Use Podcasting To Increase Sales
What if a few simple tweaks to your language, messaging or processes generated more sales through your podcast? My conversation with Sales Maven Nikki Rausch was full of golden tips including what to sell in your podcast, the art of relationship selling, how to create curiosity, and how to close more sales.
The 5 Steps of an Effective Sales Conversation
- 1) Introduction: this is where you build the Know, Like and Trust factor. It’s when people are exposed to you for the first time – it can happen on your podcast or when you’re guesting on someone else’s show.
- 2) Create curiosity: this is the most missed step. The idea here is to create curiosity and show what it’s like to work with you. You can do so by talking about success stories of past clients, for example.
- 3) Discovery: at this stage, you want to have a free consulting call with the goal of finding out the pain-points and needs of a prospect.
- 4) The Proposal: you want to make it super-easy for people to understand how to work with you.
- 5) Closing: this is the second most missed step.
Sales Is Something You Do With People
- Nikki believes that many people think that sales is something you do to people when, in reality, it’s something you do with them
- As a podcaster, for instance, there’s a difference between talking at people and talking with them. Even though a listener may not respond to you in real-time, you can ask questions to make them reflect and take action. And some listeners may even reach out to you via email or via social media.
- Our brains work like Google. If you’re willing to ask a question to your audience, and then you pause, their brain is going to want to give them an answer – just like it happens with Google, which always tries its best to give you answers to a question
- When it comes to offers, you always try to offer the right thing, to the right person, at the right time
Sales Missed Opportunities
- When creating content, like a podcast, you should try to get it everywhere: podcasting platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, your website, YouTube, etc.
- If the content is evergreen should be shared again weeks and months after it’s published
Seeding Sales Into Podcasting
- Stories are a vehicle Nikki recommends using to seed sales into your podcast
- She really likes storytelling because ‘stories are the language of our brain’
- If you have a tip to share, think about whether there’s a story you can weave around it
- Do you do strategy sessions? Include that into your stories! Nikki recently had a listener book a strategy session with her because she heard Nikki talk about strategy sessions on her podcast
What and How to Sell on Podcasts
- Nikki suggests having a combination of things. In her podcast, for instance, she uses dynamic ads – sometimes, an ad slot may be about a paid offer, other times about a free downloadable resource.
- She has a page on her site that lists multiple resources for listeners but she never promotes the page nor the resources altogether, she always promotes just one resource
- Talking about too many things can muddy the waters and just confuse listeners
- Nikki recommends making ‘If statements’ when introducing offers – for example, you could say ‘If this offer resonates, then…’ or ‘This offer is for you if you want to ___’
- Don’t say ‘this can do this for you’, rather ‘this will do this for you’
- Because of neuro linguistic background, Nikki knows the importance of choosing a word over another and how much that plays a role in sales
- Nikki believes that the more safety you can create and the easier you make it for people to buy from you, the more likely they are to actually make a purchase
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Don’t have long intros and repeat the same thing over and over again in your episodes. People love to binge and hearing the same thing being mentioned 10 times can be annoying for listeners
- Podcasters can drone on, and on, and on. Simply tell people what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you’ve told them and wrap things up
How to Put (Potential) Buyers in Charge
- A simple way to put potential buyers in charge is by making them an offer. That simple step is actually empowering because it gives them the ability to say yes or no
- Don’t decide for prospective clients whether they can buy or not, just invite them and give them the choice to decide whether to accept or decline your offer
- If you hear a no from a prospect, don’t take it personally
About Nikki
CEO of Sales Maven, Nikki Rausch has the unique ability to transform the misunderstood process of “selling”.
With 25+ years of selling experience, entrepreneurs and small business owners now hire Nikki to show them how to sell successfully and authentically.
Nikki has written 3 books, all available on Amazon. And she has a podcast called Sales Maven which you can find on your favorite podcast platform.
Resources mentioned:
eBook: Closing the Sale and How to Boost Your Confidence
Nikki’s book: The Selling Staircase: Mastering the Art of Relationship-Selling
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