21-January_9__2024 - SCAI004

Cool. So, with outreach methods, uh, Helena, can you do the whiteboard? I've been missing that. Um, were you asking? Oh, yeah, there you go. Okay, so, we have... My handwriting's going to be so bad. Email, outreach. Okay, email outreach. Then we have cold calling, holy grail. We have existing network, including family and friends. Your writing is just as good as mine on the And then we have, uh, social media outreach, DMs, uh, cold calling, email, existing network, social media, and then, uh, like Fiverr. platforms. Um, another good one is to, if you go on something like Indeed and find companies that are hiring full-time roles for, say, uh, an AI consultant, just for example, um, you can approach these businesses and say that you can do it as a contractor, uh, for a fraction of the price they're going to pay for somebody full-time. So, like, Indeed, LinkedIn jobs, um, just check out those platforms just to see, just to kind of find the businesses that are hiring for those positions because they are going to want, yeah, I mean, most of the time they're going to want to choose a contractor over a full-time employee just because of the cost involved. Um, so, yeah, these are all ways to get in contact with leads, but where do you find them in the first place? So, network, obviously, you have your network, friends, family, you have your friends and family. Indeed and LinkedIn jobs, we can search for those. Fiverr and Upwork, we can search for those. So, the other one, the place we need to find leads from are databases, like what we just looked at with Seamlessly. Then we have my personal favorite, Apollo.io, which I just put in the chat. Um, very affordable for what you, like, for what you get is very, very affordable because, um, yeah, it has the largest database, uh, they're market leaders and, yeah, they're doing very, very well. Um, there are other platforms, like Zoom Info, uh, Lucia, um, and a good one, which is Lead Gorilla because it's super cheap. It's, like, 45 bucks and that's just, like, a one-time payment and then you have, like, thousands of local leads, like local business leads, so the kind of businesses that we want to be reaching out to. So, Lead Gorilla is really, a really good one. Um, Lucia's okay. Zoom Info is okay. Apollo is better than all of those. Um, so, yeah, I would recommend, if you're on a budget, go with Lead Gorilla. Um, then, after that, I would go with either Seamlessly, uh, like we saw earlier. I don't know the pricing on that, so if we can get an update on that, um, that'd be cool. Uh, the fact they don't have their pricing on any of their tiers, uh, screams to me that it's going to be very expensive. Um, but Apollo is $99 a month, and you get unlimited leads, and they have the biggest database, and you can send, yeah, it's, uh, my tool of choice, and it has, like, a Chrome plugin where you can go to LinkedIn and find somebody, use the Chrome plugin, and get their details and just email them from there. So, uh, that's Apollo, and to be fair, I think they have cheaper plans than that. That's just the one that I'm on. Yeah, so they have a basic plan for $39 a month, uh, and you get 2,400 emails a year. Yeah, they have cheaper plans. They have a free plan as well, so it's definitely worth checking out. Apollo.io, and then, obviously, there's just, uh, Sales Navigator as well on LinkedIn, and just manually looking on LinkedIn for people, and striking up conversations. So, this would be, like, social media outreach, and the approach, just from a really high level, because as I said, I, I want to go into all of these in a lot of detail separately, um, because there is a lot to all of them, um, but the days of sending an email pitch to somebody in your first email are long gone. Uh, that doesn't work anymore, and it never will again, so whenever you're approaching somebody that you don't know, and they don't know you with any of this, even if they're friends or family, uh, you, you have to go with a value-first approach. So, you need to really be giving them something for them to even give, for them to even give you their time, if that makes sense. So, um, a few years back, it would be giving somebody an e-book, or something like that, um, that's kind of outdated now. You can think of creative ways, like creating, uh, like a GPT for your target audience, and just giving it to them for free. Um, and then, we're gonna have a training on that out by, like, um, in two, maximum three weeks, um, it's on our, it's on our project dashboard. Mike and I did that today, so that's gonna come up. So, if that doesn't mean anything to you just yet, don't worry. Yeah, exactly, and it doesn't have to be something that you're, like, doesn't have to be something that you make. It could be, um, letting them know that something doesn't work on their website. It's quite a common one. So, if you see that, like, somebody even actually sent me a, uh, an outreach message, but one of my forms on my website wasn't working, and I ended up speaking to him for ages, because he told me, and I was thankful that he told me. So, just little things like that, um, rather than just, because, I don't know if you've had this before, but, like, I get this all day, where I'll just have people sending me these huge walls of text, where it will literally be, like, just six paragraphs in one of just a huge pitch that I probably look at for about three seconds, like that, but longer, and, yeah, that's, I don't, I don't know why people are still doing that, but, yeah, I get, I get that multiple times a day still. So, don't be that kind of person, like, uh, if you're