Episode 191: Divian Mistry – Unlocking the Power of Conversational Websites: Strategies for Headache-Free Sales and Marketing

Divian Mistry  00:02

I see Making Sales Social, as I think straightaway of the actual sales process. The process of having conversations with people like one on one or one to many that creates a scenario creates an environment that creates an experience that feels social feels personal feels inclusive feels engaging in many different ways.

Intro  00:27

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me Bob Woods as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show!

Brynne Tillman  00:52

Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m excited to be here with Divian Mistry, a marketing expert for professional brands who want to grow their business using proven, mind-tested strategies. After starting his first business at age 14, he became known as the “Ticketmaster at University” and has helped clients create six months of income within just three weeks, tripled event ticket sales within 24 hours, and quadrupled Event Registrations within one month. 

He raised 5000 euros for the Make–Wish Foundation at a charity event he hosted with keynote speaker Kevin Green from the TV show The Secret Millionaire, and he’s been featured in two business books. Divian, Welcome to Making Sales Social.

Divian Mistry  01:47

Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Brynne Tillman  01:50

I’m excited to talk with you. So the first question we ask all of our guests is, What does Making Sales Social mean to you?

Divian Mistry  02:01

I really love this question. I was thinking about this before we came on the podcast. And I thought, Well, my view on this is probably a little bit different to other people’s view because I see Making Sales Social, as I think straightaway of the actual sales process, the process of having conversations with people, one on one or one to many, that creates a scenario creates an environment creates an experience that feels social, feels personal feels inclusive, feels engaging in many different ways. 

And what I found is that when I do that, and I make all of them this, the actual sales process for me becomes really easy. The ask of a sale becomes really easy because of creating that social feel before we even get to the point of the ask.

Brynne Tillman  02:53

That’s great. I love that. So I’m excited to dive into your expertise. One of the things that pull me in is headache-free websites to talk about what low sales and marketing people go through from a headache perspective and how do you fix that?

Divian Mistry  03:12

That’s a really good question, actually. So I think the main niche of people that we work with are people who are coaches and experts and who have personal brands, and the biggest challenge that they mainly have is two things, one from a strategy point of view of using the right words to attract the right people at the right point of their journey. So they can easily put their hand up and say, “Hey, I want to have a conversation because there are people ready and willing and able to spend money like today,” Right? And the second thing is the tech. We take the headache of the tech away. And that kind of says what it does. 

But the biggest thing from a strategy point of view is that it’s really getting the brand positioning right in the conversation, Right? To do three main things really, one is to talk to your ideal target audience in a way that speaks to them using simple language. I absolutely detest when people have these sentences of I help this person do that without this with that and a pink sock, and you’re like, well, it’s just too detailed. 

But there’s just too much I can’t handle to know whether I’m right. So, we like nice and simple. So it’s really clear. And then we can have conversations that then lead to people buying from us. And so that’s probably the biggest thing and then representing that in the words that your marketplace is likely to use the word and your ideal clients and your ideal clients are probably going to be like you. 

So the words you use are probably the words that they’re using, and so if we inject that in, they get a taste of you as an individual. And then making sure when we build websites for people, that it represents them as an individual as well because you’re really selling yourself as well as your service. So it should have that “feel” of who you really are as well.

Brynne Tillman  05:02

That’s so interesting because when we’re teaching LinkedIn, we often say, don’t talk about what you want to talk about; talk about what they want to consume. But you’re saying that when you talk about what you want to talk about, you will engage the right people.

Divian Mistry  05:18

So, yes. I think it’s not so much of the – so let me create a distinction there because it’s more about. When I’m talking about putting you into the conversation, it’s more about you do want to talk about the things that they want to talk about. Definitely agree with that. I think the way you talk about it, you need to share who you are as an individual. 

And also that when I’m talking about the other bits, the look, and the feel of the website, needs to share who you are as a person, because let’s say, for example, “I have a website, and it’s like all these bright colors, that’s gonna attract a certain type of person, and somebody else who has a very corporate looking website, can do the exact same thing as you, but it’s gonna attract a completely different set of people just because of the way it looks and feel right and the way we describe things will attract a different type of person as well.” 

So it’s more about using the words that your target audience and when I say the words, I don’t mean, like, you know, of course we want to have the conversation that already happened in their minds. But the words are more to do with the little details, the little things right, you know, the way that the way I speak will attract a certain type of person, Right? It would resonate with a certain type of person, but if I wanted to know, I’m in England, I live in England. 

And if I wanted to attract, you know, an upper-class person to do marketing for them. I would have to change the way I look and the way I talk because they probably, you know, I don’t talk like them is the truth. Like, There’s nothing, nothing shameful about that. I don’t talk like them. So I need to change the way in which you do not have to learn Queen’s English and you know, and talk like it’s going to resonate with a different type of individual.

