Your Sales Team Have Never Heard Your Podcast (And It's Costing You)

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Hello.
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Thanks so much for booking in for a call.
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So shall I explain a little bit more about what we can do for you?
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Hi, Neal here, founder of Podknows Podcasting.
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What just happened there sounds like total fantasy, doesn't it?
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But what if I told you there are hundreds of businesses having conversations
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with prospects just like that across the UK and the United States?
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And what if I told you they've learned how to leverage their podcasts so they
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can spend less time chatting with tire kicking disinterested D-tier prospects
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and spend more time celebrating wins over a glass of something fizzy with
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A-tier clients and enjoying many more hours to Netflix and chill.
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Would you be interested in learning more about that?
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Thought so.
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That's what this episode's about.
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Let's get into it.
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Welcome to B2B Podcasting Insights with me, Neal Veglio,
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founder of Podknows Podcasting.
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We're a podcast agency helping people and brands like you to
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get more from your podcast.
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Right, let me do my finest Columbo impression because we're about
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to establish a crime scene.
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That's absolutely what this is.
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Somewhere in your business right now,
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there are two things that should know about each other but don't.
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They're being kept apart.
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Your podcast, which has spent the last several months
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patiently, sometimes brilliantly, answering every possible question
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your ideal client could have, and your sales team are currently on
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calls answering those exact same questions from scratch for probably
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the 474th time this week alone,
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and they're slowly losing the will to live.
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They've been in each other's proximity for months, and yet nobody has put
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their hand up and raise the point
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saying, "This is what we made and this is when to use it." And this bit here in
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particular answers the objections that you're facing on an almost daily basis.
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This bit here will literally save you around about half an hour
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having to explain from scratch once again with a brand new prospect.
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Your podcast is basically the most knowledgeable colleague within your
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company who's been sitting in their desk for 18 months straight and nobody has once
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walked over to them and said, "Hello."
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And this colleague has answered every single question that any of your
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ideal customers could ever have, and probably does it better than any of
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your sales team members, to be honest.
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The podcast has never asked for a pay rise never moans when you tell it to
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turn up on time for work, never takes Fridays off, and has never once shown up
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with a hangover hoping you won't notice.
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And it doesn't reply all on emails that don't even need a reply.
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Despite all this, your sales team is still out there explaining everything manually
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again and again and again because nobody told them that this colleague exists.
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So that's the crime.
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Let's figure out how this happened.
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Oh, but first, just one more thing.
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No, that's all I've got, and this is why I'm a podcast consultant and not
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a professional Columbo impersonator.
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Here's how this happened, and let's get real about this.
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It's everybody's fault, and it is absolutely your
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fault in roughly that order.
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The podcast got handed to marketing.
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Marketing, quite sensibly, treated it like a marketing asset and optimized
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it according to their expertise.
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They looked at the downloads, the follower numbers, the listens.
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They studied the graphs.
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Probably stuck all the data into Power BI marveled over how things looked really
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pretty and did the whole glass half full thing, noticing patterns that looked
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vaguely encouraging if you squint at them at the right angle after a glass of wine.
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Lovely.
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Sales, meanwhile, was doing what sales always does, focusing entirely on closing
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the deals directly in front of them.
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You know, fielding those objections, sending the follow-up emails that try
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not to appear desperate and begging, but basically say, "Hey, just circling
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back. Wanted to bring this to the top of your inbox," in about 17 different ways.
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They've sat through call after call after call where the prospector said, "Oh,
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just send something over and I'll have my team look at it." Which is prospectese
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for, "I've already decided no, I find confrontation massively stressful, and
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I'd very much like you to bugger off."
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Nobody had the meeting.
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You know the one.
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The one where someone says, " Here is episode 12.
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Here is how episode 12 is useful.
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Here's exactly when to deploy episode 12 during a sales conversation.
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And here is how you, as a busy rep, can stop explaining for a living and actually
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start confirming and converting instead."
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That meeting, probably the most important meeting you could ever have in a
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business that has a podcasting asset
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at almost every company I've ever audited the podcast for has never happened.
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Not once.
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Let me be clear about this.
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No company with a podcast that I have done an audit for has ever had that meeting.
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Because the podcast has been filed under content, and content lives
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within the marketing department.
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Marketing sends it out to the world.
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That's it.
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That's their job.
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Sales has its very own dashboard, its own needs, its own wants, its own KPIs, and
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never the twain shall meet apparently.
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Even when the podcast has been slowly doing the sales team's job
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on the sly for months and it's had not a single word of thanks.