reaching out to people on LinkedIn, for example, then just speak to them like you're on a social network, or Facebook for the same, and strike up that conversation, and, like, add value where you can. Um, I'll give them a GPT, is that an output for them to reach? Uh, I'll, I'll go over that in more detail another time, because, yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it's just, it's just the concept of, like, a value-first approach, basically. So, it's, it's giving them something that's not gonna cost you money, like, a load of money, or time, or too much time, but it's still enough for them to appreciate it. So, leading with that approach, um, and then from there, move on to show, like, physically showing them a demo of your product, uh, because there are, like, at the stage you're at with AI, business owners, they, they, they won't understand it if you're describing a marketing service, they would understand it, but if you're describing an AI service just through text, they, the, like, mass market isn't at the level where they understand it well enough to even see any, like, some businesses see, see no value in it, some businesses see, like, a little bit, some see loads like they should. Um, so, having a visual, um, demo of your solution, so it could be, for example, if you have the conversational AI, uh, you could set that up on your own account, and then just text it from your phone, and record it on your phone, like, having a conversation with it, and that will be your product demo, so you'll be leading with, um, value, and then striking up a conversation, and then being like, oh, look, like, I've, like, I'm, like, developing these for companies that are working really well to save the max amount of time, and it's then visually showing them. Um, so, yeah, I think that component of the, I think that component of selling these services is, is completely essential, um, the visual aspect of it. Uh, it's, yeah, it's very difficult to explain things through text, unless you're speak, unless you're kind of getting, like, an inbound lead from, like, a social media post or something, where, like, they already know about, a lot about AI. Um, yeah, it's gonna be you having to kind of really demonstrate how much value, and what, what can actually be done with it. Like, you can, you could show somebody an appointment setting, but if you're talking to it on a phone, and, like, a very, very large percentage of people will probably be blown away by that, because they haven't seen it, because all they know is either chat GPT or nothing. So, um, yeah, extremely important. So, does anyone have any questions on that? Um, just in terms of sales, marketing in general, at the moment, like, where you're at, um, as I said, we're gonna go over this in a lot more detail on other calls, and in the course, but, yeah, I kind of want to gauge where everyone's at with, with things, and, um, if there's any confusion anywhere, let's get that sorted, for sure. So, just let me know in the chat, or just unmute your mic. Okay. Everyone's got leads flowing. Perfect. Simplest methods to present yourself on Fiverr or Upwork? Um, Upwork is different. So, you would, you create, like, a whole profile, and you're not, you don't, you're not selling, like, a, like, a gig is what they call them on Fiverr. Like, you basically, you are basically doing, uh, like, you're applying for jobs, basically. You send, you send in proposals for jobs. So, you want to kind of frame yourself as an AI consultant on there, um, some of the solutions that you've made, um, and then, like, anything that you can pull from your background, and anything that you've done before, pull all of that in, and, like, if you YouTube, like, how to make the best Upwork profile, there's loads of resources on it. Um, and then, again, that puts you right in front of the, right in front of business owners that are looking for solutions like this. I, I, I do, I know we did that search earlier, but I know for a fact there are a lot of people looking for, um, these services on Upwork, uh, for sure. I've, I've seen it and heard people telling me about it. So, um, yeah, and then with Fiverr, you are creating the offer first. So, you would need to do, um, some research into your ideal customer. So, if you're really, if you already kind of have, like, an idea in your mind, my advice would be is to go and speak to them. Just, like, ask them if you can, just literally say to, say to, say if you're going for roofers, just say, like, do you mind if I ask you, like, a few questions? I'm doing, like, a customer, I'm doing, like, a research paper or something. And it'd be, like, you could just have five questions and just find out what their pain points are, uh, if they know anything about AI and automation, um, what they know about it, uh, what their interests are, and then you can kind of paint a picture once you have enough of those of exactly what your ideal customer does actually want. Um, a lot of people guess this, um, a lot of the time. So, it's important to get that, that, that first-hand data. And, like, if you ask people on LinkedIn or Facebook, if you just say five questions for a bit of research, they're gonna, they're gonna give it to you. They're gonna answer them. So, yeah, people like to talk about themselves and, uh, yeah, as long as you let them know there's not gonna be a sales pitch at the end of it, you'll get a lot of, like, a lot of value from that. Um, if you already have an audience, then definitely 100% the holy grail is doing a customer survey. Um, I've got a really good template that I'll put in the Slack group, um, that has these, it