Brynne Tillman  07:15

That’s a really good observation and a good share. So thank you for that. I want to ask you a question about client-generating websites, Right? Because almost everyone at this point has some kind of download to collect an email, and then the email gets blasted with their newsletter once a month, or once a week, or whatever that is, what do you do to help convert that opt-in better than other folks? Like, what and how should coaches be looking at these opt-ins from, Yeah, I collected an email to Google and I started a conversation.

Divian Mistry  07:56

That’s, I love this question. Right? So what are the things that people do because lead magnets, you know, the free things you give away and become so popular and loads of people do to grow their list? The problem is that when people share this, what they do is that they tend to use this strategy where they go. Here’s a checklist, Right? 

People love that there’s marketing experts out there, putting this out there, where they go, just create a checklist, something really simple and easy and just get them onto your list. And then when you get them onto your list, then you kind of market to them and try and convert them to what I personally believe is there’s so many of them out there. 

Well, let me ask you a question. If you’ve ever downloaded a checklist before, have you downloaded it and just completely never looked at it? Have you ever had that scenario where you’ve downloaded?

Brynne Tillman  08:41

Yeah, I mean, I think I’ll go back to it later. It’s not intentional, but I don’t have time right now. And it looks interesting. So I downloaded it, and I got an email that said, ” Here it is.” And I think all right, I can come back to this, but I never really do not never, but I rarely do.

Divian Mistry  08:57

Yeah. And the reason behind that is not because there’s not some value in there. There’ll be some value in there, Right? But the reality is somewhere, if someone is going to consume something good, they’re going to consume it because it really resonates with them, and they’re good.

And there needs to be a resume that needs to be deeply resonating to them. Right? So if you just give me a checklist, great, well, that helps me a little bit, but it doesn’t really help me like it’s just the reminder list. Right? I probably could realistically have written that myself or found it somewhere else without even giving it .  

Brynne Tillman  09:31

Chat GPT. 

Divian Mistry  09:32

Exactly. And here’s the thing is that this is what people forget. When you ask for a name and email address, it’s a transaction.

Brynne Tillman  09:40

Yes. I love that. It’s not ordered with their information.

Divian Mistry  09:47

It’s a transaction. So if you get my name and email address, and you give me a checklist, which is not kind or maybe useful to me, Well, I’m not going to consume it. But if you give me something It really solves a big problem for me. And for what is not even a big run, even if it’s small, it solves a small problem for me, it needs to solve a problem. That’s a genuine problem. 

A checklist doesn’t solve a problem, Right? A checklist doesn’t solve a problem. Because even if I know what I need to do, and I’ve gotten this, I didn’t know what to do. And I had this checklist, well, that’s not gonna stop, that’s not going to help me solve the problem, the thing because now I know what I need to do, I still don’t know how to do it. Right? It just raises the awareness of the problem, but it actually is. 

So my personal viewpoint is you need to add value. And you need to create an experience for people. And in this day and age, trust is at its lowest and I think it’s gonna get lower and lower and lower and lower, as years and years go by, because the amount of rubbish that some people put out, not everybody, but some people put out is increasing. And we need to create experiences. 

So how do you do that? Well, one thing I love doing as I love running webinars, because when I run a webinar, I coach somebody live on the webinar, I then have people asking questions on the webinar, I’ll unmute them, let them ask the question. And I have lots of engagement. And I don’t do a hard sell at the end. Like I told them, that I’m not going to hard sell them. But there is an opportunity, and then I’ll share the opportunity at the end. 

But it creates an experience. And I think the days of, you know, if you’re gonna create a download, I’ve got a download, which I believe will share at some point on this podcast, like there’s tons of information in there, it’s not just this little drip there is quite a lot of different information in there. So my personal viewpoint is you need to go deep, you need to go deep with that person, especially if you’re selling a service like coaching or a done for you service. 

If you go deep, and you share your wisdom, what will happen is they’ll look at that and the right people will look at that and be like, “This is exactly the solution. But I don’t want to do it on my own, or I don’t want to do it myself, let me hire you,” Right. And so it’s the experience of that. And then in the email sequence, like you need to give them an experience, Right? 

You need to give them value and the subject’s value can vary a lot. And I’ll have a real quick dive into this. Because I think about five years ago, Tony Robbins, Randy’s and Russell Brunson and Dean Grazioso ran this massive webinar, the biggest webinar ever in the world, and 260,000 registrants, and I was not going to watch that and then all the people on my Facebook newsfeed were like hating on him, “Why I didn’t add any value”. 

And there’s one person who said something very profound, every single person you bought, and a load of the people who didn’t buy absolutely loved what he shared and added loads of value to them. Why so because they and I went and scan through the replay of the webinar. And they just told story after story after story, but they didn’t actually give anything actionable. 

The people who are hating on him on my newsfeed were marketers who wanted actionable stuff. The people who love mm bore love the stories and so we can sit and go, “Oh, you shouldn’t tell stories”. That’s not the right strategy. You should give this. You shouldn’t do that. But there’s no right and wrong answer. 