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Here's what it actually sounds like when somebody gets on top of this and sorts
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it out, has that conversation, holds those meetings, puts this plan in place.
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And I want you to really pay attention right now 'cause this is important.
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Your rep gets on a call.
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Instead of launching into the full explanation of how you guys work, you
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know, the one that takes about 15 minutes, carries three repetitive analogies
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that they become almost famous for,
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and then ultimately handling the objection that the prospect was
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always definitely going to raise because the pitch doesn't land.
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So they spend the first five minutes of the call going, " Hang on.
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Is any of this stuff useful to us?" Instead of that, the prospect
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already arrives half sold.
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The 15-minute story about how you work, the analogies, the explanation, the
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diagrams, the bit where you describe the client's actual situation and
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tell them how you're going to solve it, all that stuff is already done.
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The podcast did it.
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It's already contained within the MP3.
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And that was already
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before the call even started, your podcast did it all for free.
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Meanwhile, your rep was still sat there nursing their hangover that they're hoping
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you didn't notice from the night before.
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That transformation from convincing to confirming to converting, that
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is worth considerably more to your pipeline than episode 41 might be that
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you're planning this week in which the CEO that hosts the podcast plans
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on indulging in a topic they find personally fascinating but does nothing
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particularly useful for the business.
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Certainly doesn't push the needle in sales, however good 41 turns out
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to be, and I'm sure it's gonna be excellent in their head, truly.
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So here's your action plan for the coming week,
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and you're gonna feel mildly annoyed at how straightforward this is,
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and you're gonna curse yourself for not thinking about it before.
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Go through the episodes in your dashboard.
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Copy the titles to a spreadsheet.
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In that spreadsheet, right next to each episode title, a deployment note.
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Not a description of what the episode is about, but notes on
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how it helps overcome objections.
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How it'll get a founder, prospect, whoever it is, over the line.
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Something like, " Send this episode to any prospects who've gone a little bit
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quiet after we've sent them a proposal." Also add a note to, like, play the clip
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at minute three where we specifically address the problem that they claimed
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they had during our discovery call.
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Remind them of the solution that we possess.
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And for future prospects, those you haven't even spoken
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to yet, get a strategy going.
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Add a note to the episodes saying things like, "Share this before any call
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involving a procurement team," because procurement teams are very nice people
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who will absolutely need pre-educating.
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And if we don't do a good enough job of that, this is absolutely
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gonna take considerably longer than anyone has budgeted for.
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Just one document that contains all this info and then send that
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to your teams, both of them.
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Sales need to know what marketing are doing.
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Marketing need to know what sales are up to.
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And that's it.
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That's my whole intervention.
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This'll take maybe 10 minutes of your time, or appoint a VA to do it for you.
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And before you think to yourself, "Surely it can't be
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that simple," it really can be.
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The fact that pretty much nobody has ever done it is genuinely the main reason
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I still have a job, so you're welcome
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Each episode I'd like to do a founder FAQ, except this week it's not a
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question, it's just an observation.
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A voice note from a man named Fred Copestake, who runs a company named
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Brindis, which is a sales training and consultancy business that is very good.
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I say that with complete objectivity, and not at all because Fred said
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some tremendously nice and kind things about this podcast in the
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voice note that he clearly thought might end up getting played on air.
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Fred's a sales professional.
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Fred has clearly listened to more than one episode of this show and identified
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a strategic opportunity accordingly, and I respect that enormously.
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Well played, Fred.
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I love the fact that Fred also makes reference to the word that I used in
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the episode he's referencing, gauche.
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Anyway, here's Fred's message.
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Hi, Neal.
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Perhaps I'm in danger of sounding a little gauche.
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Actually, I don't care.
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I think it's quite cool to be gauche.
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But, uh, what you were saying in your podcast this week about
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marketing not wanting to be seen to be salesy, yeah, 100% agreed.
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But I think it's because they don't understand what sales is.
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A lot of marketeers will have been trained, that have gone to university,
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that have gone through kind of 9K a year's worth of, uh, education on a business
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studies course and not been told about it.
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Just literally not been told.
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Yeah.
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It's like it doesn't exist.
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They don't want to admit that there is a whole bunch of people out there who
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go out and talk to people about, like, whether they might wanna buy something.
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There's another issue as well you didn't touch on, which is
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that companies are self-obsessed.
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They're so interested in what they do, their products, their services, that
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they just go on and on and on about it.
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They'll train salespeople, or any staff that they have to, about
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their products and services a-and offerings and, and never about
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the problems that customers have.