was, uh, it was given to me by a psychologist who works in advertising. Um, but they're very strange questions when you read them. But the answers you get from people, um, are extremely eye-opening. And then when you analyze the, like, the conversational flow of people and the answers and, like, that real raw information that they give you, not like a review where it's, like, staged, not staged, but, you know what I mean, where it's, like, very raw, um, information, uh, when you then analyze that, it, uh, which we can use AI to do, we can pull out extremely good insights from it. And, uh, once we have those, we can craft ridiculously good offers that we can use on Fiverr or we can just use in our, uh, like, in our outreach just in general. And it just gives you a much better understanding of the kind of people you're, you're selling to because, um, yeah, understanding that is the absolute key to anything to do with sales. So, um, yeah, if you can't do a customer survey, you can always do research through, uh, there's, like, a little hack that I do where if I see a brand that kind of fits my basic ideal customer, I'll go through all of their posts on all of their social media sites and I'll get the comments that people have left on their profiles. I'll get all of those comments, like a minimum of 300. If I can't get 300 from one brand, I'll get their nearest competitor and take the comments from there. And then I'll analyze that using AI. And, again, you can pull out pain points, buying desires, and a lot of very good information again. Um, so it's these kind of things where that's, like, the foundation to selling. So, once we have that in order, then everything else will just work, if that makes sense. Because if you're kind of going in blind and kind of guessing, um, a lot of the time you'll probably guess a lot of it, um, but the 20% that you miss could be a huge amount, if that makes sense. So, um, yeah. Sorry, question. How do you, um, efficiently go through all these mediums and pull together that information? Are you using a prompt that you can share with us? Yes. Um, to actually get the comments, you can use, uh, you can either do it manually, which I honestly prefer to do if I have the time, um, or you can use appify.com, which you can scrape Facebook comments from. Um, but doing it manually, you're reading the comments as you're copying and pasting them. And that gives you another extra layer of understanding of who these people are, if that makes sense. And it's really, like, you want to be at a level where you're basically reading their mind. Um, and then once you have the comments, yes, I've got two really, really good prompts that I will drop in the Slack group, and that will literally, you put in the prompt, you put in the comments underneath, and then it will just give you everything that you need to create an amazing data-driven persona. Cool. Awesome. Thank you, Mike. Um, any more questions before we wrap up here today? Nope. I think we're all good to go. Smaller group today, for sure. We'll get some stuff sorted. Um, you're welcome, Nicole. Um, so, yeah, this kind of wraps up, um, this class, and I'll get the recording out. Uh, and, uh, Mike, if you can stay, like, five minutes, uh, just have a couple questions for you regarding something else. Um, but, yeah, this kind of wraps up this class. And, uh, I want to thank, oh, is there a question? Sorry, I must have missed it. Is there a question? Did you get my question? What was the question? Hi. It's about the timing. I don't want to disrupt the class, but the timing. So, the time now in California is about four, but I know it's around seven your time, right? Yes. I was wondering if we can move it up, because I've not joined since we started, because the timing is not good for me. I mean, we can look at it for the future, but with, um, you know, just so many participants in the class, like, we can't just move a class, you know, because then we'll just get other people, um, like, you know, like, it's impossible for us to have one time that works for every single person in every single time zone. And that's why we have timing at different times. Um, and they, they could change, uh, periodically as well, but, uh, definitely for January, it's going to stay put, but we can look, uh, look into that in the future to, uh, get into other, uh, some other times. Um, yeah, but definitely, uh, we'll, we will, uh, look into some other times for the, for the future that can, uh, maybe better suit, um, uh, Pacific time as well. Yeah. So maybe you can say Tuesdays, three Thursdays, another time, but it's the same time all through, same 3 p.m. all through. Yeah. No, it's not the Saturday, 9 a.m. So it's 6 p.m. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good suggestion. Like we can do one class a little later on the, on the Tuesday or the Thursday. And so then we have three different times in the week for different time zones that could work. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Cool. All right. Okay. Cool. All right. Cool. Thank you everyone. And I'll speak to you in the Slack group. It's a lot of people are joined now, which is good. Hi, Elena. I have one more question. Yes. Um, so I don't get kicked out of the classes going forward. I know you have a continuation classes for us. So, um, is that going to happen soon? I mean, I'm on the call, so I'm grateful for that. So. Yes. Um, yes. So I can send you over an invoice and then, um, and, uh, and then if you can just get that. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome, Nicole. Good to see you again. Take care. Thanks Mike. No problem at all.