167. How do you send outreach messages?
What's the secret behind effective outreach? 🤫 This episode spills all. Brand strategists and hosts Lauren and Phil dish on their techniques for effective messages to strum up business. You'll get ideas for methods, distribution, and techniques for crafting the perfect casual message. For anyone who's looking to shake the tree, this episode is for you!
Episode transcription
Phil
Well, hello there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
phil
And this is a podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand, we're happy you're here. We're talking about an important topic today. That topic is outreach, which is incredibly important for your business, regardless of your industry. regardless of what you do for a living, you will come to a point where you need to do some outreach. Or as Lauren and I call shaking the tree. Lauren would you like to define what that means for us?
Lauren
Yes, shaking the tree means that you are reaching out to people you've already worked with, to see if they need help shaking the branches and the leaves that are already there. And hopefully you can find a way to help them and also generate some business.
Phil
There you go. That's what shaking the tree means. And we're going to teach you how to do it today. We found ourselves in this position where you know what, after a month, or after two months, or after three months, we found ourselves in this position where as projects start to wrap up, we do this thing that we call that we justify calling shaking the tree, where we, instead of worrying so much about cold outreach or trying to convince strangers to hire us, we go to some of those relationships that we already have. And I have to say this is a bold statement. But it works every time,
Lauren
Every time, every single time. And I think before we get into the how tos of this, it's important for me to explain mindset when it comes to shaking the tree. You're not asking for handouts, you're not trying to take advantage of anyone, you're not trying to just squeeze money out of people, you know, that's not what shaking the tree means not in my eyes, at least. Shaking the tree is trying to see how you can continue helping people you've already helped. This isn't actually about money because as soon as you make it about money, then your efforts are going to come across as salesy. And this isn't about sales, this is about helping people in a way where you're compensated. There, I just needed to put that out there.
Phil
It's true, though. But I think that impacts how the recipient feels about this kind of resurfacing after some time, you haven't heard from them, if it's overly salesy. It just feels yucky, and kind of uncomfortable. But I think the reframing of that is really important for ourselves, because it can't be from a place of desperation, even if it is it needs to be from a place of how can I genuinely help some people I know that could benefit from my insight or my product or my service, you name it.
Lauren
Mm hmm. Okay, so there are a few tactics to use when shaking the tree. The first kind of underlying thing that you need to know is that when you're shaking the tree, it's important to have whoever you're reaching out to open up about challenges that they're having, instead of just outright selling them on something. And Phil and I have experienced doing this where we'll offer a new program, for example, I will email past clients and say, ‘hey, we've got a new program. I think you'd be great for it. The program details are written below. It includes XYZ, it's this amount per month’. Are you in? And quite honestly, clients don't really reply to that.
Phil
No, they don't. Thayare inundated as it is. So then to have another inundations kind of like, oh, sounds good, but I can't right now. It's like no,
Lauren
Yah. And it's a lot harder to sell to people, if they aren't expressing a challenge first. I think there's there needs to be an admission of needing help to make that sale go through. And if you're just cold emailing someone, after speaking with them for a few months, or even a few years, with some offer, it doesn't come across as sincere. We have a few ways of shaking the tree, and my strongest recommendation is to actually experiment with these types. The next time you're wanting to generate some business within your network and see what works. One of them is just honestly touching base with people through Instagram direct message,
Phil
That’s your favourite one.
Lauren
Phil does this a lot. That's my favorite one. Because it's really really subtle because if someone posts on their feed, or just a story about what's going on in their life, you can reply back and you go hey, like that's so fun. Looks like you had a great time. You came to my mind the other day, how are you how is business? Leave it at that. Let them open up. If they go business is good. We did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like we're continuing to generate sales, then you can start making some assumptions and go wow, it sounds like you have a lot on the go. If you feel like you need some support with social media or sales or creating your newsletter, just let us know we're here to help and I can hop on the phone whenever you need. Easy. Do you do Instagram direct messaging, Phil?
Phil
I do like Instagram, DMS. But that, for me is a place where I have like friendly conversations. All this is a friendly conversation. So maybe that's a little mindset that I need to get over myself. I like an email and I like an email with a link to say, hey, get on my calendar. Do you want to know why? Because if it's a client that's previously hired us, they know the cost associated with just hopping on a phone call with us. So I kind of like that it's content. And I've noticed that when we send an email, quick little email, again, the longer the email, the less likely people are to reply or engage because it bogs them down. But if it's a short, friendly email that says, hey, I want to hear what's up in your world. I saw on Instagram, you won this award. How cool like show that you care? Here's the link to schedule like, can you get on my calendar? Let's catch up properly. You know, something like that written in your voice. I love that's my personal favorite one, because I feel like there's nothing better than getting someone on the phone in a conversation. Because they're going to open right up and say, hey, here's what's going well, and here's what I'm working on. Do you know of anyone who blah blah, blah, insert self?