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So they're just... They don't even realise that that's actually
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what people care about and what they will want to, to listen to.
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So the most successful people I see are the ones that absolutely get this.
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They'll talk to customers about their problems, uh, issues,
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concerns, challenges, triggers.
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What-whatever it is you wanna call it.
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And get really high quality conversations with people who are skilled in
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having the conversations to do that.
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And absolutely I see how your podcast strategy would support that big time.
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Right.
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A few things.
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The university point, completely correct, and it explains an enormous
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amount about how sales and marketing is done in this day and age.
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An entire generation of marketers graduated from business degrees
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that treated sales like a slightly embarrassing must, like
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a relative who works in insurance.
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We all need them.
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We don't necessarily want them.
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Yeah, we all know they exist.
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Yeah, they pay for things.
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We don't exactly want them to Christmas dinner.
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The result is marketing professionals who are structurally, genuinely unequipped
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to connect what they make to the sales motion it's supposed to serve.
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They didn't really fail.
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The syllabus failed them, which is a very little comfort when your podcast
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is full of useful content that nobody in sales has ever thought to deploy.
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But at least now you know who to blame.
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The self-obsession point, well, I want this framed on a wall in every founder's
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office, ideally at eye level, so they've got to look at it while they're on calls.
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Companies are trained from the inside out to talk about themselves,
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the products, the services, their credentials, the founder origin story,
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the garage, the vision, the inspiring story involving a lot of instant noodles
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and an extremely patient partner.
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Meanwhile, the customer's sitting there thinking, "I don't really
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give a shit about your garage.
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I care about the thing that's gonna get me in a room with no
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windows if I get this wrong.
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Talk to me about that"
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The shows that work are built entirely around that feeling, not the product,
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the problem that product solves.
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So yeah, Fred, thanks.
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Brilliant addition.
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Come back anytime.
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Maybe bring wine.
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It feels thematically appropriate given your company name.
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I'll provide the glasses.
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If you wanna send me a voice note, a question, a mild grievance, or something
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you think that I've missed in one of these episodes, and some of you
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will be chomping at the bit to point out things that I haven't mentioned.
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I do occasionally get things wrong.
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I know, surprises me, too.
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Well, you can do all of that at podknows.co.uk/feedback.
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That's P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S.co.uk/feedback.
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Try and keep them as close to under 60 seconds, please.
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No need to sound polished, and gauche is now officially a de facto word that must
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be used, and that's Fred's fault entirely.
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All right, this episode's quick tip.
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Most podcasters, myself included, ask for a follow at the very end of the
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episode, which is kind of a bit like a restaurant asking you to leave a
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review on your way out the door while you're already in your coat, keys in
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hand, thinking about whether you're parked on a single or double yellow.
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You'll say yes.
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You won't do it.
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Everybody moves on.
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The moment to actually ask is probably right after the most valuable thing
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you've mentioned in the episode, not after the call to action, not
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after the thanks for listening.
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Right after the bit where the listener finds themself thinking, "Oh my
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God, that's exactly my situation," because that's when goodwill is at
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its absolute peak, and their phone might well still be in their hand.
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Find the single most useful moment in your next episode.
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Ask immediately after it, before they've moved on to your next point, before
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they've mentally checked out and started thinking about paying for their parking.
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The difference is noticeable, especially when you are measuring your results.
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Try it once, and you'll never put that follow ask right at the end of your
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episode over the outro music again.
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I say that, but I'll still do that.
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Cobbler's shoes and all that.
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Right.
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If you've reached the end of this episode with your sales team document already
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taking shape in your head, excellent.
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Go and make it now, genuinely.
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Do it before you listen to something else and forget.
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But if you've still got a slightly uncomfortable feeling underneath all this,
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and part of you is wondering whether your podcast is actually saying and doing the
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right things to be worth deploying to prospects in the first place Well, that's
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exactly what my diagnostic session is for.
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We look at your show together.
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We work out whether it's doing the job it should be doing or
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whether it's just orbiting your business, trying to look busy and
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achieving the square root of all.
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And achieving the square root of not very much.
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This is a PG-13 show.
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You'll leave the session with a straight answer, document that takes
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about three weeks to arrive and requires a second meeting to decode.
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You'll get a straight answer in just one session.
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So you can walk into the following Monday knowing exactly what you're actually
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doing with this podcasting thing.
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Book your diagnostic session now at podknows.co.uk/diagnostic.
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And the link is in the episode description.
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Until next time, go on and introduce your podcast to your sales team, will you?
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They've been in the same building for two years now and it's
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starting to get slightly awks.