It depends on your market and who you’re talking to. I think you should do both stories and actual novel content, you don’t give literally everything. Right? Well, you want to give the people who are savvy can go wrong, gonna take that and use it. 

Because then if it works, they pay attention to you and those who have money in their pocket, and they don’t want to do it themselves, they’ll hire you to do it. And then there’ll be a whole set of people who, let’s be honest, there’s a whole set of people who are never gonna buy from you anyway. And that’s okay.

Brynne Tillman  13:41

It could be your advocates, they could spread your content. You know, I have people in my network that will say, “My gosh, I’ve brought them so much value they’ve never bought from me” But because they’re engaging on my content, other people are attracted to that might. 

So yeah, I think that’s, that’s, that’s a great perspective for sure. I just want to drill down on one more thing around the experience. So you’ve mentioned that a couple of times, how does someone create an experience?

Divian Mistry  14:16

Brilliant, brilliant question. My personal favorite way of doing it is to have things that I do live as opposed to just having things I don’t do like, one way you can do that. For example, “If somebody went and downloaded my lead magnet, there’ll be an opportunity to book a conversation with me and I don’t sell people on that conversation” Right? 

I don’t go on my conversation to go at the end and put them in the corner and, you know, elicit their values and try to sell and all that crazy stuff. I don’t do that. That conversation is there. If you’re ready to think about taking the next step. “Let’s have a conversation” , “Let’s identify what’s not working”. And then we’ll have another conversation. 

And so that’s an experience, Right? And so in this day and age, and I’ve seen this so much there’s so many salespeople out there, who put you into this corner, and they do this selling process that elicits your fears and increases the fear and I have this theory, by the way that, you know, there’s people putting all this fear out there. 

And then what they do is they donate a lot of money to charity after they’re made a ton of money from putting all this fear out there. But the amount that they’re giving to charity doesn’t even remotely counteract the level of fear that they put into the world from their actions from the way they’re selling. 

And so actually, when you think about this, on a much bigger scale, they’re actually doing more damage than good and they’re convincing themselves. They’re doing good. So how do you do how do you create an experience, you do something different to what everybody else is doing? Right? 

So everybody in your market and this is there’s no right? There’s no specific answer. You got to look at your marketplace and go, What’s everybody doing in my marketplace? I would suggest don’t go salesy because that’s what so many people do that salesy thing and so many people like, like don’t like it anymore.

Brynne Tillman  15:56

No one likes it. I mean, no one wants to be sold, they might want to buy. That’s the Jeffrey Gitomer phrase, no one wants to be sold, but everyone likes to buy. So we want to be helped. We want someone to partner with us. But yeah, no one that sells salesy, maybe I couldn’t agree with you more. This is great. So my last question to you is what question didn’t I ask that I should have?

Divian Mistry  16:22

Oh, that’s a good one. We didn’t prepare for this question.

Brynne Tillman  16:26

It’s always left field for folks.

Divian Mistry  16:29

Yeah, I think, What question did you not ask that you should have asked? I think the question is coming to my mind is what’s the number one mistake that people make when trying to grow their business from a point of marketing? The question I think is quite poignant for this conversation. So I’m guessing I need to answer that question now. Right?

Brynne Tillman  16:53

Sure. I mean, and it doesn’t have to be the only answer, because apparently there’s more than one. Right? So just one example.

Divian Mistry  17:02

So I think the number one mistake I’ve seen people make is they focus too much from a marketing point of view on the tactics of having the right copy, or the right this or the right tactic to get the sale. And they don’t focus enough on building the relationship. 

Because what I found is if you focus really deeply on building the relationship, I mean, when people work with me, my closing question is, do you have any other questions? And literally, I think maybe one person has not said, How do I work with you? Like nine people said, “How do I work with you?” And I’m not saying 99% of them end up paying me, it’s more like 80.

Brynne Tillman  17:50

But they want to explore, you’ve earned the right, exactly, you’ve earned the right to tell them how they can work with you. I love this. This has been a very eye opening conversation to me, and I very much enjoyed this. I know our listeners will have gotten a ton of value.

And Devin has a book for you. If you go to elevenstrategies.com/makesalessocial, you’ll be able to opt in. You can buy his ebook with your email, it’s free financially, but I believe he’s earned the right today for you to buy that with your email and then you can see his process for me. 

I’m really excited to see what email I get? What does it say? Because I want to look at exactly your process. So go to eleven strategies, all words not number elevenstrategies.com/makesalessocial. Thank you so much for investing your time and sharing these golden nuggets with our network. So everyone, don’t forget when you are out and about to make sure your sales are social.

Outro  19:06

Thanks for listening and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing, sales, training and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Don’t forget to subscribe to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social Podcasts, leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned and what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com For more information.