Lauren
Mm hmm. I love that tactic too. One of my favorites, I like this one even more than doing Instagram DMS is I go, hey, I saw this article and thought of you let me know how it's going. You know what's going on in your world here.
Phil
Classic move. But it's good. It's good. If someone takes the time to say something like that, to me, I'm like, Oh, my God, you're thinking about me, you're sending me something useful. And how long does it take you to find a relevant article in Google?
Lauren
Like two minutes?
Phil
And that’s the power of this because it's the difference between going to someone saying, hey, can I pick your brain, hey, can you hire me again, hey, can you do something for me? No, I don't have time to do something for you. I'm busy doing something for everyone else that is in my life, you're on the bottom of my to do list.
And yet when I approach you with really, frankly, the same ask and say, hey, I saw this, and I thought this would be valuable for you. How are you doing making it about them, it's the same as but you just the way that you present, it can mean going from the bottom of some to do list to the very top. And that's super cool.
Lauren
Yep. Now the final tactic or what I think will be the final tactic, who knows. The final tactic that I'd like to talk about today is related to expiration. And what I mean by that is to make note of when you wrap a deal with a client or wrap a deal with the customer, and they might potentially need to renew whatever it is that they bought from you. I'll give an example. We met recently did a big outreach push to clients whose websites are over three years old, even two years old, to see if they needed any copy updated to reflect what's going on in their world, to see if they wanted to potentially redesign the homepage, to see if they wanted to move over to squarespace 7.1. And by writing the email to say, hey, I was just looking at your website the other day in a pitch, or for a pitch like kind of a lot of them a little. And I realized that your site is over two years old, is there anything you need help updating, that's taking initiative that's making their life easier, that's probably addressing one of the items that's on the bottom of their to do list that just doesn't get the light of day. And it so far has been received well. I'm in the middle of putting together pitches for clients after the calls that we had. And these were people that we weren't, we weren't working with for like a, you know, a number of months.
Phil
And it's just you taking the initiative to appear in their life versus waiting for them to appear in your life. Very powerful, very simple.
Lauren
Yes. Okay, tools. The number one tool will be your contacts list. We have a spreadsheet that's maintained by an admin on our team, where every single client we've ever worked with, and the client code that we give them internally goes into the spreadsheet. Now it's not perfect, it's not maintained. But it's really, really helpful when you need to just have a mass list of people that you've worked with before we use the spreadsheet anyone could use a CRM there are a bunch of you could even use a contacts in your email there are a bunch of ways to go about this. But regardless, the best thing that you can do is just start working on that list. So you've got it when you need to shake the tree.
The next tool and I've I feel like I talk about that every single episode, but I promise they're not sponsoring and I promise I actually don't vouch for them as a perfect solution. But I don't even love Pipe Drive. I just I just it it does the job. That's all I know.
Phil
The second one called Otter.ai. We've talked about it 500 times. Okay, I'm making a commitment to come up with more diverse tools. That's my world, really, I should be taking ownership of that.
Lauren
Look, find me a solution that's better than Pipe Drive and not as crazy complicated as HubSpot, and I will talk about them every single episode. But right now we've got Pipe Drive. And for anyone who hasn't heard me talk about drive before,
Phil
Enjoy it, because this is probably the last.
Lauren
But just keep track of the ways that you're reaching out to people who you're reaching out to, if you get them on an intro call or not. And if they convert into a client or a new project, because then you will have data to support your decisions whenever you shake the tree in the future.
Phil
Yes, the tools are not as important as actually just doing it. I don't care if you use a spreadsheet, in the most basic form. I don't care if you use a binder with handwritten entries of who your clients are. I don't even care. Just keep track of them. You've got to create a basic system for yourself so you can stay on top of it.
Lauren
That's all I have to say. That's all I've got listeners. It has been such a long week.
Phil
But at the same time, I don't know that we need to drag this episode on. It's not the most riveting topic. However, it's a practical, and it's an important topic, practical and important. And we appreciate you sticking with us through the giggles. And hopefully this strategy works well for you for your outreach. Let us know #brandtherapy. I’m @philpallen
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore and Phil, I just realized we have a pre recorded episode that talks about Pipe Drive coming up in a few weeks. So I guess this is not the last time
Phil
Man may lucked out without actually paying us for a sponsorship for the number of times we've mentioned them.
Lauren
And get this listener Phil can't even log into his Pipe Drive account. Phil, you haven't been in there for like a year.
Phil
I don't actually use it. I know. I just pay for it.
So, I should tell you to also leave us a review five star five star that helps other people discover us. We appreciate you for hanging out with us now and always right here on Brand Therapy. We'll see you back next time.
Lauren
Bye Bye
