back to those people, but a lot of them had some serious interests; there were almost 35 people on the list that said they wanted to book the guy if they could come to some, kind of, terms.

Taylorr: Wow.

Austin: Wow.

Taylorr: Are there any patterns you noticed between those that get higher outcomes from this than lower? Is it, simply, a matter of that title having the outcome? In those two examples you provided, what do you think was the differentiator from them getting as many sales meetings on the books versus; let’s say the standard one per month?

Jackie: Well, I think you have to be niched. If you have a, really, generic title there’s a lot of competition and it’s harder to get anybody booked. But if you have a very specific niche and you can zero in on that niche, women’s business meetings of from here to here or you’re looking for health and wellness organizations or something that’s, really, specific to, and your topic, really, applies to that audience; things that have to do with anti-aging for people that are a certain age. You’re going to go looking for things that are, really, right for that audience and be very specific with it. That helps a lot.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Jackie: The real key is differentiating yourself, because if you just sound like everybody else, then you’re going to have a hard time getting booked.

Taylorr: Can’t make a decision. That makes perfect sense. Yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: Yeah, pondering.

Austin: I know, right. It is so much good stuff here and you’re seeing it at scale too, which is cool.

Taylorr: Yeah, which is cool.

Austin: The patterns are super valuable for people. So, on the topic of, I don’t know, differentiation, I guess. I see so many people taking a list that they get from wherever they may get it. And then it ends up being a spray and pray approach, I guess you could say, we load a bunch of emails into a day. We see this because we’re on the technical side of it, right? So, we see people’s CRMs and what they’re doing before we start working with them, but import a giant list of a thousand names into a CRM, start sending out mass emails to the entire list. We find that the conversion rates on those tend to be very low, if there’s a conversion rate at all. So, what’s your take on the quality versus quantity approach in this regard?

Jackie: Well, the simple answer is if you send a personalized note to somebody, you’re more likely to get a response than if you blast them, it’s just simple mathematics. You may get one or two if you do the blast, but you, certainly, will have a much more challenging time getting a serious response. So, I, definitely, believe that either you do one-on-ones or you do a small list of very specific ones and just blast to that, particular, group if you’re going to, really, focus on doing that. Yeah.

Taylorr: For sure.

Jackie: It’s a, really, good point, Austin.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Austin: I think that’s a good tip.

Taylorr: For sure. Yeah. Make notes, everybody, don’t spray and pray. Fun fact, actually. Austin, you said like, yeah, we have to import a thousand leads and they’re never going to. We imported just last week, 70,000 leads. 70,000 for an individual who just had 30 different spreadsheets, basically, of information that isn’t going to be touched, right? And how do you prioritize 70,000 leads, guys? Volume is not the thing that you need, it’s, definitely, the quality. And to Jackie’s point, be personalized if you can, or hyper personalized in a smaller segment of that list.

 And also, if you recall, listeners, I’m talking to you here, Jackie mentioned that there’s at least a five touchpoint follow-up process here, right? If you send one email, your first outreach, to let’s say a thousand people, how are you going to manage the follow-up five more times with phone calls, LinkedIn messages and Facebook, because you can’t spray and pray a thousand people on LinkedIn, you’re going to have to do that manually. So, what I want you to take away from this portion of our conversation here, it’s, actually, preferential to be methodical, and if you’re taking this on yourself, there’s only so much time in the day you have to commit to doing new business development. 

So, don’t overload yourself, it can be appealing to send a mass email button to a thousand people, but if you can’t handle a thousand follow-ups come next week, well, you might find yourself in a little bit of a bind. Is that fair, Jackie?

Jackie: Yep, absolutely. I would agree with that

Taylorr: For sure. Heck, yeah. Well, this has been super awesome, Jackie, thank you for letting us pick your brain about this. I think this has, probably, been the most transparent conversation we’ve had about list generation and how to effectively do it and it’s incredible all of the resources you’ve created for people to be able to tap into and, maybe, not have them have to do it themselves and have some help in the process. So, super awesome, obviously, you’re all about creating value for your audience, so what are some of the cool things you’re working on right now that our listeners can benefit from?

Jackie: Well, I’ve just done a very cool masterclass called Five Simple Steps to Secure a Steady Stream of Conference and Event Stage Appearances. And so, I’d.

Austin: Alliteration, nice.

Jackie: Love for you to have that. Yeah, thank you. The next one is called 10 Speaker Bookings in 10 days and it’s going to give you a, really, fabulous strategy on how to, really, get that going if you’re looking for meetings, venues and associations. And then, the last thing is, now, on almost all of these, you, really, should have a free gift offer, kind of, like we’re doing right here. And so, most people think of it as a simple e-book or book me for a consult or a conversation, but they’re, actually, 44 different ways that you can seduce your next client from stage, podcast, radio shows, virtual summits and virtual networking, and that’s what it’s called. 

So, you can go there and grab this, it is a very cool e-book that is going to make it, really, simple and easy for you to start collecting new clients. So, those are all great things and I just want to invite people to come on over to Speakertunity; connect with us, nose around, set up a meeting, we’d love to see if we can help and support you.

Taylorr: Heck, yeah. Well, all of those links you, guys, will be in the show notes as usual, so be sure to go and check those out. Jackie, thank you again for coming on to Technically Speaking, this was an awesome episode. And everyone, if you like this episode, don’t forget to rate it, like it, subscribe to it, and if you want more awesome resources like this, go to speakerflow.com/resources.

Austin: Bye, everyone.